The Lost Shoes

He seems a nice enough man, gentle with his daughter, soft-spoken with his friends and colleagues… and yet… in the back half of the film as we learn about the politically motivated murders committed by the Red Brigade, and the kidnapping of Gen. Dozier, one sees him more as a violent criminal than as a hero of the people. Circumstances for workers were vile, of course. The unrepentant oligarchy gave no quarter and saw the working class as commodities to be consumed. Perhaps there was no other way to get the world’s attention, but the question of the ends justifying the means hangs in the air.

Catching up with him all these years later, he seems a genial senior, drinking with friends, singing revolutionary songs around a huge shared meal. Then we are told the only reason Dozier survived was because the Red Brigade member assigned to watch him the night he was rescued failed to shoot him when the police came, as he’d been instructed to do. He either couldn’t or refused to, but had he implemented his orders Dozier would have been murdered. Knowing this makes it hard to sympathize with Lanza and his comrades.

“…a dense slog of interviews and conversation…”

Recalling the 2019 movie Shooting The Mafia, which details the career of photographer and activist Letizia Battaglia covering the extreme violence in organized crime in Italy, and considering the violence of the labor movement in Italy as well, it becomes clear that Italians are not the people with whom to f*ck when it comes to crime and politics.

The Lost Shoes is a dense slog of interviews and conversation, made more so by the fact that it’s subtitled, but it picks up at the end, and the story becomes engaging and informative. There are lessons here for every citizen of a government that fancies itself as being “for the people.” The American system has faced recent existential threats, and if an oligarchy digs in here, we may also be faced with the prospect of trying to find ways to be seen and heard, same as the Italian workers in the 1960s.