The Ballad of Guiseppe and Pasquale

Shoeshine

Vittorio de Sica

Italy

1946

Three years ago in the darkened Videotheque of the Film Institute where only the projected images in black and white lit the 70-seater room, there sat a first year student destined to be swept, captivated, and deeply moved in the next one and a half hour by the 1949 Italian film being shown—a classic film called “The Bicycle Thief” by the neorealist master—Vittorio de Sica. For the longest and most significant period in my life, that movie remains to be the ultimate and still unprecedented cinematic experience I ever treasure. Appreciating the Auteur Theory by Andre Bazin, there’s nothing like hoping to see another work of de Sica and there’s nothing like the three-year wait to finally see one for these Italian Film Classics are unfortunately too rare. Just like real precious gems, these films you really have to dig extensively to find.

Socially and morally provoking, “Shoe Shine” is a story of two unfortunate shoe shine boys who are jailed for being involved innocently in some trade of stolen goods. A deconstruction of the crimes, misdemeanor, and mistakes of the adulthood with some apparent references to the government and judiciary system which are both obviously operated by the adults, the film is a harrowing tale of children’s impending tragedy the grown-ups perpetuated. Definitely admiring that there is no blatant appointing of the culprits, instead de Sica focused on the two boys and their fellow juvenile prisoners and never, not even a single second that he visually blamed someone in the film. The question—“Whose fault really it is?” is story-wise of the particular adults which are Guiseppe’s brother and his friend, but the subtlety I am talking about makes recognition of the exact culprits irrelative instead it initiated an overwhelming arrest of all the culpable in a much panoptic scope. 

 

Born in Italy after the dreadful and devastating 2^nd World War, Italian Neo-Realism is a cinematic movement tackling the life of those in the margins, or of the working classes from the most mundane to the most sensible minutes of their life. Attempting to center the attention to this preface, neo-realists interpret their films in a simple narrative structure such as in “The Bicycle Thief” the story is simply about the search for the stolen bicycle. No multi-layer POV or time-frame needed like in an Alejandro Gonzales-Inarittu films for creating a more convoluted storyline would rob the audience of the empowering potential of a prosaic experience. However, “Shoeshine” doesn’t really fall much to such criteria. A certain level of complexity is thus present in this 1946 classic. Two shoeshine boys are imprisoned separately on two different cells. Interrogated by the police, Pasquale thought that the policemen are beating Guiseppe and made him confess that it is his friend’s brother who asked them to sell the fabric without knowing they are stolen. Guiseppe on the other hand misinterpreted the situation and blamed Pasquale for thinking that he betrayed him and his brother. This complexity mirrors the world of the adulthood making such part in the film so heart-rending and saddening. All of the elements in this part work interestingly—the jail as the piece of space they are spending youthful days of their lives, the fellow minors as the alike fragile souls, the policemen as the apathetic authorities dictating their deportment, and the legal system as the intangible God shaping their becoming elusive future.

One of the best things I really admire about De Sica is that he delivers a beautiful earthy atmosphere to his works. There is a consistent patch of gloom scattered from start to finish and relieving splash of humor from time to time. “The Bicycle Thief” and “Shoeshine” are films telling stories from a different time and country but it incessantly look and feel so earthbound and exquisitely unglamorous. An impalpable emotion perhaps is this feeling that I feel so alive in these two films (though I felt more significantly alive with The Bicycle Thief).

The most “neorealist” part in “Shoeshine” arguably is the provoking uncertainty at the end. In “The Bicycle Thief” the camera closes up to the face of the protagonist after stealing someone else’s bicycle and being chased by the town people. The restless and hopeless look in his face leaves a question to us what is in future for him? Extremely parallel to the worry of what future the Italians are going to experience after the war? In “Shoeshine” Pasquale furiously whipped Guiseppe thinking that he is trying to runaway with the horse the two of them bought when in fact he is only trying to escape from the policemen. Guiseppe accidentally fell on the bridge and hit his head to a stone from avoiding the wrath of his friend.  Guiseppe seemingly dead already, Pasquale crying and shouting his friend’s name, and the horse running and fading away into the darkness.

Any film lover from the Philippines in the 21^st century would lie if they say they never ever felt the power and influence of Hollywood in the country’s cinema or even in their general idea of movies. One of the things that made watching De Sica films a lot easy and entertaining is the fact that it is already almost similar to the Narrative system of Hollywood—a storytelling Filipinos and most people in the world are very familiar, so familiar that it makes non-Hollywood Narrative films nothing but an artistic crap. This is also another reason why I enjoyed “Shoeshine” better than Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring”. Bergman’s work I believe has more virginal and more timeless content in a simpler form than De Sica’s however, the theatricality Bergman embellished “The Virgin Spring” is verging on obsolete today. There are over-exceeding frames in some scenes and unfortunately lacking in some others like the scene where the maiden protagonist has been raped by the two herdsmen. Some camera angles are unhelpful to what is taking place on the story failing to capture the total intensity of the scene. I am sure there is an explanation to that Bergman film but pegging the contexts today then it is an odd film. “Shoeshine” on the other hand even being released 13 or 14 years earlier than “The Virgin Spring” is more timeless in terms of the many elements in filmmaking. The “corrupt-looking” editing is almost zeroed.

“Shoeshine” is a pleasant and provoking film. Though aboveboard, I wish to humbly express a feeling of a slight disappointment not inside the film but of that inevitable expectation I unintentionally collected all throughout the years. “The Bicycle Thief” remains to be the most important masterpiece at least from out of all films I have seen and “Shoeshine” is a little bit not even half of the former but again, I can’t emphasize it that much—this film is certainly very good on its own.