Your voice for a cycling city

With our evenings spent at home and no bike racing events to look forward to we are all likely to be catching up on old , and not so old films. So we thought we’d pass on our favourite films that involve cycling – most of which you can enjoy as a family.

Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Bicicletti) 1948  Vittorio De Sica

A masterpiece of Italian neo-realist cinema that’s on many top ten lists of films of all time and winner of an Academy Award for best foreign language film. It’s the sad story of a worker in the post-war years needing a bike to secure a job, and that bike (bought with great sacrifice)  gets stolen – so he steels another…

Belleville Rendezvous (aka The Triplets of Belleville) 2003  Sylvain Chomet  (12 certificate) 

A rare animated comedy featuring cycles throughout.  The gothic animation is quite extraordinary in its inventiveness – we loved the bicycle powered gramophone and the pedalo braving an Atlantic storm. A young man, Champion,  is raised by his grandmother  to be a Tour de France contender but is kidnapped mid-race by the French mafia and taken to ultra-gothic New York with granny  and faithful dog Bruno in pursuit (in the pedalo).

Breaking Away  1979 Peter Yates

This coming of age movie was a critical and financial success winning an Oscar for Steve Tesich’s screenplay and  grossing $20m in the US.  Four working lads clash with supercilious college rivals and take on the challenge of a cycle circuit race. All the roles are terrific especially the hero’s father who is frosty about his son’s cycling ambitions (and his Italian persona) but softens as the film goes on. Both funny and inspirational.

American Flyer 1985  John Badham

After the success of Breaking Away, its screenplay writer Steve Teisch wrote this bike race themed movie featuring soon-to-be star Kevin Costner. While the film got middling reviews it’s worth watching for the breath-taking shots of cycle racing in the mountains and makes you wonder how riders are prepared to descend at 60+ mph with sheer drops by the side of the road. Guess who wins.

Wadjda 2012 Haifaa al-Mansour

The first film made in Saudi Arabia was released to wide acclaim and has won several awards. Woman director Haifaa al-Mansour takes on what is a sensitive subject in that country – a young girl, Wadjda, wants to acquire a green bike, that she can’t afford, so that she can race her friend Abdullah. She encounters a range of barriers.

ET  1982 Steven Spielberg

Many people will wonder why ET is on this list. Older BMX fans will have no such doubts. The film was shot from a childs’ perspective (many camera shots are directed upwards to present a  child’s view of the world) and  BMX was the transport mode of youngsters in the 80s. The wonderful bike chase with ET in a plastic basket is as memorable as Steve McQueen’s motorbike jump in the Great Escape but reaches to the skies. And of course ET gets to phone home.

 Il Postino Italy 1994  Michael Radford.

A delightful Italian rom-com featuring yes, a postman, who rides a bicycle. In pursuit of his beloved, Mario, the postman, takes tips from Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, who settles in the local village.  Because the actor/co-director who plays Mario, Massimo Troisi,  was seriously ill during shooting the cycling sequences (on an old fashioned roadster up some seriously steep hills) was done by stunt double. Troisi died a day after filming was finished.

 Toto at the Giro d’Italia – 1948 (Italian only) Mario Mattoli.

Toto, his screen name, was a popular Italian comedian, producing a series of Toto and X films of which this was the first . What’s remarkable is that it features the great Italian cyclists of the day, Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali as well as several from other nations including Louison Bobet and Ferdi Kubler. Toto, as a bearded professor, fails to accept a blunt brush-off from the target of his affections: “Do you cycle?” – “No” – “Then I’ll marry you if you win the Giro d’Italia”,  and sells his soul to the devil to try and win…  

Jour de Fete 1949 Jacques Tati

In some scenes a precursor to films like Il Postino and Breaking Away the bike is a perfect prop for French comedian Jacques Tati who both directs and stars. At times the postman’s bike takes on a life of its own. Magic.  The bell ringing scene is worthy of the best of Harpo Marx  

The Flying Scotsman 2006 Douglas Mackinnon

This movie tells the extraordinary story of Graham Obree, a Scotsman who defied the odds to capture the world hour record in 1994 on a bike that he built himslef using parts from a washing machine. The record was then broken again by Olympic champion, and now cycling commissioner in Manchester, Chris Boardman. But Obree sumounted personal problems and rule changes that made his original bike ineligible to win again 1995. The film wasn't a box office winner but tells  a remarkable true story. 

Danny MacAskill  - a series of superb videos

If you, or your children, have not watched Danny then you must – always remembering that you should not try this yourself. The antics of one of the worlds’ most skilled trials riders are literally death defying. His riding down the walls of an entire mountain village, or jumping around on giant Lego or leaping from house to house in Argentina is beyond awesome. And if that whets your appetitite, a young  LCCer recommends Fabio Wimber 

Where to find your films:j Just Watch