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The news from poems, says William Carlos Williams, poems from the news, say Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini. "Un buon lavoro municipale" is a treasure during times of postwar struggle, the laborer (Lamberto Maggiorani) gets it, plastering glitzy Hollywood posters on battered Roman walls. A bicycle is needed to get the job but a job is needed to get a bicycle, the Kafkaesque element is cemented by a view of the vast pawnshop-warehouse where the wife (Lianella Carell) sells the family heirlooms. Look away for a second and the precious vehicle is purloined, nobody around to help but a whole swarm to castigate—thus the fable of the thief who gets away with it and the one who doesn't. "A sociologically-oriented program," suggests the fancy-pants Communist, in the same hall is the vaudeville chum who recommends a search of the local market. "Neo-realismo," stylization by any other name, reliable theater on real streets. One long Sunday with the seven-year-old son (Enzo Staiola) by his side, the tragic needle in the haystack swiftly re-imagined by Kurosawa as film-noir (Stray Dog). The open-air bazaar that disbands under a sudden rain, the elderly racketeer who endures church services for a bowl of soup, the oasis of a mozzarella sandwich and a glass of wine. "Why should I kill myself worrying when I'll end up just as dead?" A stark Zavattini manifesto expanded by De Sica's sense of quotidian overflow. Chaplin's backward kick for the pesky little accordionist, a private court for the queenly neighborhood clairvoyant. ("Plow another field," she tells the dim lad who doesn't quite understand rejection.) The protagonist stumbles into the culprit in a moment modified by Hitchcock in The Wrong Man, the bitterest irony is saved for the parking lot outside a soccer stadium. The ultimate barometer is the boy's gaze, the tiny hopeful hand slipping into the shattered adult one as they disappear into Vidor's crowd. Cinematography by Carlo Montuori. With Gino Saltamerenda, Vittorio Antonucci, Elena Altieri, and Giulio Chiari. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |