Realism and Auteur Theory in De Sica’s Sciuscià

De Sica's silent masterpiece, much less famous than "Bycicle Thieves", read under the light of Realism and Auteur Theory.

"What are those cards for?" "To read the future" "So can you tell us what's gonna happen tomorrow?" "You're kids, it doesn't count." "Why, don't kids have a future?"

Sciuscià (Ragazzi) (English name Shoeshine) is an Italian film co-written and directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1946, and it is considered one of the first neorealist products of history, together with Rossellini’s Roma Città Aperta (1945) and Paisà (1946). The film tells the story of two kids, Pasquale and Giuseppe, who work as shoe shiners on the streets of post-war Rome. Struggling to work for American soldiers who will receive their services but refuse to pay them, the two kids need to find a better way to make the money they need to buy a horse. As they get involved in selling stolen American blankets to an old fortune teller, they end up in a juvenile hall, where they are split up and are forced to face the hardship of the Italian judicial system, far more corrupt than the streets. The film, which won an Honorary Academy Award, was actually undervalued in its original country, while it is considered De Sica’s first masterpiece by the critics. In Sciuscià, two artistic currents find fulfillment: realism (and, more specifically, the Italian neorealism) and the auteur theory. Furthermore, it is a perfect example of understanding the tensions of both the recently ended war, and the American pressure, on the Italian people in the post-war era.

First of all, it is impossible to have a discussion about De Sica without mentioning the current he is one of the pillars for: Italian Neorealism. This current was born as a cinematic branch of Realism, a theory that developed in both literature and painting in France. As defined by Doughty and Etherington-Wright, Realism is concerned with “fidelity in representation, rendering the precise details of the real thing or scene” (121). The main focus of this theory was to depict real stories, as explicit and as close to the factual events as it can possibly be. Its transliteration to film involves the use of the camera as an eye, rather than an instrument for manipulation. As mentioned in the book Understanding Movies by Louis D. Giannetti, Italian Neorealists focused on the theory of “This is the way things are” (499), which consists of: the use of long takes and deep focus photography, casting non professional actors, recurring to guerrilla filmmaking and on-location filming with available lighting.

Sciuscià is largely a typical neorealist film, however it has some differences with the then rising current. The two main actors, Franco Interlenghi and Rinaldo Smordoni, were not professionals, and speak their native dialect without any alteration or training. The cinematography, although essential, is very effective in bringing the viewer into the story. The camera and the quality of the film stock put limitations on the storytelling, however, De Sica, and the cinematographer Anchise Brizzi, use shallow photography (as opposed to the typical Neorealist method of using deep focus) to create a poetic aura around the children. Even though they are being forced into an adult world, they are still just kids who want to play with a horse.

For what concerns the timing of the story, although there is an evident use of ellipsis in the editing, selected moments resemble real-time filming, not rushing any of the actions and letting them take the time they actually would in real life. The locations used were the streets of Rome for the first part, and a set (a repurposed church) for the juvenile hall, so it does not entirely respect the principles of on-location filming. Although there are many elements of realism and adherence to the actuality of facts, this is a film which is very aware of being a dramatization. The Italian style is incredibly different from the French method of following actors on the streets or their homes, and building the plot around the real stories of the improvised cast (an example of this would be Chronicles of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin). The occasionally over-the-top score to the film and the clear structure of the plot make this movie a groundbreaking reinterpretation of realist filmmaking, making it involving for the viewer but still faithful to the story it narrates, as the plot is inspired by the true story of the shoe-shining kids of the Roman streets.

The perspective of kids is a common theme in the movies by Vittorio De Sica, as it is present also in Ladri di Biciclette (1948) and I Bambini Ci Guardano (1944). He uses the perspective of children to simplify more complex realities and make them more available for the audience to understand. In this film, “the children are viewed poetically, the grown-ups realistically” (Fong 23), an aspect of De Sica’s effort to make the invisible visible to the viewer. This recurrent theme, associated with a collaboration with the screenwriters to his films, especially Cesare Zavattini, make De Sica one of the auteurs of the 20th century identified by André Bazin. As defined by Doughty and Etherington-Wright, an auteur can be defined as someone “whose films may be regarded collectively as a body of work sharing common themes or techniques” (1). An interesting fact about De Sica’s style is his awareness of the self-absorbed trait of auteur movies, so his way of being an auteur is actually to leave no trace of his artistic manipulation on the text. As an auteur, he actively chooses to let the medium breathe, and follow its course. Nevertheless, since all of his cinematic production involves the same style of unobtrusiveness, De Sica’s movies are quite recognizable and can be appreciated in the recurring themes they deal with.

Lastly, De Sica wants to clearly convey, especially through the adult characters, the corruption of post-war Italy. This idea can be seen in one of the first scenes of the movie, with the children never seeing a penny for their hard work shining shoes for the Americans, the only people in Rome who can afford such a luxury. Not being able to make the money to reach their goal, they recur to other methods, among which participating in organized crime. Although this involves a smaller scale of only selling stolen items from the Americans, it was actually the American occupation that revived organized crime in Italy, which had been nearly eradicated during the Fascist era. Once the kids get to jail, their number one goal is to not make any names from the crime organization they worked for. Pasquale, an orphan, does not receive anything on mail delivery day (as even Giuseppe says, “your family is easy to feed. Once you’ve eaten, everybody has”). The other kid, on the other side, is brother to one of the criminals, so he is filled with goodies to make sure he is comfortable in the juvie and, most of all, does not break the silence. Once the police officers mentally abuse Pasquale to make him talk, it is evident that the friendship between the two kids is not as simple as it used to be. Giuseppe cannot forgive Pasquale for pointing fingers against his brother, not even if his friend did it to make the police stop torturing him (or so he thought). The corruption of the adults, down to the lawyer framing an orphan child who is forced to defend himself in court, eventually brushes off onto the kids, who are diametrically different from the ones who bought a horse and decided to share it, completely trusting one another. Sciuscià is one of the stones that paved Vittorio De Sica’s road into history. It is a poetic, heartwarming, yet undeniably tragic depiction of childhood in the post-war era. These kids are thrown into a world shaped for adults, and cannot help but absorb their corruption.

Works Cited De Sica, Vittorio, director. Sciuscià (Ragazzi), 1946. Onlystream.tv. Doughty, Ruth, and Christine Etherington-Wright. Understanding Film Theory. 2nd ed., Palgrave, 2018. Fong, Monique. “‘Shoe-Shine’: A Student Film Analysis.” Hollywood Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1, 1949, pp. 14–27., https://www.jstor.org/stable/1209380. Giannetti, Louis D. Understanding Movies. Pearson, 2018.