My BFF Wrap-Up: My Ranking

Starting in June 2016, I watched and reviewed every winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, or in short, Best Foreign Film (BFF), in reverse chronological order from the 2015 entry to the awards inception in 1947 (watching the 2016 winner at the end).  Part of the experiment was to see how many of these I would be able to find.  In most cases, I was able to borrow the DVD of each film from the Cuyahoga County Library system (a consistently top rated system in Northeast Ohio), and as things went further back in time, that meant using the inter-library systems CCL employs, SearchOhio and OhioLINK.  I did have to watch a couple on the dusty old VCR.  On two or three occasions when I couldn’t find the movie through the CCL system, I was able to get DVDs from the Cleveland Public Library.  Once I paid $2 to watch a movie on Amazon, and that was the grand total of money I spent on this project.  I did find a couple rare films online, having exhausted every other possibility.  Only once was I not able to find a film at all, at least with English subtitles, and that was 1950’s The Walls of Malapaga.  I watched it only in French with Portuguese subtitles, and decided to review it anyway.

My reviews were intended for people who don’t normally watch foreign films, a group that included me not all that long ago.  I found a lot of the movies worth watching, not just ones you might see at an art house, but movies I am convinced would have been mainstream American favorites had they been in English.  I also sat through a lot of tedious, self-admiring crap that got awards for having the right political or social view to the voters of the Academy.  But enough about The Sea Inside.  My goal was to make the reviews be entertaining, especially when the movie wasn't, and to give American viewer something they could relate to.

The list here is my amateurish attempt to rank what is perhaps the unrankable.  There are a variety of genres and so many different cultures represented here that it is almost unfair to compare them against each other.  But I did anyway, and the films are listed below from best to worst.  Click any movie title to read the review.  You can follow me on Twitter at @hawley5150.   

Enjoy!

1989, Cinema Paradiso, Italy

2006, The Lives of Others, Germany

1951, Rashomon, Japan

1998, Life Is Beautiful, Italy

1957, La Strada, Italy

1949, The Bicycle Thief, Italy

2011, A Separation, Iran

1975, Dersu Uzala, Soviet Union

1967, Closely Watched Trains, Czechoslovakia

1947, Shoeshine, Italy

1964, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Italy

1963, 8½, Italy

2009, The Secret in Their Eyes, Argentina

1972, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, France

1983, Fanny and Alexander, Sweden

1962, Sundays and Cybele, France

1965, The Shop on Main Street, Czechoslovakia

1986, The Assault, The Netherlands

2000, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Taiwan

1987, Babette's Feast, France

1960, The Virgin Spring, Sweden

2002 Nowhere in Africa, Germany

1958, My Uncle, France

1971, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Italy

1968, War and Peace, Soviet Union

1957, Nights of Cabiria, Italy

2007, The Counterfeiters, Austria

1974, Amarcord, Italy

1952, Forbidden Games, France

 
1961, Through a Glass Darkly, Sweden

2014, Ida, Poland

2016, The Salesman, Iran

1948, Monsieur Vincent, France

2008, Departures, Japan

2015, Son of Saul, Hungary

1970, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Italy

1985, The Official Story, Argentina

1969, Z, Algeria

1966, A Man and a Woman, France

1973, Day for Night, France

1990, Journey of Hope, Switzerland

1980, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, Soviet Union

1982, Begin the Beguine, Spain

1993, Belle Époque, Spain

1959, Black Orpheus, France

1992, Indochine, France

1988, Pelle the Conqueror, Denmark

2005, Tsotsi, South Africa

1977, Madame Rosa, France

1981, Mephisto, Hungary

1954, Gate of Hell, Japan

2010, In a Better World, Denmark

1955, Samurai, The Legend of Musashi, Japan

2001, No Man's Land, Bosnia and Herzegovina

1976, Black and White and in Color, Ivory Coast

1979, The Tin Drum, West Germany

1996, Kolya, Czech Republic

1994,  Burnt by the Sun, Russia

1978, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, France

2012, Amour, France

2013, The Great Beauty, Italy

1997, Character, Netherlands

2014, The Sea Inside, Spain

1995, Antonia's Line, Netherlands

2003, The Barbarian Invasions, Canada

1991, Mediterraneo, Italy

1984, Dangerous Moves, France

1999, All About My Mother, Spain

1950, The Walls of Malapaga, France/Italy (not ranked)

FINE!

1947 Winner, Shoeshine

Shoeshine

Director:  Vittorio De Sica

Distributed by:  Lopert Pictures

Released:  April 1946

Country:  Italy

In 1956, Federico Fellini won the first competitive Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for LaStrada, and it made him internationally famous.  He is the most widely known director from the country, Italy, that has won the most Best Foreign Film statues.  But before the Academy started the competitive award, it handed out eight Honorary Awards to films made in a language other than English in order to promote more of a relationship between American and International film.  The very first one of these special awards was given to Shoeshine, a neorealist film by Italian director and actor Vittorio De Sica.  De Sica may not be as known to Americans as Fellini is, but Shoeshine is the first of four Oscar winners De Sica would win during his long career.  That's as many as Fellini won.

Pasquale and Giuseppe bargain with the fortune teller

Shoeshine is a film about two young Italian chums, Giuseppe and Pasquale, who have a common goal: to own their own horse.  To earn money to achieve this, they shine the shoes of passers-by on the streets of post-war Rome.  They both know that they could shine a thousand pairs apiece and still not have enough to buy and board the horse they want, so when the opportunity comes to make some real dough, they jump on it.  Giuseppe’s older brother is in with some crooks who ask the boys to sell some expensive (and presumably stolen) blankets to a nearby fortune teller.  The boys are told that the higher they negotiate the price, the more they will get.  But during the negotiations, the police swoop in and accuse the boys of selling stolen goods, taking them away.  Only the police look a heck of a lot like the criminals who gave them the blankets to sell in the first place.  The fake cops take the boys out of the apartment and tell them to hit the bricks, allowing them to keep whatever the woman gave them for the blankets.  They are so happy to have enough to buy their horse that they don’t even consider what Giuseppe’s brother and his friends really had in mind—to rob the fortune teller blind.

No more shines for these two.

So Giuseppe and Pasquale are riding along on their new horse like war heroes through the streets of Rome when some real police and the fortune teller stop them.  She insists these are the boys that set up the robbery of her place, and not being stool pigeons, they keep their mouths shut.  Giuseppe, the younger and the more plucky of the two, is adamant that they not rat out his brother.  The boys are put in juvenile detention while they await their fate, split up and put into cells with four other kids each.  They will have to make it without each other for a while, and make new friends and avoid new enemies.  You get the feeling it won’t end well.

Shoeshine is a story about loyalty and what the definition of that word means.  As a prime example of Italian neorealism, like De Sica’s masterpiece of two years later, The Bicycle Thief, the characters are played by non-actors, making it seem all the more true-to-life.  It’s hard not to hope for the best for these boys, yet there is always a sinking feeling that it won’t work out.  It’s like being a Cleveland sports fan.

"Hey Tommy, now go home and get your !@#$% shinebox!"

The Title: Sciuscià.  The job of a shoeshine boy was important in post-war Italy, what with all the poverty.  Believe it or not, there are a number of famous folks who started out as shoeshine boys, such as Malcolm X, Sammy Sosa, and James Brown.  Most notably, Tommy DeVito in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas was a shoeshine boy when he was a kid, as Billy Batts, mobster fresh out of prison, reminds him repeatedly.  Batts doesn’t make too many more memories after that.

The culture:  Poverty in post-war Europe led to desperation in some cases, with crime rising as the best way to feed your family.  Certainly the shoeshine boys mixed up in the rip-off of the fortune teller looked the other way so they could forget about their miserable lives for a little and live the dream of having their own horse. 

Agenda danger:  The movie gives a hard look at how to deal with kids who aren’t quite as bad as the

The Bowery Boys, a.k.a, the Dead End Kids

crimes they commit.  Giuseppe and Pasquale both are good kids at heart, but once they get thrown into a prison of kids that look like the Bowery Boys, they have to adapt to survive.  The film pulls no punches in showing how bleak and soul-sucking such an atmosphere can be for kids who one would hope still have a chance to turn things around.

Best Picture that year:  Gentleman’s Agreement

Rating:  The Bicycle Thief is rightly and widely praised as one of the greatest films ever made, but De Sica made three other films that won Best Foreign Film (including Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis), and Shoeshine should not be overlooked as one of Italy’s great films.  Like De Sica is somewhat overlooked in comparison to Fellini, Shoeshine is overshadowed by the greatness that is The Bicycle Thief.  And that is indeed a real crime.