Back to Back 36 - The Crucifixion Considered as a Bicycle Race
Contrasting somewhat different approaches to bicycle crime and its aftermath
Bicycle Thieves (1948) - director/writer Vittorio da Sica, co-writers Oreste Biancoli, Suso D'Amico, Adolfo Franci, Gherardo Gherardi, Gerardo Guerrieri, Cesare Zavattini
Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985) - director Tim Burton, co-writers Phil Hartman, Paul Reubens and Michael Varhol
Alfred Jarry’s Big Adventure
Jesus got away to a good start but he had a flat right away. A bed of thorns punctured the whole circumference of his front tire. The two thieves, obviously in cahoots and therefore "thick as thieves," took the lead.
Alfred Jarry, "The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race" (1903)
in Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, edited and translated by Roger Shattuck (1965)
If everyone on the planet had a bicycle, two things would result: firstly, we wouldn't all die in a planetary catastrophe caused by global overheating from fossil fuel use (to simplify things somewhat - there's still the problem of the farting cows and all the polluting industries and Jeff Bezos's yacht and rocket - but we need to start somewhere, so let's go with bikes); and secondly, we all would have terrific calf and thigh muscles. Win-win. Moreover, there'd be a lot less noise outside my window.
And there'd be no more crime because, since everyone has a bike, there'd be no more incentive to steal bikes. It says clearly in the bible that "the love of bicycles is the root of all evil: which some covet after." (1 Timothy 6:10). So it logically follows that: no personal bike deficit, no more evil. Oh, sure, there might be a few misguided souls, who, though owning a bike already, covet another's two-wheeled self-powered transportation. Indeed we shall meet such a diseased specimen later, in the person of Pee-Wee's sick rival and nemesis Francis.
These unbalanced individuals will be sent for re-education at Tim Burton's Film Reform School, where they will be made to watch the Dumbo remake, and Johnny Depp-led reimaginings of popular classics, until they beg for the sweet release of death. At that point they will be cured and released back into society to steal no more, no, not even a bike pump or a handlebar bell.
Such is my utopia. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Just at this moment the cops have stopped traffic on the street outside while a huge procession of cyclists are occupying the thoroughfare. The car-drivers have gone ballistic but they own the roads 99.98% of the time so it's only fair.
After my revolution they will get to drive on the street 0.02% of the time while paying 200% road tax. What, me? Where's my bike? Sorry, the saddle hurts my arse. Medical condition, you know. I have to drive.
Anyway, enough about my bum-ailments. Here’s Bicycle Thieves by Vittoro da Sicca:
"It is a simple, powerful film about a man who needs a job."
Roger Ebert on Bicycle Thieves
Imagine a world where a hard-working honest guy lives so precariously that any misfortune - an illness, say, or the loss of a vital means of transport - would send him spiralling into abject misery. Hard to picture isn't it, in these days of solid social safety nets and welfare protections for the working poor? Yet there was a time, long ago, when a working-class family had literally nobody helping them. How times have changed, right kids?
Bicycle Thieves has had mountains of text written about it because of its place in the very early years of the Italian neorealist movement, though arguably da Sicca's Umberto D (1952) is a better all-round film. There are reams of essays about the symbolism of this, and the parallels of that, but cutting though the verbiage a little, it's the story of a guy (Antonio Ricci, played by non-actor Lamberto Maggiorani) who has his bike stolen - and his bike is necessary for his living.
That's what it is. Antonio doesn't feel the symbolism of the parable about societal themes - he feels the loss of his bike. It's what he needs to make a living.
That elemental fact is what a lot of critics, who simply have never been in a position where such a small disaster really counts as a threat to day-to-day survival, have underplayed. Not that it's bad that a critic or writer is fortunate, as most of us have been, never to have existed in such a marginal situation. That just means the empathy booster has to be switched on in order to feel that feeling of panic in the gut that comes when you know your livelihood depends on your bike, and your bike has just been stolen.
An example of this is the critic for the SF Chronicle Bob Graham, who wrote: "The wheel of life turns and grinds people down; the man who was riding high in the morning is brought low by nightfall." Riding high, Bob? Antonio on the first morning is not in any sense riding high: he sits crushed on the ground, his bike is in hock and his hopes have already been dashed. Only on the second morning is he even slightly hopeful, but doing a shitty poster-pasting job for peanuts is not 'riding high' either; it's still destitution, but just slightly more bearable than squatting in the dirt. Oh Fortuna my arse.
Another laughable take came from the NYT's Bosley Crowther, generally an excellent reviewer of the 40s-50s era, but his liberal goggles failed him badly here when he identified "a major - indeed, a fundamental and universal - dramatic theme. It is the isolation and loneliness of the little man in this complex social world that is ironically blessed with institutions to comfort and protect mankind."
Come again, Bozzers? Blessed with institutions to comfort and protect? Not in most parts of this fundamental and universal world, my friend. Maybe in your neck of the woods, and thankfully still in mine, but not in most of the sorry-ass world inhabited by the poor grinding Antonios of today. So, institution-wise, very much not ‘blessed’.
In 2020 the NYT was at it again with the centrist pablum. A.O. Scott summed up the film thus: "The tragedy it depicts arises partly from poverty, injustice and the aftereffect of dictatorship, but more profoundly from a deficit of empathy." The 'partly' here is doing a lot of work to avoid the obvious, which is that the empathy Scott calls for is so much easier to supply when the poverty and injustice are taken care of first.
And there is actually a fair amount of empathy - solidarity as it's called in the working classes - shown in the film, not least the way dustman Baiocco and his city refuse crew try to help find the stolen bike. The lack of empathy actually comes from the entrenched class enemy, the police, and arguably from the well-dressed do-gooders at the church. But the working poor evince sympathy with each other and help however they can.
Better analysis came from Pierre Leprohon in Cinèma d'Aujord:
what must not be ignored on the social level is that the character is shown not at the beginning of a crisis but at its outcome. One need only look at his face, his uncertain gait, his hesitant or fearful attitudes to understand that Ricci is already a victim.
This is actual no-nonsense watching of the film itself, not the liberal interpretation of the film as existential challenge and quest that has come to predominate.
Antonio is crushed because he is poor. He is poor because someone keeps him poor, it's in the interests of that richer person to have someone on hand ready to take a crappy job on demand and be dumped on demand.
Today that richer person is the owner-shareholder of Uber or some other gig-economy app, or a restaurant-franchise operator squeezing his barista-waitperson drones for all they're worth. Back in 1948 Rome, it was whoever paid Joe Schmos to post posters - though of course the name of the class exploiter is Legion and is always mutable. That’s innovation.
In recent times the Ken Loach film Sorry We Missed You (2019) updates the da Sicca formula of ‘hard-working family guy with personal issues and a need to provide his own working transport and equipment’. In this case it's a gig-economy worker for an Amazon-like fulfilment company. Nobody nicks his van, which he gets into massive debt to buy, but they do destroy his firm’s barcode scanner and he's expected to pay a cool grand, a thousand quid, to replace it.
The same grind is in operation as in 1948 Rome, but now there's no sign of the working-class solidarity that made the bin-men help Antonio search for his bike. The gig worker is completely and utterly alone. This is what makes the contemporary tragedy so much more bitter to watch and to experience.
I've said nothing about the cinematic aspects of this work, the framing, editing, and so on. That's because they're completely vanilla, absolutely competent and almost completely unnoticeable. They unobtrusively do their job and move on, like a quick and efficient flyposter.
There's probably an awful lot going on that I'm simply too obtuse to notice, because I've been so corrupted by cinematic flashiness and breathtaking virtuousity that I'm incapable of appreciating the simplicity. Not that I don't appreciate it, in the sense that I do in fact like it a lot, that transparent simplicity of style. Just that I can't really grasp the cleverness in it, and only see the unadorned plainness. I expect most of us are like that by now.
—INTERMISSION—
[Pee-wee is offering a $10,000 reward to whoever finds his bike]
Dottie: Pee-wee, how are you ever going to pay a reward like that?
Pee-wee: It's simple. Whoever returns the bike is obviously the person who stole it. So they don't deserve any reward!
Oh, we were so innocent back in 1985. There was no CGI, we had only just begun the nightmare that would later bring us into our present era of slow apocalypse, and there were no "fucks" allowed - or indeed given - in film comedy.
Apparently there's one "fuck" allowed per film in our time while preserving the PG rating, which makes little sense to me. Surely unlimited numberless fucks should be given, or else none at all. One just seems niggardly and tokenistic. But in Pee Wee's day you had to keep it cleaner than even that single solitary fuck, and not one tiny F-bomb could be dropped in a PG film. Which, while harsh for Tourette's-inflicted comedians and punk-rock teen idols, had at least the benefit of a coherent world view behind it.
Tim Burton's Pee Wee is knowing, all the while seeming very childlike and naive, constantly trespassing on the boundaries of propriety but in a way that you just can't quite put your finger on. The whole film is camp in the very best tradition of camp: defiant and playful, sitting within the normal world's strictures while always gesturing ouside it to a place where things are freer and more chaotic, and just more fun. The circus-type feel of the film’s music soundtrack, with its Danny Elfman carnival-sideshow lightness, is absolutely appropriate for this spirit.
We might compare it with the camp of John Waters, which was also breaking out from indie fringe into the Hollywood mainstream around this time. Waters' Polyester (1981) was outrageous, confrontational and funny as hell, a kind of in-your-face grunge-camp, but you definitely didn't want to be seen taking the kids to see it. It was rated R, which was a great improvement in accessibility for Waters from the X ratings he garnered for previous films. When he came to do Hairspray (1988), maybe learning a little from this film how outrageous camp could be contained in a family-friendly format, it got the PG, all-important for a comedy.
What makes Pee-Wee's Big Adventure appear so innocent today is partly that it has no commercial agenda beyond itself, it's not seeking to start a franchise or sell a piece of merch. Tim Burton was like that back then, and so was Hollywood in general, always on the lookout for something new, fresh and original.
Pee-Wee and his pals are just grown up kids acting out a trippy kids' version of Bicycle Thieves, only instead of the gritty streets of post-war Rome, we're in the primary-coloured world of a manchild and his big big toys. When Pee-Wee's bicycle is stolen, it doesn't threaten his livelihood or his survival, it just threatens his psyche.
Pee-Wee has none of that boring grown-up stuff like family, responsibility or job to worry about. Just him, his toys and his bicycle, his dream-world and his dream of competing in the Tour de France to win on his spiffing two-wheeler. Now it's gone, a shattered dream. And it's really really rude to do that. You just don't take a guy's bike.
So when Pee-Wee convokes the entire gang to discuss the incident - the BMX kids, Dottie, Amazing Larry, Jimmy, Mario, and of course the puppy Speck - it's no wonder that he goes... funny. You know, just a little... funny in the head:
Pee-wee: This box contains over 217 bits and pieces of information, evidence. Exhibit A - A photograph of the victims, my bike and me. Exhibit B - Another photograph. What's missing from this picture? It's just me... WITHOUT MY BIKE!
[Amazing Larry whispers something to Mario]
Pee-wee: Is this something you can share with the rest of us, Amazing Larry?
Exhibit C - The horn I was picking up at Chuck's Bike-o-rama when my bike was actually stolen![Honks the horn loudly]
Pee-wee: Exhibit D - Jimmy what is this? Too late! Chip!
Chip: It looks like a pen.
Pee-wee: Exactly! I bought this pen exactly one hour before my bike was stolen. Why? What's the significance? I - DON'T - KNOW!
So far we're at the bit in the Bicycle Thieves where Antonio's Rome city sanitation-crew mates promise to help, but are a bit stumped as to how they can actually do anything useful. Pee-Wee lacks a wife (sorry, Dottie!) or an adorable little son (though puppy Speck is cute, but he won't be going on the search). From now on all the Italian neorealism parallels fall away and we're out in Tim Burton Land, trying to keep up with all that manic camp, the clown-horror and the mattress-mutilators.
At this point we're privy to a piece of information that was lacking in the original Roman story: the motivation behind the thief's dastardly perfidy. This is where we step into Francis' evil lair and discover his evil plan. Turns out he paid the sneaky guy to steal the bike because... he wanted it. He doesn't have a real clear idea of why he wanted it, or what he's going to do with it now he has it, but he wanted it and now he's got it. Keeping up so far? Good.
The rest of Pee-Wee's journey is an object lesson in what you can do with the picaresque story, the wanderer moving from place to place and encountering dangers, challenges, monsters, monster truck-drivers, Texans, and new friends. It's like Don Quixote, but it's only 90 minutes, so it never gets on your nerves with how prolix and slow such a story can become. It's like Moby-Dick but there are very few harpoons and zero peg-legged seacaptains. Or am I wrong and there is one? Maybe there's a leg-deprived skipper in the biker-bar, or in the basement of the Alamo? Need to watch it again and check...
This film is an absolute delight from start to finish, and that's not just the nostalgia talking. I thought so back then, and I still think so all these nearly 40 years later. The goofy innocence and the grotty edges to the animation just highlight the childish, or childlike, joy in the story.
Only Barbie in recent years has shown this level of sheer campy fun, and even then the latter film complicates its joyfulness with many anxious, knowing, and somewhat confused nods to agendas here, there, and everywhere. A corporate advertisement that contains an anti-consumerist message? Holy Lego, Batman, the irony! And though you may well agree with some or all of its many agenda items, they do tend to clutter the comedy.
Pee-Wee, on the other hand, keeps it real. Real simple, just like a loner and rebel like Pee-Wee would want it. Recommend it to your biker bar friends and anyone else in the vicinity. Be sure and tell 'em Large Marge sent you.