I swoon for De Sica. I’m very sorry I haven’t posted any kind of intro thread for this. I actually haven’t watched Shoeshine in quite a while so I’m going to rewatch it this weekend and try to write up some decent comments.
I feel so shitty for having missed a huge chunk of the World Cup, but I’ll probably be able to get back in the game for this match, yeah!
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 0 – Italy (Shoeshine) 1
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 1 – Italy (Shoeshine) 0
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 1 – Italy (Shoeshine) 0
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 1 – Italy (Shoeshine) 0
An enjoyable animation v a tiresome dated “classic”
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 0 – Italy (Shoeshine) 1
Shoeshine is fine. I imagine this is where Leonardo Favio got the inspiration for Chronicle of a Child Alone, though I think he covered the material much more effectively than De Sica. The horse seems unbelievable to me (Favio includes a horse in a much more sensible way), and a lot of the emotional elements are over the top, but it’s effective in terms of what it’s getting at.
I still have a hard time getting into animated films, so Breakfast on the Grass isn’t among my favorites. The first story worked the best for me; the others were much more forgettable. The style of animation is probably partly to blame. It felt pretty crude, though in terms of style there are other examples among this year’s films that are less pleasant.
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 1 – Italy (Shoeshine) 0
I get that Italian Neorealism is important and Shoeshine was key to its early development. It was also a pretty good film, but De Sica would go on to greater works with Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. and I’m not sure Shoeshine resonates outside its historic significance.
So I’ll go with Breakfast on the Grass, which started no movement, but is an original, funny and thought provoking use of animation. Aside from the influence of Yellow Submarine, its a world I haven’t seen before, which is always a plus. The way the animation is used over the course of its four stories is like the physical manifestation of unspoken fears and desires.
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 1 – Italy (Shoeshine) 0
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 0 – Italy (Shoeshine) 1
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 0 – Italy (Shoeshine) 1
Zavattini and De Sica back to childhood, which they had already explored with Children Are Watching Us, to get another great humanist movie with very low budget.
RE:An enjoyable animation v a tiresome dated “classic”
I can only guess that those who vote for Breakfast on the Grass neither reflect nor care about a film’s responsibility to cognitively expose social and economic inequalities in class, and the torturous lives of the world’s underclass, often driven deeper into entrenchment through military war and subsequent foreign occupation. I gather that they also don’t see any continuation of theme between Di Sica’s Shoeshine and the urban cantonization of our contemporary poor and destitute while they must continue to bear the brunt of poverty, imprisonment, crime, racism, inflamed family units and political invisibility while the more educated and self-involved classes (largely the MUBI membership demographic) are swayed by clever entertainments of animated camera art concerning vague social ills rectifiable by magical artistic expression. When one puts down their box of popcorn to vote for a MUBI cup film because they consider it “an enjoyable animation,” perhaps they should consider that their judgment has morphed into bourgeois banalities and that now might be a good time to join the threads on the latest Dark Knight episode before it too ages and grows into what you will probably consider “a tiresome dated classic.”
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 0 – Italy (Shoeshine) 1
I get that Italian Neorealism is important and Shoeshine was key to its early development. It was also a pretty good film, but De Sica would go on to greater works with Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. and I’m not sure Shoeshine resonates outside its historic significance.
I can tell you it resonates in other way. It resonated with me to the point of goosebumps which I think caused me to reassess my previous rating of this film a 9/10 and put it at a full 10/10. Yes Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D are greater, but this is so close that it’s still in my opinion higher than most masterpieces. I’m so astonished that De Sica made these three astounding films so close to each other. And I’m also shocked that I still haven’t brought myself to seek out Miracle in Milan which he made around the same time. This might be the most overal finest series of films from a director I can think of.
Not much time for many more comments unfortunately though. Life is just too hectic right now. I’m glad to even fit a viewing in.
Breakfast on the Grass reminds me of a lot of animations I have seen from Russian animator Igor Kovalyov who is the father of a friend of mine. I think this was kind of a style that developed in some Soviet countries. The characters and objects have a distinct and almost deliberate non-gemotric feel. There is no attempt to make straight or curved lines or have any realism or consistency in proportions. It almost feels very childish, but at the same time it makes it feel so much more free and closer to what real drawing can be. It’s all the more apartent in the episode where the man who looks like one of the most realistic drawing styles you could imagine suddenly gets thrust into this world. Interesting stuff for sure.
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 0 – Italy (Shoeshine) 1
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 1 – Italy (Shoeshine) 0
Better than usual turnout on this one I’m happy to say. How many people were seeing Shoeshine for the first time?
That would be me.
Me too.
Both people who voted against it! Well I hope you still enjoyed it Zom.
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 1 – Italy (Shoeshine) 0
…aagh just realised I swayed the vote away from a tie
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 0 – Italy (Shoeshine) 1
Finished Shoeshine just now so no time for talking much: it was a CLOSE CALL.
I found Breakfast on the Grass really amazing, although all the segments weren’t of the same quality. But some of them were really innovative and interesting.
Since italian neorealist is a style I need to get into more, I found Shoeshine very good and was impressed by the elaborated shots that De Sica was able to pull out during the movie. It’s probably these shots and the emotions that I feel during the movies that made me choose Shoeshine,
oh another vote thank god:)
@Risselada : I did and personally found it a worthwhile cinematic experience, but I also didn’t quite connect with it emotionally (unlike Breakfast on the Grass), so it all comes down to that.
My last comment was nasty and completely one-sided. Yuk. Big apologies to all who read it or were snapped-at within it (Kenji). I too liked Breakfast on the Grass a lot, and though my earlier comments may have sounded harshly derogatory, it wasn’t true. In competition, I still found Shoeshine the more worthy film, but it’s merely an opinion, same as it everwas.
Perhaps I woke up yesterday without a face and drew an angry one with my lipstick and eye-liner. My meds are around here some place and I’m looking for them. Glad people are viewing and voting.
VOTING IS CLOSED
Final tally:
Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) – 7
Italy (Shoeshine) – 7
The winner is:
IT’S A TIE!
My meds are around here some place and I’m looking for them. Glad people are viewing and voting.
Hahah. We all get crabby from time to time. I’m just glad it’s not permanent for most of us.
I did and personally found it a worthwhile cinematic experience, but I also didn’t quite connect with it emotionally (unlike Breakfast on the Grass), so it all comes down to that
That’s cool. I realize how my attachment to it is an emotional one too.
“without a face”
I liked that bit in Breakfast, the woman’s inner anguish at loss of her identity with the onset of motherhood, I liked how it wasn’t just focused on critiquing totalitarianism the military poverty etc but also the interpersonal world of the characters.
@Meg “I liked that bit in Breakfast, the woman’s inner anguish at loss of her identity with the onset of motherhood,”
I agree. In fact I was surprised that her identity was lost with the birth of her daughter along with her entry into single motherhood, but even more surprised that it stayed hidden for so long. Usually, if the subject of a mother’s identity is brought up, I would imagine that the loss of identity would last about as long as postpartum depression, then her face would return with the new identity of being a happy mother beaming as she played with her new infant. Instead we watched the child grow quickly into a young girl and still mother had no face of her own, but merely the “face to meet the faces” which she painted on herself each day—an intriguing comment and perhaps a more truthful statement than many an analysis might draw.
One episode I still wonder about was the woman looking for apples. After many trials, tribulations and interweavings with other people whose desires were thwarted and intermixed in societal confusions and eventual exchange, we saw the woman go behind a shed led by the promise of a suspicious man and his proffered apple. He plops the apple into her basket, the two are alone and unseen behind the hut and the camera irises out to black, meaning what exactly? The woman had resisted maulers with an agile elbow or fist up until this point, but here she seemed to remain after receiving her apple without a fight. Had she grown tired of fighting? Was this man attractive enough for the woman to decide to exchange herself for the apple— on her own decision, not his? Am I wrong that some sexual payment was implied for her to gain the apple? Is it another insight into single motherhood, womanhood, poverty, desire?
When the woman, after discovering her real identity again, disrobes for Manet’s painting Le déjeuner sur l’herbe and sits naked between two fully clothed men at their picnic, while another woman in a chemise is cooling her feet in the river or pond in the background, do you think this is also a clue on gender politics? Even after finding her identity after years of living for others, is she still relegated to the “nude model” role as a woman? Her sexuality being her only worth in art or commerce? She didn’t go home and begin painting the apple herself, or start sketching her daughter, or some such note of empowerment after her real identity had returned. Obviously this particular painting was chosen, and though it has a certain ambiguity of meaning, it nonetheless seems to advertise an inequality in gender status, power, and value (sex/motherhood). I took it as an ominous finality to the character’s odyssey, but perhaps I’m missing things. Did I miss some of the more salient signs?
Also, any options for males to make personal changes, though given opportunities, seem to be negated as well, when they too take up their stations as models in the painting, returning to the patriarchal entitlement implied by their fully clothed modelling and their pasha-like bearing? Since the film was made in 1987 during Mikhail Gorbachev’s most liberal days of Perestroika, can we presume that one of the film’s intentions was to open the dialog of just what freedoms are on the table in the new political thought? Will some have their sight returned (freedom of press/information)? Some have their shoes returned (freedom of travel and inter-global communication)? Will the strictures on art be loosened (the colorful painting)? But even so, will the issues of women be ignored, except in giving more access to traditional patriarchal family life (plenty of foods for cooking, clothes for looking attractive to men)? But what of the independent single woman, the single mother? Are these freedoms ignored, or are they omitted from the discussion on the table altogether, leaving the film-makers wondering and somewhat cynical of these new freedoms? Am I off the beam? So many interesting bits are in the short film, but clothed or unclothed (in metaphor), some issues may be universal, though others seem to speak to the specifics of living under a liberalizing Soviet order, fraught with even newer anxieties for the future. Even the notion of opening its culture to European cultural and economic influence (Russians posing for famous French paintings) seems to keep the filmmakers cautious, as well they should be.
Priit Pärn has fashioned a very interesting film, as has Di Sica in Shoeshine, both worthy of our thought and analysis. Not merely entertainments I might add, but something more. They can be a catalyst for delving deeper into the film’s questionings, perhaps exposing or solidifying our own beliefs, perhaps journeying down a track of new thoughtful terrain. Oh fuck, my soap box just broke.
Risselada
This topic is part of the 2012 MUBI World Cup. If you have not already done so, please read the first post at the topic for an introduction to and rules about this year’s World Cup:
http://mubi.com/topics/2012-mubi-world-cup-introduction-submit-your-list-of-films
Estonia (Soviet Union)
Original title: Eine murul
Directed by: Priit Pärn
Approximate runtime: 25 min
Submitted by: Jorge Didaco
Italy
Original title: Sciuscià
Directed by: Vittorio De Sica
Approximate runtime: 93 min
Submitted by: Maximilian Bercovicz, Risselada
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The purpose of this topic is to cast votes in the matchup listed above and also to be a forum for discussing the films in the match.
Anyone who has seen both of the films listed above may vote in this match. You must vote for whichever of the two films you personally like better. In order to vote you must post a reply to this topic containing one of the following sequences:
If you are voting for Breakfast on the Grass: “Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 1 – Italy (Shoeshine) 0”
If you are voting for Shoeshine: “Estonia (Breakfast on the Grass) 0 – Italy (Shoeshine) 1”
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This match will end on Monday, August 13 at 10:00 PM GMT. No votes attempted to be cast after that time will be counted. Shortly after the match ends the votes will be tallied and a winner of the match will be declared. If the films both receive the same number of votes, the match will be considered a tie.
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