FOXTROT LAMONT
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,722
- Location
- St John's Wood, London UK
And the other side is Gina Lollabrigida. Mia bella signorina. I'll skip Posta and catch Gina asView attachment 614732
Il Posto from 1961 from Italy
Il Posto is the tale of a seventeen-year-old boy starting his adult life as a clerk in a large post-war Italian corporation. He is all but force marched there by his poor parents, but the bustling city and a pretty young girl he quickly meets provide a ray of hope.
Domenico is the boy - a skinny, shy teenager - who meets a cute girl, Antonietta, the day they both take the company's aptitude tests. They don't really flirt, as neither seems to understand flirting, so they just spend some of the day's downtime together.
Director Ermanno Olmi knows how to capture life's small details. His approach is almost documentary-like as he examines Domenico's days. From Domenico's family's shabby apartment to his awkwardness with Antonietta, it's the opposite of Hollywood glamor.
Domenico and Antonietta are both hired, but in different departments, in different buildings. Domenico's first job is as a messenger boy, which he's told is just temporary until a clerk position opens up.
He spends his boring workday doing very little other than trying to find a way to "run into" Antonietta. He's every teenage boy who doesn't yet care about work, but very much cares about girls. He is, though, very shy about all of it.
The glimpses we get of Antonietta show her fitting in better as she already has a group of young friends. Fair or not, pretty girls often have it easier socially. Seeing, at a distance, Antonietta seemingly happy in the company only makes Domenico feel lonelier.
There is a small story arc - Domenico eventually gets moved to his "permanent" job as a clerk - but Olmi's movie is more about its commentary on life for those working in a large impersonal company.
Olmi provides brief glimpses into the lives of the older clerks whose days are monotonous, salaries small and life away from work, often depressing. One older clerk lives in a rundown boarding house where he writes a novel at night that will never be published.
The "climax," no spoilers coming, is the saddest ever company New Years Eve party for, clearly, the "lower level" employees. It's held in a drab "social club" with a third-rate band providing tacky and dated entertainment.
Told from the perspective director Olmi chooses, Il Posto shows the dehumanizing effects that working as a faceless drone in a large organization can have on, in particular, unassuming people with modest talents.
It's true, but it's not the full story. Did Italy have a better option after WWII? Its economic growth and return to developed-country status was impressive in the post-war decades. Did having large well-run but impersonal corporations contribute to that growth?
Also free people own their own lives. Could Domenico take night courses to advance in the company or move to another one? While his clerical position is described as "a job for life," is he truly "trapped?" Not everyone who works for a large company is unhappy.
Shot in black and white, Il Posto impressively captures a moment in one boy's life in post-war Italy as he faces a possible future of soul-crushing monotony. Still, it's only one side of the complex political, social and economic story of post-war Italy.
Esmerelda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Ciao Ginie ella mi bambi.
I know I'm bad.