Analysis of Vittorio De Sicas Bicycle Thieves and Erick Zonca in the Dreamlife of Angels - Essay Example

Italian neorealism movement through Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) and modern French poetic realism of Erick Zonca in The Dreamlife of Angels (1999) Finding heart and humanity in films hardly come by these days. And when it comes, it is like oasis in a vast desert or a miracle that every moment of it you would like to keep in the treasure trove of your memory. Such experience are felt in the influential film Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette, 1948) helmed by Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica, and the effectively poignant and elegant The Dreamlife of Angels (1999) directed by Erick Zonca. Both films, in their own respective way, herald humanist cinema that neither cheapen what we feel nor belittle what’s in our minds Surprisingly, the two films are not what you may call escapist or Big Studio films made in Hollywood. Neither were the two films expected to be commercially successful in terms of ticket sales nor would please everyone for its unconventional or almost plotless structure. But history proved otherwise as both films gained the respectability and admirations of people worldwide. Godfrey Cheshire contends Bicycle Thieves “is dazzlingly rich in human insight”1 while Janet Maslin of The New York Times hailed Dreamlife as “a soulful moving vision in its rawness and immediacy that is heartfelt.” Lensing through Zonca’s version of French Poetic Realism, De Sica’s Italian Neorealism If the Bicycle Thieves is an offspring of the post-war film movement Italian neorealism, the Dreamlife is of the French poetic realism movement and kitchen-sink drama. Considered to be a predominant style during the Golden Age of French Cinema (1934-1940), the mix of realism and lyricism is very characteristic of the French Poetic Realism movement. With what William Martin pointed out of the French film movement, the social humanism in the film movement strongly influenced the Italian neorealism cinema movement. The quiet lyricism and the gritty, dreary realism of Dreamlife far extend the French Poetic Cinema of the 1940s and fashioned it to something modern and original in the modern times, particularly the late 90s, through French kitchen-sink drama. Made in cinema-vérité style, the lyricism achieved came not for any self-conscious, self-styled directorial concerns or aesthetics but through the urgency of his story and the morality it aims to tell. And like British filmmaker Ken Loach’s kitchen-sink dramas, Zonca transported to France the realist style and fashioned it the way French would do it. Zonca like Loach, who made names with films like Ladybird, Ladybird, My Name is Joe and recently with the Cannes best picture helmer The Wind that Shakes the Barley, is interested in evoking naturalistic, socialist beliefs among the working class. Manny Farber said of Loach … (he) is an inveterate Kitchen Sink–style dramatist who had got a nose for progressive causes. The British filmmaker’s films concerns social ills and injustices with a frank, punchy vitality. His films stood out from the so-called “problem” films during the 1940s–’60s. – Leigh (2002)2 To achieve the realism he wanted, Loach would shoot scenes without giving his actors script. And in the case of Zonca in Dreamlife, his two lead actresses’ performances fitted effortlessly into the Loach vérité style that although script is prepared, he let his principal stars Elodie Bouchez (Isa) and Natacha Regnier (Marie) live together during the course of filming Dreamlife so the rapport of a close friend required of them would naturally sprang. According to Bouchez, she acted the emotions demanded of her which are not even written in the script. Elodie Bouchez as Isa in The Dreamlife of Angels (La Vie Rêvée Des Anges) Courtesy of http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/dreamlifeofangels/index.html Quite similarly in the case of De Sica, the simplicity of his visual style is matched by his use of nonprofessional actors who are themselves may have experienced over the years in their lives of the harsh realities and bellows of living in poverty after the World War II. These experience, De Sica, uses to great power and achieve what he envisioned for the Bicycle Thieves to attain: cinema of impassioned social consciousness. Thus, the original contribution of Italian cinema to the world: “… lies in their stylistic organisation of elements of apparent rawness, their emotional intensity and their focus on current political and social problems…” - Sitney (1995: p 6)3 In the tradition of the neorealist films that sprang from Italy after the great world war, De Sica utilized the purist stance of this movement such as: 1) the story is set among the poor, working class people; 2) opposes big studio production but filming in mostly poor and impoverished locations; 3) non professionals or untrained performers for primary and secondary roles; 4) using the post-war Italy as backdrop to reflect how this affected and influenced the psyche of the Italian working class and the daily conditions of living, loss, poverty and despair, and; 5) use of children primarily not on a participatory, lead roles but as observational characters. De Sica’s collaborator and writer of the film, Cesare Zavattini issued a manifesto, a call to all filmmakers to: “… To excavate reality, to give it a power, a communication, a series of reflexes … that the invention of plots to make reality palatable or spectacular is a flight from the richness of life…(Zavattini wants to) make things as they are, almost by themselves, create their own special significance… ” McCann (1966).4 Lamberto Maggiorani in Bicycle Thieves http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/94/Lamberto.jpg Neorealism, in its pure sense, according to Zavattini “breaks all the rules, rejects all those canons which in fact, exist only to codify limitations. Reality breaks all the rules, as can be discovered if you walk out with a camera to meet it.”5 Not only social themes but somehow the Italian neorealist films are political in nature because of its strong rejection of Fascism and the fantasy of this repressive regime. This can be reflected in other influential films that emerged from Italy during the era such as Roma, città aperta (Open City) in 1945 and De Sica’s earlier film Sciuscià (Shoeshine) in 1946. In their strong opposition to this hellish regime, Italian neorealist filmmakers resorted to documentary style or cinema vérité, street-level filmmaking, which to them became a necessity. “In view of style in neorealism is concerned, the film was a combination of spectacle, melodrama and critical realism and represented a distinct shift away from the idealist version espoused by Zavattini.” – Millicent (1986)6 Additionally, Criterion Collection’s Godfrey Cheshire noted this, to wit: “Today, ideals of neorealism continue to repeat the struggle for authenticity and political engagement in cinema.” Dreamlife is less of a political and more on the exploration of the social themes apropos the working class. In showing the life of working class French in the person of Isa and Marie, which may be or will be the life of anyone of us, the film does not strive to serve as a disillusioning rejection of any political regime but of the almost raw, random ebb and flow of events in our life and how the people we encounter may affect us in ways we never imagined would change our lives forever. Zonca, who in a little two hours, introduced us to two women, Isa and Marie, who shared a borrowed apartment, fight and then separated ways. The film, in vivid simplicity and almost episodic or slice-of-life structure, leaves an unusually good film that is more ebullient in providing neither the reasons why the characters are acting the way they did nor the logic in action why they do what they did. We are also taken to the relationships these characters enter into and establish: Isa with a comatose girl while Marie with an arrogant and abusive lover. The very interesting Isa has the character that may seem unaffected, although identified in the film with much harder life, by the news that the owner of the borrowed apartment she and Marie live died in an accident. Surprisingly though, Isa still manages to visit the owners’ comatose daughter in the hospital and keeps her company such as continuing to read and write down in the diary of the girl. Unlike Marie, who seem willing to take and tolerate the abuses of being the other women of his womanizer boyfriend, although we know that sooner or later, the man of his dream, the person she believed would take her away from her already bruised, impoverished life, would drift away. And Marie who in exterior seems stronger of the two, but gives us an idea that she is bruised and broken from the start, later on appear helpless and weak, that ending her life would be her last resort. Cinematographer Agnes shot the film in 16mm and blown up to give an intimate feel to the film. So we almost feel empathy to the characters as it opened us to the wounds, the almost dream lives lived by our characters, and the revelation is unusually good not only because of the sterling performances of the actresses (who both shared top prizes at the Cannes in 1999), but like life itself, it surprises us and involved us in heartfelt, almost mind-blowing way. BBC’s Clare Norton-Smith (1999) enthused that the film’s visual style, which is impressive in its sheer simplicity, rejected the complex plot parallels that run throughout the film. Additionally, Zonca’s exploration of the metaphysical theme of death and rebirth “adds extra dimension to Dreamlife’s depth of meaning.” The melodramatic, almost abrupt ending of Dreamlife may seem less harsh than the more unforgiving, brutally honest life of common people in Bicycle Thieves. De Sica first introduced us to the poor family of Antonio who, we may say, are survivors of the recent world war. Still reeling from the consequences of the devastation caused by the war, Antonio’s concern is for his small family to live a dignified life. He got a new job, which gave him a glimmer of hope. But De Sica is unforgiving, as he immediately took our protagonist away from what could be a hopeful future for the post-war Italy. In unflinching way, when Antonio loses his bicycle, this is when hell starts for him and his family: desperation, humiliation and lingering hopelessness. Together with his son, Bruno, the two set off to search for the thief. Ironically, when Antonio realized he is trapped in the vicious cycle of life, but still maintained he need to retain his job, he stole too a bicycle. Unfortunately for him, he was caught and the humiliation he faced and experienced was just too hard to be taken by him and that his son, who is still at a very young age and innocence, were opened to the harsh realities of life. Bruno holds his father’s hands in this landmark film, Bicycle Thieves http://www.criterion.com/content/images/featured_dvd/374_feature_350x180.jpg In sum, similar with De Sica’ exploration of the lives of the father and son that in the end, we realize we are just seeing, watching two of the many poor people who have to grapple with the harshness this life offers, Zonca’s Dreamlife ends with Isa in the middle of a long assembly line in factory. It would be gleaned, as the camera pans to show us the other factory workers in the factory, Isa and Marie’s are just two of the stories in the world. Still, there are many like them, people who may be like angels too who are either living their dream life and may soon wake up and achieve a certain realization in their lives. Their stories would soon be told. Works Cited . Books Marcus, Millicent. 1986, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Princeton University Press. Martin, John W. 1983, The Golden Age of French Cinema 1929-1939, Martin, J. Columbus Books, London. Paris, James Reid 1983, The Great French Films, J. R. Citadel Press Sitney, P. Adams. 1995. Vital Crises in Italian Cinema. University of Texas Press. McCann, Richard 1966, In Film: A Montage of Theories, E.P. Button Press, New York. Websites Taylor, Charles 1999, Review of The Dreamlife of Angels, Salon.com, [Online] Available at: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/1999/04/05/dreamlife/index1.html. Trosset, Michael. 2007, Ten Important European Cinémas, [Online] Available at: http://www.math.wm.edu/~trosset/Film/europe.pdf. Vera, Noel 1999, The Happiness of Idiots, the Dreamlife of Angels: The 23rd Hong Kong International Film Festival, [Online] Available at http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/fafr/articles/hongkong99.htm Walsh, David 1999, A filmmaker who takes people seriously, [Online] Available at http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/ange-a22.shtml.. Cheshire, Godfrey 2007, A Passionate Commitment to the Real, Criterion Collection, [Online] Available at http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=374&eid=522§ion=essay&page=3 Norton-Smith, Clare 2007, Film Review of The Dream Life of Angels, BBC, [Online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/cinema/features/dreamlife.shtml Read More