“(This) tale of Bombay slum life...is one of the great tear-jerkers. It is in there with Stella Dallas and Les Miserables. Kapoor squeezes every drop out of every scene, and then a few more for good measure. The film's oddly lyric neorealism underlies an inordinate string of vicissitudes worthy of Victor Hugo. Ratan Kumar and seven-year-old Baby Naaz are remarkable in the leading roles of a destitute brother and sister, as is David Abraham as their friend John Chacha, an eccentric bootlegger. (The recently deceased David, a Jewish character comedian, was one of the glories of Indian cinema.) The monsoon song performed in jail by David with his fellow prisoners is a highlight; another is a rousing production number with a chorus line of slum kids, ‘A New Dawn Will Come'.... (Although the credits read ‘produced by Raj Kapoor, directed by Prakash Arora', the film) bears the stamp of Raj Kapoor's authorship from beginning to end. Most of it was shot, or reshot, by him.... Boot Polish was released in the United States in 1958 in a version that had been cut by more than an hour; the complete version will be (presented tonight).” Elliott Stein