Thursday, June 16, 2005

The Bicycle Thief

I have never been able to watch a movie for more than 15 minutes, except for a few years in college when the parallel cinema held me in awe for some time before I returned to my first love- books. It still remains for me an adjunct to literature and the written word. And I have been able to supplement some of my reading via this medium.

My current stay in the US is not without its advantages and I have been able to watch at least half a dozen movies that I always heard or read about. Among them is The Bicycle Thief (or Thieves as it probably is titled in the original). I find the movie fascinating, and no wonder it is held as the harbinger of neo- realist cinema.

Besides the technical finesse- usage of real locations and non- real actors and hence real people, De Cica manages to make even the most unreal character in the movie- the fortune teller- a real, an almost mundane person. Much better has been written about the movie than perhaps I can write and hence would refer the interested reader to other sites.

I have watched a few others in the last couple of months- some of the works of Akira Kurasawa and a number of movies starring Anthony Hopkins. About them, perhaps later.

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