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The Icicle Thief
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Format: NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), Italian (Original Language),
Theatrical Release Date: August 24, 1990
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Editorial Review:
This fascinating Italian film (with English subtitles) by Maurizio Nichetti works on several levels at once--and is extremely funny on all of them. At heart, it's a satire of the kind of neorealism of such films as The Bicycle Thief, which it spoofs. But it also makes fun of the TV-centered society in Italy, as families gather around their TVs to watch Nichetti's takeoff on The Bicycle Thief, complete with hilarious commercial breaks. The film within a film is a spot-on black-and-white takeoff that begins to go distinctly wrong when a woman from one of the TV commercials is accidentally plopped in the middle of the film (which is about a man who is disgraced when he steals a chandelier from the chandelier factory in order to feed his family). The film is clever and visually arresting; its central effect--the Technicolor woman in the middle of the monochromatic movie--is commonplace in TV commercials now but was considered startling when this film came out. --Marshall Fine
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Clever and superbly funny movie
An incredibly inventive and inspired movie, it takes the idea of a movie-within-a-movie beyond anything I've ever seen before. A movie is being shown on Italian television that resembles very much DeSica's film THE BICYCLE THIEF. At its most poignant and emotional moments, however, it's interrupted by commercial breaks. Pretty soon the characters from the movie "leave" the film for the commercials, and vice-versa. The director (Maurizio Nichetti) enters the movie to try to get his script back ... Read More
Rating: - Perception is illusion
This movie deals with one of the principle themes found in the novels of Wm Gaddis. No computer could work the way most people's heads do. Imagine a computer that had one huge file named "the present." This file would contain everything you did on the computer for say 24 hours and then mix and blend all of this together in a goulash and then seperate out things so that your bank statement would contain parts of a love letter you sent as an e-mail, etc.
When the critic is attemting to summerize ... Read More
Rating:  - Original and misinterpreted
This offbeat Italian comedy uses the familiar black and white/color dichotomy to indicate different worlds, a technique always in danger of being overdone. Last time I saw it was in Hollywood's Pleasantville (1998) where it was so cloying it annoyed; the first time magically in The Wizard of Oz (1939). It was even done (to good effect) in Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993). Here the "film" is in black and white (as it's being shown on TV) and the commercials are in color. The characters bizarrely ... Read More
Rating: - Cleverest film I've seen
While on the face of it a commedy, and in fact tremendously funny, the film is much more about how our memories merge events just because they were coincident. As a result, the independent lives of the viewers, the director who is being interviewed, the commercials, and the old film, all become intwined, with each character's drivers continuing to motivate them even in the new environment. This changes the direction of each of the narratives to great comic effect. No threads are left untied, each element of the ... Read More
Rating: - Truly hilarious, and lots of fun
This movie is terribly charming (especially after seeing "The Bicycle Thieves") and very funny. The official review sadly gives away too much of this movie. I saw this film in a college class with no summations beforehand, and was really blown away. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys quirky little stories within stories, paying close attention to the story line and typical Italian humor.
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