Word: filming
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Boot Polish (R. D. Purie; Hoffberg),the first Indian-made film to be released generally in the U.S., has drawn quick comparison to Shoeshine, Vittorio De Ska's 1947 Italian classic. The comparison, apparently based on the similarity of titles, is unfortunate. The two films move in opposite directions-Shoeshine despairingly toward the lower depths, Boot Polish wistfully toward the light. More importantly, their coupling might becloud the fact that Boot Polish is a nearly flawless little gem of a fable that glows with its own brilliance, without need of outside illumination...
...they have saved enough to buy a pair of brushes and three cans of shoe polish. For a short while they prosper, but with the coming of the rains their customers lose interest in shoeshines. Close to starvation, the boy and his sister are accidentally separated; from there the film wanders to an ending that, for all its melodramatic sentimentality, fits perfectly into the picture's curious blend of gutter reality and fairy-tale dreaminess...
...chattering happily as she works with her brother, huddling against him for warmth, patting his arm in a crisis and reassuring him, "I'll manage it somehow." Raj Kapoor trains his camera on them almost without a break, and they have rewarded him by endowing his film with the gentle luster of a miniature masterpiece...
...noisy cataract of the birthday party plunges along, the film swirls in tightening circles around each of the characters in turn, eroding the muddy façades they have built up for themselves. Burl Ives, under his robes of benevolent paterfamilias, is superb as a ruthless and contriving tyrant who has lived for 40-odd years with a woman he despises, and raised two sons only to be able to boast of a namesake. Gooper still sweats with jealousy over his brother's schoolboy athletic triumphs, and Maggie yearns pitiably for Brick's love and for the creature...
...Defiant Ones. Stanley Kramer's film about a Southern chain-gang escape, with drama and photography that are black and white, and characterizations that are expertly blended shades of grey; with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier (TIME...