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Lazy day! Slept in late and came back from running errands and slept some more. Feeling fairly good today, but just want to sleep a lot.

Dreamed last night a set of dreams that had to do with words. It was like I would go though a dream sequence and at the end a word would appear that summarized the dream scene. Or, conversely, I would see a word and then a dream would unfold based on that word. It made for a crazy set of dream elements--all tied together by single words. What can I say? Strange dreaming!

Picked up a couple of movies from the library--Spartacus and The Bicycle Thieves. Spartacus was directed by Kubrick and GH indicated we would not be seeing it in our mini-festival. Thieves is an Italian film that's high on the "must see" list of early international films. I watched Thieves this evening. It was engaging but in the end somewhat disappointing--not just because of the unhappy ending. I wanted the character who played the father to be more aggressive. He attempted to steal a bike near the end of the film, but failed to do so. Everything he did ended up in a muddle. I wanted to see more from him. He didn't deliver and the movie ended on that note.

The film was an example of the early neo-realism that came into movies during the 40s. Thieves is lauded, alongside Citizen Kane, as being a forerunner of this style of cinema. The film was gritty but somehow not exactly realistic. The father couldn't afford to make such big mistakes given the realities of the times. But, it was a slice of life during those times.