Behind The Great Film That Inspired ‘The Bicycle Thief’ In Halifax
HALIFAX – The city of Halifax has no shortage of great restaurants that serve authentic European cuisine, including Italian dishes. Most of the popular Italian restaurants have names like ‘Tomavinos Ristorante’ and ‘Mappatura Bistro’ which leaves no doubt as to what kind of food is served there. But one of Halifax’s most well-known Italian eateries has one of the more peculiar names in the whole industry: The Bicycle Thief.
It’s a bit puzzling, for sure, if you have no insight into what inspired such a unique name. . But, if you are a lover of classic cinema, the name makes more sense. The 1948 classic Italian film, ‘Bicycle Thieves,’ by De Sica is considered one of the greatest ever made. It’s no surprise that the couple who founded the restaurant, Maurizio and Stephanie Bertossi, are big fans of the film.
“Bicycle Thieves, where it’s set in post-war Italy, kind of gave me an idea for the name, and it’s one of Maurizio’s favourite films of course,” explained Stephanie Bertossi who grew up in Dartmouth. “De Sica is just so amazing.”
“For us, it was a labour of love. We loved the movie and we liked the name. And it was, in a business sense, just an awesome marketing tool.”
The film is set during a time of economic depression in Italy following World War 2. The visuals are stunning, as they showcase a Rome far different from the beautiful pictures shown for tourists over the decades. Instead, we see our protagonist, Antonio Ricci, living in apartment slums, where everyone walks or rides a bike, as few can afford a car.
Every day, dozens of men clamour at an employment centre, hoping to be chosen for scraps of work, all of them competing for even two days of manual labour. At the beginning of the movie, Ricci is handed one of the better jobs available – plastering posters around the city. But he is told he will need his own bike to get around, or he can’t have the job. Ricci curses his luck, as he had just pawned his bicycle so he could feed his family. His wife, Maria, ends up selling off their bed linen to get the bike out of the pawnshop.
All seems well until a thief steals Ricci’s bike. The husband and father then go on a desperate, and futile search with his young boy for the stolen property, in a city that is basically a sea of bikes that all look the same.
The realism of the movie is in stark contrast to the Hollywood films portrayed in the same era: of the American economic boom where every father had a job and every house was in a suburb with a white picket fence. Maurizio, born in 1951, grew up in the Italian countryside in the post-war era. He had no electricity or running water. So, the brilliant film by De Sica struck a chord with the couple.
“Maurizio grew up in post-war Italy, so it’s a totally different feel on how life was,” said Stefanie. “So, the film meant a lot to us.”
“My mother-in-law rode her bicycle until she was 90. She never had a car, she never drove. Maurizio’s father never drove. They used bicycles, mopeds, or the train and they lived in the country.”
Stephanie and Maurizio met in a Calgary restaurant in 1981 where she worked as a bartender and he was a chef. During an economic downturn, they packed their Volkswagen and moved to Nova Scotia where they would eventually start The Bertossi Group, which operated four successful Italian restaurants. The couple opened their first restaurant, La Perla in 1984. The Bicycle Thief was actually one of their newer ventures, being founded in 2011.
When the restaurant first opened, people were, understandably, perplexed by the unique name. Stephanie would get daily questions “on the hour,” about it.
I did get one crazy email one time saying that we are attributing to delinquency and stealing bicycles. But other than that, it was a really good response,” laughs Stephanie.
The unique name also helped the restaurant stick out amongst its competitors. Stephanie came up with the tagline, “Watch out for the Bicycle Thief” and put it on the back of metro busses.
In 2014, the Bertossis sold their fleet of restaurants to Hakan Uluer who, of course, hung on to The Bicycle Thief name. Stephanie and Maurizio have been enjoying their retirement, where they spend half the year living in Italy. No matter where they are, the two film buffs continue to watch great cinema together.
While the Bertossis had a happy ending to their business career, our film protagonist had no such luck. After failing to find his bicycle, he decides, out of desperation, to steal one himself, even though his young son is with him. But unlike the first thief, Ricci is caught in the act and, while he was spared from going to jail, he wasn’t spared the shame of being a thief, as he and his son walk, wordlessly, home to a bleak future.
The ending of the film brings out a universal subject that one can grasp, even without knowing anything about post-war Italy: do the ends justify the means? If you are a victim of desperate circumstances, does that justify your desperate actions? It’s a moment in film history that is debated to this day, with no easy answers.
“It was such a poignant scene. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t,” explained Stephanie. “His son would see (him steal the bike). It was a live or die situation, and that’s kind of how it was in post-war Italy.”
“In this movie, one small act affected a whole family’s life.”
Hakan Uluer started working for the Bertossis in 2009 before The Bicycle Thief even opened. He later became a partner in the restaurant in 2012, before taking over the entire company in 2014.
When Maurizio first suggested the name, The Bicycle Thief, for the new restaurant, Uluer watched the film for himself and instantly became a fan of this piece of classic Italian cinema.
“It’s fantastic; it’s not a Hollywood-style movie – it is post-second world war, a dramatic time of the century,” said Uluer. “But it’s very well-made. There’s a quality there that makes it hard to stop watching.”
The restaurant celebrated its 10th anniversary on February 21, and over that decade it has built up a strong following of regular customers. In fact, all restaurants under the Bertossi Group are doing fine, according to Uluer, despite the pandemic. Because so many of the customers are regulars, Uluer is not bombarded with questions about the restaurant’s unique name like Stephanie and Maurizio were back in the day.
“In the summertime, we do get some tourists and they look at it and say ‘oh it’s a very unique name, and the conversation starts again. We’ve been here 10 years, so a lot of our regulars already know the story,” said Uluer.
When quizzed if he ever considered renaming the restaurant to something more traditional for an Italian restaurant, Uluer answered with an emphatic “no” before the question could be fully asked.
While defending The Bicycle Thief’s one-of-a-kind name, Uluer referenced the importance of the classic film on Italian culture and history.
“This is as Italian as it gets.”