For years, I was the stereotypical "ugly American" who was too bored by foreign films to give them a fair chance. But that's changed lately. These days, I like nothing better than popping a Bergman or Kurosawa or Ozu movie into my DVD player, and I'm becoming more and more intolerant of crass Hollywood fare.
Bear with me, because my tedious introductory comments are leading up to a point. And that point is - "Bicycle Thieves" is perhaps THE essential movie that turned me off foreign films for so many years. "Bicycle Thieves" is, in sad fact, the movie that chased me away from subtitles, away from the arty-farty world of elite cinema. It took a long time for me to work up the courage to watch another foreign film after I saw this little gem, I can tell you.
But why, you might reasonably ask, did "Bicycle Thieves" have such a profoundly negative effect on me? Because I found it simply too depressing for words. Depressing...to an almost absurd degree.
The movie, I'm sure you know, is about a dude who needs a bicycle to get a decent job and support his family. He pawns some of his last worldly possessions in order to obtain said bicycle. And the bicycle is *immediately* stolen. Our protagonist spends the whole movie trying to get the bicycle back, and even succeeds in tracking down the thief, but he is obstructed at every turn by jerks and ultimately frustrated in his quest.
So, in the end, our hero tries to steal a bicycle himself during a moment of despair. Unfortunately for him, about 10,000 people witness the attempted theft and perform a group tackle on him to stop it. He is publicly shamed in front of his son, and then slinks away. End of depressing movie.
What exactly is the message here? Society sucks? Poverty is inescapable? Don't respond to stealing with more stealing? Or, at least, never try to lift someone else's bike when 10,000 people are ready to spring upon you from every doorway and stop you? The truth is, I can't figure out the movie's message. Nor can I relate much to the depths of poverty shown here - can the guy really not afford to buy another bicycle, or borrow one, or *something*? Or must his whole life be an endless tale of frustration and woe?
Call me superficial...call me bourgeois...call me uninformed...but I think this movie is just a drag, a slog, a pain in my posterior. It's the kind of foreign movie that turns Americans off better foreign movies, and that's a shame. I wish I could see something sophisticated about it, but I don't - what's so sophisticated about being relentlessly dark, to the point of stretching credibility?
In short, I'll gladly take the bitter-sweetness of a foreign art film like "Tokyo Story" over the bitter-bitterness of this one. Real life is usually better than what you see in this movie, folks. And when life does get this bad...I'm not sure I wanna look at it.
Bear with me, because my tedious introductory comments are leading up to a point. And that point is - "Bicycle Thieves" is perhaps THE essential movie that turned me off foreign films for so many years. "Bicycle Thieves" is, in sad fact, the movie that chased me away from subtitles, away from the arty-farty world of elite cinema. It took a long time for me to work up the courage to watch another foreign film after I saw this little gem, I can tell you.
But why, you might reasonably ask, did "Bicycle Thieves" have such a profoundly negative effect on me? Because I found it simply too depressing for words. Depressing...to an almost absurd degree.
The movie, I'm sure you know, is about a dude who needs a bicycle to get a decent job and support his family. He pawns some of his last worldly possessions in order to obtain said bicycle. And the bicycle is *immediately* stolen. Our protagonist spends the whole movie trying to get the bicycle back, and even succeeds in tracking down the thief, but he is obstructed at every turn by jerks and ultimately frustrated in his quest.
So, in the end, our hero tries to steal a bicycle himself during a moment of despair. Unfortunately for him, about 10,000 people witness the attempted theft and perform a group tackle on him to stop it. He is publicly shamed in front of his son, and then slinks away. End of depressing movie.
What exactly is the message here? Society sucks? Poverty is inescapable? Don't respond to stealing with more stealing? Or, at least, never try to lift someone else's bike when 10,000 people are ready to spring upon you from every doorway and stop you? The truth is, I can't figure out the movie's message. Nor can I relate much to the depths of poverty shown here - can the guy really not afford to buy another bicycle, or borrow one, or *something*? Or must his whole life be an endless tale of frustration and woe?
Call me superficial...call me bourgeois...call me uninformed...but I think this movie is just a drag, a slog, a pain in my posterior. It's the kind of foreign movie that turns Americans off better foreign movies, and that's a shame. I wish I could see something sophisticated about it, but I don't - what's so sophisticated about being relentlessly dark, to the point of stretching credibility?
In short, I'll gladly take the bitter-sweetness of a foreign art film like "Tokyo Story" over the bitter-bitterness of this one. Real life is usually better than what you see in this movie, folks. And when life does get this bad...I'm not sure I wanna look at it.