622
PARTISAN REVIE W
systematically despise money-making pictures, they insist on liking them
for reasons altogether different from those of the common herd. (They
can't get over King Victor's putting his signature on
Duel in the Sun .
They wouldn't touch T echnicolor with a pole).
With
Bicycle Thieves,
however, things were altogether different at
the Roman Cinema Club. Th at Sunday, at the Barberini, filmologi sts
and smart people were completely submerged by the haughtiest crowd
that ever attended a preview : the actors of the film, with their families,
their families' fri ends, their acquaintances, their acquaintances' acquaint–
ances, etcetera. They all came in their Sunday best from the poor sec–
tions and suburbs of Rome, where (with the help of a few radio an–
nouncements) De Sica had picked up his stars one by one. The theater
was packed, and the
Circolo Romano del Cinema
looked very much like
a n oldfashioned aristocratic clique easily and cheerfully upset by a coup
d'etat from below. The only recognized authority there was De Sica,
a gray-haired, handsome, sma rtly dressed gentleman, who sat smiling
among his people, looking like sweetness itself: a kind of clean-shaven
Santa Claus, happier at having been able to make movie-backers pay
for the camel hair overcoa t of Enzo Stajola (the six-year-old boy who
is the acclaimed star of Bicycle.Thieves ) and the gorgeous pony skin
furcoat of his mother than at h aving finished another movie. Those new
clothes on the backs of people who are still living in dreary Roman
slums were in fact a tangible acquisition . While the director of
Shoe–
Shine
knew very well that, no matter how successfu l, his latest work
could never be but a
succes d'estime
in box-office terms, Italian moving–
pictures, even when they become famous all over the world, make just
enough money to leave their fin ancial backers lukewarm to any future
project of the same kind .
There was no polite clapping of hands that Sunday, at the Barberini.
There was real applause. When the show was over, there was a good
fifteen minute bedlam. People screamed "Long live De Sica." De Sica
stood up and bowed for a couple of minutes, then went into hiding leav–
ing his actors, from small Enzo Stajola to Lamberto Maggiorani (a fac–
tory worker who, De Sica explains, has the same job as Chaplin in
M odern Times) ,
the easy prey of the people's love. Outside the theater,
the most important theoreticians of the Cinema Club went around col–
lecting autographs from the cast. Nobody mentioned Eisenstein. All that
the ladies from the
quartieri alt i
cared about was a chance at "eating
up" little Enzo. The ch ance was refused. Protected by a triple line of rel–
atives, the new star was allowed, from time to time, a little handwaving
above the heads of the crowd from the uplifted arms of his father. Vit-
