Shoeshine

Shoeshine

Starring: Franco Interlenghi, Rinaldo Smordoni, Bruno Ortenzi

Director: Vittoria De Sica

The film: In March 1948, Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine became the first foreign-language film to win an Academy Award. There was no such category at the time, and so an honorary award was created, announcing that 'the high quality of this Italian-made motion picture, brought to eloquent life in a country scarred by war, is proof to the world that the creative spirit can triumph over adversity'. De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) received a similar Oscar two years later, by which time Italian neorealist cinema was a well-established (and some would say already fading) filmmaking movement, with De Sica its most commercially successful figure.

These films had several things in common. They were shot for the most part on the street and in real locations with non-professional actors, had low budgets, and were made using outdated equipment. They brought a new kind of reality to the screen, and between them formed one of the most influential film genres of all time.

Shoeshine follows the misfortunes of two young boys as they supplement their incomes from cleaning the boots of American soldiers with some black market dealing to earn enough money to buy a horse. They're soon caught by the police and sent to a reformatory, where their friendship collapses in a series of episodes that reflect the cruelty and corruption of a financially and morally bankrupt post-war society. It's tearjerking stuff, although not on the same level as Bicycle Thieves, and De Sica's use of attractive children, dramatic music, some back projection and dubbed sound take away some of the realism.