Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Another film filled with iconic imagery, though certainly not in as stylish a way as M. Really, as I think about it, it's more full of iconic scenes, as opposed to just images. I think that's telling, because the primary quality of this film is the way it pulls you down into the story. It's shot and edited very plainly, so that the content itself does the heavy lifting. Not to say that it's a documentary style—it very much feels like a narrative, with scenes leading one into the other, tension crescendoing and falling. But it stays close to the ground, deeply connected to the immediate reality of what's happening.

The integrity of such a portrayal really draws you in. It's probably most evident when we see the picture of Rita Hayworth. It was a bit heavy-handed, of course, but still not wrong—there's a drastic contrast between the life of a Hollywood star (on- or off-screen) and the lives of these people. In a word, Hayworth seems unreal. By contrast, Antonio seems all the more real.

The most spectacular thing about the film, though, might well be Bruno. Really the entire film turns on this one character, and Enzo Staiola does a fabulous job with the role. He provides a moral and emotional anchor for the film, from the moment he appears. And of course, that gradual development is crucial to the film's final passages.