The Use of Children as Thematic Element in Post War Neo-Realism

Bicycle Thieves, directed by Vittorio De Sica and Germany, Year Zero by Roberto Rossellini present themselves similarly. These films are studies in Neopopualism, regionalism, dialect, components of revolutionary and Christian socialism, naturalism, positivistic verism, and humanitarianism. The movies are the products of the immediate postwar period by Italian neorealist directors who focus on corruption and scarcity, portraying children street urchins in leading roles. Both can be considered "pure cinema" through the disuse of actors, sets, and stories.

The films of Rossellini or De Sica owed the fact that they were significant cinematic masterpieces due to a combination of relevant subject matter and superb form. The differences between the two stories are not nearly as blinding but are increasingly palpable as the narratives continue. Rossellini focuses on the direct consequences of war, while De Sica is more interested in the economic situation right after the war without necessarily alluding to the war itself. Although both contain religious imagery, the bicycle Fides is a symbolic instrument. The cross shape on the doorway leading to the father's room in Germany, Year Zero, is relatively the same. But first, let's analyze the first scene in each of the films.

Even though Germany, Year Zero takes place outside Italian Neorealism's geography, it is still considered Italian Neorealism in a sense the father of Italian Neorealism directed it, and that is the final bookend to Rossellini's postwar trilogy. Germany, Year Zero was conceived by Rossellini in March 1947 on a visit to Berlin, immediately after making Paisa. Filming began on location in mid-August, and the film was released theatrically in 1948. Keeping to style, Rossellini used non-actors with a caveat that Ernst Pittschau had been a silent actor some 40 years prior. Franz-Otto Krüger had been a prisoner of the Gestapo. Ingetraud Hinze was a former ballet dancer found in line waiting for food rations. The leading role of Edmund was the most auditioned for as Rossellini had wanted a youth who resembled that of his son, Romano, who had recently passed away. Edmund Meschke was found working as an acrobat in the Barlay Circus.

Germany, Year Zero begins with a fade-in of the desolated Berlin landscape followed by panning of the demolished urban landscape. A swipe shows more annihilation as credits appear in German. Next, we pass the locations immediately enveloped in the post-war wreckage of Nazism. Another swipe shows a 180 pan of the Berlin Schloss and Potsdamer Platz, two monuments of Weimar progressivism. The above shot from the buildings is reminiscent of such propaganda films as Triumph of Will. Leaving that, we zoom down and into a cemetery and are introduced to the workers; men and women, old and young, are seen digging graves for the city's inhabitants. The youngest in this scene is 12-year-old Edmund. In dialogue, we hear complaints from the other workers that Edmund cannot keep pulling his weight in the grave digging. They discover that he is not fifteen years of age, but twelve as the boy goes to school with one of the women's sons. Realizing he has been discovered, Edmund runs off.

Bicycle Thieves is described as the most famous example of postwar Italian Neorealism. De Sica's ideological ambivalence made him the most representative of the prominent filmmakers of his generation in Italy. Bicycle Thieves was co-written by Cesare Zavattini and based on the book with the same title by Luigi Bartolini; Bicycle Thieves is cinematic canon, one of the most influential films in cinema history. Following Rossellini's Rome, Open City, De Sica filmed only on location and cast formally untrained non-actors. The child's casting, Bruno, took place to highlight the trotting steps of the youth next to the father, Antonio, played by Lamberto Maggiorani. De Sica provided non-actors who would not overpower the balance between the daily rhythms of an urban landscape and the isolated individuals surviving in its landscapes' monuments.

Bicycle Thieves begins with music playing before a fade-in. Credits are transposed directly over a moving image of a public bus. Various men, old and young, are let off the vehicle and walk en masse to a stairwell into the Roman Office for Employment. Denied entrance, the men wait at the bottom of the steps for names to be called by the administrative official who calls the name of "Ricci." Ricci cannot be found immediately. Instead, he is sitting 30 meters away, looking dejected. Ricci is told there is a job waiting for him and is given his work permit and told to bring his bicycle. Ricci states that he will go on foot, and the men in the crowd offer to take the position. However, they cannot qualify. Ricci leaves the group promising to obtain a bicycle.

The introduction of Bruno is not seen for over ten minutes. At 14:29 into the film is when we meet Bruno, who is cleaning his father's bicycle. Noticing a dent in the bike, Bruno reprimands his father for not saying anything to the pawnshop dealer, showing his practicality and unwillingness to let life happen to him without engaging actively with it. It is revealed that Bruno is the family breadwinner, earning money at a gas station while his father waits daily for work at the employment office. In Germany, Year Zero, Edmund is the benefactor for his family. By taking odd jobs and eventually the black market, he provides shelter for the family despite being the youngest male next to his able-bodied - although traumatized- older brother.

When we look at children as mirrors of our society, we see them as direct decedents of ourselves. If a child is a tabula rasa, then we as adults influence that individual's imprinting. In Germany, Year Zero, the child's face is absent of emotion during pivotal moments in the plot. In contrast, Bruno's expressive face gives us moments ranging from comedic levity to dramatic beat changes. As viewers, in Bicycle Thieves, we never lose respect for the protagonist through the moral leveling of his son. In Germany, Year Zero, we project onto the child our internalized meaning of the absence of concern on Edmund's face as he kills his father.

In this dramatic Structure, Rossellini deconstructs sentimental sympathy. Instead of sentimentality, which we view in Bicycle Thieves, we are pulled through profound intellectual reasoning and objectivity. The meaning comes from the characters' actions and takes us on a journey to understand our implications in the film. Bicycle Thieves has no crime of passion, yet Germany, Year Zero does, so how do we feel about seeing? In this way, Bicycle Thieves can be argued as a manipulative portrait of postwar scarcity. We know-how at every moment we should think for the Ricci family and their situation. The child is the one who gives the workman's adventure an ethical dimension from a singular moral perspective. The final gesture of the little boy in giving his hand makes them equals.

Social messages are attached and immanent in the narrative events described as "Formal Truths." A formal truth in both films is that of egoism. In these cases, the narcissism we witness is the interiorization of social defeat leading to increasing isolation for our male protagonists. A formal truth implied in Bicycle Thieves is that the poor must steal from each other to survive, while in Germany, Year Zero, the message is about the folly of Nazi ideology. A Nazi schoolteacher - a pedophile - tells his student that his father is weak and useless and that the weak must perish for the strong to live. His critique of his father's sickness and harsh words to "destroy the weak so that the strong may survive and flourish" directly leads the young boy to murder his father. When the world rejects Edmund, and the schoolteacher refusal to take any responsibility, the boy suddenly decides to die instead.

You are free to decide if the incidents result from bad luck or to chance; however, the cultural responses, although different, lead to the same ending—one resulting in shame and defeat. The supposed death of the drowned child in Bicycle Thieves highlights the relative insignificance of the father's bicycle theft and creates relief in the story. In contrast, the father's death in Germany, Year Zero, becomes even more traumatic in its insignificance. Thus, the end was unnecessary, and its plot point focalizes on the young boy's further descent into shame and misery.

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Works Cited

Andrew, Andre Bazin Hugh Gray Francois Truffaut Dudley. "Bicycle Thief." By Andre Bazin - What Is Cinema: Volume II (1st Edition) (11/13/04), 1St Edition, University of California Press, 2021, pp. 47–60.

Bazin, Andre. "Germany, Year Zero." Bazin at Work, Routledge, 1997, pp. 121–24.

Curle, Howard, and Stephen Snyder. "Some Ideas on the Cinema." Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives (Toronto Italian Studies), 1st ed., University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2000, pp. 217–28.

Rossellini, Roberto. "Germany, Year Zero." HBO Max, uploaded by HBO Max, 19 Sept. 1949, play.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GXmlRlge6sZ4_wwEAAC8B.

Sica, Vittorio de. "Bicycle Thieves." HBO Max, uploaded by HBO Max, 13 Dec. 1949, play.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GXnvVpgspM4CgwwEAAA6K.

Sitney, Adams. "De Sica's and Zavattini's Neopopulism: Ladri Di Biciclette." Vital Crises in Italian Cinema: Iconography, Stylistics, Politics, Illustrated, Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 83–91.