Bondanella’s Film, Ladri Di Biciclette

In Bondanella’s film, Ladri di biciclette, the changes in relationship between the characters help define the understanding of the film in general. An ordinary role in society is that the parents normally take care of the children and the children are dependent upon the parents for everything they need while at a young age. Relationships between children and their parents may also differ depending on the feelings and ties to each parent. For example, some boys are closer to their mother rather than their father and girls are closer to their father rather than their mother. This seems to be the more common role that is played in society, meaning that you, as a child, are closer to one of your parents more than you are to the other.

In Ladri di biciclette, the actions of role models and parenthood/childhood relationships are viewed quite differently from that which is considered ordinary. In normal society a parent is supposed to be there for their child as a role model, a guide, a teacher, etc.; anything to help their child make it through life without any worries about the trivial things. A parent is supposed to care for their child by providing food, clothing, shelter, advice, or anything else that a child may need. All of these things seemed to be reversed in the movie. The movie mainly deals with a dad, Antonio, and his son, Bruno. Antonio is a grown man who has a hard time finding work and when he actually does he needs a bicycle for the job. Once he gets his bicycle, someone steals it fro him while he is working and this sets the stage for the rest of the movie and for this discussion. Bruno, who is only around seven years old, seems to be extremely mature for his age. He holds a job and seems to be well respected by his parents. In more ways than one, Bruno appears to be like a parent figure throughout the movie. Bruno’s father, Antonio, is in complete disgust and despair when he looses his bicycle that it appears that it is difficult for him to find courage to do anything and it is hard for him to go on anymore. In the beginning of the movie Bruno’s mother provided for the family financially when his father was not working and Bruno seemed to almost be the man of the house because he had a job and helped his mother and family out financially. As the movie progressed, Antonio became more like the provider for the family and he was able to care for his son. Bruno did not truly look up to his father in the beginning of the movie because he seemed to think that he was lazy in his duties to his family but that changed quickly when he got the job. Bruno then looked up to his father as a role model and he was proud that his dad was able to overcome his hardships and work through the problems. As the movie progressed, when Bruno was helping his dad look for the bike it appeared that his dad was depending on him as a form of sympathy in order to help him locate his bike. Bruno lost some form of hope in his dad when he was late picking him up when he did not have the bike and he had to tell Bruno it was broken. He realized that there was lost hope in a sense for what had happened to Antonio that day. Bruno does help his father look for the bike for the rest of the movie and throughout this time Bruno has had to make several choices to choose his dad or the other people he was around. This distinguishes the turning points of the movie because Antonio at this point realized that Bruno was disappointed in his as a father. The main event was when Bruno and his dad were in the town and his dad walked off and Bruno was staring at his dad but kept looking back between the people that were yelling at him and his dad. This is the major point in the movie where everyone knows the severity of the issue at hand and what the bicycle represented for both Bruno and Antonio. I think at this point Antonio is represented as a failure to his son and he knows it but he is so overwhelmed with both disgust and fury that it is hard for him to grasp the problem at hand and to deal with it in a proper way. I think that he mainly feels that he has failed himself more than his family and now he has something to prove to both himself and his family in order to regain the trust of his wife and son. In several parts of the movie, Bruno gets in the middle of a fight that almost breaks out between his father and other people over the bicycle recovery and he acts like an adult, or a form of police to try to stop anything major from occurring. This proves to me that Bruno and Antonio have seemed to swap roles because it is normally the parent trying to break up the fighting between children, not the other way around. Bruno is also portrayed throughout the movie as a child, like he actually was. He is constantly tripping or falling