Made for $20,000 in 1946, "Sciuscià," Vittorrio de Sica's film of two shoeshine boys used by the elder brother of one to fence stolen merchandise, was called by no-one less than Orson Welles "the best film I have ever seen." He elaborated, " In handling a camera I feel that I have no peer. But what De Sica can do, I can't do. . . The camera disappeared, the screen disappeared, it was just life." The most passionate American film critic of the day, James Agee, wrote that "Shoeshine is about as beautiful, moving, and heartening a film as you are ever likely to see."

I especially wonder what Agee could have regarded as "heartening." It seems to me that the film is still moving, but heartbreaking rather than heartening. One of the best and most famous of Italian neo-realist films, I also wonder about the screen disappearing and witnessing "just life." That is, the story, particularly the denouement seems very operatic to me. Not the opera of monarchs and warriors, but verismo opera. Verismo opera without a soprano, though probably if Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) sang, his voice would be a boy soprano.

But he doesn't sing (in any sense). Thinking that he is stopping the whipping of Giuseppe, Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi) "sings," incriminating Giuseppe's brother. Giuseppe does not forgive this, and does not relent even after Pasquale really is whipped. Giuseppe throws his lot with the bully of the cell in which he is consigned, Arcangeli (Bruno Ortensi).

Pasquale tries to protect another younger boy, who has tuberculosis and is trampled in the fire and riot that accompany the escape of Arcangeli and Giuseppe. More pain and betrayal follows. The reform "school" has transformed the boys from relatively innocent accomplices of criminals into desperate, hardened young men. The destruction of their friendship is only part of the pulverization of their innocence.

The younger (and doughier) of the boys De Sica cast grew up to be a baker. The darker, handsomer fifteen-year-old Franco Interlenghi is still appearing in films (other than "Sciuscià," the best-known of them is Fellini's 1953 "I vitelloni," in which he played Moraldo). Although De Sica went on to win two more Academy Awards (as director of best foreign films "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" and "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" and to play the title role in Rosselini's masterpiece "Il Generale della Rovere"), he never made as compelling a film as "Sciuscià."

I was not entirely convinced by the idyllic opening of the film, when the boys are happy with the horse they have bought together. I wonder if the rhetoric which lawyers produce in Italian movies has any relationship to what is said in Italian courts. The cell-block looks like it was lifted from "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" or some other interwar expressionist German film. And the studio-shot finale is a bit pat. However, the loss of innocence is shown convincingly. There is no lecturing, the music is only occasionally a bit hectoring, and the dialogue is far less important than what is written on the young non-actors' faces.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older