IT314 ITALIAN CINEMA: INDIVIDUAL PERSPECTIVES Term 2, week 7: Alternative Perspectives (i) Sciuscià (Vittorio De Sica, 1946) Key points: - the child’s perspective – plot; - the child’s perspective – society, morality, values; - the child’s perspective – mise-‐en-‐scène, shot; - imprisonment and liberty; - spaces: interior, exterior; the adult world and the natural world; - neorealism; referentiality and self-‐referentiality - aesthetics of the child’s perspective. ‘In Shoe-‐Shine, two distinct worlds come face to face, the world of children and the world of grown-‐ups. If there were only the children’s world, there would be no dramatic impact, no tragedy. But the picture deals with children who come into conflict with grown-‐ups, and with grown-‐ups who have just emerged from the shocking experience of the war and a profound political upheaval. In these two worlds the rules of the game are entirely different, and the conflict is born of the impossibility that one group will understand and adapt itself to the rules of the other. The two worlds do not interpenetrate. They exclude each other’ - from Monique Fong, in Hollywood Quarterly (p. 19) [see below]. ‘Just as the title itself, Sciuscià, corrupts or “blurs” the Italian word for shoeshine, the “soft effects” of the cinematography blur reality slightly, especially in the last scene on the bridge, where mist also obscures the image […cites Fong…]. I would […] say that the “soft effects” suggest that the story is seen not only through the eyes of children, but also through those of the American occupation troops, the Italian government, the prison officials, and De Sica himself – eyes that, like those of the children, do not comprehend fully what they see, do not have sufficient knowledge’ - from Bert Cardullo, ‘The Art of Shoeshine’, in Curle and Snyder (eds) (p. 134) [see below]. Dr Jennifer Burns, H411, tel. (024 765) 73096, e-‐mail <[email protected]> Select bibliography: Alsop, Elizabeth, ‘The Imaginary Crowd: Neorealism and the Uses of Coralità’, The Velvet Light Trap, 74 (2014), 27-‐41 Curle, Howard and Stephen Snyder (eds), Vittorio De Sica : Contemporary Perspectives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) Fisher, J., ‘On the Ruins of Masculinity: The Figure of the Child in Italian Neorealism and the German Rubble-‐Film’, in Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema, ed. by Ruberto and Wilson (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007), pp. 25-‐53 Fong, Monique, ‘“Shoe-‐Shine”: A Student Film Analysis’, in Hollywood Quarterly, vol. 4, n. 1 (1949), 14-‐27 Gordon, Robert, Bicycle Thieves (London: Palgrave Macmillan/BFI, 2008) Hipkins, Danielle and Roger Pitt (eds), New Visions of the Child in Italian Cinema (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014) Micciché, Lino (ed.), De Sica, autore, regista, attore (Venice: Marsilio, 1992) Rigoletto, Sergio, Masculinity and Italian Cinema: Sexual Politics, Social Conflict and Male Crisis in the 1970s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014) Film credits (www.imdb.com): Directed by Vittorio De Sica Writing by Sergio Amidei, Adolfo Franci, Cesare Giulio Viola, Cesare Zavattini Cast: Franco Interlenghi ... Pasquale Maggi Rinaldo Smordoni ... Giuseppe Filippucci Annielo Mele ... Raffaele Bruno Ortenzi ... Arcangeli Emilio Cigoli ... Staffera Pacifico Astrologo ... Vittorio Maria Campi ... Palmist Antonio Carlino ... L’Abruzzese Angelo D’Amico ... Siciliano Produced by Giuseppe Amato, Paolo William Tamburella Original Music by Alessandro Cicognini Cinematography by Anchise Brizzi Film Editing by Niccolò Lazzari Dr Jennifer Burns, H411, tel. (024 765) 73096, e-‐mail <[email protected]>