Shoeshine

"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.