De Sica's Shoeshine is a rough-hewn, sometimes a bit shaky, film about two kids trying to fulfill their dream - buying a horse - in post-war Italy. Despite its mannerisms and technical flaws (strange cuts and so on) this story about youngsters trying to get by tugs at your heart. Things start going bad when the two boys are commissioned by a calculating brother to sell blankets. They visit a fortune teller and sell a blanket to her. With that money, they are finally able to buy the horse they have been dreaming of. In gloriously joyous scenes, we see the kids riding outside the city on their horse. But the cops are after them. They are accused of having stolen money from the fortune teller, and are sent to a juvenile detention center. The rest of the film is a harsh study of the conditions in the juvenile detention center. The kids are separated. The police try to force them to admit their guilt or to reveal who stole the money. After one of the kids thinks that his friend is beaten, he reveals the truth. The kids have their hearing and are sentenced to several years in prison. One of the kids try and escape with another friend. There is a prison riot and one youngster dies. The kid who is left behind is angry and seeks revenge.... Shoeshine is not a pretty film. The acting is not perfect, but the roughness in these actors make it all work. The brutality goes all the way from lines to settings - the story starts with a Dream, and ends with - you guessed it. Even if this is far from de Sica's best film, Shoeshine is worth watching because of its fearless attempt to shed lights on the outsiders of society and the cruelness they are met with. The disintegration of the boys' friendship is linked to the authoritarian prison system. The kids' former bond is broken and the kids start to act like the calculating brother - each thinking of his own interest. De Sica simply confronts us with this brutal set of social conditions that transform people into scheming behavior, never falsely relying on sentimental tricks. Here, its all about dog eat dog.
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