Shoeshine
I will understand this film when I've gotten to compare it to a few others of its time. But I definitely enjoyed it, even if it's a gut punch. Here's what I wrote (or rambled) about it on Letterboxd:
I've become fascinated by the work of Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami, who have cited the influence of Italian neorealism on their works. Shoeshine is the first Italian neorealist film I've seen, and one of its earlier works, and it's a real punch to the stomach. The two shoeshine boys at the center of the story were non-professional actors playing family-less Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi) and his buddy, from a family on the borderline of total destitution, Giueseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni). Vittori De Sica seeks to deliver just real life without much in the way of artifice. This is as what you see in some of Panahi's best work, The Circle and Offside, where he found people that had a look and could fit a part, which he's talked about in interviews and bonus features in DVDs. In the beginning of Shoeshine, the boys pinned all their dreams on owning a horse. They were poor but alive and had something like hope and a little bit of money. Watching their first ride on him as part of the family is joyful, indeed. But things fall apart when they get caught up in a robbery by some con artists and end up accessories. From here, you can see the insides of a cruel and inhumane juvenile detention center where very little is done to be sure their cases are pursued and that they can get out. The end is such a brutal expression of how fast such dreams can escape your grasp. And today, we sell poor children in the U.S.A. on needing an education to get by, but it's everything that happens between the hours they're at school that will ultimately secure their fate. In Vittorio De Sica's post-war Italy, it would seem that street kids got caught up in all sorts of misbehavior, living aimlessly. Pasquale and Giueseppe were actually two of the better ones, who got caught up in a scam. It makes their ultimate fates all that much harder to bear.
But I'd agree with Orson Welle's take on De Sica that, "The camera disappeared, the screen disappeared; it was just life." Whether it's The Circle, The White Balloon, Close up, or Children of Heaven; or even more recent films such as Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Capernaum, there is such deference paid to lived experiences by marginalized peoples in this brand of film. Now it's all about seeing more.
Next up in for this type of film, I'm going to go De Sica again, Bicycle Thieves.