Stealing Bicycles, Now and Then

I've been running an under-the-radar foreign film club for a year now.  I've been sharing some of my favorite classics with a small cohort of students with the stamina to muscle through these gems.  All along, I've been fascinated to note my own internal new relationship to these personally formative movies, many of which I haven't seen in 25 years or more.  Mostly the changes in my reactions are due to being a Dad.

Tonight, on the one year anniversary of the club, I showed the de Sica's 1948 "Bicycle Thieves" and I had tears running down my face at the end.  This movie didn't even make my original top ten list!

The thing that struck me this time around is the complete and total emasculation of the main character.  He can't provide for his family, he is being crushed beneath society's uncaring heel, and his son's admiration is a spotlight on his inefficacy.  When he takes his son out to eat a meal they can't afford and he confides in his little guy "We deserve this because we are men", I heard his cry for help.  The pathos of his desperation resonated in me powerfully.

Then, in the final scene, as his own son reached out for his hand to comfort his father as father's tears came out, my own came out too...