The Criterion Collection: Bicycle Thieves

description

Hailed around the world as one of the greatest movies ever made, the Academy Award–winning Bicycle Thieves, directed by Vittorio De Sica, defined an era in cinema. In poverty-stricken postwar Rome, a man is on his first day of a new job that offers hope of salvation for his desperate family when his bicycle, which he needs for work, is stolen. With his young son in tow, he sets off to track down the thief. Simple in construction and profoundly rich in human insight, Bicycle Thieves embodies the greatest strengths of the Italian neorealist movement: emotional clarity, social rectitude, and brutal honesty.

further info

features

• New digital restoration (4K on the Blu-ray), with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Working with De Sica, a collection of interviews with screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico, actor Enzo Staiola, and film scholar Callisto Cosulich
• Life as It Is, a program on the history of Italian neorealism, featuring scholar Mark Shiel
• Documentary from 2003 on screenwriter and longtime Vittorio De Sica collaborator Cesare Zavattini, directed by Carlo Lizzani
• Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
• A booklet featuring an essay by critic Godfrey Cheshire and reminiscences by De Sica and his collaborators