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De Sica's Powerful Italian Neorealist Classic

Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine (1946) is one of the earliest movies of the Italian neorealist movement and also one of the best. It so impressed Hollywood that it was given an honorary Academy Award. Now Entertainment One makes available a restored and re-mastered DVD version of this masterpiece that offers very good picture and sound quality.

Like other Italian neorealist films, Shoeshine focuses on the daily lives of working-class characters, has underlying social themes, features nonprofessional actors and was shot on real, unglamorous locations.


It tells the story of the disintegration of a friendship between two boys who eke out a living shining shoes in Italy just after World War II, when the country was caught up in poverty and unemployment. Nearly all their customers are American GIs, so the boys try to say the English word "shoeshine," but it comes out sounding like a word written in Italian as "sciuscià.

Shoeshine takes place in Rome, though none of the city's famous landmarks are shown. The main characters are Pasquale, about 15, and Giuseppe, about 12. Close friends, they sell black-market goods to get enough money to buy a horse, and they end up behind bars for being participants in a robbery. While in prison, a series of incidents occur that causes their friendship to go into a downward spiral, leading to tragedy.

In the early part of the film, it may seem to the first-time viewer that it is going to be cloying, but this is not the case. This is a tough-minded movie that gradually builds up enormous emotional power.

Audio Commentary

The only extra of consequence on the DVD is a feature-length audio commentary by Bert Cardullo, who has his Doctor of Fine Arts from Yale and has authored over 20 books, including Vittorio De Sica: Actor, Director, Auteur. Cardullo's commentary is rather like one you might expect to hear in an undergraduate classroom, and he spends too much time simply describing in words what you are looking at on the screen. Still, he occasionally makes observations that are interesting and/or informative.

Perhaps what Cardullo does best here is to shed light on what Italian neorealism was and what it wasn't. He points out that most of the adults with speaking roles are professional actors, and although the kids in the film are nonprofessionals, De Sica mostly avoided casting real-life street urchins because they were too ugly. Cardullo also says that De Sica claimed that the movie's heavy-handed music, which tells listeners what they should be feeling, was forced upon him by the producers. Furthermore, the commentator states that the majority of the dialogue was dubbed in post-production, which gives it a certain artificiality. In addition, Cardullo notes that the final scene was shot in a studio, apparently for financial reasons. And the commentator calls attention to the fact that Shoeshine is not just a bunch of episodes, it's carefully plotted: it has an inciting incident, rising action, a turning point and a climax.

DVD Release Date: May 17, 2011
Total Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated

A pre-release review copy of the Blu-ray Disc was provided by E1 Entertainment Distribution. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.