Watch Shoeshine For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The Age of Commercialism

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

A couple of street kids become involved with some unsavory characters and end up in a prison for juvenile delinquents. De Sica was a leader of the Italian neo-realism movement, and this is celebrated as the earliest of his masterpieces. Unfortunately, it is not in the same class as "Bicycle Thieves" and "Umberto D." It is ironic that this is (or was) regarded as realistic because it has some embarrassingly melodramatic scenes. While the two kid actors are pretty good, the adults are all portrayed as ruthless, one-dimensional villains, showing little regard for the troubled youth. Perhaps De Sica did this on purpose to expose the conditions at such places in Italy, but it doesn't make for good drama.

I am a huge admirer of the films directed by Vittorio De Sica during the 1940s. Using what is referred to as the 'neo-realist' style, he was able to craft many brilliant classics using ordinary folks in ordinary situations. So, without stage-bound sets and professional actors, he was able to make films superior to Hollywood--and among the best films ever. Try watching "The Children Are Watching Us", "Umberto D"or "Miracle in Milan" and you'll see what I am talking about--brilliant and compelling fro start to finish. The only negative about the films is that sometimes they can be incredibly depressing--and that is certainly the case with "Umberto D" and "Shoeshine". Depressing, but also amazing.Like the other neo-realist films, this one stars very ordinary folks--lots of kids--not professionals. Considering how hard it is to get realistic portrayals from kids, he really has to be commended for this. And, like this style of film, it was shot throughout Rome in various locations--not sets. And in the process, De Sica really hit a home run--chronicling a very sad period in Italian history.The film is set in Allied occupied Italy circa 1944. Folks are poor and hungry and jobs are hard to come by. Amidst this poverty, two kids (Pasquale and Guiseppe) are inexplicably saving all the money they can to buy a horse! And so, they take odd jobs, shine shoes and scramble to make a buck. When they are nearing their goal, they are tricked into doing a 'simple' job for Giuseppe's brother--and get arrested for stealing blankets from the Allied forces. Surprisingly, despite their age and how non-serious their crime appeared to be, the two are dealt with VERY harshly and are sent to a god-awful juvenile prison--where starvation and neglect are the norm. Most of the film is set in this awful place and it's a fascinating historical portrait of this period of time in recent history. I could say a lot more about what happens there but I don't want to spoil the surprise. Suffice to say, it's all very tragic--and you might want to have some Kleenex nearby just in case.The biggest strength of the film is the realistic acting by all the kids. You don't get the impression they are acting but that really are kids sent to prison. Also, although this might put some off, the story's insistence that it NOT have a nice happy ending is also a plus. Although I don't want a steady supply of depressing movies, I love that the film was not afraid to be sad in order to tell the story effectively. Well worth seeing and if you enjoy this film, I suggest you then try "The Children Are Watching Us" next--it is, in my opinion, De Sica at his directorial finest.

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.

(Spoilers) The separation of hands; that's what the movie is about. In postwar Rome two shoe shine boys, young friends, after some bad luck with adult black-marketeering, and false accusation of theft, are sent to a Rome juvenile prison. As each is put into separate cells, their hands cling, resistant to the forced separation of their hands, of their affections."Shoe Shine," one of the most devastating films of all time about good youth in bad trouble, is really about what this separation of hands implies. They and we are thrust amid uncaring officials, in a prison that seems like a slow-to-die fascist institution in this post-fascist Italy. A prison inspector still imparts, involuntarily, the fascist salute. The upraised hand of the fascist salute contrasts with the desperate friendship and fraternal love in the hands of the two boys, Pasquale and Giuseppe, whom the system will hurt in the worst way possible, by separating them, by turning one against the other, by causing one to be responsible for the death of the other. Is there any greater cruelty?"Shoe Shine" is one of my favorite films of all time, and one of the greatest and most overwhelmingly moving Italian films ever made…in some ways even more potent than director De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" or "Umberto D." The two boys are beautifully played by Franco Interlenghi as the older boy, Rinaldo Smordoni as the younger. In addition to them is another figure of innocence, the little Neapolitan Raffaele (Aniello Mele). He is in this hell-hole for kids merely because he has been abandoned by his mother. Sick and doomed to TB, despite the humane concern (the only true adult humanity we see here) of the new prison assistant Bartoli, he is a son anyone in his right mind would be honored to have. He commands respect even with the tyrannical prison chief Staffera when he slaps everyone to find out about the source of a chisel in a cell. He does not dare lay his hand to this generous little person who gives his food away who shows a kindness of a stature beyond his years.Raffaele was the boy-saint who tried to re-join the hands of his two friends, Giuseppe and Pasquale. This fails. The outside forces are too massed. In the tragic end, it is Pasquale who screams his lost friend's name, his hands trying to stir Giuseppe's now unmoving body. His hands.