Bicycle Thieves, The Seventh Seal, Rashomon

The film market in the late 1940s was dominated by the Hollywood studio system, which oversaw the production of a few standard genres including film noir and mysteries, screwball comedies, and musicals. The vast majority of these followed a logical, straightforward narrative of cause-and-effect events, usually constructed with a specific four-part form: exposition (meeting the protagonist in his own world), obstacle (a problem the protagonist faces, creating a goal toward which he works), climax (the protagonist is in jeopardy, or the final standoff before the goal is reached), and resolution (the protagonist achieves his goal, the mystery is solved, the murderer is caught, the guy gets the girl, all is right again). These films are often “morality tales,” simple love stories, or whodunits; in other words, relatively simple surface entertainment. The “art film,” which captivated a niche audience in the U.S. around the end of World War II, roots itself diametrically against this established system: one event does not always lead directly to another, and narratives are not necessarily linear nor do they include a beginning, middle, and end. An art film may consist instead of a series events or a “slice of life.” Usually, the goal of the film is not the end, but the means; a more personal journey or experience that engages the viewer’s intellect. These traits may be due in part to a propensity toward deeper and more universal themes: a questioning of god or faith, philosophical debates including the contemporary ideas of existentialism and absurdism, perhaps reflecting the sentiments of a postwar society. While these traits may not apply to all art films, “Bicycle Thieves,” “The Seventh Seal,” and “Rashomon” do demonstrate these tendencies: a lack of cause-and-effect as impetus for the story; the absence of a linear narrative in the sense of having a beginning, middle, end; and a questioning of one’s moral beliefs or a leaning toward the existential or absurd.
The only cause and effect relationship in Vittorio de Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves” is that Antonio’s bike is stolen, thus he searches for it. Individual events or episodes of his search do not always follow one another directly or logically, and the narrative wanders as blindly as Antonio and Bruno through the streets of Rome. Antonio’s attempts to find his bike ultimately die out or lead to nothing, from his search at the market to his confrontation with the culprit. Andre Bazin agrees, the film “give[s] the succession of events the appearance of an accidental and as it were anecdotal integrity” (Bazin 52). De Sica chooses to include a scene in which it starts to rain and Antonio and Bruno must pause their search, although there is no apparent reason for this scene (other than the fact that sometimes it rains at inconvenient times in real life). Similarly, there are no direct consequences of this cessation and nothing significant or relevant takes place while they wait for the rain to stop. The absence of cause-and-effect relationships is also evident when a character responds to a situation in a way we can neither predict nor justify. When Antonio takes Brutus out for an expensive meal, his motivations for doing so are unclear. In fact, we would expect him to do quite the opposite and perhaps try to reserve his limited funds. This anecdotal quality relates to the film’s lack of a four part structure. Of the three films, “Bicycle Thieves” follows this format most closely, but with key differences that distinguish it from the classic Hollywood narrative. Although an obstacle does arise, it is not a surprise as it might be in a Hollywood film. The audience knows from the title and expects the theft—it is not a matter of “what” but “when.” Also, the identity of the thief is not a mystery, as we clearly see his face. In the same vein, Antonio’s goal is to find his bike, but it is clear from the beginning that he has little to no hope of doing so. His confrontation with the thief might be the climax of the film, but it proves futile, as it does not solve anything nor bring Antonio closer to his goal. In fact, he never finds his bike. Therefore the film has no resolution per se, as not much is actually resolved. Perhaps Antonio has strengthened his relationship with his son, but this was not really the problem, and does not change the fact that Antonio still has no bike and therefore no job, and probably will not be able to feed his family. The film simply ends when the day ends, and, as David Bordwell points out, “the future of Antonio and his son is not revealed” (Bordwell 95). While this film is not explicitly existentialist, it does imply the futility of religion or belief. As he follows the old man through the church, Antonio gets no answers, and in fact the clergy physically stand in his way of finding any. Bazin points to the rain scene to this same effect, “when a flock of Austrian seminarians crowd around… we have no reason to blame them for chattering so much and still less for talking German. But it would be difficult to create a more objectively anticlerical scene” (Bazin 52). The fact that in the end the protagonist does not come out on top and the thief does not get his comeuppance indicates an unavoidable and unreasonable injustice in the world, begging the question, “what type of god would allow this?” Antonio does not apparently question his beliefs in god as much as his moral convictions. After a clearly heartbreaking internal struggle, Antonio decides to disregard his conscience (in the form of his son’s innocence) and steal a bicycle. In a postwar society where people are struggling to merely feed their children, it does not seem implausible that they may question their belief in god or their standards of “right and wrong.”
Just when things seem as though they could not get any worse, we turn now to the Great Plague and a one-on-one duel with Death himself. Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” strays even further from cause-and-effect and a recognizable plot structure. This storyline functions more like a fairy tale (albeit a very dark one), in that a number of events are unexplained. It is unclear why Death appears to Antonius in the first place, as Antonius does not appear to be sick or in danger. Even more peculiar is that Death would grant Antonius more time. When Antonius first objects, Death says “You all say that. But I give no respite,” a fact that is evident when Death ignores the pleas of Skat (who also dies seemingly without reason). Jof’s visions seem at first like a significant part of the film because they are one of the first things we learn about his character, yet why he sees these visions is never explained. The parallel or connection for Antonius between the existence of god and the act of committing a meaningful deed is also puzzling; at first he asks only for proof of god, yet he later speaks of (and is ultimately satisfied by) doing a significant deed for others. The absence of a four-part structure is also apparent. A number of episodes could be rearranged, as they are mostly unconnected stops on Antonius’s journey back to his castle. The film begins when Death appears and the chess game starts, and ends when the game does. There is almost no exposition, as Antonius is barely introduced before the “problem” (Death) appears, and in fact we never learn very much about him. He appears to be the protagonist, yet he is mostly in the background, observing and thinking. Unlike the other characters, around whom the real action centers, Antonius is not proactive. Antonius essentially has no specific goal he is trying to reach. Not only does this leave us with an absence of a plot point, but also adds to Antonius’s entire quandary: according to Bordwell, “had the characters a goal, life would no longer seem so meaningless” (Bordwell 96). His struggles are mostly internal, thus there is virtually no climax. Most events seem to be of equal importance, and scenes function not to advance the plot but to create an emotion or beg a question. For example, the scene in which the “witch” is burned to death does not directly relate to main plot points or characters in the film, yet it does raise issues of organized religion. According to Bergman, he used scenes to “leave behind a mood… It is a mental state, not an actual story, but one abounding in fertile associations and images” (Alpert 63). The end of the film is not a resolution because the bulk of the cast die and nothing is solved. In “Bicycle Thieves,” the peripheral result of father-son bonding was not the original problem, and the outcome of the real problem is left unanswered. This same disconnect occurs in the end of “The Seventh Seal.” Antonius saves the lives of Jof, Mia, and Mikael, but he never indicates whether his faith in god is restored and does not beat Death. The film seems to detail Antonius’s search for god and existential crisis. Existentialism “stresses that people are entirely free and therefore responsible for what they make of themselves. With this responsibility comes a profound anguish or dread” (“existentialism”). Antonius experiences a loss or questioning of his faith after he has spent years in the Crusades, a religious war, yet he doubts its purpose and dreads the potential consequences of a godless world. Again, the “witch” scene comes to mind to demonstrate this questioning of the divine. The so-called believers are always looking for somebody to blame or somewhere to point a finger. Often, the finger should really be pointed at the blamers themselves. Does the devil really exist, or is he made up in the minds of men to explain the unexplainable? Or, worse yet, is he created through the actions of those attempting to rid their world of him? Absurdism, too, comes into play here, as “the idea that the universe is without meaning or rational order and that human beings, in attempting to find a sense of order, conflict with it” (“Absurdism”). This is Antonius’s struggle in a nutshell; when death asks Antonius if he ever stops asking questions, Antonius replies that he does not. Such questions are the root of absurdist thought. Absurdism also asserts that although no inherent meaning exists, it may be possible for a person to create his own meaning; in Antonius’s case, this constructed meaning comes from saving the lives of Jof and his family.
Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon,” called a “conspicuously uncommon film” by Bosley Crowther, is the most unique of the three films. Told through a series of flashbacks of the same event, there is no hint of a linear narrative or four part structure. There is no main character striving to reach a goal or taking the viewer through the film. The goal of the film as a whole (or rather that of the filmmaker) seems to be to provide a case study to supplement or argue sides of the discussion at the end. The final scene could potentially be interpreted as hopeful or “resolved,” but this is probably not the filmmaker’s intent, considering the rest of the film. Following the film’s logic, the man who “restores faith” likely has ulterior motives, lies, or generally cannot be trusted. Though this may not be the case, we never find out. The mystery as to whose story is the true version is also never solved. Bordwell finds this ambiguity typical of the genre: “given the [art] film’s episodic structure and the minimization of character goals, the story will often lack a clear-cut resolution,” and indeed we find this in “The Seventh Seal” and “Bicycle Thieves” as well (Bordwell 99). Cause and effect relationships are, on a larger scale, eliminated along with the exposition, problem, climax, and resolution. “Rashomon” is not a series of events in which new things occur and move a story, per se, forward. Like “The Seventh Seal,” rather than focusing on a linear story, the four stories are used as a vessel to convey, or raise questions concerning, philosophical ideas. In the context of this film, “faith” is not meant in terms of god or a higher power, but rather faith in fellow man. The four stories and the discrepancies between them lead us to believe that man is inherently selfish, weak, and corruptible. Each witness distorts the truth to make himself look nobler or to hide incriminating evidence. Even the “subjective” woodcutter’s story cannot be trusted, as he tells two different versions of his own story. People cannot even be honest with themselves; even the dead man lies (presumably). Therefore, we can trust nobody. The ideas in “Rashomon” relate to existentialism and absurdism in that it details the futility of a search for something that ultimately cannot be explicitly found: in the film, this search is for true goodness or reason in the human heart; in philosophy, for proof of god or inherent meaning in life. Using the aforementioned definition of absurdism, the priest and his faltering faith in the human soul certainly falls in line with this definition.
Being different is what sets the art film apart from the classical Hollywood film. However, it is possible to find some connecting thread or common traits between these unique works. In the case of “Bicycle Thieves,” “The Seventh Seal,” and “Rashomon,” as well as many other art films, those connections include a lack of cause-and-effect relationships, abandonment of a classic four part structure, and philosophically existentialist or absurdist themes.