From the Collection: Shoeshine
Vittorio De Sica’s 1946 film Shoeshine has been added to the Criterion Collection.
An international breakthrough for neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning film is an indelible fable of innocence lost amid the hardscrabble reality of 1940s Italy. On the streets of Rome, two boys—best friends Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi)—set out to raise the money to buy a horse by shining shoes. When they are inadvertently caught up in a robbery and sent to a brutal juvenile detention center, their loyalty to each other is severely tested. A devastating portrait of economic struggle made all the more haunting by its child’s-eye perspective, Shoeshine stands as one of the defining achievements of postwar Italian filmmaking.
Here’s What the Disc Includes:
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by The Film Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Sciuscià 70 (2016), a documentary by Mimmo Verdesca, made to mark the film’s seventieth anniversary
- New program on Shoeshine and Italian neorealism featuring film scholars Paola Bonifazio and Catherine O’Rawe
- Radio broadcast from 1946 featuring director Vittorio De Sica
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- New cover by F. Ron Miller
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar David Forgacs and “Shoeshine, Joe?,” a 1945 photo-documentary by De Sica
De Sica is probably best known for his 1948 classic The Bicycle Thief, a highly regarded film for its authenticity and portrait of post-war Italy. I had never seen Shoeshine but knowing it was from the director behind one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen was enough to make me excited. Shoeshine did not disappoint, but it was also an emotionally draining film, even more so than The Bicycle Thief. What starts as a tale of two young Italian boys, played brilliantly and authentically by Smordoni and Interlenghi, who are hustling anyway they can to earn money to buy a horse, quickly descends into a bleak and tragic tale of crushed dreams and lost innocence. The second half of the film is particularly poignant as the once-close friends begin to grow apart due to a trick played by a prison warden. The film’s finale is soul-crushing, but a perfect finisher by De Sica in his critique of war-torn Italy.
The Criterion release is excellent. The 4k restoration is beautiful, and the disc features some solid special features. My favorite was the program about Shoeshine and Italian Neorealism, which was a fascinating movement in film history that gave us some truly great films. De Sica has several films in the Criterion Collection already, including The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D., and Shoeshine is another great addition from one of Italy’s greatest directors.
You can find Shoeshine on the Criterion Collection website or wherever you find Criterion DVDs.
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From the Collection is an analysis of non-new-release movies, whether seen on DVD, streaming, or in a theater. It includes a brief history of the film, a review of the film, and content about the experience of seeing the film and/or the contents of the film’s DVD.
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