Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) influenced Rosetta

The Dardennes are the clearest inheritors neorealism has. De Sica's rules are theirs: shoot on the real streets, cast a non-professional in the lead, build the whole film on one small economic problem, and refuse the music and the lighting that would tell an audience how to feel. Rosetta keeps a girl's job as the entire plot the way Bicycle Thieves keeps a bicycle as the entire plot, and both end without resolving the thing they are about. The difference is the camera. De Sica watches from a distance; the Dardennes put a handheld lens on the back of Rosetta's head and stay there. Filed MEDIUM: a tradition carried forward rather than one film answering another. The film's real-world consequence, the Belgian law on youth wages named after it, is already recorded separately.