Keating,P . "The Fictional Worlds of Neorealism." Criticism [0011-1589] 45.1 (2003). 11-.

        Unlike Yau's Recon-figuration:Revisiting Modernity and Reality in Deleuze's Taxonomy of Cinema (Wide angle [0160-6840] 20.4 (1998). 51-.) Patrick Keating disputes previous claims that Neorealism exist solely in a plane of constructed reality because of conventional cinematic attributes .  Keating does not refute that neorealism is constructed and stylized reality, but it is his assertion that neorealism is closely related to documentary in its scope and tradition as well.  To support his claims, Keating points to Benjamin Harshav's theory of Internal and External Fields of Reference, a literary theory that explains how a work of fiction does not truly exist outside of reality, but rather the realms of fiction and reality are interrelated through a frame of reference (fr).  Each frame does not exist in a separate world, but rather inhabits and contributes to a larger frame, called a field.

          In the Bicycle Thieves, Keating sees a "double-decker" reference of reality where there is the fictionalized Rome that de Sica constructs (internal), and the Rome outside of the mise en scene (external).  In other words, a viewer is getting a glimpse into the world of Antonio and Bruno AND late 40's post-war Italy.  These two references do not exist in separate spheres, yet they are distinct and should not be interpreted as being one in the same, but the viewer still is shaped by the depiction of father and son shown in the film.  The reality in the Bicycle Thieves is not based solely on content, but rather the importation of reality to the film and the subsequent exportation of this reality as art.