Ladri di biciclette

Bicycle thieves, an Italian Neorealism film which is directed by Vittorio De Sica, is a very impressed and influential film as long as it was screened. It is a significant cinematic artwork in the postwar era not only because it contained several new trends of postwar films and changed the way people regarded films, but also because it drew worldwide audiences' attentions towards to the hard time and bad situations that the whole European people went through after the WWII.

As a film in which the director utilized less film skills and kept it as real as possible, the term "realism" went into audiences' eyes more often than ever before. In the films, the actors were not professional ones, giving the film a sense of reality that made audiences feel like the film was like their daily life. Also, the filmmakers tried not to use so much reverse shots or montage, which made the film more "documentary". Instead of giving audiences a specific and small frame, the directors made more long shots and long takes to enlarge audiences' views and consequently rejected the subjectivity that filmmakers often gave to audiences.
The film focused on the three-days life of a normal family in the after war Italy, where there was high unemployment and people went through a tough period. In the family, the husband was unemployed for a long time and finally got a job from the welfare department. However, the requirement was he had to have a bicycle. Selling the bed sheets, the man bought a bicycle and went to work happily. Unfortunately, his bicycle was stolen in his first working day so as he had no money to buy a new one, he had to find it or he would lose the job.

What happened afterward was the most interesting part because although he did the best to find the bicycle with his son, there were several obstacles which blocked him from finding it. He found an old guy who knew how to contact the thief, however, the old guy was so callous that he only thought about himself. He did not want to offer the guy's address even though he lost nothing from it. From my pov, this part was interesting because it represented how cold and scared people were in that era. They only cared about themselves and even others might die, they did not care at all. The humanities shown here made me pretty sad because it was not the problem of the old guy, it was the problem of the whole society after the war. People never trusted others and they became extremely selfish in the extreme impoverished situations. Also, there was another plot which interested me a lot. When the man finally found the thief, all the neighborhood rejected him and stopped him from taking his bicycle back or asking the young thief, which made the thief seemed like not that bad, or he wouldn't win so much supports. Conversely, the man who was stolen the bicycle, also went to steal another one's bicycle, which made it like a recycle system that everyone was no good or bad. People were just determined by the life conditions they experienced.

As a Academy Award winner, Bicycle Thieves provides a new view of what we should shoot in the film and what filmmakers should consider about. It was this new trend which made a explosive influence and discussion around the whole world.

Rashomon, an art film about humanism

In postwar era, the development of modernist art and the influence the war brought to people, culturally and socially affect the emergence of art cinema. During this period cinema does not any more have the straight storyline and characters do not have clear-cut persona any longer. Oppositely, filmmakers were trying to search another way to express their inner thought with camera, using multiple-persona characters and complex structure of storyline.

At this point, Rashomon is a good example to illustrate this occurrence, by using parallel storyline to tell a story about complexity and selfishness of humanity. Everyone in this film is a representation of deceit and feign. For example, the robbery lies because he wants to seem strong enough and show his masculinity; the woman lies because she wants to keep an image of her innocence and her faith to her husband; the man lies because he wants to let others respect and honor him after he died; the witness lies because he stole the expensive dagger. As a result, there are four stories of the same affair, which shocked the Buddha and the witness, simultaneously shocking the audiences and showing the fact that people are selfish creatures. If the deepest humanism is dig out and shown in front of people, it is hard to accept the coldness of the fact.

However, at the end of the film, the positive aspect humanism is shown since the witness' adoption of the kid. The hope is lit up again when the heavy rain stopped, and maybe the kid is the representation of the new generation of Japanese after World War II, hope and bright future.