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“Anywhere Anytime” is, quite overtly and unapologetically, a re-tread of the beloved classic “Bicycle Thieves.” However, in modernizing Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist landmark, Iranian-born director Milad Tangshir imbues his version with both contemporary cultural nuances and a unique perspective as an immigrant to Italy, resulting in a remake that stands apart.

The film follows Issa (Ibrahima Sambou), an undocumented Senegalese immigrant, who works odd jobs in Turin while evading the watchful eye of the police, just in case. When the pressure of evading the law (or paying mounting fines) becomes too great for Issa’s boss, he lets the diligent youngster go from his low-paying flea-market job, leaving him to the mercy of the gig economy.

Over-the-table work is hard to come by, given his legal status, but friend and fellow immigrant Mario (Moussa Dicko Diango) sets him up with a food delivery app and even lends Issa his smartphone.

Editor’s note: this list was originally published in May 2024. It has since been updated in honor of Father’s Day.

Every family relationship is fertile material for any film, but none have been pillaged quite as extensively as the father/son dynamic. Blame the patriarchy, perhaps, for centering the male experience far more extensively in fiction, resulting in films where daughters and mothers tend to fall by the wayside in favor of drama between the men of the family.

Still, filmmakers and their work respond to the imperfect culture we all live in, and the relationship between a father and son can act as a vehicle to explore powerful ideas on screen. Familial expectations, pressures to uphold legacies, and the emotional repression that often defines heterosexual male relationships inform many of cinema’s greatest father stories, which can frequently be boiled down to the (somewhat reductive) label of “daddy issue” dramas.

More than 60 years after its release, “Bicycle Thieves” is a profound lesson on how to survive tough times, but often not appreciated that way. While widely considered in saccharine terms, it actually offers a bleak assessment of humanity’s worst impulses. For years mislabeled as “The Bicycle Thief,” the original title of Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece actually gets the point across much better. The story is less focused on the murky figure who stole the bike that Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) was using for his meager job putting up posters around Rome. Instead, as Ricci himself grows desperate in the film’s closing moments, “Bicycle Thieves” exposes the endless cycle of corruption that comes out of hard times, and how self-interest so often trumps the impulse to do the right thing. Decades later, that message resonates more than ever.

It’s also a bitter pill to swallow, one that...

Like Bicycle Thieves’ Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) almost seventy years before him, Thierry Taugourdeau (Lindon) the protagonist of The Measure of a Man, is simply trying to earn an honest living to support his family. He has been unemployed for well over a year and must make ends meet with a small unemployment check. He spends most of his days trying to find a job, and at night he puts on his best face to appease the fears of his wife (Karine de Mirbeck) and his teenage son (Matthieu Schaller) who has a disability that will require special education in the near future. While Thierry’s overall situation is absolutely lamentable, there is no “time bomb” outlook in the meditative film, rather than push this everyman into “Michael Douglas in any 90s thriller” mode, director Stephane Brize invites us to observe and perhaps develop empathy.

Thierry is both unique and...

Vittorio De Sica is widely regarded as a master in the realm of world cinema. As one of the Italian neorealism forerunners (in company with Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti), De Sica concentrated on films that told stories about real people on real locations. He was fantastic at casting ordinary citizens for his lead roles --- particularly for his film Bicycle Thieves, which was recently been released via the Criterion Collection. The plot is simple: Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), a father in depressed, post-wwii Rome finally gets a job, which is everything, but he needs his bicyle. In order to provide for his family, he must get his bicycle back from the pawn broker, and to do that, his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) must pawn...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

'Father of the Bride': Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams. Top Five Father's Day Movies? From giant Gregory Peck to tyrant John Gielgud What would be the Top Five Father's Day movies ever made? Well, there have been countless films about fathers and/or featuring fathers of various sizes, shapes, and inclinations. In terms of quality, these range from the amusing – e.g., the 1950 version of Cheaper by the Dozen; the Oscar-nominated The Grandfather – to the nauseating – e.g., the 1950 version of Father of the Bride; its atrocious sequel, Father's Little Dividend. Although I'm unable to come up with the absolute Top Five Father's Day Movies – or rather, just plain Father Movies – ever made, below are the first five (actually six, including a remake) "quality" patriarch-centered films that come to mind. Now, the fathers portrayed in these films aren't all heroic, loving, and/or saintly paternal figures. Several are...

Last week, EW published The 55 Essential Movies Kids Must Experience (Before Turning 13). Predictably, given that we published a post on the Internet whose headline contained a concrete number and the word “essential,” we got some impassioned feedback from readers—many of whom were eager to suggest additional great movies kids should see that we’d left out.

As we noted last week, “This isn’t a list of the 55 ‘best’ kids movies, nor a compendium of hidden gems. Rather, it’s a survival-guide syllabus of films that we all need to know to be able to speak the same pop-cultural language.

It's Father's Day this Sunday, and in celebration Indiewire has decided to offer a few picks for the best cinematic dads. Clearly there's many notable examples missing from the list, but here's the movie fathers that six of our staffers felt most warranted inclusion. Feel free to use the comments section to offer up your favorites. Antonio Ricci, "The Bicycle Thief" Vittorio De Sica's heartbreaking neorealist work won Sight & Sound's top films poll just two years after its release for one very prominent reason: It's the best movie about paternal instincts ever made. The continuing efforts of Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), struggling with unemployment in post-wwii Italy, to find the stolen bicycle that could theoretically help him find a new job, derives much of its power from the relationship between Antonio and his young boy (Enzo Staiola). As Antonio's efforts to recover the bicycle grow increasingly desperate, culminating...

Currently leaving theatres is A Better Life, the latest movie from director Chris Weitz, the man who brought us American Pie and Twilight: New Moon and tells the tale of a father who struggles to do what’s right by his son and search for a stolen truck, is a loose remake of the classic 1948 Italian movie ‘The Bicycle Thieves’. The Bicycle Thieves (or The Bicycle Thief as it is known in the Us), for those who are not too familiar, was directed by Victorio De Sica and is often regarded as one the best foreign language films ever made and perhaps the greatest film to come out of the Italian Neo-Realism movement. The film follows Antonio Ricci (played by Lamberto Maggiorani) who finally gets a job delivering cinema posters only to have it threatened when a thief steals his bicycle. Together with his young son Bruno (Enzo Staiola), they...

John Hooper selects 10 of his favourite Rome-based films from Hepburn in Roman Holiday to Fellini's La Dolce Vita

• As featured in our Rome city guide

Roman Holiday, William Wyler, 1953

Insulated from the commotion of Roman life, Via Margutta is a cobbled street near the Spanish Steps, draped in ivy and lined nowadays with art galleries, restaurants and boutiques. It was home to Federico Fellini and Truman Capote. And at number 51, Crown Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) began her fleeting love affair with an American foreign correspondent, Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) in the enchanting, if improbable, comedy that shot Hepburn to fame and forever welded Vespas to Rome in the popular imagination. "You have my permission to withdraw..." slurs Hepburn, unaware she has previously been sedated, as she lets her skirt slip to the floor. "Why, thank you very much," replies the gentlemanly Peck and leaves her to sleep alone. It...

Lamberto Maggiorani in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves Gregory Peck To Kill A Mockingbird: Father's Day Movies In Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief / Bicycle Thieves (1948), non-professional actor Lamberto Maggiorani plays an impoverished husband and father who uses his bike to put up posters of Rita Hayworth in Gilda all over Rome. But then, his bicycle gets stolen. How will he support his family? Enzo Staiola plays the working man's young son, who comes to his father's rescue when he is accused of being a bicycle thief. Bicycle Thieves won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film released in the United [...]...

Vittorio De Sica, director of Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette), was a leading force in the neorealist movement in Italy. It’s no wonder that this 1948 film is the one people point to as the perfect example in the genre. A crowning achievement, not only in this particular genre but in film in general, De Sica’s film won an honorary Oscar in 1950 and was listed in many ‘best of’ lists, especially Sight & Sound’s poll for greatest film of all time by 1952, 4 years after it’s release. Since then it’s been regarded as one of the best films of all time and for good reason. It is a story that still resonates, even in today’s world.

Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) is a husband and a father who is desperate for a job. He goes to the local job club and as luck would have it, he gets an offer.

Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica (1948)

I didn't see Bicycle Thieves in its entirety until recently – only snippets here and there. But it was projected on Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard a couple of years ago, which really gave me a coherent grasp of the full story. I immediately bought tickets to see it again the next day.

After several years of unemployment, Lamberto Maggiorani's Antonio finds a job tacking up movie posters round Rome – a job for which he needs a bicycle. His wife sells all their bed linen and buys him a bike which is promptly stolen. After a long and fruitless hunt for the thief, a desperate Antonio resolves to steal a bike for himself. He gets caught. The shattering last scene will always stay with me: a weeping Antonio walking through crowds with the police as his son looks on. It shows a heartbreaking loss of innocence.

Lamberto Maggiorani in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves Some good and/or unusual offerings tonight on Turner Classic Movies. Silent Sundays will feature the 1925 version of The Wizard of Oz. Directed by and starring silent-film comedian Larry Semon, The Wizard of Oz features Dorothy Dwan in the role that would become associated with Judy Garland, especially in the minds of some gay men — and that's one mystery I've never been able to fathom. I mean, why Judy's Dorothy? Why Dorothy to begin with? Why not Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face? Or Norma Shearer in Let Us Be Gay? Or Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs? Or Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro? Or Ramon Novarro in Ben-Hur? Or Frances Dee in Blood Money (or The Gay Deception or I Walked with a Zombie)? Why not Toto or Asta? It's a mystery. Albert Lamorisse's Academy Award-winning...

Filed under: Columns, Cinematical

Welcome to Where Everyone Has Gone Before, the weekly column where I continue my film education before your very eyes by seeking out and watching all of the movies I should have seen by now. I will first judge the movie before I've watched it, based entirely on its reputation (and my potentially misguided thoughts). Then I will give the movie a fair chance and actually watch it. You will laugh at me, you may condemn me, but you will never say I didn't try!

The Film: 'Bicycle Thieves' (1948), Dir. Vittorio De Sica

Starring: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola and Lianella Carell.

Why I Haven't Seen It Until Now: Well, I guess I haven't seen it because -- Wait! I'm turning the tables this week. How many of you have seen 'Bicycle Thieves' (or as it's commonly known as in North America, 'The Bicycle Thief')? C'mon.

Lamberto Maggiorani in Vittorio de Sica‘s Bicycle Thieves (aka The Bicycle Thief) Suso Cecchi D’Amico, the only top female screenwriter in the post-war Italian cinema, died today in Rome. She had turned 96 on July 14. According to reports, no cause of death was given. Chiefly among Cecchi D’Amico’s screenwriting contributions — nearly 120 of them — are those for Vittorio de Sica‘s Oscar-winning neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Cannes Film Festival co-winner Miracle in Milan (1951), and for numerous films directed by Luchino Visconti, among them Bellissima (1951), Senso (1954), Rocco e i suoi fratelli / Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Il Gattopardo / The Leopard (1963), Ludwig (1973), and Conversation Piece (1975). Additionally, Cecchi D’Amico collaborated with a number of other celebrated Italian filmmakers, including Michelangelo Antonioni (Le Amiche / The Girlfriends), Alessandro Blasetti (La fortuna di essere donna / Lucky to Be a Woman), Luigi Zampa (L’onorevole Angelina), [...]...

As we salute fathers far and wide this Sunday, why not pop in some first-rate DVD titles that examine the distinct challenges of fatherhood, and how various dads rise to the occasion or, for a host of reasons, fall short. We lead with one of the most heartbreaking foreign films on record: Vittorio de Sica's neo-realist masterpiece, The Bicycle Thief (1948). In a devastated Italy just after the the Second World War, we meet Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani), who just manages to scrounge a living for himself and his family putting up movie posters around town. Antonio's job depends entirely on his bicycle, however, and soon disaster strikes. Someone steals his bike right out from under him, and with his adoring son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) in tow, an increasingly desperate Antonio scours Rome to retrieve it. Finally, he resorts to the theft...