Capitalist Training-Reels

The most important aspect of The Bicycle Thieves is the cinematography of the film. The meta-narrative that the film tacitly imposes upon the viewer reinforces a capitalistic narrative. Viewers are meant to identify with the camera-shot, not the characters in the film. "The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera;" (Benjamin VIII).

The first shot of the film takes place, while the credits are still rolling, from the perspective of the crowd looking up at the top of a staircase. A work foreman or manager, of a higher social class, signified by his suit and physical position, standing atop the stairs, enters the scene. The next shot cuts away from the crowd, taking in the whole scene, and, importantly, capturing the architecture of the buildings. All of the windows have a symmetrical composition to them and a homogeneity of three different kinds, squares, rectangles, and semi-oval-shaped windows. This tacitly signifies the division of three different groups and their homogeneous relationship within the group, or class. Adding a vertical reading the viewer who is identified with the worker, based on the first shot, unconsciously observes that there are gradations of differences between each window: rectangle on the first floor, superseded by the one of the second floor and so on. This is true for every division (three in all). Already the viewer observes architecture unconsciously enforcing the idea of class distinction and the possibility of social mobility. Benjamin notes how architecture has this tacit (or, unconscious) power to influence people: "On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception." Viewers accustomed to seeing buildings do not consciously stop to process the psychological suggestion embedded within the architectural structure.

During the worker and the man-in-the-suit conversation the camera switches angles back and forth setting up the main structure of the film narrative: the possability of social mobility. The camera follows the main character around, on his level, establishing a near equal relationship between the viewer and main character. Until a crucial scene takes place, where, forlorn and dejected, the main character sits down on a bed with, significantly, a cross hanging in the background. Rather than pray for salvation his wife helps the main character to keep fighting by raising him up and taking the bedsheets to sell.

When the wife sells the bedsheets a lot of camera time is spent from within the perspective of the bourgeois capitalist who, it so happens, with grace and generosity gives more money due to the pleasant plea of the main character's wife. The viewer is meant to identify with the bourgeois capitalist, reinforcing the belief in capitalism and the social order. The worker now has a chance to succeed because he did not give up and though unlucky, through the thrifty thinking of his wife, found a way to get the job; all by sacrificing the use-value of his bed sheets for the exchange value of 7,500 lira. Money to be exchanged for a bicycle which will provide a job that will more than pay for the bed sheets, with, of course, enough hard work and a healthy spirit and wife who supports the worker's efforts at home. The scene ends on a very hopeful, reassuring note, unconsciously reinforcing capitalistic ideology.

I have no idea on how to analyze On the Water Front on any significant, deep Marxist level. Except for the blatant portrayal of poor working conditions, a refrence to being in debt "now more than before I began working," perhaps as a refrence to credit-debt, the film does not offer much, to my eye. I also did not really understand the priest's and girl's role in the film. The portrayal of Marlon Brando reading (porn?) on the ship, however, is definitly an illustration of how the film averts dealing with real proletarian concerns (bad working conditions) and thereby reinforces a capitalistic undertone.