Shoeshine [1946] : Vittorio De Sica

 

After watching Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine [1946], it is evident why the Indian subcontinent was so much moved and influenced by Italian neorealism. I think the rationale of being realistic in Indian cinema was more impactful than Italian neorealism. Because India had one additional ground to illustrate her cinema in neorealist mold. It is its independence and great partition which occurred concurrently while the west was suffering from  Second World War devastation.

Apart from cinematic techniques, art direction, costumes, and narrative subjects; neoliberalism made paramedic change into acting styles. The acting had been transcended from theatrical to natural. The spontaneous presence of child artists with ever presence of class division in the power structure and distributed justice in the human conditions are the main concerns. Surprisingly, K.A. Abbas’s Dharti Ke Lal [1946, Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar [1946] was also made and released in India in the same year. This tradition has been followed by Raj Kapoor’s Awaara [1951], Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin [1953] & Mehmoob Khan’s Mother India [1957]. It seems the East was in a perfect symphony with the west.

 

What I have found so striking in Shoeshine is Giuseppe’s loyalty to Pasquale, his friend, and to Attilio, his brother, in the midst of hard times. On the other hand, what I have found so paradoxical is screening the American nuclear attack in Japan for a large crowd of adolescents. Maybe there are some political and artistic purposes behind it but at the first view I have found it a deviation. I was thinking about Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer [2023] that I watched last Friday which also created some kind of scenery on the American invasion during the Second World War.

 

There are very few films I felt that have such an intense and unpredictable ending which has an immense power to burst out one’s inner suppressed emotions which is so cathartic like Shoeshine as soon as Giuseppe fell from the bridge on the boulder. Similar kind of emotional lability I have experienced this month when I read the ending of Sarat Chandra’s Devdas [1917] and watched the film adaptation by Bimal Roy [1955] who can be called Eastern De Sica because of his Do Bigha Zamin [1953]

 

Shoeshine [1946]

Sciuscià in Italian

Vittorio De Sica

Italian, Italy