by Joel Bocko
This series will continue exploring European classics from the 60s, with three in turn from a given country – Italy, Britain, Czechoslovakia, perhaps France. After Fists in the Pocket last week, the Italian theme continues with…
Il Posto, Italy, 1961, dir. Ermanno Olmi
Starring Sandro Panseri, Loredana Detto
Story: A quietly observant young man gets an office job in the city, where he takes his first tentative steps into the adult world, and falls in love with a pretty co-applicant.
I once read a cartoon featuring an old man lying in bed, covers pulled up to his nostrils. Next to him, an obnoxiously cheerful wife hovered, chirping, “Wake up, honey! Today’s the first day of the rest of your life!” The next panel switched to a courtroom, with the sleeping man standing in the docket and a judge slamming down his gavel. A speech balloon conveyed the verdict – “Justifiable homicide, case dismissed.” A curious anecdote with which to introduce Il Posto, because the cartoon’s arch cynicism could hardly be more out of tune with Ermanno Olmi’s warm, open humanism. Yet it serves to set the film in stark relief, because Il Posto also opens with a character in bed, his eyes wide open, a mother rather than a wife calling out to him. There are times in one’s life when clichés shake off the accoutrements of familiarity and take on a fresh, glowing meaning – “oh, that’s what they meant,” we think to ourselves. If someone told Domenico Cantoni “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” he would know exactly what they meant, and it would not be cause for a bitter, murderous outburst but rather excitement, anticipation, worry, and a bit of fear.
In his late teens, Domenico hovers between the comfortable world of his childhood and the unknown world of adulthood. He heads off to Milan, where he will apply for a job at a corporation, but back at the provincial suburban apartment block where he lives, his parents still complain about him going out at night, and scold him when he tries to boss around his baby brother (the only time we see him as anything other than shy and deferential). Of course in the city, where his adult life is supposed to begin, he’s never seemed more the lost little boy: quietly watching the grown-ups around him, wondering anxiously when he’ll be fully initiated into their strange world, and perhaps silently fearing that once he is, the freshness he takes for granted will dissipate and disappear. For the moment, excitement reigns, and simple scenes carry a double meaning. They represent a real, specific situation, yet convey an extra resonance given the circumstances. Each step forward opens a new world, each turning of the corner breaks a bond with the past, and the buildings glimpsed out the window of a speeding trolley may as well be monuments to the new horizon, unexplored, pregnant with promise and perhaps vaguely threatening as well.
Il Posto is a film of youth; not a film of restless, ruthless rebellion nor exuberant romanticism (Fists in the Pocket and Before the Revolution would arrive on the scene soon enough) but a film of youth nonetheless. It belongs to the Italy of the early 60s rather than the mid 60s, when the tendrils of neorealism still clung to the visions of Fellini and Antonioni, when postwar Italy was still warming to the fact of its economic recovery and development, when filmmakers were moving past the portraits of desperation and a yearning for security, into the realm of dissatisfaction and alienation – indeed, Il Posto hovers uneasily between those two sensibilities, mostly conversant with the first but hinting at the approach of the second. It is a film of youth not just because Domenico Cantoni (played with a wonderful wide-eyed, unpresuming soulfulness by Sandro Panseri) is young, but because he embodies youth. Of course, no body, no thing in this film “embodies” meaning in the usual sense; each individual is him or herself first and always. In focusing so acutely on the particular, writer/director Olmi (with co-writer Ettore Lombardo) manages to illuminate the universal. These illuminations appear suddenly and unexpectedly, lightning insights into the offscreen lives of characters who might otherwise be reduced to types or extras. But this is not the lightning of a fierce thunderstorm, screaming across the sky and temporarily blinding us with its bright glare. Rather, think of an electrical storm where little hairlines flicker silently in dark corners of the sky, allowing us to peek briefly into the night, while ominous yet safely distant booms sound somewhere out there, reminding us how far the world stretches beyond our familiar horizons.
As we follow Domenico on his journey, from that early-morning bed to the clerical desk where he ends the film, we frequently pause for asides, digressions, even one full-blown divergence from his point of view. It is sometimes hard to tell when this curious observational quality of the film is Domenico’s and when it belongs to the director. Sometimes, as when an old man wanders into the corporate headquarters and asks, “Where’s the welfare office? Where do they take care of poor people?” (the receptionist shrugs comically), Domenico is standing nearby – in this case waiting for an elevator, well within earshot. On other occasions, the situation is more ambiguous; when the overbearing mother of one of the applicants (she holds his hand all the way into the room, and responds to his name during a roll call) pauses in front of an old mirror to examine herself, Domenico is in the other room; we are alone when we chuckle at her harmless vanity, and then we never see her again. And Domenico is at the far end of the hallway when two secretaries whisper about him behind his back – “How’s the new messenger?” “Cute – and so young!” Could he really have overheard them? Could he, perhaps, even have imagined this exchange?
These questions arise most prominently in the film’s most adventurous break – when we follow several of the older clerks through their nightly rituals and private lives. One old worker, hunched over his desk at work, is at home an aspiring novelist, stuffing away pages of his unfinished masterpiece while his landlady lingers in the hallway, griping about missed bills. Another employee, nearing sixty, spends his evening serenading friends and familiar customers at a bar, seemingly content with his life as an afterhours Caruso. A female clerk pretends not to see her young son lifting notes from her wallet, then brings her grief to work, weeping silently while co-workers gossip about her (repeating a banal observation in unison, they divert themselves with a game of jinx). In his wonderfully astute essay on Il Posto, Kent Jones observes that this passage “feels like an illumination of Domenico’s own perceptions: these hushed vignettes represent the lay of the adult land, as well as a set of possible futures.” So true, yet they must have their own reality as well; after all, when the old would-be novelist dies, his desk is cleaned out and the other employees discover a jumble of pages labeled “Chapter 19” among his effects. Shrugging, they discard them into the “personal” pile and then Domenico, who has been waiting for an opening, moves in. Seniority, however, quickly shifts him to the back of the room where his attention becomes fixed on the neverending mimeograph machine, the first flickerings of dread beginning to shape themselves in his consciousness.
If the film finds heart in office squabbles, personal rituals, and everyday encounters, it finds its soul somewhere else – in the early overtures and gestures of young love. Domenico first sees Antonietta (Loredana Detto) in a crowd of other applicants. Only gradually, unexpectedly, does she begin to stand out and catch his attention. From there, Olmi pursues their flirtatious friendship with tenderness and wisdom as well as a complete immersion in the fleeting feelings of a moment. And so many of these moments ring true. The French New Wavers, working contemporaneously with Olmi, were fond of expressing their enthusiasm in lists, and so I’ll follow suit: banal small talk about café food and test times, tacitly understood by both sides as preliminary maneuvers; the first move unexpectedly and earthily made by Antonietta, as she lifts her sleeve to his nose and asks if it smells like fried food; her acceptance of his awkwardness with teasing affection (“oh, you dunce!” as she sprinkles the underside of his collar with her perfume, “There now you’re like a young lady,” with an irresistible grin); Domenico’s acceptance of her teasing with a blushing joy; his silly attempt at boasting (“the math problem wasn’t hard’); walking past the random strangers and hoping they’ll think they’re a couple; Antonietta ever so gently leaning back into Domenico’s shoulder as they look through the window at a trench coat; Antonietta’s urban assertiveness and Domenico’s provincial reticence. Domenico buys her a cup of coffee; Antonietta chuckles when the bartender calls Domenico “sir”; Domenico drops his teaspoon and Antonietta shares hers with him; they’re all smiles, blushes, fleeting glances – “How is it?” “Good” “A little bitter” – Domenico grins and shakes his head a bit, as if to say “Good enough for me.” Then the construction site, bursting forth from the ground like a concrete flower unfolding in a future unknowable and exciting – Domenico and Antonietta look across it, realize they’ll be late, run down the scaffolding, cross the street, and Domenico grasps her hand to guide her through the traffic. They run, run, run – through the street, across the sidewalk, into a park, weaving through trees, across grass, still holding hands, exuberant, down a hill, where she breaks off suddenly and a cop on a bicycle accosts him, yanking the young man back down to earth with a rope tied around his ankle: “You can’t run on the grass! This is the road!”
An unseen period must intervene, with anxious worrying about work mixing with a desire to renew his crush. And then he‘s hired, he returns to the big building in the city, and they meet once again. Antonietta nonchalantly avoids and then peremptorily and casually returns his glances at the follow-up interview, but later they will wait together for her bus. “Did you wait for me?” her eyes sparkle, and it’s she who invites him to walk her to her stop; he lingers but makes no move and she smiles at him, wisely and wistfully, after making fun of his name – “Domenico suits you. Because you’re old-fashioned too.” Even such a broken tune is music to Domenico’s ears and it keeps playing all the way home – at least until he realizes, in a daze, that he boarded the wrong car and the train has left him behind, all alone on the frozen railroad. Attempts to meet up with Antonietta during lunch hours fail; they’re on different shifts; it rains and two older men hover near her, holding an umbrella aloft. Again, Domenico is in the station, left behind. Yet he runs into her when delivering a message to her building, and she invites him to the social club’s dance, where she’ll celebrate New Year’s Eve – “if my mother will let me.” Perhaps her mother doesn’t let her, perhaps she’s flaky, perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be, but Antonietta never shows up at the dance. Domenico has a good time anyway, dancing and getting drunk with people twice his age, even as he watches all the couples who take their romantic luckiness for granted embrace and kiss at the midnight hour. Then he’s back to work the next day, at his new desk, cue the mimeograph. Probably he and Antonietta will not see much more of each other; maybe a smile, a hello, from time to time, ships passing in the night and all that – eventually even the greetings will cease, the foghorns fall silent, and the ships will go their separate ways.
Yet hope remains. When he made Il Posto, Olmi had been working in just such an office for a dozen years; having made his way on industrial films and documentaries for the company, Il Posto represented his break into narrative features (it was his second such project, but first big success). Since then he has become a world-renowned director, crafting I Fidanzetti and Tree of the Wooden Clogs, among other acclaimed movies. But that’s not all. Shortly after shooting wrapped, Olmi also got married. His bride? Loredanno Detto, the delightful and charming one-time-only film actress who, of course, plays Antonietta in Il Posto. Olmi has suffered chronic illnesses over the years (which often arrested his filmmaking endeavors) but in his films and very rare interviews, he continues to express a cautious openness to life. If the glow of this movie is any indication, when Loretta wakes Ermanno up in the morning, should she reiterate that opening cliché, he would greet her not with rage or despair, but with a smile – shy perhaps, certainly a little bit sad, yet a smile nonetheless.
Il Posto is available on Netflix; it can also be watched in high quality on You Tube.
Read “Handcrafted Cinema” by Kent Jones.
Marvellous reflection on a superb film, Joel.
Il Posto is a rare excursion into the realm of bittersweetness that entirely transcends sentimentality. The protagonists so gently chaffe at the walls closing in on them, and so modestly reach out for more, that the diminution of their lives becomes a warm (widely accommodated) comedy. In their halting poise, the film discloses a resilience that comes as a delightful surprise.
Thanks Jim, though your eloquent summation calls forth the film’s mood more effectively than anything I wrote! Have you seen La Cotta? I saw it on the Criterion release and love almost as much as Il Posto; when I was running up on the deadline I almost considered watching/reviewing that instead since it’s only about 50 minutes, but this one seemed to fit my approach more. Still, I think I’ll cover it at some point. It’s interesting because in style and content it sometimes seems the film of a younger director than Il Posto’s (although it has a warm wisdom that definitely belongs to someone much older than the likable fool at its center).
A marvelous review and film Joel! I am a big admirer of this work. A tender semi-autobiographical film about growing pains and a young boy’s entry in the world of love, work and the decision to forge one’s own path to a more meaningful life or to remain seated behind a desk and a life of tedium.
Thanks, John! I remember your review (I should go back and re-visit now that I’ve finished this) – it is a great movie, isn’t it? I’ve only seen the shorter film I mentioned to Jim for the rest of the director’s work, have you seen/what did you think of the others?
A great film Joel for sure. No, I have yet to see any other Olmi films but look forward to it.
Btw, John, are you running in the NYC marathon on the 7th? A few of my friends are as well and I thought I heard Sam mention that on a MMD a while back. Good luck if so!
No Joel, it must be someone else. My legs can’t take it anymore and back when I could run the max I ever did was about eight or nine miles.
Joel, I believe Troy is the one!
In any case I have every intention of getting back here to impart my views on this great Italian classic of the cinema! Your review, needless to say does it full justice!
Fun film, dwarfed in my mind by the towering I Fidanzati which you mentioned, and actually most reminiscent of the Czechoslovakian films you have coming up. I just hope that in that treasure trove you will avoid Menzel/Forman/Kadar trio of Oscar/Criterion glorification and, well, boredom. I can at least take some comfort in knowing that at least the existence of Herz is acknowledged once on this website, although who knows what else. Surprise me!
Leaves, this site has gone even beyond Herz (The Cremator is one of my favorite black comedies ever) if you’ve noticed, and for the last several years it’s central contributors have taken up the task of attempting to examine every film ever made including the rarest films from Chinese cinema in the 30’s and 40’s, Czechoslovakian cinema (I’m a huge Vlacil fan in particular) and the full run of Eastern European cinema and everything Japanese.
However, with due respect it is unfair to shoot down Forman and Menzel (because they are popular) at the expence of plumbing the landscape. It would be like a classical music fan who has just discovered Howard Hanson and Cesar Frank to then say that Mozart and Beethoven are overrated. I assure you we all know Forman, Kadar and Menzel and hundreds of others (like the back of our hands) that you may never have even heard of! That’s been the business of the writers here for the past three years. If you’ve examined the site’s archives you will see the extent we’ve gone here.
My guess is Leaves dislikes them less because they are popular than because he sees them as “conventional” (Trains has the coming-of-age hook, Shop has the Holocaust theme, both of which could be considered “Oscar bait”). But, regardless of whether that’s a good or bad thing, I don’t see how one can put Forman in that same category – Loves of a Blonde is a very fresh youth film that can stand beside what was being produced in France & Italy (indeed, it has affinity to ANOTHER Olmi film, the short La Cotta included on the Il Posto). And Fireman’s Ball is very much its own beast. I think Forman’s Czech work is still the most interesting stuff he’s done in his career, that I’ve seen (yes, that’s above Cuckoo’s Nest & Amadeus).
I meant no offense, I swear! Those filmmakers mentioned a.) got Oscar nominations and b.) had Criterion releases and are thus c.) the most widely written about on the internet from the movement, with the possible exception of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. As such, I think it would be rather redundant. I don’t think the concept of ‘overrated’ is sensible, however I do think the concept of ‘justified exposure’ is. Given that the films mentioned are among my least favorite films that I’ve seen from the country/era and then that they are the most widely written about and then it is, as movieman mentioned, the perfect storm of mediocrity. I do like Forman’s film the most of the three, though, to be sure. My post may have come off as negative, though, in which case I would like to amend it as such: I am so excited that you’ll be exploring all sorts of interesting films from Czechoslovakia! You are my heroes! I worship the ground you walk on! That… that’s a more appropriate tone, more in line with what I was going for. Then I would throw in, “As long as the ground you walk on is not that of Menzel, Forman, or…” – I can’t help myself!
Fair enough (I didn’t take it as negative though)! To be honest, I’m kind of bummed out about my progress with exploring the Czech New Wave at present – most of the movies in this series have been my favorites for years (the Italian and upcoming French films, certainly) but I was going to take a different angle with the Czechs. I haven’t seen enough Czech films to take that sort of approach, so that was gonna be the one area in this Euro 60s miniseries where I actually was seeking out films I hadn’t seen before to write about – the Passer and the Chytilova seemed like no-brainers. Even getting to the point where I’m maybe resigning myself to only doing Loves of a Blonde even though I’m doing 3 from the other countries in question.
Out of curosity, is there any available (through DVD R1, You Tube, or even Torrents) Czech New Wave films you’d recommend? This isn’t an “official” sort of series with a locked-in-stone approach, but I’d still like to stick with the 3-from-each approach. Right now, it’s really only Daisies & Loves that would really be eligible (the others I’ve seen, from the aforementioned Menzel & Kadar wouldn’t really make the cut). I would probably start the Czech segment around Thanksgiving at the earliest so there’s time to scratch around…
One easy new angle to take is that all of the famous Czech(oslovak) New Wave films are Czech. They refuse to tell you about the whole other half of the country! Stefan Uher’s Sun in a Net is the film to which the ‘best film’ award in Slovakia gets its name, and it’s amazing. If only it were as amazing as Uher’s Miraculous Virgin then I could recommend it wholeheartedly. Instead I am forced to recommend both. ’tis a shame. His If I Had a Gun is great, too. In addition to him you have the Fellini of Eastern Europe aka Juraj Jakubisko whose Birds, Orphans, and Fools is anarchic ridiculousness. I think he actually left the country to make it because the tanks had already rolled in, but he went back. To go with it there’s an amazing film called Celebration in the Botanical Garden which, umm, words? Nope, don’t have the right ones. Sort of like Daisies if every person in a town were the two girls in Daisies, and there is no protagonist. Amazing. I think those are the big Slovak guys that I know of. All of these Slovak films were released by some film body in Slovakia and are thus excellent prints and well subtitled R2 PAL releases. I don’t think they have any R1 release because of the recent shortage of DVDs which were saved for more important things like the upcoming release of Vampires Suck, but such is the way of things.
Going back to the Czech side, Sam mentioned Herz and Vlacil, who both have at least some R1 distribution, and there is a R1 release of All My Good Countrymen by Vojtech Jasny that you could get your hands on, I’m sure. Other films to consider that may be only available in R2: Ucho, The Party and the Guests, and Case for a Rookie Hangman. Those are my favorites, and there are some more films in between those and the Forman/Chytilova/Menzel films, so I think there’s a good chance you’ll prefer them. If you’re having trouble finding Passer’s Instant Lightning, you should look for his Intimate Lighting because that one, you know, exists. As far as the Czechoslovak ‘gentle comedies’ go it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen. It’s so difficult to find inventive comedy without digging deep into a country’s ‘respected films’ outside of the Czech New Wave, so I was planning on going back to exploring that whole era and place until I discovered the treasure trove of Russian/Soviet comedy and, well, I may never leave. But it is great to be able to dig into a country’s major films without having to be faced with ‘important topics’ at every turn and still be seeing great works *cough* Romania *cough*.
Ha, yeah, despite my typo I did look for Intimate Lighting on torrents and couldn’t find it (though full confession, I also typed in Intimate Lightning at some point, so I think I’ve covered all the bases there…). Even tried cutting-and-pasting the Czech translation – but I’ll keep looking for it…
Thanks for the recommendations – I’ll definitely pursue them. I’m currently reading Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art and he goes through a whole slew of CNW titles (including some Slovakian ones – Birds, Orphans, and Fools was indeed made in France after the Soviets, urm, “liberated” Prague but maybe I could include it as the odd one out if I can find it, sort of like Il Posto is nestled between Before the Revolution & Fists in the Pocket, and next one’s entry is nestled between Loneliness and another British kitchen sink sports film not that I’m tipping my hand or anything…).
Leaves, you really know your Czechoslovakian cinema! This terrific post is a boon to all of us, and your appearance here is most welcome anytime my friend!
What I’m really trying to work on now is my knowledge of black comedy. I know that I love it above all else, but I don’t know where to find new stuff. If you were to do a post on the topic (or just a reply here) it would be great! The internet has proven rather unhelpful in my attempts to find something beyond ‘Dr. Strangelove and Fight Club are the two best black comedies ever made’. It’s disheartening.
Leaves, Allan Fish might be your man. As his countdowns showed, he’s got a taste for the black arts as well, mostly in a brutally serious vein but definitely in a comedic as well. He ranked El Verdugo quite highly in his 60s countdown, for example.
Forman will be on there; I’m a big fan of Loves of a Blonde. As for the rest, my planned line-up is turning out frustrating. I was particularly hoping to track down Chytilova’s Something Else but so far it’s proven impossible even in Torrent-land. Frustrating…we’ll see what turns up. More surprisingly, Passer’s Instant Lightning is also not showing up – I would have thought that would have been easier to track down. Damn Czechs. I may be reduced to writing up Daisies which is one of my favorite New Wave films and for that reason wouldn’t have shown up here (I’m trying to focus on films which might not necessarily make, say, a top 100 but which I want to discuss nonetheless).
At any rate, if you’re looking for totally off-the-beaten path check out the Fish Obscuro (see the sidebar) though right now Allan’s deep in the Nipponese and probably will be for some time. This one’s more for the in-betweens, not the 8 1/2s of the world but not really the, say, Tomu Uchidas either. For better or worse, quite a few will be Criterions. 🙂
I agree that Il Posto kind of fits in with the Czech mood – the hero even looks a bit like the protagonist in Closely Watched Trains, doesn’t he?
And come to think of it, knowing what’s to show up in a week and a half (squished between two more hard-nosed Brit films) maybe there ARE some 8 1/2 equivalents on the horizon…
This is, for lack of a more subtle way of saying it, a mesmerizing essay. That I can go one further to praise JOEL on his amazing work here, by saying that I have not yet seen this film but now desperately want to, only proves the persuasiveness of this piece.
Frankly, this essay has such gusto and verve, it would make the hardest heart melt and the reader collapse into such pliable acceptance that they would rush to seek this film out.
I cannot wait to see this film…
SAM!!!!!! Do we have this in the library????????
Of course Denis. It’s a Criterion.
Well, PARDON ME for not having the whole CRITERION catelog memorized!!!! LOL!!!!
But, then again, knowing that SCHMULEE would give up his wife and kids to keep the CRITERION collection ever abundant in his home, it’s not surprizing at all…
LOL!!!!!!!
In any case, we’ll need to set up a showing of this film in the upcoming week as I fully agree with you and everyone here that this essay by JOEL has really blown the lid off this film and the WANT TO SEE this film…