It’s hardly staking out bold new critical territory to assert that Bicycle Thieves (a.k.a. The Bicycle Thief) is a great piece of work: Vittorio De Sica’s urban picaresque about a Roman prole desperately seeking his stolen two-wheeler is firmly entrenched in the canon of world cinema. Over the last 60 years, it has become the standard-bearer for neo-realism and an avowed influence on everyone from Abbas Kiarostami to Pee-wee Herman.

As such, it’s difficult to see the film with fresh eyes, so we’ll just have to make due with a fresh print. Cinematheque Ontario’s limited-run engagement features a newly struck 35mm presentation, all the better to appreciate De Sica’s eye for urban bustle, frequently captured in long panning or tracking shots that combine you-are-there intimacy with a sense of narrative momentum. As for that social critique I mentioned earlier, it’s still plangent, describing a teetering economic infrastructure (never more explicitly than in a marvelous shot of linens stacked ceiling-high in a pawn shop) and inexorable cycles of poverty without descending into simple miserablism.

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