288. Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Starring: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Running Time: 93 mins

Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette) is an Italian film about a man who is given a new job, but he has to buy a new bicycle in order to be accepted for it. However, on his first day, his bike gets stolen, and he and his son must set out to find it if he wants to keep his job.

This film was pretty good. Initially, I found the story really interesting, and particularly promising, with clever plot twists along the way, and although it was a little boring in the middle, it finished off with an intriguing end.

It may seem as if the idea of a man and his son just meandering around Rome looking for a bike is quite tedious, however it was at first very interesting, as you could evidently see how desperate this man was to keep his job, so he had to find his bicycle, making me sympathise for him.

However, after about 40 minutes of this, it does start to become a little too slow and a little too boring, because the ways in which the man set about finding this bicycle were very slow and quite stupid in my opinion, which also made it often annoying to watch.

Overall, I’ll give this a 7.5 because although it was clever and interesting at the start and the end of this film, the main middle part was quite dull to watch.