XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Morten_5 "Shoeshine" (1946), the seventh film by legendary Italian neorealist director Vittorio De Sica, was a great critical success and became the first foreign film to be recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, receiving an honorary award./Mårten Larsson, Facebook & Twitter: @7thArtShortRevs

kenjha A couple of street kids become involved with some unsavory characters and end up in a prison for juvenile delinquents. De Sica was a leader of the Italian neo-realism movement, and this is celebrated as the earliest of his masterpieces. Unfortunately, it is not in the same class as "Bicycle Thieves" and "Umberto D." It is ironic that this is (or was) regarded as realistic because it has some embarrassingly melodramatic scenes. While the two kid actors are pretty good, the adults are all portrayed as ruthless, one-dimensional villains, showing little regard for the troubled youth. Perhaps De Sica did this on purpose to expose the conditions at such places in Italy, but it doesn't make for good drama.

Ganesh selvaraj Honestly speaking I watch movies based on their ratings and IMDb is one site that I rely on (despite the fact that many good movies are underrated; anyway I suppose it is because movies are subjective) and if I find any movie rated 8 and above I would just die to watch them. One of that kind is Vittorio De Sica's The shoeshine and not just because it was rated 8 and above, but also for the movie being a European product.Unlike American movies most of the European movies have close ends rather open ends which make them phenomenal. Now let me tell you why 'The shoeshine' is phenomenal. After having seen the movies Umberto D, Bicycle thief and The Shoeshine(the third movie of De Sica which I watched) it became evident to me that the narrative is spun around the characters (emphasising on the dimensions of the character)where there is a transformation of the character from being vibrant to becoming docile or vice-versa and the like. This can be encountered in all the three movies which I have stated above. Say it be the Father and the son in The Bicycle thief or the old man and the dog in Umberto D or the two boys in The shoeshine. For movie buffs this movie is one gem to archive.

Gerald A. DeLuca (Spoilers) The separation of hands; that's what the movie is about. In postwar Rome two shoe shine boys, young friends, after some bad luck with adult black-marketeering, and false accusation of theft, are sent to a Rome juvenile prison. As each is put into separate cells, their hands cling, resistant to the forced separation of their hands, of their affections."Shoe Shine," one of the most devastating films of all time about good youth in bad trouble, is really about what this separation of hands implies. They and we are thrust amid uncaring officials, in a prison that seems like a slow-to-die fascist institution in this post-fascist Italy. A prison inspector still imparts, involuntarily, the fascist salute. The upraised hand of the fascist salute contrasts with the desperate friendship and fraternal love in the hands of the two boys, Pasquale and Giuseppe, whom the system will hurt in the worst way possible, by separating them, by turning one against the other, by causing one to be responsible for the death of the other. Is there any greater cruelty?"Shoe Shine" is one of my favorite films of all time, and one of the greatest and most overwhelmingly moving Italian films ever made…in some ways even more potent than director De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" or "Umberto D." The two boys are beautifully played by Franco Interlenghi as the older boy, Rinaldo Smordoni as the younger. In addition to them is another figure of innocence, the little Neapolitan Raffaele (Aniello Mele). He is in this hell-hole for kids merely because he has been abandoned by his mother. Sick and doomed to TB, despite the humane concern (the only true adult humanity we see here) of the new prison assistant Bartoli, he is a son anyone in his right mind would be honored to have. He commands respect even with the tyrannical prison chief Staffera when he slaps everyone to find out about the source of a chisel in a cell. He does not dare lay his hand to this generous little person who gives his food away who shows a kindness of a stature beyond his years.Raffaele was the boy-saint who tried to re-join the hands of his two friends, Giuseppe and Pasquale. This fails. The outside forces are too massed. In the tragic end, it is Pasquale who screams his lost friend's name, his hands trying to stir Giuseppe's now unmoving body. His hands.