Rent Shoeshine (1946)

Masterpiece - Shoeshine review by sb

FILM REVIEW Shoeshine - in 1948 Vittorio De Sica made The Bicycle Thieves which is one of greatest films ever made - two years earlier he made this which is equally good. Set in Rome in the grinding poverty of the post war years we meet two shoeshine boys - Pasqualle ( Interlemghi) and Guiseeppi (Smordoni) who dream of buying a horse. Most of their customers are occupying GI’s who tip well so over time they save enough up. But this dream is short lived as they pass stolen blankets on behalf of Guiseppi’s brother, get arrested and sent to juvenile prison as they refuse to squeal. Life is hard inside with terrible food and 5 boys to a cell with regular violence. Pasqualle is fooled into thinking that Guiessippi is being beaten by a warden so gives up the brother causing a rift between the two. Meanwhile an older boy in Guiseppi’s cell hatches an escape plan to be carried out during a film show - but some money he was relying on falls through so Guliseppi tells him about the horse. This is the ultimate betrayal for Pasqualle so he sets in motion events ending in a heart breaking finale . Using almost all amateurs and using the story to examine just how important friendship is at that age it’s a gripping complelling story and one of the greats of Italian Neo-Realism cinema. As Orson Wells describes it - the camera disappears, the screen disappears- there is only life -5/5

Classic Neorealism. - Shoeshine review by Steve

Two years before his cinematic landmark with Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica broke though to an international audience with this neorealist critique of juvenile prisons in impoverished postwar Rome, which won a special Oscar for best foreign language film. It's a polemical exposé of unusual candour and insight.

Civic society has broken down. Rather than go to school, poor kids make money for their families. There is no social net for the orphans of war so they work to survive. A pair of close friends (Franco Interlenghi, Rinaldo Smordoni) are shoeshine boys duped into working on the black market and betrayed and jailed.

The bulk of the story is set in a destitute youth detention centre alive with fleas, bugs and lice, which is vindictive and without purpose. The boys are separated and gradually brutalised into tough kids who hide their vulnerability. It's some achievement by De Sica to draw such nuanced performances from this large cast of children.

There are the usual motifs of neorealism including a reformist, socialist agenda as well as the documentary approach and amateur cast. But there is more craft than the raw, earlier films, with faster editing and some visual style. But primarily, it is a cry for help. The two boys are not even guilty, but no one should go through this.