The revival of Shoeshine reminds us of what true empathy — not the fake ‘social justice’ sort — looks like.
The 4K restoration and revival of Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine (1946) at New York’s Film Forum, one of the few repertory movie theaters in the U.S., reminds us what movies need to be. It is a prime example of Italian Neorealism, the movement in which filmmakers responded to the spiritual and social essentials of modern (post–World War II) life.
This story about two boys (Ragazzi is the film’s Italian subtitle) depicts teenage Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi) and Giuseppe (Renaldo Smordoni) who work the streets shining shoes; their friendship is doomed when both get caught up in Rome’s juvenile-detention system. The combination of beauty and tragedy is how Italian Neorealism answered post-war problems.
Shoeshine’s reformist intention differs from the recent “social justice” hoodwink. De Sica, a popular actor of Italian comedy, became a director in the sentimental style of Charlie Chaplin, transcending the Marxist ambitions of his screenwriter-collaborator Cesare Zavattini. De Sica looked beyond politics to attain irresistible artistry, as in his later masterpieces Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D., and Miracle in Milan.
Millennial activist-filmmakers propagating Obama’s “hope and change” slogan cheapen the kind of clear-eyed empathy so evident in Shoeshine. Pasquale and Giuseppe, despite complementary sensitive and brash personalities, are not social victims as the media portrayed Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd. Imprisoned for participating in the adult black market, they get separated and lose their interpersonal connection.
Shoeshine was made with what critic James Agee called “a creative generosity.” Its contemporary lesson comes from De Sica’s moral confidence. Agee noted that De Sica was “at one with a large, eager, realistic general audience.” But recent flashpoint films from Get Out to The Green Book create a gulf between countrymen, exacerbating our superficial differences. Shoeshine unites us through its beauty and tragedy, and that’s what Hollywood’s social-justice warrior-hacks neglect. De Sica criticized the intolerant social forces, the bureaucratic self-righteousness (from selfishness and boredom to indifference) that’s always the enemy.
Imagine Millennial filmmakers asserting a new neorealism to examine the intimate, fraternal, and familial relations of those infamous Martin, Brown, and Floyd reprobates. Hollywood doesn’t, because race and gender politics discourage activist filmmakers from considering the common truths that distinguished Italian Neorealism. Millennial totems Selma, Judas and the Black Messiah, Till, Origin, Nope, and I Am Not Your Negro cheat emotional realism by prioritizing biased media and political strategies.
Pasquale and Giuseppe are merely victims only in the most obvious scene: a grandstanding courtroom oration by a lawyer who accuses Italy for its indifference to the suffering of street kids. That point is shrill and shallow because De Sica, the artist who had previously directed the divorce drama The Children Are Watching Us, has already gone far past political bromides. Shoeshine intensifies our concern with De Sica’s young protagonists by forcing us to realize the coarsening of their souls.
Again, imagine any Millennial filmmaker dramatizing the personal betrayal behind so many urban-ghetto gang shootings, or refusing to repeat the “gun violence” cliché that confuses rhetoric for realism. Few hip-hop-era films (perhaps only Charles Stone III’s Paid in Full or Benny Boom’s Next Day Air) ever matched Shoeshine’s portrayal of citizens or a community turned to personal betrayal.
Through Pasquale and Giuseppe’s shared husbandry of a racehorse, De Sica conveys their escape from the mean city’s turmoil and grinding poverty. Horse-riding offers countryside exhilaration and the freedom of open air. In a penitentiary, the boys face confinement, harassment, and acrimony similar to the dehumanization of a concentration camp. Giuseppe attempts escape — the opportunity arrives during an assembly, when priests of the “humanitarian crisis” kind show a movie. It’s a documentary of the world at war, a timely representation of how the media overlook the boys’ spiritual needs while pretending to address larger social issues.
Today’s reality-TV and SJW movies pervert the potentialities of spiritual and social realism. Seeing how Shoeshine’s youths can be manipulated by circumstances, we recognize our own susceptibility to influences. (Interlenghi would go on to play Fellini’s alter ego in his autobiographical I Vitelloni.) Shoeshine’s neorealism condenses the stress of urban experience during traumatic times — the kind of movie we all need. But its climax is also a moving projection of our basic empathy and deepest fears.
