Secondly, the theme of Bicycle Thieves is quite different from Hollywood films. As mentioned above, “Italian neorealism is a style of film characterized by stories set among the poor and working class.” (Reference 1) The main purpose of this film is to reflect true lives and living difficulties of ordinary people. It can give the audience very deep impressions and can move them constantly. Furthermore, audiences can always acquire some invaluable advice and can form their own understandings towards life through watching this film. Because they firmly believe the story is true and it may take place in somewhere in their country. It is a vital trait of Italian Neo-Realism films. Although Hollywood films are famous for their grand and gorgeous settings, it cannot always touch audiences’ inner heart. Therefore, the theme of this film apparently makes it sit on realism spectrum. Thirdly, the shooting style of Bicycle Thieves need to be mentioned. When making this film, the director did not bring in props and sets. Instead, he shot it in real streets. According to Dogme 95 (Reference 1), “Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in.” The combination of actors’ performs and real social environments rather than artificial sets was really a breakthrough. Different from the traditional films, which emphasized on the coordination of settings, The Bicycle Thieves broke the constraint of space. Because the director made a brave decision -carry their cameras to the streets and try to record real stories taken place in the real streets. In doing so, the film can become irreplaceable real. And from this point, we can safely place this film into realism spectrum. In addition, the recording nature of this film also makes The Bicycle Thieves a neo-realist film. The recording nature means the film-maker is trying to record some physical facts. It is loyal representation of real figures and events in the film. The director telling the story in the film is like broadcasting news. “Real figures and events” here means the real style and features of true life rather than some particular figures and events. Besides, the use of long shots adds the sense of reality to the film. After all things we see through our eyes in daily lives are mostly “full-length shots”. The director’s dream is to convey unmanipulated reality. So he uses few montages. One advantage of full- length shots is that they can show integral whole events which makes the story real and nature. One manipulated picture can destroy the authenticity of a film. That is why Neo-Realism films often use large quantities of full-length shots. They can make films nature and real. The Bicycle Thieves uses lots of full- length shots and leave the audience a sense of reality. Last but not least, the structure of The Bicycle Thieves is really clear. The development of story follows the action and the audience can find the story in the material themselves. According to American Direct Cinema, one of the essential rules of observational cinema is “Follow the action, do not lead. Story must be ‘found’ in the material.” (Reference 1) The film-makers of The Bicycle Thieves try to tell the story in chronological order according to the coherent logical connection of events instead of contriving one. We can hardly find the technique of flashback in this film. All the events in this film occur naturally one by one. It is the simplest and the most outstanding structure of Neo-Realism film and at the same time, which the most touching one. From Kracauer’s point of view, there are clashes between realism and formative tendencies, “films which combine two or more dimensions are very frequent; for instance, many a movie featuring an everyday-life incident includes a dream sequence or a documentary passage.” (Kracauer, 5) Maybe in Kracauer’s opinion, it is better to use some formative techniques in this film. All in all, as a masterpiece of Italy Neo-Realism film, The Bicycle Thieves makes a lot of breakthroughs and plays an important and irreplaceable role in the development of film art. It is really worth watching. 网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文作品权归所有；未经官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。，英语论文范文，、更多范文欢迎访问我们主页 当然有需求可以和我们 联系交流。[-Z] |
