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Enzo Staiola, Child Star in Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves,’ Dies at 85

The Italian actor was forever immortalized as the sad-faced son with big expressive eyes in the Oscar-winning 1948 Neo-realist masterpiece.

Italian child actor Enzo Staiola, best known for playing, at the age of 9 years old, the sad-faced son Bruno Ricci in Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Neo-realist masterpiece Ladri di Biciclette( Bicycle Thieves), has died. Staiola’s co-star in Bicycle Thieves in the role of Antonio Ricci, his impoverished father, was Lamberto Maggiorani, a factory worker-turned-actor, as De Sica wanted working class authenticity for his humanist drama. The classic Italian Neo-realist film left Staiola forever etched in celluloid history as Bruno Ricci, whose memorably big eyes were so expressive of childhood innocence as the young boy followed his anguished father through the streets of post-war Rome.

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