• Sub-Plots: Police investigation showcases stories of five witnesses that depict how their day started and what they saw when it finishes in Paolino park

• Themed Character: Roman rain that drives characters to seek shelter, triggering transitions to portrayal of the prostitute at different stages of her day before meeting her nocturnal fate.

Paolino Park where all witnesses congregate
and the victim – prostitute in the far left

The above are the building blocks of an Italian cinema masterpiece, written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci based on a story by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The backdrop story is that Bertolucci has started his career assisting Pasolini in his first feature film Accatone a year earlier. He describes this experience as “witnessing the birth of cinema” as neither Pasolini nor him had any experience making films. All Pasolini wanted was close up angles of the protagonists that should resemble tormented faces of religious saints, sacrificed on the altar as depicted in timeless Tuscan paintings.

In this film you will find the typical Pasolinian themes of the rough life of poor boys on the fringe of society and their struggles to find meaning in a chaotic environment. Pasolini convinced Cinecitta’ executives to allow Betrolucci and Franco Citti to turn his story into screenplay. However by the time the script was ready, Pasolini was completely busy tending to his film Mamma Roma (1962), so luck and ample talent crossed path and the assignment of directing the film was given to 21 year old Bertolucci who had never before directed a full feature film.

In the Criterion’s interview of this disc, Bertolucci confesses to the initial disbelief sentiment the entire set had towards taking orders from a young unknown 21-year old. What I found interesting is that although Bertolucci tried to personalize the film with his signature poetic style of keeping the camera always in movement as it followed the characters’ individual trajectories towards the park crime scene, emphasizing the element of the passing hours as a prosaic manifestation of the ordinary and life-like realism – critics only saw the Pasolinian influence dominating. It tells you a lot about the delicate balance between screenplay and directing style, especially when the story comes from such a powerful source as Pasolini.

The film brings another fine auditory gem; a brooding suspense of the park scenes countered with a jovial jazzy street life – a genuine score
by classic composer Piero Piccioni. With that, the film opens up a window to a Pasolinian Rome coined in his signature novel “Ragazzi di vita” of the early 60’s, depicting rough urban realities of adolescents at the lowest social rung: the faces, the fashion, the accents, the architecture, the cars, and yes the music that paints it all with a rich depth.

You will find the story structure following Akira Kurosawa’s Rashômon (1950), where a master scene is being reflected by myriad of point views, in this case of the five eye witnesses, each revealing another layer that was not visible through the others.

Think about the next time you read the paper about the latest crime scoop, which serves as the only valid conclusion but what caused it often carries multiple conflicting agendas, which validates once again that the truth is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

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Shoeshine is a special film for many reasons. First, it marks the start of one of the most creative collaborations between De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini. Together they produced some of the best expressions of the Neorealism in Italian cinema with gems such as The Bicycle Thief (1948), Miracle in Milan (1951), and Umberto D (1952).

De Sica is responsible for 34 films and starred in some 150 films, that’s how he would typically finance his films. In Shoeshine, we can see a common theme in Neorealism, which is the lost of innocence, specifically of children who are thrown into a rough adult world, accentuated further here where neither support groups – the family or social systems – are available.

Like most films in the Neorealism genre right after WWII, there is an indifferent outside observer camera movement, scenes are shot in long takes on location, themes of lack of human solidarity, collapse of social system deserting the common man, and most importantly the use of non-professional actors.

The inspiration for this film came for De Sica from meeting two shoeshine boys Scimmietta (‘Little Monkey’) and Cappellone (‘Big Hat’) that represented the many kids in the streets of Rome who made their living by polishing shoes of the American soldiers, shouting Sciuscià, a Neopolitan corruption of the English word “shoeshine” used to attract soldiers. These two boys were not selected for the role as De Sica decided they were two ugly. Instead, two other street boys, Franco Interlenghi playing the mature Pasquale Maggi and Rinaldo Smordoni, playing the younger Giuseppe Filippucci – had their film career debut.

After the success of the film both boys were offered many projects, but whereas Interlenghi’s career flourished with 75 films to his credit, most notably starring in Fellini’s I Vitteloni’s (1953), Somordoni, did another 2 films and then broke away from show biz ending up as public transport worker.

The film obtains its power by clearly illustrating how fragile human relationships are where two boys’ strongest friendship is turned upside down due to vicious turn of events beyond their control. Like life truly is. In this sense, without playing the blame game De Sica shows how bad circumstances can play a huge role in the lives of people in postwar Italy. Italian cities where half destroyed, social systems where barely functioning, so who can condemn children if they opted for stealing, and prison guards for blackmailing? They’re all part of a long food chain that merely tried to survive.

Legendary film critic, Pauline Kael aptly put it:

“It is one of those rare works of art which seem to emerge from the welter of human experience without smoothing away the raw edges, or losing what most movies lose–the sense of confusion and accident in human affairs.”

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Great excitement for this movie which is again from and about Sardinia. The fact that the director was there presenting the film and holding the discussion makes it even more interesting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sonetaula is a book by Giuseppe Fiori that he recently re-wrote and shortened. It is set up in a decade between 1938 and 1948 (more or less) in the island of Sardinia, inland, in the shepherd’s most true world.

Sonetaula is the name of our character, in reality a nick name, which means sound of wood, since he was very skinny.

Sonetaula follows the story of many other children in a typical village of Sardinia. He has to help the father to tend his flock, because he has to go to work in a factory in Italy, he would make more money, he said. Poor people, after war, hoping to have a chance to change their lives. However, we will discover that this is not the truth.

Sonetaula is a young boy victim of his culture. In the mountain, in the cold, in the freezing solitude of woods and sheep, one day, founding out that his friends stole one of his sheep he goes and kills 20 of theirs.

It’s a revenge imposed by the shepherd culture, where you have to protect what is yours at all costs and teach others that you are stronger.

This act will mark his life and his future won’t have chances for salvation, unfortunately. Rejected now by a people that is trying to emerge from its millenary absence from the evolution, that is rejecting its archaic pastoral existence rules, Sonetaula is left alone with his life of bandit.

Maybe only 23 or 24 years old, Sonetaula, unable to trust and surrender to justice because too far from his known living codes, he plays his last card making an escape agreement with an ‘important person’, the ingegnere. A person reasonably trusted because of his high social position that, instead, has other interests than saving a poor shepherd life.

This movie has of course the charm of a neorealist movie. They took one year to shoot it, in real places, with real people, I mean non professional actors, and with real seasons, the director says. A photography very effective though, with major technological touches, maybe too many to be authentically neorealist. Nevertheless, valuable for its strong ability to make looks, silences, thoughts, feelings, talk.

However, Salvatore Mereu is not giving his true poetry, like he did in Ballo a Tre Passi. Fair enough, we know he will again.

On one hand you can look at this film and say it’s all about men camaraderie in effort to solve an economical problem, and indeed the relationships among the protagonists run the gamut from support, anger, humor, and compassion.

And yet, this film is known as the first to usher the Italian Comedy (Commedia All’Italiana) genre of the late 50’s that lasted until the 70’s. Director Mario Monicelli provides a unique opportunity to see in one film some of the biggest names in Italian cinema; comedian Totò, Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale in a minor role that started her career.

The film combines stylistic choices from the Italian neorealism, postwar film noir in the US and France, packed with a fine dose of comedy of errors. This mixed bag of styles provides the film with a sense of lightness and parody, specifically about Rififi, a French melodrama that was a big hit in those days in Italy.

I especially liked the jazzy soundtrack by Piero Umiliani that supports the plot’s rapid pace as the mastermind scheme to break a safe of a pawnshop in Rome, is “scientifically” planned and then hilariously executed.

Some of the scenes feels almost like a Pink Panther cartoon, as Cosimo (Memmo Carotenuto) attempts to rob a bank, covers his pistol under a newspaper approaches the counter with the barrel showing and asks the clerk “Do you know what’s that?” hoping to alarm the clerk to submit the cash. But surprisingly, the clerk calmly responds by taking the pistol from him and knowingly declaring the pistol’s model number and make. Cosimo with wide-eye shock immediately scurries away.

The film’s title “I Soliti Ignoti” (The Usual Unknowns) derives from a newspaper jargon that describes crimes executed by unknown criminals. The film had a sequel in 1985, named “Big Deal on Madonna Street – 20 years later,” directed by Amanzio Todini.

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