Allusions In Stolen Children

Amelio had a huge focus on intertextuality in this film as an ode to the end of the neorealistic era. He particularly referenced one of the leading figures of the neorealistic movement, Vittorio De Sica, and his film Bicycle Thief. The title, Stolen Children, and the main character’s name, Antonioni, are an allusion of Bicycle Thief. Through Amelio’s choice of allusions, it creates a comparison between Italy in 1948 and Italy in the 1990s. His most direct allusion was the social criticism he made on failed postmodern institutions, such as the hypocrisy of the church. In both films, both Antonio’s were rejected by the church in their time of need. In Stolen Children, Antonioni was assigned to bring the children to the Catholic children’s home of Civitavecchia. At first glance, the Rosetta and Luciano seemed to be a

However, as Luciano curiously stroll into a religious classroom with children his age writing down the teachings of the nun who repeatedly chants “live life as a gift”, he is ironically shooed away by the nun. The juxtaposition of this very apparent exclusion of Luciano being in the classroom and the verse the nun is chanting to the children shows the religious hypocrisy of the church. Millicent Marcus connects this criticism of the church to De Sica’s criticism in Bicycle Thieves as the film “focuses on the distance between the rhetoric of caritas and the actual practice of exclusion” (Marcus 160). The children were rejected by the church because it would look bad on the church to take in children with their past. The law was another failed institution in the film, as they lacked humanity in their literal-minded thinking. During Antonioni’s interrogation in Noto, he showed pride in his work, catching a thief, and how he took on the role of escorting the