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Editor’s note: this list was originally published in May 2024. It has since been updated in honor of Father’s Day.

Every family relationship is fertile material for any film, but none have been pillaged quite as extensively as the father/son dynamic. Blame the patriarchy, perhaps, for centering the male experience far more extensively in fiction, resulting in films where daughters and mothers tend to fall by the wayside in favor of drama between the men of the family.

Still, filmmakers and their work respond to the imperfect culture we all live in, and the relationship between a father and son can act as a vehicle to explore powerful ideas on screen. Familial expectations, pressures to uphold legacies, and the emotional repression that often defines heterosexual male relationships inform many of cinema’s greatest father stories, which can frequently be boiled down to the (somewhat reductive) label of “daddy issue” dramas.

More than 60 years after its release, “Bicycle Thieves” is a profound lesson on how to survive tough times, but often not appreciated that way. While widely considered in saccharine terms, it actually offers a bleak assessment of humanity’s worst impulses. For years mislabeled as “The Bicycle Thief,” the original title of Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece actually gets the point across much better. The story is less focused on the murky figure who stole the bike that Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) was using for his meager job putting up posters around Rome. Instead, as Ricci himself grows desperate in the film’s closing moments, “Bicycle Thieves” exposes the endless cycle of corruption that comes out of hard times, and how self-interest so often trumps the impulse to do the right thing. Decades later, that message resonates more than ever.

It’s also a bitter pill to swallow, one that...

“Everyone is helping so there is no need to be sad.”

There is still a certain prejudice when it comes to films made for children. Some see the bright colors, the at times silly comedy and the kind of characters and regard these films as “something only a child would find funny”. While there are certainly stories, films and novels, which may confirm this judgment, it is, nevertheless, a rather short-sighted assessment, ignoring the expressive power of art and how adult (or even universal) themes are reflected in these tales. In fact, many filmmakers have made their child characters carry the emotional weight of the story, presenting the relevance of their themes for everyone in society. For example, Enzo Staiola’s Bruno in Vittorio de Sica’s “Ladri di biciclette” expresses what it means to experience poverty in post World War II-Italy as well as the sadness when his own...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of “The Florida Project,” which has just started its platform release across the country, what is the greatest child performance in a film?

Jordan Hoffman (@JHoffman), The Guardian, Vanity Fair

I can agonize over this question or I can go at this Malcolm Gladwell “Blink”-style. My answer is Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon.” She’s just so funny and tough, which of course makes the performance all the more heartbreaking. She won the freaking Oscar at age 10 for this and I’d really love to give a more deep cut response, but why screw around? Paper Moon is a perfect film and she is the lynchpin.

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This August will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Tuesday, August 1

Tuesday’s Short + Feature: These Boots and Mystery Train

Music is at the heart of this program, which pairs a zany music video by Finnish master Aki Kaurismäki with a tune-filled career highlight from American independent-film pioneer Jim Jarmusch. In the 1993 These Boots, Kaurismäki’s band of pompadoured “Finnish Elvis” rockers, the Leningrad Cowboys, cover a Nancy Sinatra classic in their signature deadpan style. It’s the perfect prelude to Jarmusch’s 1989 Mystery Train, a homage to the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll and the musical legacy of Memphis, featuring appearances by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Joe Strummer.

The Barefoot Contessa

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1954 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 130 min. / Street Date December 13, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Marius Goring, Rossano Brazzi, Valentina Cortese, Elizabeth Sellars, Warren Stevens, Enzo Staiola, Mari Aldon, Bessie Love.

Cinematography: Jack Cardiff

Original Music: Mario Nascimbene

Written, Produced and Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

As a teenager, many of my first and strongest movie impressions came not from the movies, but from certain critics. I memorized Robin Wood’s analysis before getting a look at Hitchcock’s Psycho. Raymond Durgnat introduced me to Georges Franju and Luis Buñuel, and I first learned to appreciate a number of great movies including The Barefoot Contessa from Richard Corliss, a terrific critic who championed writers over director-auteurs.

The Barefoot Contessa is a classically structured story, in that it could work as a novel; it’s told from several points of view.

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

NYC’s IFC Center has plans to expand, and they could use your help to let city officials know you support it.

Watch Don Cheadle analyze a scene from Miles Ahead:

Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan begins shooting on July 9th, Le Journal de Quebec reports.

Cinematographer Jeff Cutter discusses shooting 10 Cloverfield Lane with Filmmaker Magazine:

Anamorphic lenses just have a feeling that reminded Dan and I of what it used to be like watching these great widescreen movies when we were kids that were shot anamorphic. It just makes it feel like a big movie and that was something that we really,...

To all cinephiles! This one is for you!

What a surprise was in store for us when we went to see “We Weren’t Just Bicycle Thieves. Neorealism” on its opening night of its qualifying run for Oscar submission in the documentary category.

The footage!

It took two and a half years to clear it all! The best scenes of Neorealistic cinema illustrate points on how Neorealism changed the lexicon and language of film in the same way that the Renaissance changed the visual language of art with linear perspective and its humanistic point of view.

The commentary!

Speaking about the influence of the Italian post-war Neorealism upon their filmmaking choices are Bertolucci, the Taviani Brothers, Scorsese, Olmi, Umberto Eco, Gabriel Garcia Marquez… the only reason Antonioni and Fellini did not speak was because they were no longer living when the movie was made. The interviews were not “talking heads”; they were conversations in which the great directors expressed their connections with Neorealism as they spoke to Carlo Lizzani.

Carlo Lizzani, the narrator and host of this documentary is an elegant 91 year old man who worked as scriptwriter, assistant director to every Neorealistic director and director in his own right. He starred in movies 1939-1954.

I loved him dancing in "Bitter Rice" (which he cowrote) with the women workers. That was the first Neorealistic movie I saw, dubbed on TV, when I was about eight. It was so puzzling to me, seeing this woman in a rice field with her skirt hiked up in a very provocative way, calling to someone with her words not matching her lips.

I really did not understand what sort of movie I was seeing… Similar to the first time I saw Chantal Akerman’s "Jane Dielman" which was rather Neorealistic too, though a product of the early ‘70s.

The production value!

The room, a fascinating “study” filled with objects of Neorealistic movies where the Lizzani seemed to belong was actually a room built from scratch by production designer Maurizio di Clemente within the walls of the oldest film school in Italy, Centro Sperimentale de Cine. When Lizzani opened windows, they looked out upon landscapes of these great Neorealistic movies. The technology of today was used in service of high art. Opening windows itself was a Neorealistic device.

The book!

You will want to read it all and show it off on your coffee table. Interviews, philosophic discussions, pictures and detailed listings of all the Neorealistic movies are splendidly displayed.

The education!

My view of cinema — both post war Italian cinema and today’s cinema shifted into an informed appreciation of how much Neorealism changed our vision of what a film could be.

Neorealism came to fruition with the rebirth of Italy after the war and lasted to 1954. Actually as Carlo Lizzani explains, it began in 1939 “with the first rumblings of an anti-fascist rebellion… as well as among many intellectuals and cineastes, increasingly unanimous in their refusal of so-called “White Telephone” cinema.”

“Before Neorealism, films were called ‘Bianchi Telefono’ after the white telephones that Hollywood movies showed in the so-called ‘White Telephone’ cinema for the way they featured Hollywood-style living rooms where that status symbol was invariably set center stage. It may have been a typical object in certain Hollywood mansions or Middle-European villa, but hardly in the average Italian home,” says Lizzani.

The interview!

Gianni Bozzacchi, the film’s director, writer and producer is a Renaissance man and his stories are funny, deeply moving and extremely interesting! This is someone you want to talk to for hours.

Watching this labor of love was an experience I will always treasure.

Rarely do we see a film about the art of film…Todd McCarthy’s "Visions of Light" comes to mind but others fade into PBS TV memories. This is a cinematic, highly technological and artistic feat. The Dp was Fabio Olmi the son of Ermanno Olmi.

After the screening, Bozzacchi stayed for a Q+A and the next day I continued to question him in the home of producer Jay Kanter where he was staying. After two and a half hours, I still wanted more. But the issue of condensing it all to a blog was weighing on me.

“Everything was planned and laid out in great detail, scripted and planned to the second so that filming 91 year old Lizanni for two hours a day took exactly 8 days to complete.”

Bozzacchi had previously made movies and in the ‘70s and ‘80s. He worked in Los Angeles with Greg Bautzer, who, for nearly 50 years, was one of the premier entertainment attorneys in Hollywood and with Kirk Kerkorian who needs no introduction. He wrote, directed and produced “I Love N.Y.” which was sold internationally by Walter Manley. It presold widely including to Australia where it played six weeks. But for the U.S. release, Manley edited it, and Bozzacchi moved away from it and took the DGA pseudonym, the credited name Alan Smithee.

Why did you leave filmmaking for so long?

I still remember that film, starring Christopher Plummer, Virna Lisi, Scott Baio, Jennifer O’Neill, but that was my last until “Neorealism”.

In 1986 I saw the industry was changing and I chose to step out in order to watch it as an outsider. What was ‘Show Business” was becoming a 'Business Show’. Marketing led to creating a show which led to creating a sales industry. “

“I decided to change direction and do only what I really wanted to do. I took ten years developing a big project ‘Oh Brave New World: The Renaissance’ for TV. It is now in pre-production. I thought of the Neorealism project and of The Enzo Ferrari story for which I now have a deal with Tribeca and Robert De Niro.

What did you do before you were a filmmaker?

I quit school at 13. From 1966 to 1974, at 20 I entered the jet set and became a photographer.

Elizabeth Taylor was shooting ‘The Comedians’ in Africa by Graham Greene. In Dahomy (today it’s Benin) they rebuilt part of Haiti. In the photo agency I worked no one wanted to go there, so I went. I knew Elizabeth Taylor’s face very well so I photographed her with light; no retouching was needed. After seeing a photo I took of her, Richard Burton said to me, ‘You want to join our family? Elizabeth needs you.’ I only spoke Roman, no English. I worked with her for 14 years and her two kids were my assistants. I also worked on 162 films as a special photographer, reading the scripts and shooting scenes for magazine layouts, working with “the making of the film” format.

It was when I stopped as a photographer in ‘75 that I began to think of producing films like the cult film “ China 9, Liberty 37” directed by Monte Hellman and starring Sam Peckinpah, Warren Oates and Fabio Testi and I wrote a book ExpoXed Memory about my life.

There is a relationship of all my projects to Neorealism, and of Neorealism to the Renaissance. All our projects are ready to go.

What are you doing in L.A.?

We have formed a new company with producer Jay Kanter and other partners who love film rather than the business of film. “We Weren’t Just Bicycle Thieves: Neorealismo” is the first to come out of the gate.

“The Listener” is the next project I will direct. It is based on the semi-autobiographical book, Operation Appia Way, by the Italian politician Giulio Andreotti. Andreotti served as Prime Minister of Italy seven terms since the restoration of democracy in 1946.

Yes he was the subject of Paolo Sorrentino’s film “Il Divo”. The book is about phone tapping, abuse of power and violations of personal privacy as is so often employed in politic, spying, etc. Andreotti had studied to be a priest but became a politician and this is about the birth of wire tapping which took place in the Roman catacombs and tapped the phones of Pope Pius Xii in conversations with Churchill, Churchill and the King of Italy, Mussolini and Hitler, Roosevelt and the Pope. The scenarios alternate between New York and Rome today and flashbacks to past times.

The production coordinator of “Neorealismo”, Julia Eleanora Rei, also has a project on Eleanora Duse and Gabriel D’Annunzio. Known as ‘Duse’, this Italian actress is known for her words of wit and wisdom, ‘The weaker partner in a marriage is the one who loves the most’ and ‘When we grow old, there can only be one regret – not to have given enough of ourselves’. She is also known for her long romantic involvement with the poet and writer, the controversial Gabriele D’Annunzio. They are now targeting a star for the film, although, says Bozzacchi, ‘Today the script is the star’.

What films are most important to you?

Those shown in this documentary, especially "Open City" where the scene of shooting down Anna Magnani still makes me feel angry.

Every week the Neorealistic filmmakers met in a café or restaurant. They did not have lots of money, had only one camera and not much film. But they created a way to tell a story very realistically, hiding the camera and shooting the people as they are.

Cary Grant pleaded De Sica to star in ‘The Bicycle Thief’, but he would have disrupted the Neorealist aspect; he was too recognizable. In the scene where three men stop the thief , other citizens joined in thinking it was real. If they saw it was Cary Grant, the scene never could have happened. The little boy in the film, played by Enzo Staiola, was scared the mob would turn on him.”

It was surprising to see Enzo Staiola in conversation during the movie. He said that ‘De Sica invented this whole story about how he made me cry. When I looked at him in surprise, he said: ‘Don’t worry, it’s just cinema…you’ll understand later’.

They also changed the way to shoot in sequence, called ‘piano sequenza’. Before a film was done in steps, with a storyboard, with cuts, three camera povs. Actors and the camera depended on the director. Now the camera follows the actor as he or she moves. This went from Rossellini to Fellini who always used the system; but Fellini, who shows a new reborn Italy, did not want direct sound. Fellini directs saying, ‘pick up drink’ or ‘turn right’ or ‘look left’ and then afterward he would add the sound. He showed Italy out of war time in ‘La Dolce Vita’.

What happened after ‘Neorealism’?

Pontecorvo was born in the time of Neorealism and he brought it to Algiers (‘Battle of Algiers’). He was going to make a doc there but then decided on fiction. He wrote notes on his hand.

Who were the French, German and U.S. adherents to Neorealism?

Truffaut and Melville, Wim Wenders with ‘American Friend’ and ‘Paris, Texas’, Coppola with ‘Apocalypse Now’. Cassavetes was a producer of Neorealism; he took it to his era. Scorsese did with ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Mean Streets’.

What do we see about Neorealism today?

If you really love movies, with all of today’s technology, you must bring in realism. With the new technology there will be a new wave of new realism. New filmmakers are very straight. Honesty and realism on the screen will come out. We’re at the sea floor now, coming back. Tell me a story that I can feel and see emotion…that is the legacy of Neorealism.

The final scene was great ...

There was a great sense of collaboration on this film.

What made that so related to Neorealism?

Neorealism also had the full participation of everyone. Directors heard and listened to the community. Clint Eastwood does this too. He would be great directing the Ferrari movie…depending on the script of course.

I love you story about the dog being an actor who allowed for transitions and covered discontinuities in film.

What about catering Italian style?

Take a look at the film's trailer Here.

Coleen Gray in 'The Sleeping City' with Richard Conte. Coleen Gray after Fox: B Westerns and films noirs (See previous post: “Coleen Gray Actress: From Red River to Film Noir 'Good Girls'.”) Regarding the demise of her Fox career (the year after her divorce from Rod Amateau), Coleen Gray would recall for Confessions of a Scream Queen author Matt Beckoff: I thought that was the end of the world and that I was a total failure. I was a mass of insecurity and depended on agents. … Whether it was an 'A' picture or a 'B' picture didn't bother me. It could be a Western movie, a sci-fi film. A job was a job. You did the best with the script that you had. Fox had dropped Gray at a time of dramatic upheavals in the American film industry: fast-dwindling box office receipts as a result of competition from television,...

'Father of the Bride': Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams. Top Five Father's Day Movies? From giant Gregory Peck to tyrant John Gielgud What would be the Top Five Father's Day movies ever made? Well, there have been countless films about fathers and/or featuring fathers of various sizes, shapes, and inclinations. In terms of quality, these range from the amusing – e.g., the 1950 version of Cheaper by the Dozen; the Oscar-nominated The Grandfather – to the nauseating – e.g., the 1950 version of Father of the Bride; its atrocious sequel, Father's Little Dividend. Although I'm unable to come up with the absolute Top Five Father's Day Movies – or rather, just plain Father Movies – ever made, below are the first five (actually six, including a remake) "quality" patriarch-centered films that come to mind. Now, the fathers portrayed in these films aren't all heroic, loving, and/or saintly paternal figures. Several are...

Last week, EW published The 55 Essential Movies Kids Must Experience (Before Turning 13). Predictably, given that we published a post on the Internet whose headline contained a concrete number and the word “essential,” we got some impassioned feedback from readers—many of whom were eager to suggest additional great movies kids should see that we’d left out.

As we noted last week, “This isn’t a list of the 55 ‘best’ kids movies, nor a compendium of hidden gems. Rather, it’s a survival-guide syllabus of films that we all need to know to be able to speak the same pop-cultural language.

It's Father's Day this Sunday, and in celebration Indiewire has decided to offer a few picks for the best cinematic dads. Clearly there's many notable examples missing from the list, but here's the movie fathers that six of our staffers felt most warranted inclusion. Feel free to use the comments section to offer up your favorites. Antonio Ricci, "The Bicycle Thief" Vittorio De Sica's heartbreaking neorealist work won Sight & Sound's top films poll just two years after its release for one very prominent reason: It's the best movie about paternal instincts ever made. The continuing efforts of Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), struggling with unemployment in post-wwii Italy, to find the stolen bicycle that could theoretically help him find a new job, derives much of its power from the relationship between Antonio and his young boy (Enzo Staiola). As Antonio's efforts to recover the bicycle grow increasingly desperate, culminating...

Currently leaving theatres is A Better Life, the latest movie from director Chris Weitz, the man who brought us American Pie and Twilight: New Moon and tells the tale of a father who struggles to do what’s right by his son and search for a stolen truck, is a loose remake of the classic 1948 Italian movie ‘The Bicycle Thieves’. The Bicycle Thieves (or The Bicycle Thief as it is known in the Us), for those who are not too familiar, was directed by Victorio De Sica and is often regarded as one the best foreign language films ever made and perhaps the greatest film to come out of the Italian Neo-Realism movement. The film follows Antonio Ricci (played by Lamberto Maggiorani) who finally gets a job delivering cinema posters only to have it threatened when a thief steals his bicycle. Together with his young son Bruno (Enzo Staiola), they...

John Hooper selects 10 of his favourite Rome-based films from Hepburn in Roman Holiday to Fellini's La Dolce Vita

• As featured in our Rome city guide

Roman Holiday, William Wyler, 1953

Insulated from the commotion of Roman life, Via Margutta is a cobbled street near the Spanish Steps, draped in ivy and lined nowadays with art galleries, restaurants and boutiques. It was home to Federico Fellini and Truman Capote. And at number 51, Crown Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) began her fleeting love affair with an American foreign correspondent, Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) in the enchanting, if improbable, comedy that shot Hepburn to fame and forever welded Vespas to Rome in the popular imagination. "You have my permission to withdraw..." slurs Hepburn, unaware she has previously been sedated, as she lets her skirt slip to the floor. "Why, thank you very much," replies the gentlemanly Peck and leaves her to sleep alone. It...

Lamberto Maggiorani in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves Gregory Peck To Kill A Mockingbird: Father's Day Movies In Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief / Bicycle Thieves (1948), non-professional actor Lamberto Maggiorani plays an impoverished husband and father who uses his bike to put up posters of Rita Hayworth in Gilda all over Rome. But then, his bicycle gets stolen. How will he support his family? Enzo Staiola plays the working man's young son, who comes to his father's rescue when he is accused of being a bicycle thief. Bicycle Thieves won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film released in the United [...]...

Vittorio De Sica, director of Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette), was a leading force in the neorealist movement in Italy. It’s no wonder that this 1948 film is the one people point to as the perfect example in the genre. A crowning achievement, not only in this particular genre but in film in general, De Sica’s film won an honorary Oscar in 1950 and was listed in many ‘best of’ lists, especially Sight & Sound’s poll for greatest film of all time by 1952, 4 years after it’s release. Since then it’s been regarded as one of the best films of all time and for good reason. It is a story that still resonates, even in today’s world.

Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) is a husband and a father who is desperate for a job. He goes to the local job club and as luck would have it, he gets an offer.

“Great movie, huh? So refreshing to see something like this after all these… cop movies and, you know, things we do. Maybe we’ll do a remake of this!”

So says Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), the amoral producer in Robert Altman’s The Player. So unassailable is the popular opinion surrounding Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves that Altman uses the film as shorthand for the kind of untouchable classic that Hollywood could so easily ruin.

Closely associated with Italian neorealism, even defining the ‘movement’ for some, Bicycle Thieves tells a relatively simple story of a working class man, Antonio Ricci (Lamerto Maggiorani). Antonio’s bike is stolen and, unable to work without it, he desperately searches the streets of Rome, trying to find this simple item that represents a lifeline for him. Accompanied by his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola), Antonio’s search becomes an seemingly unending quest to which there is no happy resolution.

Filed under: Columns, Cinematical

Welcome to Where Everyone Has Gone Before, the weekly column where I continue my film education before your very eyes by seeking out and watching all of the movies I should have seen by now. I will first judge the movie before I've watched it, based entirely on its reputation (and my potentially misguided thoughts). Then I will give the movie a fair chance and actually watch it. You will laugh at me, you may condemn me, but you will never say I didn't try!

The Film: 'Bicycle Thieves' (1948), Dir. Vittorio De Sica

Starring: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola and Lianella Carell.

Why I Haven't Seen It Until Now: Well, I guess I haven't seen it because -- Wait! I'm turning the tables this week. How many of you have seen 'Bicycle Thieves' (or as it's commonly known as in North America, 'The Bicycle Thief')? C'mon.

With filmmakers everywhere suffering from budget cuts, our latest World Cinema column provides some handy tips for cash-strapped directors...

Cuts. More cuts. France is on strike again. Demonstrations. It's pretty depressing right now out there. And if it's bad for us, think what it must be for those poor struggling Hollywood filmmakers!

The Spider-Man reboot is a prime example, which has had its budget cut from Spider-Man 3's bloated $258 million to a paltry $80 million. How will they even feed themselves on set?! Maybe there will no longer be a choice between the salmon and the crab?

But take heart, and don't despair, as filmmakers have for years been creative and, indeed, crafty at squeezing maximum product out of budgets that, to be honest, probably couldn't even pay for a port-a-loo in Hollywood...

Shoot on location

Can't afford to build expensive sets? Why bother? The world will provide. This has...

As we salute fathers far and wide this Sunday, why not pop in some first-rate DVD titles that examine the distinct challenges of fatherhood, and how various dads rise to the occasion or, for a host of reasons, fall short. We lead with one of the most heartbreaking foreign films on record: Vittorio de Sica's neo-realist masterpiece, The Bicycle Thief (1948). In a devastated Italy just after the the Second World War, we meet Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani), who just manages to scrounge a living for himself and his family putting up movie posters around town. Antonio's job depends entirely on his bicycle, however, and soon disaster strikes. Someone steals his bike right out from under him, and with his adoring son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) in tow, an increasingly desperate Antonio scours Rome to retrieve it. Finally, he resorts to the theft...