Bicycle Thieves
original US distribution by Prof. Arthur MayerThis simple yet powerful drama of a down-on-his-luck father and son searching for a stolen bicycle is hailed as one of the greatest films of all time.
In poverty-stricken postwar Rome, a man is on his first day of a new job that offers hope of salvation for his desperate family when his bicycle, which he needs for his work, is stolen. With his young son in tow, he sets off to track down the thief. Simple in construction and profoundly rich in human insight, Bicycle Thieves embodies the greatest strengths of the Italian neorealist movement: emotional clarity, social rectitude and brutal honesty.
Hailed around the world as one of the greatest movies ever made, the Academy Award–winning Bicycle Thieves, directed by Vittorio De Sica, defined an era in cinema. Producer and film mogul Arthur Mayer, a visiting professor in the early days of Film Studies at Dartmouth, is responsible for the film's distribution in the US.
D: Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 1948, 1h29m, Italian with English subtitles
From The New York Times:
Last October, when Congress was considering legislation barring compulsory retirement, John G. Kemeny, president of Dartmouth College, urged that colleges be permitted to force retirement at the age of 65. He noted that "exceptionally able" teachers could be invited to continue. "Dartmouth," he wrote, "which has mandatory retirement at 65, also has a very popular 91-year-old visiting professor."
Since then, the bill has become law and Arthur L. Mayer, the 91‐year old professor, has turned 92. Twice weekly, he looks about him at the 150 to 175 students who have mastered that day's surge of spring fever, and launches into his course, "History of Film," as though there is not a reel to be omitted. His tone is self-deprecatory, pitched for laughs, and the phrases are hybrid, nurtured on Variety prose, Hollywood press‐agentry and contemporary film criticism.
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