Bicycle Thieves

“I also saw Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica and this film was a film that Roy Andersson was talking a lot about when I was in film school. It was nice to see that you have the right title on the film here. For many years it was called Bicycle Thief and I think Bicycle Thieves is a much better title for the film. So that's the film that I definitely will take.”

“A third film which I could watch back home when I started watching a little bit of older cinema was Bicycle Thieves. At some point they started having this Cinematheque in Romania... For me what was important was to discover the strength of this Italian Neorealism and later on in the film school I watched this film several times and I think that somehow it became part of my Education about and desire just making very realistic films in which most of the tension is coming from things.”

“I remember this film Bicycle Thieves and I remember it was made by an aristocrat and this aristocrat was making movies about poor people... I remember this beautiful film. I remember the emptiness of their lives and the central Performance of this actor... De Sica showed me something I've never seen before which was I guess in a post Second World War Italian poverty.”

“Bicycle Thieves, greatest movie. This is my number one movie of all time.”

“Bicycle Thieves. I don't really in my way of doing, I don't create something, I just find it in the daily life of people and organize it because I really hope that we all have a bit of Cinema in us and I just have to find it. And Bicycle Thieves really help me to just see that reality was possible, that just to capture the reality as it is as we are seeing it.”

“Bicycle Thief is a film that I saw oh very long time ago, 50 years ago or so. I was just so moved by the story and the opportunity, the feeling that I had that I was watching, even though it was staged, that I was watching real people and I was getting some sense of how they acted and how they felt.”

“الان گشتم و دزد دوچرخه رو اینجا دیدم و میخوام اینو بردارم. این تنها فیلم که تأثیر واقعاً زیادی روی سینماهای من گذاشت و وقتی من این فیلمو دیدم فهمیدم حالا دنبال چه نوع کاری هستم چه نوع سینمایی هستم و راهم رو به طرف سینمای اجتماعی باز کرد. در واقع توی فیلم دزد دوچرخه، دوچرخه ریچی رو می‌دزدن و اون حالا خودشو با آب آتیش می‌زنه با پسرش دنبالش میره و آخر سر می‌بینیم حالا میره دوچرخه یکی بدبخت‌تر از خودش رو بخواد.”

“I had seen this film The Bicycle Thief many years ago and I loved it and it really kind of moved me and then recently I became a father and I watched this film again and I think it was specifically because now I am a father this film destroyed me. The little boy in it is one of the greatest child performances of all time.”