Italy Against Italians

A film analysis of the classic Italian films: Ladri di Biciclette (de Sica) and Sedotta e Abbandonata (Germi), written for my Italian Cinema class.

The phenomena of Italians having a problematic relationship with the institutions that serve them can be exemplified in many cinematic classics, which often feature characters who are taken advantage of, mistreated, or forgotten by the institutions and organizations that are meant to serve them. Two examples of such films are Vittorio de Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette and Pietro Germi’s Sedotta e Abbandonata. These films explore different reasons for the distrust between Italians and their institutions and visualize this strained relationship by utilizing a multitude of techniques.
    Ladri di Biciclette (1948), translated into English as ‘Bicycle Thief’, shows one man’s journey searching for his stolen bicycle featuring the various national and religious institutions that let him down in the post-war period. From the onset of the film, Antonio Ricci’s position is established as being not at all unique. The scene at the pawnshop where the couple trades in their bedsheets features a dizzying shot upwards of hundreds, if not more, similar sets pawned off by families just like the Riccis. When Antonio initially reports his bike stolen there is a shot of the countless incident reports at the police station, showing even in coming to the police for help Antonio is not special, and that police resources are spread thin amongst all these crimes (Marcus, 66). The scenes in Piazza Vittorio and Porta Portese heavily imply most, if not all the bikes being sold there have been stolen, just like Antonio’s (Marcus, 66). These scenes establish that people all over Rome, and therefore imply people all over Italy, are struggling to stay afloat during this period of economic instability, and are doing what they must to survive (whether that is pawning off their belongings or stealing others’). They also begin to show that perhaps the systems built to support these people are inadequate.
    As mentioned, every power Antonio interacts with fails to assist him in his quest, and he visits many looking for help. Marcus explains that their “indifference to Antonio’s plight forms the basis of De Sica’s socio-political critique. The law, the church, and the trade union all fail to alleviate the very problems they were established to correct, forcing antonio to resort to unconventional, and, finally, self-defeating modes of redress” (64). To visually connect these institutions, De Sica utilizes Rome’s arches to “convey the heaviness and inevitability of Antonio’s fate” (Marcus, 73). The architectural purpose of these arches is to provide stability to a structure and to solidify it, so that it may withstand the test of time. The metaphor De Sica makes of them implies that these institutions, built on these structures, will continue forevermore with their inability to successfully achieve their purpose and support the Italian people.
    De Sica takes care to not make his critique only of the government through Antonio’s visit to the communist meeting and church. At the meeting, Antonio attempts to reach out to the group and ask for their assistance, but he is quickly pushed aside and ignored. In A New Guide to Italian Cinema, written by Carlo Celli and Marga Cottino-Jones, they conclude the following: “If the party really loved Antonio they would offer him more help. Instead, the communists and the vaudeville troupe argue about who has the right to use the stage, leaving the impression that like the vaudeville troupe, the communist cell is only interested in putting on a show” (62). This seems to imply that the communist cell, as well as the other institutions Antonio interacts with, are concerned with appearing to be for the people, instead of concerned with actually putting in the effort to achieve this goal. The church acts similarly, focusing on cleaning and shaving the people in need before forcing them to sit through a service and then finally providing them that which they have come for: food. Antonio gets grouped with these people easily, as those serving at the church do not seem to be concerned with much more than simply assembly-line completing their limited tasks. Really, throughout the film he is seen amidst crowds: in the beginning at the job office, in the church, on the street in the end credits, etc, continuing to hammer home this idea that he is one of many in this position.
    Antonio does eventually find help with his search for the bicycle, but this does not come from the institutions, truly establishing they cannot be relied on to serve their intended purposes. Marcus explains: “Though Baiocco does all that he can to help his friend, he acts not as an ambassador of the union’s will to help its members, but as a single individual, empowered by compassion alone, lacking the kind of institutional support that could give his aid the weight to succeed” (65). It is the compassion here that is the most important component, and in part is De Sica’s attempt to offer advice to those who may find themselves in the difficult position he is describing.
    De Sica’s film has a very clear melodramatic undertone which leaves audiences feeling dejected. It says to Italians:  no one can help you, because everyone is struggling, and it shows this by visualizing all sorts of Italian institutions ignoring or downright insulting Antonio. Can they all be considered the ‘antagonists’? Perhaps “the chief candidate for villain in the film is the Italian state as the collective expression of society” (Celli and Cottino-Jones, 64). While that may seem a harsh conclusion to draw, it is one clearly supported by De Sica’s cinematography and the film’s plot. While it discourages Italians from trusting the systems made to support them, it does simultaneously encourage the building of community, and having people support each other through the hardships they face, which isn’t all that bad of a message.
Pietro Germi’s 1964 film Sedotta e Abbandonata (“Seduced and Abandoned”) establishes a similar distrust but culturally grounds it in the ‘traditionalist’ Sicily by focusing on a young girl caught between the police (and by extension Italian law) and the traditional honor codes of the island. Germi takes great care to establish that Sicily is caught between these two often contradictory powers, showing “the contrasts between a modern industrial culture of a post-economic boom Italy and the feudal social and economic codes of the Italian south” (Celli and Cottino-Jones, 92), and determines, through Agnese’s story, that when the two powers are at odds the only real loser is the original victim.
Agnese, because of what has been done to her by Peppino, is at risk of being ostracized by society, and bringing her family down with her. In most other parts of Italy, the understanding that Agnese, as a 15-year-old, was forced by a man who overpowered her–physically and socially–would have been enough to redirect attention and judgment to the man who did the forcing. In traditionalist Sicily, however, if society found out (through police proceedings, for example) the Ascalone family would be ruined for her 'transgressions'.
This leads to a strange shift in tone during the scene at the police station, where the two families are arguing outside of the door of the office only for Don Vincenzo to state “we have only one enemy” (Marcus, 235). As if they were not just arguing over the perpetration of a very serious crime one committed against the other, “the Sicilian parties to the dispute are united in their suspicion of a foreign ruling authority, preferring to keep silent according to the code of omerta and settle their accounts at home” (Marcus, 235). This makes for an incredibly uncomfortable viewing experience, as everyone lies to the police to seem as though they are the closest of friends, as Agnese sits there taking it all in.
In showing the Ascalones sacrificing Agnese in the name of a fanatical respect for traditional Sicilian practices, Germi forces the audience to grapple with the unasked question that hangs in the air: is tradition worth this?
Agnese thus far has shown herself to be capable of acts which in another film could have given her a heroic role: “she dares to violate the codes of her culture, going to the police to report the impending showdown between Peppino and her brother Antonio in defiance of the principle of omerta” (Marcus, 236), but instead of being celebrated she is instead sacrificed, or as Germi would likely prefer, abandoned. She is abandoned by her family to adhere to traditional values, and she is abandoned by the police, because they have no power when the harmed party refuses to admit they were harmed.
Germi utilizes parody throughout the film to magnify the “inconsistency, hypocrisy, immorality, and stridency” (McDonald) of the characters and codes they abide by to ‘modern’ non-Sicilian audiences of the time. The score as Antonio departs for Regalbuto mimics that of a Western, fitting because Antonio wishes to avenge his sister. As Don Vincenzo “[speculates] on the identity of Agnese’s seducer,” the film takes on the stylistic elements of a thriller (Marcus, 244). The film even parodies itself, “when the four Ascalone women strut down the street to the same tempo and music of the earlier prostitutes’ promenade” (Marcus, 244) implying, of course, the Ascalone women are all promiscuous, not just Agnese, while we as the audience recognize none of them are as such.
Most importantly, by refusing to end the film in a manner that abides by the traditional ending for a comedic plot expected in a film such as Sedotta e Abbandonata, Germi ensures that his statement about traditional values coming at a human cost remains clear. Marcus writes: “[Germi] could have easily devised a comic ending in the classical tradition which would make his film the entertaining romp in quaint sicilian social customs that many critics expected it to be” having Peppino and Agnese to fall in love and willingly enter their marriage “despite the inhuman and mechanical requirements of the honor code” (Marcus, 231), but the violation of expectations in this regard makes the message sting even more. Audiences are forced to recognize that “like the statue, Agnese, too, will find her place at the altar as the unwilling bride of Peppino and the sacrificial victim of her family’s honor” (Marcus, 236) and there is nothing that can change this fact.
Ladri di Biciclette by Vittorio de Sica and Sedotta e Abbandonata by Pietro Germi exemplify films illustrating the distrust between Italians and the institutions and values that are meant to serve them. While De Sica shows the law, church, and political parties, among others, failing to provide Antonio Ricci the support they were established to, Germi shows a young girl falling victim to the conflict between traditionalist values and the law. Especially when taken together, they strongly discourage trust in Italian institutions, redirecting audiences to focus instead on supporting each other.
Works Cited
Celli, Carlo and Cottino-Jones, Marga. A New Guide to Italian Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Marcus, Millicent. Italian Film in the Light on Neorealism. Princeton UP., 1986.
McDonald, Michael. “Seduced and Abandoned (1964).” True Myth Media, True Myth Media, 19 Aug. 2019, www.truemythmedia.com/true-myth-media/reviews/seducedandabandoned.