Il Posto (1961, Italy)

Il Posto (1961)


 


The very first film I intend to discuss in my second official blog post is the 1961 Italian film, Il Posto (The Sound of Trumpets).


 


I came around to watching this film in a roundabout way.  The picture's director, Ermmano Olmi, is cited by a Catholic Christian painter/writer I admire (Michael D. O'Brien, of Father Elijah fame.)  O'Brien touts Olmi as a filmmaker worth seeking out.  Since it was O'Brien's writings that led me to discover one of my all-time favorite directors, Andrei Tarkovsky, I knew that I had to look up the works of this Olmi guy.  I am embarrassed to say that I was, until recently, completely ignorant of director Olmi's background and work.  So, I set out to do some research.


 


According to IMDB, the indispensible movie database:


 

Ermanno Olmi was born July 24, 1931 in Triviglio, Lombardy, Italy.

 

His trademarks include long, slow takes; social commentary; passionate humanism; and using non-actors in authentic locations.

 

Olmi has been married to his wife Loredana Detto (who co-stars in Il Posto) since 1963.  They have three children.

 


Like any internet-saavy blogger of today, I found some additional background on the director on his Wikipedia page:


 

Olmi's films fit into the artistic mold of Italian neorealism, though Olmi would argue (and does argue, in an interview found on the Criterion Edition DVD of his 1961 film, Il Posto) that this is the artistic tradition he is responding against because, he claimed, he used non-actors in authentic locations whereas neorealism used professional actors. However, many neorealist directors also used non-professional actors for secondary and sometimes even primary roles. His films, like most of those considered to be products of the neorealist movement, are shot in long, slow takes, and generally contain some sort of social commentary, though rarely do the neorealists wear their political opinions on their sleeves. Another film was I fidanzati.

Perhaps his best known film is The Tree of Wooden Clogs (L'Albero degli zoccoli), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. In 1983 his film Walking, Walking was screened out of competition at Cannes. In 1988, his La leggenda del santo bevitore (The Legend of the Holy Drinker), based on the novel by Joseph Roth and starring Rutger Hauer, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival as well as a David di Donatello award.

His The Profession of Arms (Il mestiere delle armi) also won a David di Donatello award.

In 2008 he received the Honorary Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

An impressive resume.  What it doesn’t say on his IMDB page or Wikipedia biography, is that Olmi is a devout Roman Catholic director.  Intriguing, to say the least.


 


Enter author Deborah Young, who wrote a piece for Film Comment magazine back in March/April of 2001 that I uncovered .  She had this to say regarding Olmi’s faith:


 

            It's strange that so few directors in Italy are religious, at least in the sense that their films are imbued with signs of their faith. Though they share real estate with the Vatican—or maybe because of its very proximity, on the theory that familiarity breeds contempt—Italian filmmakers are much better known for political militancy than religious fervor. Among the few exceptions are Roberto Rossellini and, in a complex way, Pier Paolo Pasolini. And most emphatically, Ermanno Olmi.

 


Wow, so there you go, I thought...I have definitely have got to watch this guy’s stuff!


 


I Googled a synopsis of the film.  Here’s what Google came up with:


           

With his family mired in financial troubles, Domenico (Sandro Panseri) moves to Milan, Italy, from his small town to get a job in lieu of furthering his education. A lack of options forces him to take a position as a messenger at a big company, where he hopes to receive a promotion soon. There, Domenico meets Antonietta (Loredana Detto), a young woman in a similar situation as himself. The two form a tentative relationship, but the soulless nature of their jobs threatens to keep them apart.

I rented a copy of Il Posto from my local library system.  Luckily, the movie got the full Criterion Collection treatment a few years back, which meant a full digital restoration.  The movie looks beautiful, like the day it was made, with a crisp, quality picture.  Scratches and other marks to the film’s original negative have been for the most part, erradicated, as is apparent in the new digital transfer.


 


This movie was filmed in black and white, and it has English subtitles for non-Italian speakers.  Watching a film that is not in color, and not in the native language of the people that are viewing it, can be overlooked challenges for a modern audience of a classic film.  My attention was adequately held with a limited ammount of districtions, although yes, as the IMDB description of Olmi's films indicated, the film does unfold slowly, which can try one’s patience when used to the fast pace of many Hollywood studio films of today.


 


Sandro Panseri, who plays Domenico, is completely convincing in his role.  I had no trouble imaging this young man as little different from the character he portrays.  Loredana Detto is also perfectly cast as the young maiden he forms a cute little romance with- it’s easy to see how Domenico falls for her character of Antoinetta.


 


Neither Panseri nor Detto had much professional acting experience, as is true with most of those cast in this movie.  It hardly shows.  And at a time when many Hollywood productions used lavish, expensive movie sets with highly-paid, established stars (think Cleopatra, Liz Taylor/Richard Burton, 1960) this movie uses real-life locations, the interiors of actual homes, real interiors of office buildings, real outside city streets, real interiors of trains, etc.  The results are almost documentary-like in feeling.


 


So where does the religious faith of the director come into play with this movie?  Well, for me, I think this is displayed with regard to the portrayal of the idea that every human life has dignity, a concept that can be traced back to the earliest Christians.  Sometimes in modern society, we tend to lose sight of this key concept.  In the march toward "progress," we lose some of our dignity.  How in the world this can happen, is a major theme illustrated in Il Posto.


 


At the time in history that Il Posto is set (post-WWII), Italy is in the mist of an industrialization boom.  Farmers and other agriculturalists are being drawn from the countryside to work in the cities (in this film’s case, Milan.) But these agriculturalists lose something of themselves with this corporatization, whatever they think they might be gaining. 


 


What these individuals lose in industrilized society is their past freedom.  They are shunted into a dreary job in a dark building where one is stuffed into a room full of other corporate “lifers.”  Sure, at this time in history in this place, one may have a job for life, once you go through all the deameaning tests and hoops to get the job in the first place (which are displayed with particular clarity in the movie.)  Get up at the crack of dawn, commute farrrrr into the city, work all day, return home after a looooong commute back to the countryside late at night. And repeat.  Week after week.  You end up like one particular character, a recent retiree, whose family life was supplanted by a new family, that of the corporation.  Social occasions for him, like all his co-workers, revolve around holidays and parties, dances, etc spent with others working for the company.  After retirement, his life is so tied into that corporate culture, that he spends his retitrement days coming back to visit his old co-workers on consecutive visits!


 


I came away with the notion that the main protagonist of Dominico, a young man in search of a better living to help his family, is fated to end up much like that retiree.  Thrust from his familiar country surroundings into the forboding city, he is initially in awe and wonder of this new landscape, new clothes, new (potential) love interests, new social interests, etc.  But it all too easily will become old-hat before long, and he will be sucked into the repetition of a life lived like a hamster on a treadmill.


 


Not to say that the film is all doom-and-gloom.  Far from it!  There are ample times we appreciate the wonders of the world through the director’s camera lens.  A “first date” of sorts, between Domenico and Antoinette, is particularly affecting in it’s sponteneity.  We feel their nervousness sharing a quick coffee in a downtown cafe.  Before they've barely even realized it, they’re sprinting to work in excitement, over and through buildings being constructed, hoping their lunch hour isn't over, to avoid being late.  Later, we feel sorry for Domenico when he is alone, stood up at a corporate party/dance. But soon, we see him jolted out of his solitary state, and hoisted (reluctantly, at first) into drunken revelry and bacchanalia with his other co-workers (notably a middle-aged woman old enough to be his mother.) Plenty of music and dancing and in a sea of wine-induced frivolity!  And so on.


 


I believe I’ve found a new favorite film in Il Posto, and a new favorite director in Ermanno Olmi.  The man has been very active in cinema through the years, even up to the ripe old age of 83 (!), when his most recent film was released.  I look foward to exploring the rest of his ouvre very soon.