Sciuscià (Shoeshine)

De Sica’s Shoeshine was an important early work of Italian neorealism – the influential film movement that explored social issues in postwar Italy. De Sica, who would go on to make the neorealist classics Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Umberto D. (1952), brings his trademark humanist pathos to this story of two young friends who, in their attempt to save money to buy a horse, find themselves falling into petty criminality that lands them in the uncompromising jaws of the juvenile prison system.

Shoeshine stands alongside Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) and Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) as one of the classic films about childhood in a challenging world. Released the year after the end of World War II and the death of Mussolini, Shoeshine was the first film awarded an Oscar as Best Foreign Film for proving “to the world that the creative spirit can triumph over reality”.

“There are no barriers at all between De Sica and these children whose tragic lives he understood perfectly.” – Martin Scorsese

Restored in 4K in 2022 by The Film Foundation and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Orium S.A. with funding provided by Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.