THE ICICLE THIEF
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A satire on how films are treated on television becomes a weird fantasy, not totally original but surprisingly creative. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4). (Note: heavy spoilers follow the first paragraph.)
Italian actor, screenwriter, and director Maurizio Nichetti is probably more recognizable by sight than by name to most American audiences. Nichetti plays a little artists with a big (false) moustache in the international hit ALLEGRO NON TROPPO. That film was directed by Bruno Bozetto, but now Nichetti is very much an auteur, writing and directing THE ICICLE THIEF in which he himself plays the two main roles. The subject of the film, at least for a while, is what commercial television does to a film. The title is a reference to Vittorio De Sica's BICYCLE THIEF with part missing, just as films are shown on television with part missing. The title, of course, works only once it has been translated into English, indicating the film is aimed for an international market, which indeed it has gotten. As the film opens, Nichetti, playing himself, arrives at a television station to host his own film, THE ICICLE THIEF. We see the chaos at the station, we see a typical family watching the film, and in black and white we see the film itself. What the television station does to the film is the springboard (but only a springboard) for the pandemonium that is to follow. This is an innovative and at times very funny film. I rate it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
***HEAVY SPOILERS TO FOLLOW***
While it is not entirely a new idea, Nichetti very cleverly mixes the three levels of the film with a fourth level, the commercials. At one time it was very common to have cross-over elements between the text of a radio or television play and the commercials. The FCC decided this was a deceptive practice and made it illegal, though radio disk jockeys commonly violate the rule. There have been many times when usually disjoint planes such as audience and actors interact in live plays and in fantasy films such as THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO. In this case of the film characters, the director, the people in the commercials, and the audience, five of the six pairings of planes do take place. Characters from the film at some point find themselves in commercials, talking to the director, and even once looking out from the television to see what the audience is doing. The missing pairing is that at no point does there seem to be any sort of unexpected meeting between the audience and the characters in the commercials.
The use of color is singularly impressive, perhaps more so than the script itself. This is true not just in the amazing scene in which a scantily-clad commercial actress breaks into the film world and has her color wiped off by Antonio as her dries her off. There is also use of subtle color shifts throughout the black-and-white sequences to simulate the variable film stock available in post-war Italy when THE BICYCLE THIEF was made.
Where Nichetti falls down most is in his acting of Antonio, the poor laborer in the internal film. Had Nichetti captured some of the tragic desperation of Lamberto Maggiorani's performance in THE BICYCLE THIEF, it would have strengthened the humor by contrast. It would also have demonstrated some depth in Nichetti's acting ability. He may have felt such a somber note had no place in a light comedy, but if so, it was a serious lack of vision. His failure to put any meat in his performance of Antonio is the weakest point of an otherwise creative film.
Mark R. Leeper
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