Vittorio De Sica's SHOESHINE, the Ideal Filmic Complement to Raimondo Borea's Boys' Town of Italy Photo Essay, Plays at Film Forum This Month

MONSIGNOR JOHN PATRICK CARROLL-ABBING, IN CONVERSATION WITH A GROUP OF YOUNG BOYS, CIRCA 1940s. © THE ESTATE OF RAIMONDO BOREA.

On October 17th, 2023, GME revisited, in honor of Italian-American Heritage Month, an indelible suite of images taken by Raimondo Borea, which documented the Boys’ Town of Italy in the early 1950s. Boys’ Town of Italy was a community created by Monsignor John Patrick Carroll-Abbing, an Irish priest working at the Vatican who witnessed the plights of homeless and orphaned children in Rome in the wake of World War II. Through his philanthropic efforts, Caroll-Abbing was credited with feeding, housing, and educating over 180,000 children by the time of his death in 2001.

Beginning this Friday, June 14th, and running through Thursday, June 27th, Vittorio De Sica’s SHOESHINE (1946) will play at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata, in association with Orium S.A. Restoration. Like Borea’s Boys’ Town of Italy photo essay, De Sica’s film chronicles the struggles of homeless and orphaned children in Italy after the war, many of whom resorted to stealing, panhandling, and shining shoes to survive.

ORIGINAL ITALIAN POSTER FOR VITTORIo DE SICA’S SHOESHINE (1946). SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA.

As noted on the Film Forum listing: “Sciuscià boys Franco Interlenghi (later adult star of Fellini’s I VITELLONI) and Rinaldo Smordoni polish the boots of occupying American GIs and dabble in the black market to make a bare living, but what they’re really scrimping for is the hour of horseback riding at the Villa Borghese stables — but what if somehow they could own a horse of their own? De Sica and frequent screenwriting collaborator Cesare Zavattini (THE BICYCLE THIEF) shadowed real kids through the streets and prisons for a year: their first work of pure neo-realism, a smash hit worldwide, and winner of a special Academy Award.”

An essential piece of Italian neorealist cinema, De Sica’s SHOESHINE is an ideal filmic complement to Borea’s photographs, which can be viewed here.

The Estate of Raimondo Borea is exclusively represented by Gartenberg Media Enterprises, Inc., and we are committed to resurrecting the career of this overlooked photographer through licensing his photographs, republishing his out-of-print books, mounting curated exhibitions, and identifying a long-term repository for this significant collection of photographic works.

For additional information regarding our photography collections, contact David Deitch, Fine Arts Curator, at david@gartenbergmedia.com.