De Sica is considered the purveyor neorealist cinema, so it is perhaps ignorant on my part to deem his works — especially this film — foremost examples of dramatization. In Umberto D, a late scene finds the impoverished and near defeated title character framed carefully through a hole in his apartment wall. This staging may relay the actual circumstances of Umberto’s living, but it is nonetheless dramatized, which I feel is somehow antithetical to the fundamental tenets of neorealism.
Such dramatization extends to (or rather, is established in) Shoeshine, and the effect is much more disheartening. Two young boys are arrested for their inadvertent involvement in a theft, and at the juvenile prison they are told to ink their hands and stamp their fingerprints. By the time they are released, you fear, their hands may not even match these ephemeral facsimiles.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Masters of Cinema DVD
11 Jan 2007 11:40 AM | Submit Comment
