Intrigue

Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.

At a track near Rome, shoeshine boys are watching horses run. Two of them, the orphan Pasquale and his younger friend Giuseppe, are riding. The pair have been saving to buy their own horse. They meet Attilio, Giuse's much-older brother, and his shady friend at a boat on the Tiber. In return for a commission, the boys agree to deliver black-market goods to a fortuneteller. Once the woman has paid, Attilio's gang suddenly arrives, pretending to be cops, to shake the woman down. With a payoff from Attilio, the boys are able to make the final payment and stable their horse in Trastevere over the river. The fortuneteller identifies Pasqua and Giuse. Held at an overcrowded boys' prison, they are separated. Giuse falls under the influence of an older lad in his cell, Arcangeli. During interrogation, Pasqua is tricked into betraying Giuse's brother to the police. With their trial still in the future, the two friends are driven further apart.—David Carless

Two boys in post-war Rome earn their living shining shoes for American soldiers. Pasquale is 15 and homeless. His younger companion Giuseppe has a family, but they live as refugees on some square meters in a big apartment where many families are gathered. The two boys have developed a strong bond of friendship, and together they pool their savings for a common goal: to buy a horse. Giuseppe's older brother, a criminal, and his companions persuade the boys to sell stolen American blankets to a lady for them. The young boys don't understand that they are used in the gang's plot to rob the lady. While they are in her apartment, the criminal gang enters masquerading as policemen and accuse her of black-market transactions while they steal her money. The gangsters give the boys a large sum of money for their silence. Now the two boys have enough money to buy the horse, which they house in a stable on the outskirts of Rome. The next day Pasquale and Giuseppe are arrested by real police when the lady recognizes them in the street. They are taken to jail as juvenile delinquents--the beginning of their downward spiral. They are split in two different cells. The police try to get some information about the criminal gang from them and finally trick Pasquale into revealing that Giuseppe's brother is one of the gangsters. For Giuseppe this betrayal is the end of their friendship and the beginning of negative actions against each other until the tragic end.—Maths Jesperson {maths.jesperson1@comhem.se}

In post-World War II Rome, plunged in poverty and unemployment, the inseparable bosom friends, Giuseppe Filippucci and Pasquale Maggi, struggle to eke out an existence working as shoe-shine boys, or sciuscià: a paraphrase of the English word, "shoeshine" with Neapolitan pronunciation. Intent on buying a gallant spotted horse, the entrepreneurial boot polishers are willing to go to great lengths to obtain hard-to-find cash, putting their precious friendship to the test, delving deeper and deeper into the harsh and ugly criminal underworld. But, are the boys prepared for an unwelcome but inevitable brush with the law?—Nick Riganas

"We're running a jail here, not a daycare center." Shoeshine (1946) by Sergio Amidei, Adolfo Franci, and Cesare Giulio Viola is a drama about scrappy shoeshine boys that are sent to an all-boys juvenile prison for the "illegal sale of stolen American goods"-which they didn't know were stolen. Themes of trade, post-war hunger/poverty, survival, oppression, abandonment, friendship, betrayal, deception, kindness, compassion, and lost-innocence are woven throughout. Betrayal is the primary theme, as best friends, Pasquale and Guiseppe, save up to purchase a horse together, but when they are placed in jail, they are not only placed in separate cells, but are also deceived into turning against one another. True to Italian Neorealism, the actors and settings are true-to-life, and the boys' story ends tragically--with Pasquale getting so angry that he accidentally kills Guiseppe. The horse is symbolic of the boys' friendship and innocence as well as the loss of friendship and innocence. In the beginning, the horse is a means of playful escape, and in the end, the horse is a means of actual escape. The real tragedy in this story, however, is the societal circumstance of young boys incarcerated for committing crimes of survival. Whether living in poverty or abandoned, these boys know they have to do what they can to help themselves and their families. What we see in the prison are boys in crowded cages, not hardened criminals. When one boy is escorted down for a visitor-thinking his mother is there to see him-he cries at seeing a different woman there to deliver a "parcel full of nice things" on behalf of his mother, who decided to go on vacation instead. And despite the compassion of most adults around them, these boys are at the mercy of a justice system that thinks it must curtail crime with any means.—T.B. Hayes