Comparing Lester of American Beauty and Ricci of The Bicycle Thief

Mookie is a young black youth who works at a local pizzeria in his Brooklyn neighborhood. The pizzeria is owned by Sal, who operates the restaurant with his two sons, Vito and Pino. Sal treats Mookie as if he were his third son and the two have a friendly relationship. Pino, however, is a racist who isn’t happy with the current location of the pizzeria and often pressures his father to move the restaurant into their own neighborhood, due to his distaste for the current client base. Vito, is also friendly with Mookie and mentions to his brother that he trusts Mookie to his brother Pino, who in return openly mocks him, this behavior is common and has created a rift in the relationship between the brothers. Mookie, however, has a more casual approach with his life, job, and relationships.

A Bronx Tale, an American crime drama film directed by Robert De Niro accomplished all the aspects that correspond to a classic Italian mafia movie. Similar to The God Father, A Bronx Tale captured communal and family relationships in an Italian neighborhood in the 1950's and 60's. This motion picture included multiple sub-plots, but had an underlying plot that was concentrated on towards the end. The plot showed the bigger picture of the film which tackles a controversial topic, especially in the time period in which the movie takes place. The different sub-plots may alter one’s expectations of the remainder of the movie. Although this film includes many important details of conflicts, what one can grasp from watching the movie is the conflict between African-Americans and Italian-Americans. The director purposefully adds a love interest to show a sort of union in the midst of confrontation. In addition, what seemed to be a competition to dominate as Calegero’s father figure between Lorenzo, his dad, and Sonny, one of the men the protagonist looks up to, influences the audience’s idea of where the film is headed.

During the course of the film, Lester Burnham goes through a large change. When we first meet Lester he is living his life as a ritualist. He goes to work every day because that is what he is supposed to do, but he puts in little to no effort and he has little regard for the completion of his goals. He has no motivation. His marriage is failing and he has an empty relationship with his daughter. Lester says "both my wife and daughter think I'm this gigantic loser, and they're right, I have lost something. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I know I didn't always feel this…sedated. But you know what; it's never too late to get it back" (American Beauty). From this statement we can see that there is going to be a change in Lester over the course of the movie.

In the film The Bicycle Thief the audience is able to witness all the elements of neorealism. The use of non professional actors, to low class working characters, the flattening of scenes, and the location where it was shot at; are just a few of the essential elements that can be found in this film along with copious neorealist films. It is clear that the director used a variety of shots, angles, and set-ups in order to create certain emotions at very specific scenes in the film. From the start we are able to obtain a feel about the film’s tone as a result of the lack of color. The use of black and white truly helped the audience experience what Italy was like during the post World War 2. As a result of the depressing post war we are able to detect how the act of trying to improve oneself can sometimes lead to desperation.

Rudy also starts to see how the smart kids are acting in school and so he acts, sleeps, and studies like them. Ruddy and his family are deciding on what school he should go. Ruddys family are in some economic problems. Rudy's dad works every day, and on weekends to get extra money so they could survive. But with this because the dad

In life, we all have an impulse to change. We grow in both good and bad ways. We mature, and most importantly gain a better understanding of life. A crucial aspect of change is its ability for other perspectives to emerge. Change and dynamic characters are demonstrated effectively in the novel, The Outsiders, which focuses on a gang in the 1960’s, their everyday troubles and interactions, as well as the effects of them on their lives.

this point, he has lost his friend, his job, his relationship with his spouse, and his house. Despite all of these things, he continues on. He reaches the climax of his change from a brain washed conformist to a justice seeking citizen when he seeks revenge on his fellow

The amount of trust and childish priorities which are shown throughout the novel can be examined regarding the loss of innocence and morals in characters such as Salvatore. Salvatore promised that he wouldn't tell anyone about Filippo, however only hours later he revealed

Guy Montag, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, exhibits great change through his actions, thoughts, and choices that completely shifts his views of the world around him, as he transitions from an enforcer of the tyrant, censoring government, to an outlaw, a fugitive trying to break the tight-knit conformist view of society. Through this change, he begins to question everything he once believed in: his job, his lifestyle, and even his own wife.

This change is a positive and uplifting change of self for the protagonist in this novel.

“A Bronx Tale” is a film about directed by Robert Di Nero about a boy named Calogero an Italian American male, and his life as he grows up in a town occupied by the mob in the 1960’s. Calogero has two strong influences in his life. They are his father Lorenzo a proud middle class bus driver and a mob boss named Sonny. In the film there are three scenes that especially demonstrate the influence Sonny and Lorenzo have on Calogero.

While Rossellini’s Rome Open City portrays the struggle for freedom, De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves tries to find the human face. He discovered it not in the exceptional sorrow of war but in the misery of daily life where war is just one aspect of the human lot. Bicycle Thieves takes place at a specific time under a unique series of social conditions that shape both its narrative and its embrace of the Neorealist style.

   Happiness is defined as enjoying, showing, or characterized by pleasure; joyous; contented. Based on this definition we all search for happiness our entire lives. Two very different stories address this idea of the quest for happiness. M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang is the story of a man named Gallimard who is longing for his love "Butterfly" to return to him. John Deeney describes it as him, clinging to his idea of a "Perfect Woman" to the end by costuming himself into the victimized Butterfly though his final suicide. Although Gallimard’s infatuation with Song sometimes makes him cut a rather ridiculous figure, his dead seriousness at the end evokes a certain amount of pathos and

Set in the depression times of post-World War II Italy, Graziadei and De Sica’s (1948) The Bicycle Thief narrates the story of Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), who, after finding a job as a bill poster, loses his bicycle to a young thief. He tries to look for it with his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola); however, despite seeing the thief, he fails to recover his bicycle. Desperate, he tries to steal a bike himself but is easily thwarted by a group of bystanders. They plan to bring him to the police station until the owner notices the weeping Bruno and, in an act of compassion, ask others to release the thief. In this paper, I argue that The Bicycle Thief

In Italy, directors focused on the moral and economic conditions that came with the postwar generation quickly after the war and addressed the war instead of not acknowledging as German cinema did for so long. Unlike Alice in the Cities and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, films such as Bicycle Thieves depicted dislocation during the postwar period in the Neorealist style, made in 1948, this film differs greatly from the two former films discussed. In Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica delivers a political message regarding the difficulty of survival in postwar Italy, but also conveys a sense of psychological dislocation through the character development of Antonio Ricci. In many ways, Italy’s economy is much to blame for Ricci’s two-year unemployment in which the film begins, however, Ricci has as many internal struggles as he does externally. Neorealism lies heavily on the depiction of real life problems depicting common people and often used people from the street as actors, in this film the man who played Ricci, Lamberto Maggiorani, actually was a factory worker, which helps solidify the film’s authenticity. Towards the end of Bicycle Thieves, Ricci’s efforts to retrieve his stolen bicycle fail when the people that live near the boy who stole it side with the epileptic boy as he has a