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Ladri di biciclette (literally translated as Bicycle Thieves) is a 1948 Italian neorealist film known in its US English release as The Bicycle Thief.
The film was directed by Vittorio De Sica, stars Lamberto Maggiorani as the father and Enzo Staiola as the son, and won an honorary Academy Award for Foreign Language Film in 1950, and won the British Academy Awards for Best Film from Any Source. The film was heavily awarded by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, and is commonly considered a film classic.
In 1990, Italian director Maurizio Nichetti produced a spoof of Italian neo-realist cinema, named The Icicle Thief after The Bicycle Thief.
The movie is based on the novel by Luigi Bartolini and translated to the screen by screenwriter Cesare Zavattini. Following neorealist principles, none of the cast were professional actors but were people from real life. The documentary style camera work helped convey the feeling that the film is truly about real people.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow. The film tells the story of a man who gets a job posting fliers in the depressed post-WWII economy of Italy; to keep the job, he must have a bicycle. His wife sells her wedding sheets to get the money to buy him a bicycle. Early in the film, the bike is stolen, and the man and his son spend the remainder of the film searching for it. At the end of the film the man, desperate to keep his job, attempts to steal a bicycle himself.
See also List of movies that have been considered the greatest ever.
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