Subject: REVIEW: THE ICICLE THIEF

From: [email-masked] (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: 18 Jul 91 14:41:10 GMT

[Followups directed to rec.arts.movies.]

			       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
					att!mtgzy!leeper
					[email-masked]