Waste of time

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

After Umberto D. and The Bicycle Thieves, I was loving Vittorio De Sica. His neo-realism films are heartbreaking and ring true to the human spirit. He almost has a free pass to make my top directors list, I just got to fill his next 3 spots. In retrospect, Shoeshine has brilliant plotting and characterisation. It takes emotionally motivated turns and has well constructed cruel ironies. Unfortunately, it struggles with its execution. It's not as tightly edited or shot as his two later films, often making scenes confusing and key plot points are missed. The score and performances, of which I recognise are from amateurs, can be too melodramatic. Its atmosphere ends up feeling inauthentic. Umberto and Bicycle were great for their subdued portrayals of inner pain, I wish Shoeshine was the same. I would love to rank this film among those two as its screenplay is really great but both the crew in front and behind camera let it down. Still has a punch though and gets more engaging as it goes along. Great decision to have most of the film take place in that great set of a juvenile prison.7/10

This movie follows a couple of young teenage friends (Pasquale and Giuseppe) who are trying to survive, by shining shoes, in the difficult conditions in Italy after WWII. Pasquale is homeless and has been sleeping in elevators while Giuseppe is a bit better off, having a mother and brother living. However, it is Giuseppe's brother who involves the two friends in selling army blankets on the black market. From their rather innocent involvement in this scheme the boys are ultimately arrested and sent to a prison for juveniles. The bulk of the movie takes place in the prison and it is there that things start going very wrong for the two friends, leading to an ultimate tragedy. For me the power of the movie lies in its depiction of how a society on its ass creates a toxic environment that grinds people up in a downward spiral that they are powerless to control. I did not get the sense of any overarching evil on anybody's part--people on all levels were just tying to get by. The movie portrays how the social structure was overwhelmed in its attempt to climb out of the hole left by the war.There were some things that seemed inconsistent with the stark realism. The two friends are seen saving up to buy a horse that is being rented out to upper class people. I appreciate the value of the horse as a symbol of freedom and how people who are down can still have dreams, but was it realistic to think that the kids could buy the horse on income from shining shoes? The musical score often intruded with a sentimentality that seemed out of place. For kids who were supposedly on the verge of starvation, the kids in the prison seemed remarkably healthy, even the small kid with tuberculosis.I found the commentary track on the DVD to be of interest, since it made some points that I would otherwise not have noticed, like how the filming of the two friends mimics their relationship--close together on the screen at first and later separated.This is an example of how a quality movie can inform you about a small slice of history in a more effective manner than reading history books.

I have watched the unforgettable and justifiably renowned Bicycle Thief, and the impressive Umberto D. I had long been wanting to watch Shoeshine and finally saw it last evening, enjoying it as movies are meant to be enjoyed - on a big home screen with my new projector. The movie starts on a perky note - two boys, close friends, exuberant at having bought a horse they both love. One is almost lulled into thinking that this will be a buoyant movie about friendship and a horse. It turns out to be several shades darker. It is De Sica's genius that he can pull you in so quickly and make you feel such strong empathy for the two boys as they are brutalized by life within a short span of a few days; their friendship souring and spiraling down towards an ominous end. Be warned, this is a depressing movie. But it is a gem nonetheless, and I know that several scenes will remained etched in my mind forever. In particular, De Sica captures in a starkly beautiful manner the quicksilver bonding and the territorial rivalries of the boys trapped in a bleak Dickens' style detention center. A must watch for any fan of that strain of Italian cinema from the 1940s and 50s.

After watching The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D and having been so impressed by those films I secured a copy of this. Unfortunately, this fell way short of those other two both in style and content. Why this has received such praise is beyond me. Unlike the former films which are slow paced, meditative and draw you in this just rockets along at a pace and I found it hard to follow. The dialogue comes at you like machine gun fire and I found it really hard to read the subtitles fast enough to keep pace with the story. The acting was totally unconvincing too. It reminded one of more of the dramatic hammy renditions given by Italian football players falling down in phony pain trying to convince the ref to give a free kick. I wasn't convinced at all. It left me cold.