Bicycle Thieves

Author(s): John C. Stubbs

Source: The Journal of Aesthetic Education , Apr., 1975, Vol. 9, No. 2, Special Issue: Film
IV: Eight Study Guides (Apr., 1975), pp. 50-61
Published by: University of Illinois Press

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Bicycle Thieves*

JOHN C. STUBBS

The experience of the war was a determining one for all of us.
Everyone felt a mad desire to throw into the air all the old
stories of the Italian cinema, to plant the camera in the middle
of real life, in the middle of everything which struck our aston-
ished gaze.
DeSica

Neorealism was a powerful and important movement in filmmaking

which took place in Italy at the end of World War II. Roberto Rossel
lini, Luchino Visconti, and the team of director Vittorio DeSica and
writer Cesare Zavattini were its originators. Neorealism's basis of
strength is the documentary quality inherent in film. That moments of
real life caught and held for inspection can fascinate an audience wa
known as early as the Lumiere brothers; some critics, such as Siegfried
Kracauer and Andre Bazin, argue that this realistic quality continue
to be the main appeal of films. The neorealists used this appeal. They
knew that Italy in the war and immediately afterward exposed th
individual to situations that needed to be changed, or exposed him to
situations that brought out the best and worst in him. They wanted
to show the individual in such situations straightforwardly and con-
vincingly. They did not, however, choose to make actual documentaries;
instead, they chose to tell their narratives in a documentary way.
This documentary way involves both the kind of subject matter se-
lected to be filmed and the technique used for filming. The neorealis
films were always about ordinary men, not glamorous heroes. The
characters were always shown in the context of their social, economic,
and/or political circumstances, and they were always shown at some
JOHN C. STUBBS is associate professor of English at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. He has written The Pursuit of Form: Hawthorne and the
Romance and has had articles in such magazines as Literature and Psychology,
PMLA, and Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction.
* Literal translation of Italian title.

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 BICYCLE THIEVES 51

particularly revealing moment of stress. Writing when the

movement was almost over, Cesare Zavattini said the neorealist
plot and concentrates on character and theme. Plot, he felt,
the truth about people. Certainly the story line of Bicycle
is simplicity itself. The character of Ricci is the focus of th
but we are interested strongly in what will happen next in the
sequence of events, and that is a plot interest. Other neoreal
(e.g., Rome, Open City) depend more heavily still on plot i
Zavattini's pronouncement, then, cannot be accepted without
tion, but his general stress on the importance of character a
over intricacies of plot holds true in most neorealist films.
The technique of the neorealists is well known. It empha
location shooting; natural lighting; grainy, fast film stock; t
nonprofessional actors, or at least realistic-looking actors; little
dialect; shots in the long-to-medium range; objective camera
and editing which is functional rather than expressionistic.
To some extent this style was planned by the neorealists, and
extent it was forced on them by circumstances. In 1935 Mussoli
Cinecitta, a vast complex of studios, and during the war the
cranked out costume histories, glamorous comedies, and a fe
ganda films. But by the end of the war the studios were in a sh
Refugees lived in the buildings. A great deal of the equipm
been carried away to the north by Mussolini's government when
been forced out of Rome; much of the rest had been stolen.
the well-known actors had followed Mussolini's government or h
Rome for other reasons. There was little else neorealists could have
done except make their films on location, in natural lighting, with in-
experienced actors.
But such an explanation is not the full story. Even before the war,
critics and filmmakers had been arguing about the need to cut away
the artificialities in Italian movies and to turn back to the realistic
principles of nineteenth-century painting and literature. And in 1942,
while the studios were thriving, Visconti made a gritty melodrama
about adultery, Ossessione, which had many of the qualities of neo-
realism. At the war's end, filmmakers who wanted a different kind of
movie took advantage of the situation. It was wide open. They filmed
their action where it took place - in the streets, in public buildings,
and in actual apartments. They could not control the lighting as in
the studio, but they could use fast film stock that would allow them
to get an adequate, if grainy, image under difficult circumstances. The
result was a rough image that looked like a newsreel image and gave

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52 JOHN C. STUBBS

the viewer something of the sense of immediacy usually assoc

newsreels. The actor was to look and move like the ordina
portrayed. If that meant getting a real fisherman to play
a fisherman, that was what was done. The voice, often the do
the nonprofessional, could be dubbed in later. (There was
ment for the intricate job of recording sound outside the stu
way.) But the man's voice and his dialect had to be right, e
came from someone other than the actor.
The neorealists liked long and medium shots which show the actor
loosely framed in his environment and allow the viewer opportunity
to look around in that environment. Good examples of this are the
early shots in Bicycle Thieves which follow Ricci from the gathering
of the unemployed to his wife at the well and then follow them into
their building. The housing project in the background of the shots is
fully exhibited to the viewer. This stress on long and medium shots
meant, of course, that when the neorealists did move in for a close-up,
the effect would be very strong, as is the case at the end of Bicycle
Thieves, with the close-up of the clasped hands. The neorealists tended
to favor shots taken at eye level, as opposed to extreme uptilts and
downtilts. Finally, they sought to keep as much as they could of the
continuity of external life. They minimized jumps and shifts through
editing. The flashback, for example, is almost nonexistent; it is too
artful. Instead, events tend to follow events in chronological order.
The first neorealistic film was Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City
in 1945. Rosellini was originally commissioned by a wealthy woman to
make a documentary about the execution by the Germans of a Roman
Catholic priest who had been a resistance worker. With the help of
writers who included the resistance worker Sergio Amidei and the
inventive Federico Fellini, Rossellini expanded the film to a full-
fledged portrait of a group of partisans in Rome. The story concerns
the events of seventy-two hours when the Germans close in on the
group and torture and execute those they capture. Rossellini used fast
film stock to shoot his action in and around the apartment blocks of
his staff; only the scenes in the German headquarters were done in a
studio. Such was the newsreel quality of Rossellini's images that many
critics felt the film contained actual documentary footage shot during
the German occupation. (The movie was not begun, though, until two
months after the Germans had left.) The cast was made up mainly of
professionals, but the actors were chosen for their earthiness. From
the music hall, Rossellini recruited comics Aldo Fabrizi and Anna

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 BICYCLE THIEVES 53

Magnani. Magnani, in particular, with her blockish figur

sharp, city-wise face, came to represent a new type of heroine
nani hadn't come from Rome, she would have come from B
She is strong, vital, and she has seen it all. Rome, Open Cit
immediate success in Italy and in the United States. The f
year Rossellini made a second neorealist movie, Paisan. Th
was made up of six different episodes, set in different part
about the clashes, insights, and ironies that arose between t
and the allies (mostly G.I.'s) when they combined to battle
mans. The episodic nature of the film did much to open up
how films can be made. (It paved the way for movies like A
L'Avventura and Fellini's La Strada and La Dolce Vita, as well as
other neorealist films.) Luchino Visconti's avowedly Marxist, neo-
realist film, The Earth Trembles, came shortly after this, in 1947. It
concerns Sicilian fishermen who are financially exploited by boat-
owners. The "red duke," as Visconti is called in Italy, used Sicilian
villagers as his actors and was amazed to find they had "a lack of
complexes in front of the camera." They helped him write his dialogue
in the proper dialect. Visconti would tell them what he wanted said,
and they, in turn, would tell him how a Sicilian fisherman would say it.
High points of neorealism were the movies made by the team of
Vittorio DeSica and Cesare Zavattini. They made three outstanding
films: Shoeshine (1946), Bicycle Thieves (1948), and Umberto D
(1951). The two men were an unlikely pair. DeSica was a handsome
Neapolitan who had been a singer on the stage and a matinee idol in
studio movie comedies. Zavattini was a short, tubby novelist and play-
wright from the north. DeSica claimed to be nonpolitical; Zavattini
was a Marxist. DeSica has said in his memoirs, "With my lazy, timid
and pessimistic character, I constantly take a step backward and lack
the courage to undertake anything adventurous. Zavattini is quite the
opposite, so he was just the man I needed." The statement is probably
too self-effacing, but the two opposite types did play against each other
very well. If Zavattini provided an adventurous spirit, DeSica at least
matched it with the care and control he exercised over the actual film-
making. The two met in 1935 when DeSica acted in a whimsical
comedy written by Zavattini, and in 1942 they collaborated on The
Children Are Watching Us.
In 1945 DeSica went to Zavattini with the germ of the story of
Shoeshine. DeSica had been watching the development and breakup
of a friendship between two young shoeshine boys in the upheaval of
the war's aftermath. He recounts: "Scimmietta slept in a lift in Via

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54 JOHN C. STUBBS

Lombardia, and he was lucky to have a grandfather who l

This family warmth saved him. Capellone was nobody's c
pletely alone in the world, with his big head deformed b
Eventually he stole and ended up in jail.... As soon as they
three or four hundred lire from cleaning shoes, they ran to t
Villa Borghese park and hired a horse." Zavattini expanded
by having the boys enter into black market activities in or
the horse they loved to ride. In the expanded version, bot
arrested, sent to a reformatory, and divided against each
of them plans to sell their horse to pay for an escape, and
informs on him and causes his death. The strength of the
in the careful reconstruction of life in the boys' prison and in
analysis of the boys' friendship and their codes. DeSica use
professionals and got believable performances from them.
Umberto D treats a theme similar to Shoeshine's. The story
tini's original conception. It comes closest to his ideal of a
plot is ignored and character and theme are stressed. The m
acter is an old-age pensioner who does not receive enough
pay for his rent and food. He is too proud to beg and too
cheat the system. His life is detailed in a series of vignettes w
up to a suicide attempt that fails. The secondary character
a maid in the boarding house where Umberto lives. She i
and unmarried, and she wants the advice and friendship
man. The tragedy of the movie lies in Umberto's inability
interest in Maria's problems, for she could surely help him
loneliness and help him at least a little with money. The
solidarity among people is overwhelmingly important to D
Zavattini.

Bicycle Thieves was begun when Zavattini sent DeSica a best-sell-

ing novel by Luigi Bartolini, with the note, "I think we could find
an idea and a title for a film from it." An idea and a title are all they
did take from the novel. The hero in the novel is a well-to-do artist.
One of his two bicycles is stolen. As a matter almost of amusement, he
follows the trail of the stolen bicycle through the black market. Zavat-
tini created the new character of the hero Antonio Ricci in his screen-

play, and DeSica and five other writers fleshed him out in the final
script. Together DeSica and Zavattini visited the Mass of the Poor,
a brothel Zavattini had been to in the past, and the apartment of a
fortune-teller, in order to agree on how the scenes in each of the three
should look.

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 BICYCLE THIEVES 55

Most of the movie was done on location. The housing pro

age was shot at Citta Valmeliana on the outskirts of Rome
used an abandoned warehouse for his municipal pawnshop
the market scenes he paid fees to the stall owners and film
actual displays. To simulate rain at the Porta Portese market
a fire company to spray water from their hoses up into the air
most difficult was the scene of the theft of the bicycle from
thief's movements had to be timed so that he would get to the
light while it was still green and he could, therefore, escap
had no control over the flow of traffic in the street.
The three major actors were nonprofessional; all were disc
accident. Lianella Carell (Maria) was a journalist who came
to interview him. Lamberto Maggiorani (Antonio Ricci) w
tory worker from Breda who brought his son to DeSica to audi
the part of Bruno; DeSica turned down the son but chose t
Maggiorani is a handsome man, but there is also about him
human weakness--his thin bone structure; his high, wrin
head; his knit brows; his tight body language with his arm
his sides. An actor himself, DeSica worked hard with Magg
comments: "I engaged him to work with me for a while b
started shooting. I talked a great deal with him about Anto
about Antonio's wife and their son, thus establishing in a ro
way a hidden but continuous parallelism between the famil
own. In the end, I realized that a kind of osmosis had operated
the reality and the fiction, between his life and Antonio's."
Enzo Staiola, was not found by DeSica until after shooting h
DeSica was dissatisfied with all the children he had seen during
He felt they would have made Bruno too sentimental. DeSic
kid who could criticize his father as well as admire him. H
work on the scene in the workers' theater and saw Enzo in the crowd
of onlookers. "I asked him simply, 'Would you like to act in a movie?'"
DeSica recounts. "He replied, 'Yes,' in that adenoidal child's voice; his
eyes were wistful, his little face like a clown's."
The style of Bicycle Thieves is simple and straightforward, but it
is not without its craft. The lighting is realistic and the framing loose.
With the exception of the famous downtilt on Ricci and Bruno on the
curb and a few other shots, the camera angle is neutral, straight on
from eye level. Yet, there is a nicely worked out balance between ob-
jective shots of the characters and subjective shots from their view-
points (i.e., the tracking shots in the market of Piazza Vittorio) which
keeps the style from being boring. The editing is mainly functional,

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56 JOHN C. STUBBS

until the final scenes. Dissolves indicate shifts to future time. There
are no flashbacks. But when we reach the scenes where Ricci himself
becomes a thief, we find extensive use of crosscutting. The cutting back
and forth among shots of Ricci, shots of the bicycles by the stadium,
and shots of a single bicycle by the apartment wall gives us a sense of
the state of mind of Ricci as he contemplates the theft. The crosscutting
between the fleeing Ricci and his pursuers gives us the excitement of
the chase. And the cutting between Ricci when the crowd gets him
and Bruno as he makes his way to his father gives us a sense of the
frustration, humiliation, and irony in the situation. This extended use
of rapid crosscutting near the end provides the movie with an intense
rhythm at the point where it needs it most.
The movie's center of interest is the character of Antonio Ricci.
DeSica wanted him to appear not as a faceless representative of a typ
or class, but as a unique individual: "I had no intention of presenting
Antonio as a kind of 'Everyman' or a personification of what is calle
today 'the underprivileged.' To me he was an individual, with his indi-
vidual joys and worries, with his individual story." Much of what is
unique about Ricci comes from his interactions with his wife and son
At times he ignores them and walks away from them as if he forgo
they existed; at other times he basks in their admiration; at still other
times he tries to comfort them. He shares his joys with them. And it is
hard, almost impossible, for him to face them when he has a failur
to report. He is particularly close to his son. DeSica has commente
on the closeness of fathers and sons in Italy: "In Italy men often go
about with their sons. Children converse and argue with their father
become confidants, and very often become no longer children but
'little men.'" This holds true of the relationship between Ricci and
Bruno. But there is more; Ricci needs his son's help, and he needs hi
son's consolation. Ricci is an underdog. He gets hope in the form of
the job which depends on his having his bicycle. We share with him
the gamut of his emotions as he tries to recover the stolen bicycle. To
know Ricci is for us to learn a great deal about the hopes and frustra-
tions of a human being.
CREDITS

BICYCLE THIEVES

Released Italy, 1948. P.D.S. (Produzioni DeSica). Produ

directed by Vittorio DeSica. Screenplay by Cesare Zavatti
the novel by Luigi Bartolini. Script by Vittorio DeSica, Orest
Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Adolfo Franci, Gherado Gherardi, a

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 BICYCLE THIEVES 57

Guerrieri. Photography: Carlo Montuori. Cameraman: M

tuori. Music: Alessandro Cicognini. Decor: Antonio Trave
Eraldo da Roma. Assistant director: Gerardo Guerrieri. Production
manager: Umberto Scarpelli. Running time: 90 minutes.
Cast

Antonio Ricci .................. Lamberto Maggiorani

Bruno Ricci ...........................Enzo Staiola
M aria Ricci.........................Lianella Carell
Biaocco, Ricci's friend ............. Gino Saltamerenda
Thief ..........................Vittorio Antonucci
Old M an .............................Giulio Chiari

16mm Distributor: Audio-Brandon, 512 Burlington Aven

Illinois 60525, (312) 482-9090; 34 MacQuesten Parkw
Vernon, N.Y. 10050, (914) 664-5051; 406 Clement St
cisco, Calif. 94118, (415) SK2-4800.

SEQUENCE OUTLINE

1. At the government-built housing project, Antonio Ricci is informed

he can have a job as a bill poster, but he must report with his
bicycle.
2. Ricci talks with his wife Maria about their need for the bicycle he
has pawned. She decides to pawn their linen to get the bicycle back.
3. In the municipal pawnshop, she pawns the linen for 7500 lire, and
Ricci reclaims his bicycle for 6100.
4. Ricci reports to the poster office and is told to begin work the next
morning.
5. Ricci shows Maria his new cap and talks of his prospects.
6. The apartment of the fortune-teller, Signora Santona. After telling
two boys to watch his bicycle, Ricci follows Maria up and takes
her away from the fortune-teller's room. Maria leaves 50 lire, be-
cause the fortune-teller had predicted Ricci's job. Ricci says the
fortune-teller is a fraud.

7. Ricci's son, Bruno, polishes the bicycle early the next morning.
Maria prepares Ricci's cap and packs lunch.
8. Ricci rides Bruno to Bruno's place of work.
9. A colleague shows Ricci how to paste up a poster. It is a poster
for a Rita Hayworth movie.
10. On his own, Ricci struggles to put up a poster. Three men engineer

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58 JOHN C STUBBS

the stealing of his bicycle. A young man in a German

and jacket rides off on the bike, while an older accomp
himself in Ricci's way. A driver helps, but the accomplice
driver and Ricci false directions.
11. Police station. Ricci files his complaint. He gets no further help.
12. Ricci meets his son. Bruno asks about the bicycle. Ricci says it is
broken. He won't go into his apartment with Bruno.
13. Workers' Party Headquarters in the basement of the housing proj-
ect. The speaker wants a big public works program to furnish more
jobs. Ricci is told to be quiet.
14. In another part of the basement, he finds his friend Biaocco re-
hearsing an amateur show. Biaocco suggests they search the market
at Piazza Vittorio the next morning (Sunday). Maria comes to
find Ricci.
15. The market at Piazza Vittorio on Sunday morning. Endless rows
of bike frames in the stalls. Bruno is approached by a pederast.
Biaocco and Ricci discover a man repainting a frame, but its
registration number is not that of Ricci's bike.
16. The market at Porta Portese. Rain. Bruno falls down. Ricci sees
the thief ride up to an old man and give him money. The thief
escapes. Ricci and Bruno look for the old man.
17. The old man leads them to the Communion of the Poor. He tells
them, eventually, that the thief lives on Via Campanelle. Then
the old man slips away. Bruno chides his father, and Ricci slaps
him.

18. Riverbank scene. Ricci tells Bruno to wait by the bridge while Ricci
searches for the old man. Down the bank, Ricci hears cries from
the bridge that someone is drowning. He rushes back and is re-
lieved to find the victim is not Bruno.

19. Cafe. Ricci buys his son an expensive meal. They add up the salary
and benefits Ricci would have had with the poster job.
20. The fortune-teller's apartment again. She tells Ricci, "Either you
will find it immediately or you never will find it."
21. In the street, Ricci and Bruno spot the thief. (Perhaps they have
gone to the Via Campanelle.) The thief ducks into a brothel.
22. Ricci goes into the brothel. "The young ladies" are having lunch.
He drags the thief out into the street.
23. A crowd gathers in the street. The thief's mother shouts at Ricci
from her window. The thief has an epileptic fit. The crowd grows
angry. Bruno brings a policeman.

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 BICYCLE THIEVES 59

24. The thief's apartment is searched by the policeman a

poverty of the family is evident. The policeman finds a h
tire, but no evidence of Ricci's bicycle. Ricci has to tell t
man he has no witness other than himself. Ricci can make no
charges.
25. The crowd in the street jeers at Ricci and Bruno.
26. Ricci and Bruno walk toward the soccer stadium. Bruno is nearly
hit by a car. They sit on a curb. Ricci sees rows of bicycles outside
the stadium. He sees also a single, old bicycle leaning against an
apartment house wall. Before Ricci acts, the people come out of
the stadium and claim their bikes. Ricci tells Bruno to take the
trolley. Ricci steals the bike by the apartment house. He is seen
by the owner.
27. The chase and capture of Ricci. He is shoved and threatened with
arrest. Bruno comes up to his father crying. The owner lets Ricci
go. "That's a nice trick to teach your son," says one of the crowd.
28. Ricci and Bruno walk toward home. Ricci fights back tears. Bruno
takes his hand. They disappear into the crowd.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. It is axiomatic that frustration is great in situations where hopes

are built up and then destroyed. The greater the hope, the more frus-
trating the loss of it. This axiom seems to describe the overall struc-
ture of Bicycle Thieves. Antonio Ricci gets a job and holds it for
part of a day. By the movie's end, he loses the job and all it means to
him. His hopes are raised and then dashed. Within this overall struc-
ture, are there smaller segments where momentary hopes that Ricci
will recover his bicycle are raised and then destroyed? And what are
the scenes where Ricci demonstrates frustration?
2. Ricci is shown with his wife in only six sequences in the first half
of the movie (sequences 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 14). Yet we have a pretty
good understanding of their relationship. What are the important
details of their relationship that help us grasp its nature? Describe the
visual presentation of Maria.
3. What strengths of character does Ricci exhibit in the course of
this movie? What scenes show weaknesses in him? Comment on the
visual presentation of Ricci. Do you agree with the description of him
given in the introductory section of this article?
4. How would you describe the development of the relationship be-

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60 JOHN C. STUBBS

tween Bruno and his father prior to Ricci's attempted the

the visual effect of the two of them walking together? How
is Ricci to his son's well-being? Where do we see Bruno ad
father? Where criticizing him? Is Bruno's face right for t
scribe the emotions on both sides when Ricci slaps his son.
5. Critic Andre Bazin argues that Bruno undergoes "th
manhood" in the last sequences when he watches his father's
theft, goes to his father, gives him his hat, and takes his
argues for a maturity of understanding that comes to Bru
agree? Can you support your position by comparing Brun
in the last sequences with previous ones?
6. Why does Ricci revisit the fortune-teller when he has
a fraud to his wife, and why does Ricci not leave the resta
he sees how expensive it is? Do his actions make sense?
7. Trying to steal a bike is a desperate act for Ricci; he has
condemned theft earlier in the movie. Has the movie shown a
desperateness in him that makes his attempted theft believab
he have stood a better chance if he had taken one of the stadium bikes
before the soccer game ended?
8. Critics have maintained that Ricci wants to keep his son's admira-
tion. The humiliation of having his son see his attempted theft thus
adds to Ricci's humiliation in his own eyes and to his frustration at
losing the hopes his job had kindled. How much hard evidence is there
that Bruno's admiration is important to Ricci?
9. What to you is the significance of the clasped hands near the
movie's end?

10. What locations seem to you particularly important as back-

ground? What do they contribute to the movie's tone?
11. What is the effect gained by the choice of a Rita Hayworth
poster for Ricci to paste up?
12. After seeing the movie, do you feel you know how the black
market in bicycles worked in postwar Italy? Describe its workings as
best you can.
13. What effect is achieved by showing the apartment of the thief
of Ricci's bike and by showing his epileptic fit? Can we be sure his fit
is real?
14. In the course of the movie, Ricci encounters many institutions
designed to help the people of Rome: the government employment
system, the police, the Catholic church, the workers' party, and the
municipal pawnshop. Considering each separately, are the institutions

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 BICYCLE THIEVES 61

attacked? Which, if any, are shown with documentary obj

Taken all together, what effect is achieved by showing th
tutions?

15. Andre Bazin states that the movie has a radical message: "In
the world where this workman lives, the poor must steal from the poor
in order to survive." The movie, for him, is an unstated (but never-
theless strong) call for social change. Would you agree?
16. Can this movie be both the kind of social documentary Bazin
claims it is and the kind of story of a unique individual with his "indi-
vidual joys and worries," hopes and frustrations, that DeSica claims
it is?

SUGGESTIONS FOR ADDITIONAL READING

Armes, Roy. Patterns of Realism: A Study of Italian Neorealist Cinema. New

York: A. S. Barnes, 1971. This is the definitive work on Italian neorealism.
Excellent on background material. The analyses of individual movies, how-
ever, are brief.
Bazin, Andre. "The Bicycle Thief," "DeSica: Metteur en Scene," and "Um-
berto D: A Great Work." What Is Cinema? II. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1971, pp. 46-60, 61-78, and 79-82. The essays
of the French realist critic on DeSica. Originally done in the 1950's. Espe-
cially good on the relationship between Ricci and Bruno.
DeSica, Vittorio. The Bicycle Thief. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968.
The "literary script"; that is, the dialogue spoken in the film.
. "How I Direct My Films." Miracle in Milan. New York: Orion
Press, 1968, pp. 1-9. Not the systematic account implied by the title, but
still a useful recounting of some of his aims and some of his achievements
as a director.
."The Memoirs of Vittorio DeSica." Films and Filming 2, no. 3
(Dec. 1955), 5-6; no. 4 (Jan. 1956), 28-29; no. 5 (Feb. 1956), 12-13; no. 6
(March 1956), 7. This is the closest we have to an autobiography of DeSica.
The best source of information about DeSica's life and his experiences as a
director. Anecdotal perhaps, but still very useful.
Zavattini, Cesare. Zavattini: Sequences from a Cinematic Life. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Zavattini's diary material. Often self-
indulgent and trivial. Material pertinent to his films, however, can be
gleaned from it by looking at entries dated near the time of the films you
are interested in.
"Some Ideas on the Cinema." Film: A Montage of Theory, ed. R. D.
MacCann. New York: Dutton, 1966, pp. 216-28. The fullest statement of
Zavattini's Marxist, neorealist theory of films. The essay contains Zavat-
tini's attack on plot.

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