SHOESHINE Movie Review

Two young shoeshine boys, struggling to survive in a wartime Rome occupied by American Gls (“shoeshine” is what the street kids of Rome shouted at Gls to make money during the war), become involved in the black market and are jailed. Once in prison, their sense of abandonment and hopelessness becomes overwhelming, and even their friendship ultimately falls victim to the ever-widening tragedy that envelops them. In a 1957 interview, director Vittorio de Sica said: “What hit Zavattini (his co-screenwriter) and me at the end of the war was human solitude. The real sense of my films is the search for the human solidarity, the fight against egoism and indifference; in Shoeshine, the theme was treated in tragedy…” Indeed. De Sica's heartbreaking 1946 classic is one of the great achievements of neo-realist cinema, though not always ranked quite as highly by critics as the same director's The Bicycle Thief or Rossellini's Open City and Paisan. This may simply be because portions of Shoeshine were photographed in studios, rendering the film less “purely” neorealist than the Rossellini films (I disagree strongly with such simplistic categorizing); or it may simply be because Shoeshine has a more conventional overall structure than The Bicycle Thief. Where Shoeshine is ranked on some abstract, numerical scale, however, ultimately matters a lot less than the fact that it's a great, unforgettable experience—one of the most searingly powerful films ever made about the loss of innocence.

NEXT STOP … The Bicycle Thief, Forbidden Games, Pixote

1947 90m/B IT Franco Interlenghi, Rinaldo Smordoni, Annielo Mele, Bruno Ortensi, Pacifico Astrologo; D: Vittorio De Sica; W: Cesare Zavattini, Sergio Amidei, Adolfo Franci, C.G. Viola. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘47: Best Original Screenplay. VHS FCT