Shoeshine
An international breakthrough for neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning film is an indelible fable of innocence lost amid the hardscrabble reality of 1940s Italy. On the streets of Rome, two boys—best friends Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi)—set out to raise the money to buy a horse by shining shoes. When they are inadvertently caught up in a robbery and sent to a brutal juvenile detention center, their loyalty to each other is severely tested. A devastating portrait of economic struggle made all the more haunting by its child’s-eye perspective, Shoeshine stands as one of the defining achievements of postwar Italian filmmaking.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by The Film Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Sciuscià 70 (2016), a documentary by Mimmo Verdesca, made to mark the film’s seventieth anniversary
- New program on Shoeshine and Italian neorealism featuring film scholars Paola Bonifazio and Catherine O’Rawe
- Radio broadcast from 1946 featuring director Vittorio De Sica
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar David Forgacs and “Shoeshine, Joe?,” a 1945 photo-documentary by De Sica
New cover by F. Ron Miller
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by The Film Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Sciuscià 70 (2016), a documentary by Mimmo Verdesca, made to mark the film’s seventieth anniversary
- New program on Shoeshine and Italian neorealism featuring film scholars Paola Bonifazio and Catherine O’Rawe
- Radio broadcast from 1946 featuring director Vittorio De Sica
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar David Forgacs and “Shoeshine, Joe?,” a 1945 photo-documentary by De Sica
New cover by F. Ron Miller
Cast
- Franco Interlenghi
- Pasquale Maggi
- Rinaldo Smordoni
- Giuseppe Filippucci
- Aniello Mele
- Raffaele
- Bruno Ortenzi
- Arcangeli
- Emilio Cigoli
- Staffera
- Gino Saltamerenda
- Panza
- Anna Pedoni
- Nannarella
- Leo Garavaglia
- Commissioner
- Antonio Nicotra
- Bartoli
- Mario Volpicelli
- Prison governor
- Peppino Spadaro
- Lawyer
- Irene Smordoni
- Giuseppe’s mother
- Guido Gentili
- Attilio Filippucci
- Gino Saltamerenda
- Panza
- Enrico De Silva
- Giorgio
- Antonio Lo Nigro
- Righetto
- Pacifico Astrologo
- Vittorio
- Maria Campi
- Fortune teller
Credits
- Director
- Vittorio De Sica
- Story and screenplay by
- Sergio Amidei
- Story and screenplay by
- Adolfo Franci
- Story and screenplay by
- Cesare Giulio Viola
- Story and screenplay by
- Cesare Zavattini
- Produced by
- Paolo William Tamburella
- Cinematography
- Anchise Brizzi
- Music
- Alessandro Cicognini
- Edited by
- Nicolò Lazzari
- Production design
- Ivo Battelli
- Sound
- Tullio Parmegiani
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Trailer for Shoeshine
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