Il Posto + I Fidanzati (1961/1963) Love and Work; the Original Four Letter Words

Following Weak Spot, Radiance’s second release of the week is a double bill from the acclaimed Italian neorealist filmmaker Ermanno Olmi. The set comprises two of his earliest features, 1961’s Il Posto and 1963’s I Fidanzati, each of whose themes are the original four-letter words—love and work—and Italy’s post-war industrialization era, often referred to as the “economic miracle.”

Il Posto, alternatively known in English as The Job or The Sound of Trumpets, is rooted in this economic boom. The audience is left in no doubt that this is what the film is arguably about from its opening caption, which explains that, for the people of the Lombardy region, the sole prospect of a job for life lies in its northern capital of Milan. One such person seeking a job for life is young Domenico (the achingly sympathetic Sandro Panseri), who we are introduced to as stepping stone into the bustling city to sit a series of exams for the opportunity to work at a big corporation.

During the screening process of mathematical examinations, degrading medical fitness tests, and a bizarre psychological questioning that includes the enquiry, “Do you feel repelled by the opposite sex?”, Domenico meets Antonietta (a sweet performance from Olmi’s then-wife Loredana Detto), who is also new to the world of work. The two strike up a friendship that tentatively leads to romance but, with Antonietta securing a job in the typing pool and Domenico employed as an errand boy in the firm’s technical division, the alienating nature of their employment threatens to scupper their happiness.

I really enjoyed Il Posto. It is arguably at its best in those early stages, exploring the hoops that Domenico, Antonietta, and the other hopefuls must go through to secure employment. These tender sequences feel universal, striking a chord with anyone who recalls those first tentative steps into the adult world of work. In Domenico, Olmi delivers a perfect and relatable protagonist for his coming-of-age narrative: a shyly sweet, halting youth who is, nevertheless, capable of great observations regarding those around him as he attempts to find his place in the world.

I worried if Olmi was veering off course halfway through when he attempted to explore the lives of Domenico’s older, fellow employees, but I now see that these are necessary for the protagonist’s thoughtful sizing up of those characters, their lives arguably indicating a future that Domenico will either come to embrace or retreat emphatically from. It’s interesting and unsurprising to note that, for Olmi, Il Posto was a semi-autobiographical work. Like Domenico, Olmi was a native of the Lombardy region who, for the first ten years of his life, worked as an office clerk in Milan.

At the close of the film, a vacancy opens up as a result of an elderly clerk passing away, and Domenico finally gets to achieve his dream of working in the clerk’s office in the same division as his beloved Antonietta. But, in depicting the surroundings of this achievement as a windowless, cramped room filled with the persistent chattering of the typists and the mimeograph machine, Olmi is clearly showing that this much-dreamt-of “job for life” is likely to be anything but for his intelligent and questioning, sensitive protagonist – just as it wasn’t to be in his own experience.

There’s a thread of bittersweet awkwardness that runs through Il Posto that is only right when you consider the age of Domenico. The early sequence, detailing that all-too-familiar sensation from our youth of standing in a room full of prospective candidates, eyeing each of them up – from the pathetically young, who is accompanied by his suffocating mother, to the pathetically old, who will flunk the very first examination – has a parallel in a scene towards the end of the film. Here, Domenico cautiously engages in his first experience of socializing with workmates, feeling a palpable awkward trepidation as he waits for the dance hall to fill up for the New Year’s revelry.

All the while, Domenico is seen to be “trying on” the various guises of adulthood: from the awkward purchasing of two coffees in the cafeteria between exams, which sees both Antonietta and Domenico snigger with embarrassment upon hearing the proprietor address him as “sir,” to the moment in the gents’ lavatory in which Domenico poses before the mirror to decide on what image he, in his newfound status as both an employee and, more crucially, as a man, wishes to present to the world – raincoat collar up or down? Flat cap or the firm’s postboy cap? Fixed at a jaunty angle or worn square on? Reveries that are interrupted by one workmate seeking to relieve himself, who jokingly utters that he looks like “an SS officer.”

Olmi’s follow-up to Il Posto, and the second film on this Blu-ray release, is I Fidanzati, also known in English-speaking territories as The Fiancés. Released in 1963, the film once again sees Olmi exploring themes of abandonment and alienation at the time of the “economic miracle” but appears visually and narratively more ambiguous and experimental than his earlier effort.

The film tells the story of Giovanni (Carlo Cabrini), a young man who works as a welder in his native Milan. When his superiors at the factory offer him a transfer to their dependency in Sicily, a region in the south of Italy, Giovanni is quick to accept the offer, knowing full well that this is a role within the company with good promotion prospects. Unfortunately, his decision to relocate means that he must part from his long-time fiancée Liliana (Anna Canzi), as well as his aging father.

As he commences his new life in Sicily, Giovanni cannot get the life he had left behind in Milan out of his mind. A turning point seems to be a colourful street carnival in which the Sicilians adopt various masks and disguises as they dance and perform their celebrations. From there, Giovanni begins to write a series of candid and emotional letters to the woman he left behind, culminating in a heartfelt phone call one rain-lashed Sunday. Could absence have made the heart grow fonder for our titular fiancés?

A beguiling non-linear film that put me in mind somewhat of Alain Resnais of Last Year at Marienbad fame. Whilst Olmi’s film is rooted more firmly in reality, the deployment of intercut flashbacks, flash-forwards, and potential fantasy sequences makes it difficult for audiences to know exactly where they are within the narrative. An ambiguous film blessed with beautiful, assured imagery captured in crisp black and white.

There’s too much to point out here, but I will mention the aforementioned street carnival, the film’s opening sequence in which a dance hall is being prepared for the evening with dust being thrown across the floor to make it less slippery, culminating in Giovanni and Liliana spinning around the floor, with her gazing up at him, tears streaming down her face at the news of his imminent departure and silently imploring him to look at her. The scenes of factory life are also beautiful, with the furnace light illuminating Giovanni’s labours—almost expressionistic to behold.

Crucially with I Fidanzati, Olmi seems to want to argue that the progress his native Italy was undergoing comes at a high price if it means disconnecting people from their lives, loves, and homes. We see this principally in the isolation that our protagonist Giovanni feels, adrift in a new and unfamiliar location, but we also see it in Liliana, and in Giovanni’s father, who turns to drink to combat both the terrible loneliness and the sense that his age has rendered him inconsequential to society, even though his failing health means he can ill afford to drink alcohol.

We also see it in the effects that these advancements have upon Sicily itself. A region of Italy whose industries remained traditional and unchanged for hundreds of years, Sicily was brought up short by the post-war boom, seeing many of their young relocating to the north to fulfill the needs of the new manufacturing industries. Whilst Olmi’s film turns this on its head by showcasing a northerner like Giovanni moving south to help establish new heavy industry in the region, the culture shock remains apparent. Olmi captures the slower pace of life – the salt mines, a pootling motorcar circles the empty village square delivering a public service announcement, a stray dog intruding upon a Catholic Mass to the amusement of the children in the congregation, and an anecdote that a colleague of Giovanni relates to him about how, when the plant started, the Sicilians wouldn’t turn up for work if it rained – before it disappears completely.

This Radiance release is presented on two discs and comprises a 4K restoration of both films from the original camera negatives by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Titanus. The extras across each disc include new appreciations by filmmaker Maurizio Zaccaro, and a clutch of new interviews from figures such as Olmi’s cinematographer Lamberto Caimi, the programmer Ehsan Khoshbakht, and the author Richard Dyer on Ermanno Olmi and the films respectively.

There is also the opportunity to watch two different cuts of Il Posto: the original from 1961, and the 2018 restoration, which incorporates a deleted scene some four minutes in length between Domenico and a kindly, elderly woman co-worker. This sequence can also be viewed in isolation as part of the extras. There is also a limited edition booklet with new writing by critic Christina Newland and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista.

Mark’s Archive – Il Posto + I Fidanzati