De Sica’s classic has had a HUGE influence on me and the kinds of films I’m most drawn towards. As someone diagnosed with clinical depression, the mood of neo-realism artistically validates the weight of my experience.

Neo-realism in Italy has a fascinating history. It emerged as a response to the impacts of WWII and big studio conventions. American imported, slap-happy, escapist films failed to reflect the war-torn landscape of Italian identity. People were searching for something “truer.”

Anything softened by sentiment would lessen the blow. “Neo-realism” was really a way to move beyond sentiment to naked reality, however uncomfortable, tackling things like poverty, the working class, and corrupt gov’t without smoothing out the raw edges.

Rather than staging elaborate spectacles, these films went into the streets, the barracks, the train stations; they observed through windows, around doorjambs, through cracks in sewers like flies on a wall. Seduction always sacrificed for grittiness, sweetness for toughness.

The aesthetic — the mood — of neo-realism films never seek to entertain, but to reveal. They resist the urge to force an un-earned happy ending. They don’t ring false. They deftly capture the confusion and angst I’ve often felt. Paradoxically, they’ve also been extremely cathartic for me.

Bicycle Thieves is one of the greatest representations of this mood I know. The story is so simple, direct, and sad, but it also taps into a truth so cleansing and pure. It helps you see people in context rather than in sound-bytes.

No judgment either. It just gives you a context for the ways people might behave under duress, and the relationships and moral quandaries that give rise to their behavior. It’s as compassionate as it is depressing, and those feels speak to me in the most rewarding of ways.

De Sica Ranked