Bicycle Thieves (1948)

 "You live, and you suffer."

I am, unsurprisingly, going to praise this film.It is, after all, a known classic of cinema. It's a masterpiece of Italian neo-realism, a meditation on both the despair and the suffering of truly grinding poverty and the uncaring nature of society.Yet, for a film with a run time of less than ninety minutes, the fact is that it's quite slow, uneventful and challenging.

I like arthouse films, including avant garde ones, and I don't routinely struggle to hold my attention as I did with this. Perhaps it's the realism, the lack of spectacle,of something weird or overtly artistic to stimulate the mind.... athough the visual of all those men on theitr bikes, carrying ladders, was certainly arresting.

And yet, I can't justly criticise the film for this. It's visual poetry, and the slow pace is the point. Antonio depends on his bicycle to keep his precarious job by which he can feed his wife and young children. The theft of this precious object destroys his world, and as the film unfolds we see both his desperation and the sheer impossibility of finding a stolen bicycle. There's no hope for him.

And yet the film is also about Antonio's relationship with his little son, Bruno. He's not a perfect father, none of us are, but he's a decent man under trying circumstances. And yes, the ending packs quite the punch. 

Not, perhaps, an entertaining film. But a most worthy one.

Hamlet (1948)

 "This is thevtragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.

Said quote is the popular opinion of the play. It has truth to it. Yet, as always with Shakespeare, there is nuance.

This play is a deconstructioin of the late 16th century revenge tragedy. Hamlet is, yes, hesitant. He is inytrospective, introverted. Naturally he hesaitates. Right?

Yet the ghost of his father gives him clear information. we can't excuse his procrastination. And he is not the student, intoverted, poetic hero. His reaction to his father's ghost is not revenge but a crying-for-help version of suicidal thoughts- see that soliloquy- and misogyny. His treatment of ophelia, and his mother, is unforgivable.He is not a likeable charactor. Here, that is a brave and right decision by Sir Laurence Olivier, whise charisma ois beyond all.

Contrasted to Hamlet is Laertes, an extrovert, who just gets on with his revenge. Good on him. Hamlet loses our sympathy when he kills Polonius, perhaps. After failing to kill the unshriven Polonius in the church. One could construct an argument that he does, in fact, kill Claudius as soon as reason and circumstance permit. I mean, I did this play at both A Level and University. The question persists- does Hamlet procrastinate? There's an argument to say not. His father's ghost interrupts only to rebuke him for being nasty to his mother.

Olivier is superb here.The soliloquys are exquisite. The play, long and bloated though it is, remains a piece of art up there with the best. That Warwickshire boy could certainluy pack a sentence with meaning.