“Bicycle Music”

Alessandro Cicognini’s musical score for Vittorio De Sica’s film Bicycle Thieves (1948) has often been faulted and dismissed by critics due to the perceived incongruity of its conventional musical style with the innovations of neorealist film. However, there were strong continuities between the development of realism in pre-war Italian cinema and the resultant flowering of neorealism after World War II. Cicognini, along with other composers for neorealist films, continued to approach film music composition much as they did before the war without ascertaining a need for a change of style and approach. This paper reviews the critical reception and context for the score and, by also analyzing how the principal theme and score function as a cinematic device, argues that Cicognini’s score is effective in both meeting the requirements of the film and fulfilling the intentions of director Vittorio De Sica.