What Is Neorealism?: Exploring De Sica’s Sciuscià (1946) and Ladri di Biciclette (1948)

Dear Reader,

For a bare-bones definition and history of Italian Neorealism, please see the prior post. Today, I will be examining two of Vittorio De Sica’s Neorealist masterpieces, Shoeshine and The Bicycle Thieves. If you are already familiar with the plot, skip the synopsis section straight to the analysis.

Film Synopsis:

Sciuscià (Trans: Shoeshine) – A 1946 Neorealist drama following two shoeshine boys in Rome, one an orphan (Pasquale) and the other from an impoverished family (Giuseppe). While saving up to by a horse of their own, the boys are drawn into a robbery and blackmail plot by Giuseppe’s older brother. After trying to deliver the final payment to the stableman, they are instead caught and held in a dehumanizing, overcrowded boys’ prison. Separated in the prison, Giuseppe falls under the influence of an older juvenile cellmate and Pasquale is tricked into giving up Giuseppe’s brother to the police. With their trial pending, the two friends are driven further apart by all the forces at work in postwar Italy.

Italian Neorealism, in its most acknowledged form as both style and movement, is characterized by its use of non-professional actors, on-location shooting, natural lighting, a documentary-style cinematography, setting of contemporary events and issues, a distinct social context, and a focus on social, economic, and political issues facing Italy in the immediate postwar period (e.g. poverty, unemployment, isolation, alienation, disillusionment). However, neorealism also existed on a more personal, director-by-director basis in which the “neo-” and “realism” transmutes across film, creator, and time. For Vittorio De Sica, the realism of the postwar period was “neo-” not because it was more representational due to its on-location shooting or documentary artifice, which were mostly by-products of financial and resource scarcity. Instead, it emerged in a humanist pursuit of truth and authenticity on the levels of narrative and character, of experience and humanity, of place, time, and personality, and of individual and collective, in order to portray man’s indifference to the suffering of others, its attempt at solidarity, and its need for a reconstructed morality.

In an interview with journalist Charles Thomas Samuels, neorealist filmmaker De Sica divests his definition of “Neo-realism” from its stylistic hallmarks, grounding it in more abstract, almost philosophical ideas and goals:

“. . . People think that neorealism means exterior shooting, but they are wrong. Most films today are made in a realistic style, but they are actually opposed to neorealism […]. Because neorealism is not shooting films in authentic locales; it is not reality. It is reality filtered through poetry, reality transfigured” (Cardullo 188).

Born at the turn of the century in the Lazio region, not 100 miles from Rome, De Sica endured an impoverished youth before establishing a theatre company, and eventually found himself acting in the Italian film industry, mostly in popular light comedies, directed by the likes of Mario Camerini. It wasn’t until 1940 when he began directing films of his own, and by that point, he had already forged his career’s most productive working relationship with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini. In the immediate postwar period, he directed his informal “neorealist” Trilogy of Solitude, which includes Sciuscià (1946), Ladri di Biciclette (1948), and Umberto D. (1952). Most of his early filmography as a director features comedies, often starring himself, however, he only began to shift to drama towards the close of the war with I Bambini Ci Guardano (The Children Are Watching Us, 1944), considered by some to be a neorealist precursor, due to its use of a first-time child actor as its protagonist, some on-location shooting, real crowds, traces of dialect, the contributions of Zavattini, and most importantly to De Sica, the adoption of a child’s perspective to capture the unsympathetic and indifferent nature of the adult world (unusual for the reverence and sentimentality usually attached to the family unit in films of the Fascist period).  

In Sciuscià (1946), De Sica informally inaugurated what is now known as his “Trilogy of Solitude.” Peter Bondanella, groundbreaking Italian film historian, suggests that the “solitude” originates in De Sica’s implication that no reform or revolution can “alter the basic facts of life: solitude, loneliness, and alienation of the individual within the amorphous and unsympathetic body of humanity” (89). This is illustrated in De Sica’s consistent use of crowds in introducing his protagonists. In Sciuscià, the first shots are groups of children chasing and yelling after two boys riding on a horse, those boys being shoeshine boys Pasquale and Giuseppe. Throughout the film, that gaggle of children are seen chasing after anything that captures their attention, from the wealthy couple on the horses to the judicial condemnation of their friends. In Ladri di Biciclette, the film starts with a group of out-of-work men gathering around an employment agent begging for work, when protagonist Antonio, isolated on a lawn nearby, is singled out for a potential job. The first frames of Umberto D. feature the eponymous character half-heartedly participating in a pensioners’ protest. Each individual emerges from the crowd to relay their extraordinarily ordinary story, and hence disappears back into the faceless masses, writhing in their own multitudes of pain and suffering, and clawing attempts at simultaneous individuation and solidarity.

For Sciuscià, according to De Sica, his vision was to convey the “melancholy poetry of that generation of children led astray by the war” and “emphasize a phenomenon that has always deeply saddened [him]—the indifference of humanity to the needs of others” (Cardullo 177). These ambitions are reflected in the narrative as well as the aesthetic choices. First, he essentially conducted ride-along (or field) research in Rome by following actual shoeshine boys around for a year in their everyday activities (one of whom ended up in prison after the theft of a gas mask), and the “reality” of the story unfolded before his eyes: “The drama, not invented by me but staged by life itself, was drawing to its fatal conclusion” (177). He also casted nonprofessional child actors, shot a combination of on-location in Rome as well as in the available studios. De Sica seemed to find particular inspiration in seeking out fresh, malleable talent, whether adult or child, as an essential facet to his realism. In that endeavor, he was actively rejecting the pre-existing divismo star system of Italy’s early cinema, and the studio-star system that predominated the aggressively influential and culturally imperialistic American Hollywood cinema (which existed for most national cinemas as a point of reference, for good or bad). For De Sica, it is “not the actor who lends the character a face which, however versatile he may be, is necessarily his own, but the character who reveals himself, sooner or later, in ‘that’ particular face and in no other” (178).

However, the most effective stylistic decision was in the cinematographic framing of the film. It is shot at eye-level with the child protagonists, inhabiting their bleak yet strangely exuberant world, as though they are miniature adults. It follows them through the squalor, of dozens of people living in one structure, including refugees, and the hundreds of out-of-school and out-of-home children working the streets (not unlike Biciclette’s Bruno).

The “indifference” to human suffering is played out in every frame, from the rich people at the club who walk past the children in torn clothes, to the American G.I.s skimping on paying the shoeshine boys, to the wavering solidarity between the poor, families, and what is viewed as the necessary criminalities. The most poignant apathetic experiences occur in the execution of the crime and within the walls of the juvenile prisons. Adults are willing to use children in order to commit crimes and face punishment for them; doctors and administrators inspect the detention center like a prison camp, beating children, and even the doctors remain cold and clinical when shuffling the sick in with the “healthy.” When the children sing, their windows are closed out by shutting the only window through which to see their fellow “inmates.” Even the parents don’t visit or concern themselves, the kids are used as guards and informants, forced to turn against one another. At a certain point, the children and adults alike become indifferent to their corrupted souls and tragic fates.

An Interlude into Bicycle Thieves (1948)

A similar questioning of institutions is conducted in Biciclette, which De Sica claims is a filmic telling of the story of one man and his son’s attempt at “pathetic human solidarity” (Cardullo 178).

Film Synopsis:

Ladri di Biciclette (Trans: Bicycle Thieves) – A 1948 Neorealist drama following Antonio Ricci, an unemployed man in the depressed postwar economy of Rome, who gets a last chance at a good job – for which he needs a bike – hanging up posters. But soon after, his bicycle is stolen, and he and his son, Bruno, wander the streets of bleak Rome in an almost hopeless quest to find it. After unsuccessfully searching the streets and black market, they finally manage to locate the thief but with no proof, he is forced to abandon his quest by a violent mob. Without the bike, father and son know he will be not be able to keep his job and support their family, and Antonio is driven to one final desperate act to save his future.

At every level, the systems, structures, and institutions not only fail people, primarily children (or anything new, young, fresh, or clean), but feed them back into one another in a synergistic paradigm of apathy. The collective, in this case, preys on and denigrates the individual. Thematically, the postwar alienation from the collective provokes intriguing questions, particularly since one of the principles of fascism was the prioritization of the primordial collective over the destructive, secondary individual identity.  

In seeking solidarity, man and child – Antonio and Bruno – reach out to several institutions in their day of crises. Bruno is unable to attend school and must work, is snidely ignored by upper-class peers, and is often at odds with his father’s attempts to desperately cope with his seemingly hopeless situation. Antonio reaches out to the law to retrieve his bike and is ignored, to the elderly spiritualist and is discouraged, and is unassisted (and even silenced) by many of the groups representing socioeconomic and political revolution, such as the party meeting. Furthermore, he is repeatedly attacked as an individual by teams or collectives: from the pair that steal his bike to the neighborhood that violently opposes his pursuit of the thief, to his final condemnation by the group of men who catch him stealing a bike. It is only at the behest of the individual bike owner that the crowd releases him, after they have hurled ruthless insults at him regarding his failure as individual, Italian, father, and man. Here is a man with his final symbol of respectability – his hat and suit – dirty and in tatters. In the face of this personal tragedy, not unlike that facing most of the country in the immediate postwar period rightly questioned the need for fabrication:

“Why seek extraordinary adventures when we are presented daily with artless people who are filled with real distress?” (De Sica 87-88).

Beyond the inefficiency and apathy of institutions is their continuous absurdity.

For example, in Biciclette, through various public and private spheres, inhabited by the police, pawning merchants, churches and charitable socialites, the lower and higher-classes, spiritualists, and soccer fans, the audience recognizes the utmost absurdity of everyday life. This is exemplified in small things like the windshield wipers on Baiocco’s work truck that don’t work in face of a heavy rain to the labyrinthine plot to find the eponymous stolen bicycle in the first place. Furthermore, on an institutional level, the absurdity continues: the police who expect the victims to solve the crime, the church and charity who demand religious loyalty and mass attendance in exchange for the actual charity of a shave and food, the church workers who make a racket just to tell Antonio not to make a racket, and who are unable to properly address said racket due to their habitual making of the sign of the cross. Particularly the scene in the church, where the contrast between the tradition and decorum of the Church, the superficiality and hypocrisy of the Church’s treatment of outsiders and those who endure the realities of poverty and troubled faith, and the wavering resolute of the Italian people in the Church in the bleak (and often hopeless) postwar period. In the film’s most astute moment of juxtaposition is the eventual breakdown of the protagonist, as he sends his son away so as to blind or protect him from the great transgression he is about to commit, which is paired with the sounds of the cheering crowd in the stadium (the irony that so many should be celebrating a sport so attached to a sense of nationalism, all while a man, one of countless, should be in such agony, under such scrutiny, and almost at his end).

In a through-line to his next neorealism chapter, Ladri di Biciclette, Sciuscià also reflects, however briefly, on the gradual realization that adults make mistakes, have weaknesses, and foremost, possess uncertainty, desperation, and vulnerability.

Ritorno a Sciuscià

By Sciuscià‘s end, Pasquale is divided from the adults by distance and conscience. After accidentally killing Giuseppe, he remains below the bridge as the adults look down on the tragic conclusion, for the children had been made adults too soon, by the war, the economy, the justice system, and society. This message of “childhood innocence corrupted by the adult world,” is exemplified through Cesare Zavattini’s dialogue, and specific character reactions (Bondanella 82). First, the choice to have the children, more or less speak like adults, constantly swearing, even young Nannarella, makes the dynamics between the world-weary children rough and borderline disturbing. Second, and by far the most powerful symbol of this communication is each scene featuring Giuseppe or Pasquale crying. In those brief moments, the audience is reminded that they are children. Every human being has this perspective of vulnerability, to be sad and despair in the circumstances they find themselves in, but in the faces of children, as their expression scrunches, their eyes and mouths turn down,
the tears fall, and the noise of weeping that is clearly not aged, is breathtakingly tragic. They are just children.

Despite its classification, Neorealism, for De Sica, must always be aware that reality is carefully constructed, as the output of specific and planned aesthetic and narrative choices, from elaborate screenplays to carefully choreographed crowd scenes to extensive (almost sociological) research, and purposeful cinematography and editing – cinematic artifice in the service of truth and reality. It was what was between the lines, spoken and unspoken, seen and unacknowledged that conveyed the reality that De Sica hoped would translate to the Italian audience – “the poetry of real people and the truth of human relationships” (Cardullo 208). He once said that neorealism was “born after a total loss of liberty, not only personal, but artistic and political. It was a means of rebelling against the stifling dictatorship that had humiliated Italy” (Cardullo 188). It was as much about the contemporary, the present, as it was negotiating the past and future, in real terms, not in legislation, statistics, or epic backdrops, but in working hard, making a living, feeding one’s family, being a child, thinking and feeling one’s own thoughts and feelings, and rediscovering as individuals and as a nation, a reconstructed morality and an Italian identity.

Works Cited

1. Bondanella, Peter. A History of Italian Cinema. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2009, Print.
2. Cardullo, Bert. Vittorio De Sica: Actor, Director, and Auteur. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 7 March 2016.
3. De Sica, Vittorio. “Why Ladri di Biciclette?” Springtime in Italy: A Reader on Neo-realism. Ed. David Overbey. London: Talisman Books, 1978. 87-88. Print.
4. Ladri di Biciclette. Dir. Vittorio De Sica. Perf. Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell, and Vittorio Antonucci. Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche, Umbrella Entertainment, and Joseph Burstyn & Arthur Mayer, 1948. Film.
5. Sciuscià. Dir. Vittorio De Sica. Perf. Franco Interlenghi, Rinaldo Smordoni, Annielo Mele, Bruno Ortenzi, and Emilio Cigoli. Lopert Pictures Corporation, 1946. Film.
6. Umberto D. Dir. Vittorio De Sica. Perf. Carlo Battisti, Maria-Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari, Ileana Simova, Elena Rea, and Memmo Carotenuto. Dear Film, 1952. Film.