Being a student and teacher of the Italian language, and also a lover of film, it occurred to me to try to merge these two fields of interest in an attempt to help advise or at least get feedback from fellow Italian students.
So, I started with a classic, or at least what the authorities deem a classic of Italian cinema; Ladri di Biciclette - The Bicycle Thief. Normally I am not crazy about movies that end with the protagonist crying in despair, but the more I understand about Italian cinema, the more I see that suffering is kind of important. Several Fellini films that I have seen left me with a similar feeling.
The film is set in Rome in the late 1950s and follows the protagonist Antonio on a journey to recover his stolen bicycle, which he needs for his job so that he can provide food for his wife and son. One thing I love about the film is seeing Rome during the late 1950s. It's unrecognizable and simultaneously very familiar, having been a Roman tourist several times.
The whole reason I got into Italian Film in the first place was to learn more about the nuances and subtleties of the Italian language and its numerous dialects. Ladri di Biciclette, being set in Rome, is in the Romanesco dialect. The most obvious example of this (to me) is the use of the word 'andiamo' which in Romanesco is 'ah-NAmo' or just 'NAmo.' On the first DVD version of the film (the one I just watched), the sound was pretty fuzzy and many words were difficult to make out. However, a Criterion Collection edition of the film was recently released, which should have a much more crispy clean sound. Overall it was an enjoyable experience. I am not yet at the point where I want neorealistic suffering every time I watch a movie, but I'm getting there. Something lighter next week.
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