Shoeshine
Shoeshine
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1h 31m
Directed by Vittorio De Sica • 1946 • Italy
Starring Franco Interlenghi, Rinaldo Smordoni, Aniello Mele
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.
Up Next in Shoeshine
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Sciuscià 70
Made to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of SHOESHINE, this 2016 documentary features interviews with lead actors Rinaldo Smordoni and Franco Interlenghi; Emi De Sica, the director’s daughter; and Paolo W. Tamburella, the producer’s grandson.
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SHOESHINE: Neorealism in Focus
In this 2025 program, Italian-cinema scholars Paola Bonifazio and Catherine O’Rawe examine how SHOESHINE helped to export a specific image of postwar Italy and to shape an aesthetic of realism that continues to inspire filmmakers around the world.
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Vittorio De Sica Radio Interview
In this radio broadcast, which aired on April 27, 1946—the day SHOESHINE was released in Italian theaters—director Vittorio De Sica condemns public indifference toward street children, an issue to which the film draws attention.
