Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
De Sica!
And I think the fact that Scorsese can branch out and make a film that is unlike anything he's made is a good sign, rather than bad.
Misspelling.
Also, what I meant, more deeply than "the film is a different style," is that I don't feel like the film really had any of what makes vintages Scorsese such a wonderful director. Like most of what he's made in the past decade or so, there's nothing in it (save maybe some of the camerawork) that really distinguishes it from the sort of fare that any good Hollywood studio director might make (though with Hugo, Scorsese's love for early cinema also shines through, which is a plus). Granted, the movies are still at least good, so I guess that's fine, to an extent, but coming from somebody like Scorsese, who could lay claim to having made maybe the greatest character study of all time, it's just a bit disappointing, is all.
Edit: CaptYamato, yes, it IS a neorealist film, but the fact that the title is not what the director intended doesn't matter at all to me. I've ALWAYS argued that the intent of an artist doesn't matter against the quality of a work of art, and "The Bicycle Thief" is no less accurate/real in that it expresses what sets the wheels of the story in motion, while simultaneously doing all of the things that I said it does in the previous post as well as
capturing the nature of what "the bicycle thief" really was in that time and culture.