New Year's Eve Resolution Week Twenty Three: The Bicycle Thief

Hoooo boy, was I not looking forward to this one!  Subtitles.  Which means attention.  I first heard about this movie while watching My So Called Life.  It was supposed to be Angela's first date with Jordan.  He never showed.  Guess he didn't like foreign films either.  That and he can't read, remember?  ;-)  Nah, he just didn't want to meet her parents.  And Brian Krakow in a fit of jealousy said he had to explain the movie to Angela.  That is the only exposure I've had to this film.  And it didn't sound good....

So dinner.  I went for traditional Italian food.  Italian movie, Italian food.  I think I've done enough pizza on here, and yesterday I watched The Godfather part 2, so I had pasta.  There's not many other options in Italian food if you don't eat meat.  It's all just variations of carbs, cheese and tomatoes.  Not that I'm complaining!!  There is nothing better.  I was up for cooking tonight and skipped lunch so that I would have room.  Alright, I had popcorn at a movie that I was at(Colleen Moore!!!), but that's it.  I decided to make one of my favorites, panzeratti, which is basically a pizza folded in half.  It's "kinda" pizza, so that doesn't really count as doing pizza again, does it?  Whatever, it's delicious!  I did use store bought dough, I can make my own, I just didn't have time.  I filled it with diced tomatoes, basil, garlic, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, and fresh mozzarella.  OMGoodness.....  I served the leftover tomatoes on the side.  I didn't want to put all of them into the panzeratti because I've heard panzeratti's  can explode if they're overfilled.  I hate cleaning my oven.  I also had some red sparkling red grape juice, because I always think Italian food goes wonderfully with red wine, but I cannot have red wine.  Boooooo!  So I did what was closest.

Amazing!  Huge panzeratti with diced tomatoes on the side and sparking red grape juice.  All on my fabulous depression glass.

Now for the movie.  I found it remarkably watchable.  I was really surprised.  It flowed very well and was easy to pay attention to.  The cool thing about this movie is that you can watch it on two levels.  You can just take the basic story line of a man desperately trying to support his family and keep his job, or you can look for the symbolism and read into it deeper.  I did a little bit of both.

There are lots of symbolic ebbs and flows in this movie.  A current.  The country and the people were in a state of conflict and indecision.  Lots of deciding to go with or against the mob, the majority.    Streams of people, streams of bicycles, streams of street cars.  Do you decide to go with them or against them?  Then the moral decision at the end.  You see the main character remember what it did to him.  Remember that it ruined his life.  Do you do that to another person so that you survive and can support your family?  At the end he is shown understanding that he could not show, and blends into the crowd.  One of a million that this happens to every day.  No one is special.  No one is unique.

Lots of crowds and groups in this movie.  Lots of flow.

I had a really great night!  I was pleasantly surprised by this movie.  I can see why it is an essential and why it has the reputation that it has.  I definitely going to watch it again and get an even deeper feel for it.  I really want to analysis it more.  Especially the role his son plays.  Jiminy Cricket?  There's a lot there and I want to find it!  As for dinner, I mean really, did you see that picture?  Ummm, nummy!  You can't go wrong with cheese and bread.  You just can't.  I did use basil paste, because I couldn't score some fresh basil, and that was a little off, but it was still delicious, it just could have been better.

I wanna do tonight again!

Love,
Olive