At the beginning of the film, I had doubts, the title was The Bicycle Stealer. It is equivalent to the director telling the audience at the beginning: "Some people will steal bicycles." So who is the person who steals bicycles? So the audience followed the setting of this suspense and watched it . The story takes place in Rome after World War II, a society full of unemployment and poverty. We know this in the first scene of the movie, when there are only a few job offers, but there are hordes of people cramming for a job.
Richie, who has been unemployed for a long time, is delighted that he finally got a job. The job content is also very simple, but he requires a bicycle to get this job. He has no other choice but to stick to it. Scalp took the job. As soon as he met his wife, he complained. It turned out that the bicycle had been pawned in order to survive, so for the job opportunity, the wife had to remove all the dowry sheets and take them to the pawnshop, and then redeem the bicycle.
In the pawnshop play, we can see that there are a lot of people going to the pawnshop, and there are a lot of things pawned in the pawnshop. It can also be seen from the social conditions at that time that people were generally very poor, and they had to pawn their belongings in order to make a living, so the pawnshops were so prosperous.
As soon as he redeemed the bicycle, Rich excitedly carried the bicycle to the place where the work was reported. Sure enough, he got the job smoothly. With the job, there was income and hope for life. Richie and his wife were very happy when they got the job, when the wife asked Richie to take her to a place. Richie, who was waiting downstairs and went upstairs when he felt that something was wrong, asked the children playing at the door to help him watch the bicycle.
After going upstairs, he found that his wife was going to repay the promise to the goddess. Rich 's reaction at this time was that he thought his wife was stupid and made fun of his wife's money and nowhere to spend it.
After going downstairs, the bicycle was still in the same place, and the two of them rode home happily.
The next morning, Rich's son appeared on the stage. It can be seen here that although his son is very young, he is very distressed and very sensible. This is also a manifestation of the poverty of Rich's family. The so-called children of poor families are in charge.
At this time, Richie and his wife are no longer as frowning as they were at the beginning of the film (the poor and humble couples are sad). After having a job, the livelihood can be solved, and the family is very happy.
Next, Rich's bicycle was stolen, and organized thieves prevented Rich from catching up with his stolen bicycle.
What the police said when reporting the case was very ironic. For public officials, it was just a bicycle lost. For Rich, this bicycle was the hope of their family's life and a tool necessary for their survival. What he lost was A carefree family life.
The above two scenarios both reflect that in such a social situation where poverty and unemployment are common, the poor people at the bottom are more likely to have conflicts because of their survival, and gradually become a kind of mutual harm between the bottom and the bottom .
However, when faced with people of a higher class than them, such as public officials such as the police, the stall owner showed a completely opposite and even flattering attitude. This is a typical feature of mutual harm at the bottom. People of a class or a class lower than themselves attack and hurt each other. However, when faced with people of higher rank than him, he showed obedience and flattery.
In the movie, an emotional state has been exaggerated, that is, embarrassment and embarrassment , like the suffocated urine of Richie's son. Wherever Ricky goes, he is very eager to grab the clues (the old man and the young man who stole the bike) that will get him back to the bike, but no matter where Ricky is, there are always people around him blocking him.
Corresponding to Richie 's embarrassment caused by poverty is the state of the upper classes of society. Those wealthy upper classes in the church use free food for missionary purposes to attract many poor people to worship (essentially is a hypocritical gesture). The state of the upper echelons of these churches is to maintain their decency at all times, as Richie is reminded many times in the film to "keep quiet". There is also the contrast between the two upper-class youths who knelt down and salute when passing the central altar of the church and Richie who has been looking for the old man and walked over without looking at it, and the son who has not fully understood the seriousness of the matter at this time also learned from the two Youth salute. For Ritchie, the issues he faces are more realistic issues of survival, so he's so urgent that he doesn't have time for any decency. This is also the difference in the psychological state of the poor and the rich due to poverty.
Afterwards, Richie beat his son because of his emotions, and asked his son to hear a little boy falling into the water while waiting for him on the bridge. At this time, Richie rushed over to check and found that the person who fell into the water was not his son, and saw his son again. After walking out of the bridge and sitting down, he breathed a sigh of relief. At this time, Rich realized that a bicycle is nothing in the face of the child's life, and he can't lose/injure the child just because he is looking for a bicycle. Because of this episode, Rich had a brief relief from bicycles and decided to take his son to a restaurant for dinner.
However, another rich little girl in the restaurant attracted the attention of Richie's son, which is often more obvious than between children. Richie, who noticed his son's strangeness, told his son about the gap in reality, and told his son to post How much income this job can bring to their family makes my son realize the importance of finding a bicycle. At the same time the scene pulls them back to the reality of having to find the bike.
At this time, contrary to the previous attitude of disbelief and ridicule, Richie, who was desperate, decided to go to the goddess for fortune-telling.
There is another queue cut here , which echoes that Richie, who was anxious when he just lost his bicycle, wanted to cut the queue when he took the bus home, but this time it was his son who took the initiative to cut the queue, which also showed that his son understood the urgency of looking for a bicycle.
And they finally met the young man who stole the bicycle by chance, and after chasing him all the way to his house, because there was no evidence, Rich had no way to retrieve his bicycle. Richie could only leave there angrily with his son.
The son was almost in danger again, but at this time Richie didn't notice it at all. What was he thinking? After leaving the youth residence, he felt injustice and humiliation, and was so immersed in his complicated thoughts that he didn't even notice his son behind him.
Then they walked outside the stadium, where a very lively football game was being held, and at this moment the restless mood and atmosphere in the stadium was contagious, and this emotional contagion made Rich more anxious, and his anxiety was also contagious to son.
The race was over, and the people who watched the race filed out, and Ritchie felt even more anxious as he watched the people leave on their bikes. Richie looked at a bicycle parked alone at the corner, and watched the people pacing back and forth anxiously after watching the race and leaving on their bicycles, and his heart was at war.
So Rich made up his mind and gave his son the money to take the bus and go back first.
The son, who was unable to get on the bus and left, happened to see the scene of his father being chased by a group of people and shouting to catch the thief. The son watched his father, who was obviously here to catch the bicycle thief, turned into a bicycle thief and was caught. live. It was a huge shock to my son at the moment. This can be said to be a collapse of the father image . However, the son understands why all this is. It is better to say that at this moment, whether it is for the audience or the son, the biggest impact is actually the real power from reality .
So the son rushed up crying, squeezed into the crowd surrounding his father, and grabbed his father's clothes tightly. When the father was about to be taken away and sent to the police station, the person who had the stolen bicycle saw the son who followed his father in tears and hugged his father's knocked-off hat. So moved with compassion and let Richie go.
After being released, the son handed him the hat that his father had knocked off. When the son saw his crying father, he immediately grabbed his father's hand. Ritchie and his son walk away silently from the crowd holding hands, and the movie ends here.
At this time, let's answer the question at the beginning of this article, who is the bicycle thief? In the beginning, it was just the young man, but in the end, in the face of the pressure of reality, Richie also became the bicycle thief. In fact, that young man is a complete bad guy. Probably not, he suffers from a medical condition like epilepsy and is unemployed at home. To a certain extent, there is not much difference between him and Richie, they are just poor people at the bottom, but the young man may become a thief earlier and deeper.
So in fact, the film is a metaphor: under such a social reality, every bottom-level person who has nowhere to go may become the "bicycle thief".
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