Author: Pauline Kael
Translator: csh
The translation was first published in "Iris"
When "Shoe Shine Boy" was released in 1947, I went to the theater alone to watch the movie. Before that, I had just had a terrible argument with my lover, in an incomprehensible and hopeless state. When I walked out of the theater, tears were already streaming down my face. Inadvertently, I heard a college girl complain to her boyfriend softly: "I don't understand, what is so special about this movie." I walked on the street, crying aimlessly, I no longer knew Why did my tears flow: for the tragedy on the screen, for my own helplessness, or for the alienation of my talents-for those who do not realize the glory of "Shoe Shine Boy". If they can't feel the brilliance of "Shoe Shine Boy", what can they feel? I identify with the two lost boys so strongly, which also affected my attitude towards this dissatisfied customer. Not only did I simply pity and loathe her, I was full of despair about everything... Later I learned that the man I was quarreling with also left the same night, and he was also crying when he walked out of the house. . However, the tears we shed for each other and "Shoe Shine Boy" did not bring us together. As "Shoe Shine Boy" shows, life is too complicated for us to get a simple ending.
"Shoe Shine Boy" is not conceived in the mode of romanticism or melodrama. It belongs to the rarest works of art, almost entirely emerging from the torrent of human experience. At the same time, it has not smoothed out the original edges and corners, nor has it lost what most movies have lost-the chaos and accidents in the human situation. James Eggy’s intuitive reaction when watching this movie is: "Shoe Shine Boy" may be the most beautiful, touching, and heart-moving movie you have ever seen." But a few months later, he Recovering his own evaluation of it as a work of art, he wrote that it is not a completed work of art, but "the original state of art, at best, the crude material of art." I think he should believe in his original Feeling: The greatness of "Shoe Shine Boy" lies precisely in its power to touch human emotions. It has not been processed, has not been framed as something (a so-called pattern? A structure?), and it is absolutely impossible. Composed of this structure. What we receive is something more naked, something pouring out of the screen.
In 1960, Orson Wells paid tribute to this quality of the film. He said, “I don’t think I have any colleagues in dealing with cameras. But I can’t do what Desica can do. I recently watched his "Shoe Shine Boy" again and I found that the camera disappeared. The screen disappeared. That is life itself..."
When the shoeshine boy came to this country, "Life" magazine wrote: "This new Italian work will shock the world... It will become a fist and hit the belly of American audiences." However, there are very few. The American felt the punch in his stomach. Maybe they are like that college girl, they need a real fist to get a certain personal feeling. Or maybe—from a more benign perspective—they are afraid of the pain in the movie. Almost everyone has heard of "Shoe Shine Boy"-it is one of the greatest and most famous movies of all time, but how many people have actually watched it? Not even many Italians have seen it. As Desica said, "For the producers, "Shoe Shine Boy" is like a disaster. It costs less than one million lire, but there are very few viewers in Italy. Because Its release hit a new wave of American movies...” Perhaps in the United States, the reason why people don’t watch this movie is because it was promoted as a social protest movie—it’s like putting "Hamlet" Seen as a work of political research dealing with power struggles.
"Shoe Shine Boy" has a certain sense of beauty and simplicity, they refer to that kind of great emotion, which is very rare in movie works. If you want to draw inferences from one another, you may only have to look outside the film medium-if Mozart wrote an opera with poverty as the background, perhaps he could create this painful beauty. This "social protest movie" by Cesare Zavatini has surpassed its purpose. In a lyrical way, it explores the process of two boys betrayed by society, betraying each other and themselves. These two young shoeshine boys maintained their friendship and dreams in the indifference of Rome after the war. However, when they were sent to prison for black market transactions, they were destroyed by their own weaknesses and desires. This is a tragic exploration, which focuses on the decline of innocent things. It is a strong, compassionate movie, and more importantly, it is a humane work.
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