In post-war Rome, a family pawns its wedding dowry bedsheets to buy back a bicycle, because without it the father cannot take the job that will feed them. On his first day, the bike is stolen. That simple premise became Bicycle Thieves, the 1948 film that helped define Italian neorealism and in 1952 topped the Sight and Sound poll as the greatest film of all time. This episode looks at how Vittorio De Sica, rejected by the studios, raised roughly 133,000 dollars from friends, refused to build a single set, and cast a factory worker and a boy he spotted on the street in the lead roles.

The discussion follows Antonio and Bruno through the markets of Piazza Vittorio and Porta Portese, the false alarms, the mob that protects the thief, and the shattering climax outside the football stadium. It also examines Luigi Bartolini's hostility to the ad ...