The Moviegoer

Even those who have often considered the great potentialities of the motion picture as an art medium may pause on seeing "Shoeshine" and wonder that a group of actors and technicians could so well utilize the camera while handicapped by the frugality of post-war Italy. But out of such handicaps have grown the film's virtues. Somehow it is almost forgotten that "Shoeshine" was written, acted, directed. Rather it seems that the camera has moved unnoticed down the among the gamins of Rome's streets and recorded there a bit of life as it was happening in Italy at the war's end.

The strength of the film lies in its objectivity. Passing no judgment on twelve-year-old Giuseppe or his fourteen-year-old friend Pasquale, it traces their development from urchins who cry, "Hey, shoeshine, Joe?" at the passing GIs, through the days when they become hardened inmates of a juvenile cell-block where they have been sentenced for black-market sales.

In not condemning or attempting to justify the moral degeneration of the youths, the picture recalls "Crime and Punishment." Just as Raskolnikofi was by nature generous, warm hearted, and high spirited, so Giuseppe and Pasquale are portrayed as human beings who are gradually twisted by poverty and the demoralized period in which they are caught. Their's is the simple morality of friendship that does not permit "squealing." But even that is swept away when Pasquale--thinking he would save Giuseppe from being whipped--tells that Giuseppe's brother was involved in black-market dealings.

Vittirio De Sica has directed so well that nowhere are his efforts obvious; similarly no one in the picture "acts." The realism of "Shoeshine" is as great as that of "Open City" and it even surpasses the latter film by a simplicity of theme that nowhere permits the continuity to become naveled as did the narrative of the Italian underground. De Sica has limited himself to a small canvas in painting the destruction of the two young lives but has produced a masterpiece with deeper meaning. When Pasquale brings about his young friend's death, he does not receive punishment before the picture closes; he merely reacts as an individual upon whom the realization of great personal loss has fallen. Through the simple drama of these boys' lives is reflected the disillusionment that is Europe's tragedy today.