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PARTISAN REVIEW
Bicycle Thieves,
which is by a long shot the best Italian movie of
1948, has cost eighty million lire (about one hundred and forty thousand
dollars), eight months of groundwork and preparation, and two months
of actual shooting. David Selznick, who had kept an eye on De Sica
since
Shoe-Shine,
and who is now trying to convince him to come to
Hollywood, had first wanted to produce the picture, with Cary Grant
in the main role. The story goes that the deal fell through because De
Sica refused to modify the script, whose final scene required that the
hero be slapped in the face by an angry crowd, when, in a futile at–
tempt to get back at life, he tries in his turn to steal a bicycle from
somebody. The American producer said that an American audience
couldn't possibly stand for Cary Grant's being slapped without fighting
back and giving 'em hell. On the other hand, if Cary Grant were al–
lowed to fight back, it would have meant that he didn't feel guilty for
making away with other people's property, and social morality would
have lost whatsoever was gained by national pride. The problem was
found insoluble, and the project dropped. De Sica found some backers,
and produced the film himself, which is what he vastly prefers.
With Romans,
Ladri di Biciclette
has had all the success an Italian
movie can hope for. There was nothing comparable, however, to the
crowds that stood in long lines waiting for a chance to see
Duel in the
Sum..
And in Turin, the film (which is done in Roman dialect) almost
antagonized the Piedmontese, contemptuous of anything that comes from
south of the Po river. In New York and Paris it will probably be success–
ful, and that's finally where the producer hopes to find some financial
justification for his venture. As said above, a good Italian movie, even if
it is a success, can never make enough money in Italy. The reasons are
simple.
Movie box-office receipts are, in Italy, about thirty billion lire
(fifty million dollars) a year. Fifty percent of this sum goes to the State
in the form of entertainment tax. Of the remaining part, the producers
get from fifteen to eighteen pcrcent. This is fine for Metro Goldwin–
Mayer or Twentieth Century Fox, for whom the Italian market is just
gravy. For Italian producers the story is different. The difference starts
from the fact that every year Italian audiences are shown eight hundred
foreign movies (mostly American, of course) against fifty Italian ones.
Profits are shared accordingly. Briefly stated, no Italian movie, however
successful, can make more than a hundred million lire, while, from the
producer's point of view, the business of movie-making would begin to
be attractive only at the level of about four hundred million lire. But
Bicycle Thieves,
for example, will make a maximum net profit of twenty
