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(Ginette Vincendeau, 'Encyclopedia of European Cinema', Cassel 1995, pp302)
What is also evident is the representation not just of a loss of hope, but a loss of faith. When Antonio enters the decrepid, crumbling chapel, it is not to pray, but to chase and accuse the old man. Likewise the old man is there for his soup tin. The characters are at mass out of function rather than faith. When Antonio seeks help in his darkest hour, he goes not to confessional, not to pray, but to the psychic Madam Serena. When he runs out of the chapel to chase the old man, he exits through a side room, cluttered with various religious objects and affectations, stuffed and piled like old furniture waiting for the garbage truck, relics from earlier days pushed to one side or ignored as Antonio searches for the one thing he really needs, more than crucifixes and Christ and blind faith his bicycle, and all it can provide for his family.
Particularly in a country such as Italy, where the national faith is such an accepted and integrated part of the social framework, it is easy to see how a loss of faith in the country and the society might entail a loss of religious faith too, that a sub-culture of unemployed fathers, who went from fascism to Nazi occupation to a tainted freedom characterized by squalor and struggle, might find it harder to put their trust in the cross hanging from the wall of their empty kitchen.
Sorlin talks of the parts of Rome De Sica chooses to photograph: Ricci enters the city three times on none of these occasions does he go through Roman Rome or Classical Rome, and he never goes past an ancient monument (Sorlin, 'European Cinemas, European Societies', Routledge 1991, pp121). Just as Roman Rome is characterised by the prestige, glory and beauty of its religious art and architecture like the Pantheon or the Foro Romano, so the squalid backstreets and half-finished urban sprawls are reflected by the small, cramped, decaying, decrepid chapels, the simple crosses hanging in the simple apartments, a low-key spirituality where faith has given way to function. In a similar way, De Sica chooses to ignore the beauty of Rome's most familiar landmarks in favour of crumbling alleys that could be in any Mediterranean city.
We might expect in a film based around the social climate of post-war Rome to see wide, open piazzas, grandiose architecture, baroque statues, ancient monuments, the accepted international face of Rome. But De Sica chooses to set his story in a Rome of high-walled alleys, hawkish markets, dusty half-finished buildings, twisting side-streets. The prestigious beauty of Roman Rome is conspicuous by its absence; De Sica's Rome is a city of lost glory.