Vittorio De Sica
Sciuscià

Neorealism is more a necessity than a genre. It is the necessity to escape the fantasy in celluloid format, the quaint portrayals of the Fascist era, the complacency of power. It is the necessity to narrate reality, without frills and embellishments, without needing to invent anything, except a story. Neorealism is born from society, from what remains after the adventure of war, after the dreams of Tripoli (bel suol d'amore) and the Lindberghian travels signed by Luciano Serra. Neorealism is an artistic movement, like expressionism and romanticism; it holds no copyright, anyone can become a neorealist, but only a few will remain in history. The best.

Neorealism was born in 1943, with a very specific (though, ultimately, not very courageous) aim: to counter the proliferation of films known as "white telephones." These were films for young ladies, what we nowadays call heart-love films, which so irritate Tarantino, but with the fashions and styles of 70 years ago. They weren't sleazy films, heaven forbid, indeed, in hindsight, some have become genuine milestones of Italian cinema (I think, for example, of "Il signor Max" by Camerini), but many intellectuals were annoyed by this approach to cinema, accusing directors and actors of superficiality, lack of courage, and lack of creativity. Then the war ended, and neorealism transformed, becoming what we all know today. The (painful) representation of reality.

The quintessential neorealist film became "Ladri di biciclette" (yes, the very film by Vittorio De Sica, the leading actor of the "infamous" Signor Max), even though the pivotal film around which neorealism revolves is Rossellini's "Roma città aperta," dramatically shot with low-quality film and prohibitive resources a few weeks after the end of the war. Neorealism would enjoy a season of great successes (of quality, less so of audience) that, besides conferring prestige and esteem to our cinema, managed (for the first time) to export it beyond national borders, from Europe to America, which traditionally opposed non-domestic products.

Senior De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti (the memorable Verghian "La terra trema"), De Santis: these are the names that imposed neorealism on the entire world. Among the most beautiful "neorealisms," a very high-ranking spot is deserved by "Sciuscià," an unforgettable masterpiece by De Sica that from its very title ("sciuscià" is a distortion of "shoe-shine," a shoeshiner) puts the cards on the table: pure neorealism, even in the way of conceiving common lexicon. "Sciuscià" has on its side poetic intensity and a sense of deep human dignity that made it, over time, a true generational cult for entire generations of American cinephiles, including Martin Scorsese (who paid tribute to it in his "Il Viaggio In Italia"), Woody Allen, Orson Welles (who considered De Sica the greatest Italian director).

Steeped in poverty and war, "Sciuscià" narrates the sad story of two young shoeshiners, accustomed to living on the fringes of legality in Rome with its black market and English-speaking soldiers. They decide to buy a white horse but end up, against their will, entangled in a shady story of thefts and robberies, and end up, through no fault of their own, in a reformatory. They become acquainted with a harsh and cruel world, filled with abuse, beatings, violence, and pity. They attempt to escape, but during the flight, they meet death.

Divided into two parts (the external and the reformatory scenes), "Sciuscià" is perhaps one of the most realistic films of the entire neorealism movement, a film that never shrinks back, even in the face of the grimmest violence. There isn't a shred of sentimentality, nor of forced goodness (as the plot might suggest), but neither is there detachment, only clear participation and straightforward reporting of facts. This is precisely De Sica's great merit: not succumbing to any cinematic extortion (easy tears) without ever losing sight of the true essence of the story. Narrating a story (one of many in Italy of those times) without omitting or adding anything, smooth, precise, clean. More than neorealist, at times it seems a verist film.

And there is the very evident hand of Cesare Zavattini, author of the subject and the screenplay, especially in the first part, when the film proceeds slowly, at a child's pace, as in the most classic Zavattinian tradition, the psychological analysis shaped through the shadowing of events. On Zavattini's theory of shadowing, books and philosophical treatises have been written, so much so that the term neorealism is somewhat linked with Zavattini's name and his revolutionary cinematic theory. So revolutionary as to become the subject of curious reinterpretations or analogies with modern filmography. Listen to what Stefania Parigi (a film journalist now known as the greatest expert on neorealism in Italy) says: "Between the lines there is Nanni Moretti, inevitably brought into play for the strong analogy between the various and more or less destabilizing forms of shadowing reality, pursued by Zavattini through the streets of the Bassa Padana armed with a gaze damned by the obsessive perversion of detail and a simple wooden frame, and the Morettian walking through the streets of Garbatella." Zavattini and Moretti, be honest, had you ever thought of it?

The second part, set in the reformatory, is less Zavattinian and more De Sican, the theme of shadowing reality disappears (which instead appears throughout the film in "Ladri di biciclette") and the theme of destiny, inevitable, impossible to change, tragic, without redemption, emerges. The ending is as tragic and unjust as possible, a stroke of destiny, a fatality that should not have taken away two innocent boys, but the wounds of the war, evident in the long shots portraying a wounded and destroyed Rome, are bigger than any philosophical discourse. When everything is destroyed, nothing can be saved, not even innocence and purity.

Miraculously, however, despite being a film cut in two parts, it manages not to lose itself in useless showy frills and the screenplay (though a bit naive, it's undeniable) manages to stay firmly balanced between storytelling and social considerations. Verist, as previously mentioned, but also very humane. So humane as to leave us speechless: the ending does not make us cry, not a single tear falls, precisely because it is extremely human, not showy. To note, for the record, the extraordinary performances of a cast of great non-professional actors (as in the best neorealist tradition), among whom stands out Franco Interlenghi, the only one who would become a professional actor (there is no longer any news of Aniello Mele, Bruno Ortensi, Emilio Cigoli, and Rinaldo Smordoni).

Like all respectable neorealist films, "Sciuscià" was met with negative reception from the public, from the critics, and was heavily boycotted by the then Christian Democrat government (famous is the outburst with which Andreotti addressed the neorealists: "Dirty linen should be washed at home"), while it was met with positive reception in America, where it received great applause and a well-deserved special Oscar (the one for best foreign film had not yet been invented yet). For once, we cannot complain about the Academy. Good for them.

After "Sciuscià", neorealism continued unabated, from "Paisà" to "Umberto D.", except to transform into "pink neorealism" at the beginning of the 1950s when even great directors like De Sica or Rossellini decided to produce vérité films steeped in cheap sentimentality. By heaven, not disagreeable works ("Pane, amore e fantasia" is the best example of pink neorealism), but, in short, qualitatively inferior to their predecessors. Then pink neorealism also disappeared, and Italian comedy was born. Another great season of Italian cinema.

It is certain that the distant and desperate gaze of Aniello Mele looking at his friend through the railings of the reformatory still sends chills today. And, at the risk of seeming an incurable nostalgist, I must say that this type of cinema is somewhat (an understatement intended as a gentle euphemism) lacking today. And to think that today Sciuscià is the name of a nightclub in Ercolano, honestly, fills me with sadness.