Le voleur de savonnettes

This offbeat Italian comedy uses the familiar black and white/color dichotomy to indicate different worlds, a technique always in danger of being overdone. Last time I saw it was in Hollywood's Pleasantville (1998) where it was so cloying it annoyed; the first time magically in The Wizard of Oz (1939). It was even done (to good effect) in Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993). Here the "film" is in black and white (as it's being shown on TV) and the commercials are in color. The characters bizarrely go from one "world" to the other while somewhere in between is the "real" world of TV viewers. Because the world of TV commercials is the more fantastic, I think the technique works well here.

Maurizio Nichetti, who might (and might not) remind you of Roberto Benigni, stars as Anotonio Piermattei, the icicle thief, the protagonist of the movie within a movie, which is a Bicycle Thief-like tragic film that the TV people manage to mangle into a TV-like romantic comedy. (If you're wondering how one can be an icicle thief, keep wondering. I'll never tell.) Nichetti also plays the auteur of the film being shown on TV who is invited to be interviewed but never gets to speak partly because the film critic who is to do the interview thinks they are viewing a different film.

The title notwithstanding, this is not a satire or a "spoof" of Vittorio De Sica's internationally acclaimed The Bicycle Thief (1948), although De Sica himself might be seen as being lightly satirized. Nichetti's The Icicle Thief is more like an identification as it attempts to stand with the art film solidly against commercialism. However any similarity between the film within a film here and De Sica's masterpiece is sycophantic. This is not to say that The Icicle Thief does not have its moments and its charm. It does.

Caterina Sylos Labini who plays Maria, Antonio Piermattei's singing wife, is charming as the archetypical Italian femme fatale, a dark, lusty, earthy woman who can cry and laugh at the drop of a hat. She is contrasted with Heidi Komarck, a colorized blonde model in a butch haircut who does TV commercials. Komarck looks like a member of the Swedish ski team draped in a lingerie outfit that leaves little to the imagination while speaking only American English. My favorite part of the film was the cute shtick with Maria's happy one-year-old daughter who crawls continually into mischief (grabbing a knife by the blade, putting an electric wire in her mouth, etc.) but somehow never has to shed a tear.

That this is a satire and spoof of TV (and not De Sica's Bicycle Thief or old-time neo-realism itself) is immediately apparent when the TV film critic has to ask the name of the film he is critiquing. On TV the only things that really matter are the commercials. So, to the extent that a "Big Big" candy bar jingle and a laundry detergent superhero triumph over a black and white neo-realistic film, we can see that triumph as a satire of television and its middle-brow audience.

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A fun takeoff on the serious drama of "The Bicycle Thief." The film contrasts the intense, self-centered film director; his characters, who are just trying to make things turn out more pleasantly for themselves; the ideal and imaginary people we see in commercials; and the people in the television audience who see any film chopped up into bits that fit around commercials and other station business.

A film critic who uses the notes he prepared for another film tries to evaluate and analyze the film the television program is playing (titled "The Icicle Thief"), while the director in the studio sputters in disbelief. The characters in the melodramatic black-and-white film are stuck in drudgery and dispair until the fantasy characters in the commercials start to enter their lives. The audience, represented by a typical family, just looks at the screen whenever there is nothing better to do, while the television program chatters on in their mundane existence. Could this be us? Could this be you?

Maurizio Nichetti is a talented director, writer and actor in Italy. The film is not just a spoof of the depressing Neorealist "Ladri di Biciclette", but also a satire on the media in the republic. The majority of Italian films are funded by television channels such as the Rai and Mediaset. By jeopardizing the financing of this film by taking out a bitter swipe at the film's revenue source.

He also makes a powerful comment on the portrayal of women in Italian films of both the 1940s and 1980s. Nichetti deserves more credit for this film than he seems to have received.

Overall, however, it is very funny and intelligent the way that the spectator forms part of the film. It is not an escapist film.

Film buffs with fond memories of Vittorio de Sica's post-war Italian Neo-realist masterpiece 'Ladri di Biciclette' won't want to miss Maurizio Nichetti's clever parody, in which the director himself is shown presenting his own homage to Neo-realism on Italian TV. The gimmick is that the movie within the movie is at first interrupted and then overwhelmed by garish television commercials, prompting Nichetti to enter his own film so he can salvage the narrative: not an easy task, since after a glimpse of consumer heaven his characters are reluctant to return to post-war Roman poverty. Nichetti manages to lampoon everything from pompous film critics to inappropriate commercial programming to (with affection) highbrow film pretensions, but his plea for cinematic integrity has its own crazy logic. And he certainly knows his sources, showing more than a touch of Chaplin in the black and white film-within-the-film and borrowing mannerisms from Woody Allen in the modern framing story. Favorite ongoing gag: the trouble-prone baby who can't resist playing with carving knives, electric light sockets, and so forth.

This clearly stands as one of the greatest parodies of all times, and it is in Italian. Being a great admirer of The Bicycle Thief, I found this movie hilarious, especially during the parts Nichetti was watching his film go out of control. Parodies are slowly becoming a dead art form, especially considering Scary Movie seems to be the best one can offer even though it relies heavily on low brow humor. If you can find this particular film, rent it.