[6] It follows the story of a poor father searching in post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.
"[12] In post-World War II Rome, Antonio Ricci desperately needs work to support his wife Maria, his son Bruno and his small baby.
Maria resolutely strips the bed of her dowry bedsheets—prized possessions for a poor family—and takes them to the pawn shop, where they bring enough to redeem Antonio's bicycle.
Antonio sees an unattended bicycle near a doorway and after much anguished indecision, instructs Bruno to take the tram to a stop nearby and wait.
Instantly, the hue and cry is raised and Bruno – who has missed the tram – is stunned to see his father pursued, surrounded and pulled from the bicycle.
[13] De Sica had just made Shoeshine (1946), but was unable to get financial backing from any major studio for the film, so he raised the money himself from friends.
Wanting to portray the poverty and unemployment of post-war Italy,[14] he co-wrote a script with Cesare Zavattini and others using only the title and few plot devices of a little-known novel of the time by poet and artist Luigi Bartolini.
He later cast the 8-year-old Enzo Staiola when he noticed the young boy watching the film's production on a street while helping his father sell flowers.
In Bartolini's novel, the title referred to a post-war culture of rampant thievery and disrespect for civil order, countered only by an inept police force and indifferent allied occupiers.
[14] Luigi Bartolini, the author of the novel from which de Sica drew his title, was highly critical of the film, feeling that the spirit of his book had been thoroughly betrayed because his protagonist was a middle-class intellectual and his theme was the breakdown of civil order.
He wrote, "Again the Italians have sent us a brilliant and devastating film in Vittorio De Sica's rueful drama of modern city life, The Bicycle Thief.
Widely and fervently heralded by those who had seen it abroad (where it already has won several prizes at various film festivals), this heart-tearing picture of frustration, which came to [the World Theater] yesterday, bids fair to fulfill all the forecasts of its absolute triumph over here.
For once more the talented De Sica, who gave us the shattering Shoeshine, that desperately tragic demonstration of juvenile corruption in post-war Rome, has laid hold upon and sharply imaged in simple and realistic terms a major—indeed, a fundamental and universal—dramatic theme.
One need only to look at his face, his uncertain gait, his hesitant or fearful attitudes to understand that Ricci is already a victim, a diminished man who has lost his confidence."
[18] In 1999, Chicago Sun-Times film reviewer Roger Ebert wrote that "The Bicycle Thief is so well-entrenched as an official masterpiece that it is a little startling to visit it again after many years and realize that it is still alive and has strength and freshness.
The site's critics consensus reads, "An Italian neorealism exemplar, Bicycle Thieves thrives on its non-flashy performances and searing emotion.
"[30] Many directors have cited the film as a major influence including Satyajit Ray,[34] Ken Loach,[35] Giorgio Mangiamele,[36] Bimal Roy,[37] Anurag Kashyap,[38] Balu Mahendra,[39] Vetrimaaran and Basu Chatterjee.
A Hollywood studio executive (played by Tim Robbins) tracks a screenwriter to a theater showing Bicycle Thieves and stages what he represents as a chance meeting.