374 Bicycle Thieves

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swo17
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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#176 Post by swo17 » Sun Nov 06, 2011 11:57 pm

See also what MoC did with The Flowers of St. Francis. They include a more accurate translation as a subtitle but avoid confusion by prominently displaying the untranslated title.

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knives
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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#177 Post by knives » Sun Nov 06, 2011 11:58 pm

Though in that case I think the translation is better as the subtitle for the original title is referring to a wholly different character which is unclear.

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MichaelB
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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#178 Post by MichaelB » Mon Nov 07, 2011 6:39 am

swo17 wrote:See also what MoC did with The Flowers of St. Francis. They include a more accurate translation as a subtitle but avoid confusion by prominently displaying the untranslated title.
Or Harakiri/Seppuku.

Believe it or not, in the 1990s I actually overheard someone with an American accent ask in a London video shop whether Bicycle Thieves was the sequel to The Bicycle Thief, so even something as comparatively minor as Criterion's correction could cause confusion. And I agree that The 400 Blows, though linguistically ludicrous, is probably too firmly established to change now - at least Bicycle Thieves was always known under that title in Britain, and appears under that title in things like the 1952 Sight & Sound poll, so it was always present as a recognised alternative.

Mind you, the real pain is coming up with a plausible English title for a film that doesn't officially have one. A case in point: I recently reviewed Grzegorz Królikiewicz's Wieczne pretensje for Sight & Sound, and found three different English titles (Endless Claims, Eternal Grievances, Permanent Objections), any of which would have been OK since the film had never had a formal release in English-speaking countries.

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#179 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Mon Nov 07, 2011 6:55 am

MichaelB wrote: I agree that The 400 Blows, though linguistically ludicrous, is probably too firmly established to change now - at least
I don't know if it's a case of this title having seeped into my genes but I actually think it's quite a poetic little neologism given the sense of hardship AD goes through. If in the 60's it had come out with a more literal translation like Wild Oats or Crazy life expectations might have been a bit blunted.
N.B I note that the secondary dictionary definition of neologism means the misguided ravings of a psychotic so I might be wrong here.

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ellipsis7
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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#180 Post by ellipsis7 » Mon Nov 07, 2011 7:04 am

Sometimes there are simply two different titles for the same film, for instance Antonioni's THE PASSENGER in English (US, UK, Aus etc.) while in France, Italy, Germany etc. it is know as, and titled on the prints as, PROFESSION REPORTER/PROFESSIONE REPORTER etc. (there used also to be some minor variants in the cuts)... Frankly I don't have a problem with that ...

On another note, I remember the soul searching on this board to find the most suitable English equivalent sense of Rossellini's LA PRISE DE POUVOIR PAR LOUIS XIV, which I believe can never really be rendered with the same nuance and meaning as the French version...

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#181 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Nov 07, 2011 1:08 pm

MichaelB wrote: And I agree that The 400 Blows, though linguistically ludicrous, is probably too firmly established to change now
Firmly established enough that it seems almost impossible to imagine it under another name, surely. Idiomatic titles always seem to be difficult- appropriate though the title A Grin Without a Cat is for virtually any Chris Marker movie, it certainly doesn't seem to be a 'translation' in any meaningful way of "Le fond de l'air est rouge".

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zedz
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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#182 Post by zedz » Mon Nov 07, 2011 3:23 pm

MichaelB wrote:Believe it or not, in the 1990s I actually overheard someone with an American accent ask in a London video shop whether Bicycle Thieves was the sequel to The Bicycle Thief.
Cue rumbly trailer voice: "The Bicycle Thief II: Bicycle Thieves! Last time, it was personal. This time. . . it's professional!"

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manicsounds
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#183 Post by manicsounds » Mon Nov 07, 2011 8:52 pm

I still have to see this movie someday... my Criterion DVD is gathering dust in the closet...

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Gregor Samsa
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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#184 Post by Gregor Samsa » Tue Nov 08, 2011 5:35 am

zedz wrote:
MichaelB wrote:Believe it or not, in the 1990s I actually overheard someone with an American accent ask in a London video shop whether Bicycle Thieves was the sequel to The Bicycle Thief.
Cue rumbly trailer voice: "The Bicycle Thief II: Bicycle Thieves! Last time, it was personal. This time. . . it's professional!"
Followed by the haunting tale of change and social progress that is Bicycle Thieves II: Electric Bikealoo!

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CSM126
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#185 Post by CSM126 » Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:26 am

Bicycle Thieves II: The Quickening. Spoiler: the thieves are really aliens from Planet Zeist!

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Re: BD 33 The Gospel According to Matthew

#186 Post by Jack Phillips » Tue Nov 08, 2011 7:09 am

I actually overheard someone with an American accent
damned Canadians!

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manicsounds
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#187 Post by manicsounds » Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:34 am

And I finally watched this today, a double bill with "The Tree Of Life" (Father/Son double feature, I guess). With the region-B Arrow out, I'm guessing that the Criterion upgrade shouldn't be too far behind.

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TMDaines
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#188 Post by TMDaines » Tue Nov 08, 2011 1:00 pm

They took their time with the DVD, didn't they? Would love to be proved wrong though as the Italian disc was clearly visually superior to the Arrow but doesn't have the same array of extras.

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puxzkkx
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#189 Post by puxzkkx » Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:02 pm

I just saw this for the first time, and I can't say I liked it very much: de Sica does something very interesting by making a 'perseverance of the spirit' story with such an intensely self-involved asshole as a protagonist - the intent here seems to be offering Antonio's basic existence as the most important qualifier of our identification with his struggle. However I think the scope of his obnoxious manchildishness - his laziness in his first appearance on film, the way he roughs up his wife without thinking, his unrepentant harassment of a homeless man and an epileptic youth, his immediate instinct to cut in line (once in front of a crippled man!), his buying a nice meal before whining about money, the careless fraternity of his relationship with his son who falls over without reassurance, is hit, is nearly run over and, it is implied, nearly molested - swings the pendulum back from the social study to the personal, and makes it hard to either carry the metaphor of his plight over to an entire class or assume that stealing a bike is something he would resort to only after such an apparently violent internal conflict. I respect de Sica's resistance of 'nobility of the poor' tropes, but there is still an icky sentimentality in his insistence on such lacrimose scoring behind Maria and Antonio's rapturous discussion of wages (catering directly to wet-eyed middle-class audiences' sense of pity upon hearing someone describe such a meagre sum as if it were a fortune) or the camera's readiness to pick up 'incidental' moments of Enzo Staiola cuteness.

I think I prefer something like Miracle in Milan, where de Sica's warring impulses to cynicise sentimentality and to give it free rein are given an appropriate outlet in fantasy.
Antoine Doinel wrote:Just have a quick question regarding the subtitles. I saw a print of the film last night, and while the theater had the poster claiming it was a restored print for the 60th anniversary, it was fairly obvious the print was a much older. That said, there were good chunks of the film, though unimportant to the actual plot, where there were no subtitles at all. The one example I can think of right away is the scene where Antonio meets Baiocco during his rehearsal. While Antonio recounts what has happened to his bicycle, Baiocco is interrupted by the players on the stage and they exchange words. These aren't subtitled. There are other small scenes like that throughout the film, where I found this happening. Does the new Criterion DVD offer "expanded" subtitles? I know that it's common for not every line of dialogue to be subtitled, but it seemed with this film, it was a little more than usual.
This happened on the print I watched as well (on my computer), and every other subtitle I could find to download had the same problem.

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swo17
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#190 Post by swo17 » Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:16 pm

I feel like you may have watched a different movie from me. Perhaps one of the sequels?

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zedz
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#191 Post by zedz » Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:18 pm

puxzkkx wrote:I just saw this for the first time, and I can't say I liked it very much: de Sica does something very interesting by making a 'perseverance of the spirit' story with such an intensely self-involved asshole as a protagonist - the intent here seems to be offering Antonio's basic existence as the most important qualifier of our identification with his struggle.
If you'd like to see that idea pushed even further (and the audience's natural sympathy treated with much more problematic ambiguity), you should see Kiarostami's The Traveller (on Criterion's Close-Up disc).

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knives
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#192 Post by knives » Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:22 pm

I think it's more excusable with a kid though especially when it's more of him suffering from being a kid than just being an idiot. While it gets criticized for this attitude more I think Umberto D. is more successful in showing how even awful people are worthwhile on account of them being people.

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HerrSchreck
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#193 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:48 pm

My first time encountering this kind of a response to this film was when I showed it (I'm not kidding, she loves cinema... She just this past sunday wept at the end of CITY LIGHTS which I brought over) to my mother. . . and she left me gasping for air with her complete lack of sympathy for ( and in fact out right dislike for) the protagonist of the film. And this coming from a woman reared in the old East Harlem, and completely in sync via her childhood with the pain of poverty..

Really makes one wonder how much of what we take from a film is actually IN thefilm, and how much was injected into the narrative by us.

Beauty of art... Different things to different people... Etc etc mutatis mutandis id est yadda yadda....

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#194 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Mar 20, 2012 4:06 pm

Maybe your mother _knew_ folks not too different from the protagonist...

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HerrSchreck
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#195 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Mar 20, 2012 4:53 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:Maybe your mother _knew_ folks not too different from the protagonist...
That's where my mind headed at the time in fact, and I couldnt help thinking that he might have reminded of my grandfather, an aspiring tenor who never quite made it (met my grammy when she got backstage to meet him), left the family hungry when he went to war and during bleak blank stretches back home. I couldn't figure anything else that could color her reception of the character in such an unconventional way.

Anyhow, 'nuff bout me mummy..... Heading home w t the Milestone BOWERY, CC ANATOMY OF A MURDER, and a fresh copy of some of my fave schlocko 50's of all time MISSLE TO THE MOON ( wore my old one literally out... This edition has an optional colorized track of all things furchrissakes).

"Look out, the rock men!"

"My Leee-do........."

Joy!

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zedz
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#196 Post by zedz » Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:29 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:
Michael Kerpan wrote:Maybe your mother _knew_ folks not too different from the protagonist...
That's where my mind headed at the time in fact, and I couldnt help thinking that he might have reminded of my grandfather, an aspiring tenor who never quite made it (met my grammy when she got backstage to meet him), left the family hungry when he went to war and during bleak blank stretches back home. I couldn't figure anything else that could color her reception of the character in such an unconventional way.
I have to admit that I have an incredibly low threshold for characters who make really stupid decisions for the convenience of the drama, but whom we're still supposed to feel sorry for (this is my pet peeve with a number of Ken Loach films, for instance) - but that's never even occurred to me in relation to Bicycle Thieves, since I think the film very carefully closes off all the exits and backs the protagonist into his particular corner.

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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#197 Post by Dave » Fri Jun 07, 2013 9:49 pm

Hello, I recently became obsessed with tracking down the filming locations of Bicycle Thieves in Rome. I have created a website that provides a map plus a lot of 'then and now' comparisons. You might find it mildly interesting. Any additions or corrections would be greatly appreciated.

Enjoy!

MongooseCmr
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#198 Post by MongooseCmr » Sat Jun 08, 2013 2:37 am

That's really impressive. You better hope a location tour isn't a supplement on any Bluray in the near future, making your work a bit for naught. Or maybe you'll be an inspiration

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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#199 Post by jedidarrick » Fri Aug 15, 2014 6:12 pm

Saw this film in one of my history classes a few months ago and I loved it. Hopefully Criterion will release this on Blu next year. Reliance MediaWorks is doing a new restoration on Bicycle Thieves, so this makes me think that it could be re-released on Blu next year.
http://variety.com/2014/film/news/class ... 201257457/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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ellipsis7
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Re: 374 Bicycle Thieves

#200 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Oct 24, 2015 3:46 am

Don't know if this court action will have any bearing on a potential Blu Ray... And here is the actual document of the Complaint being put to the New York Courts...

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