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Directed by: Ermanno Olmi
Script by: Ettore Lombardo, Ermanno Olmi
Genre: Drama (B&W)
Duration: 1h 45’
Nationality: Italy |
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Cast: Loredana Detto (Antonietta Masetti), Tullio Kezich (psicologo), Sandro Panseri (Domenico Cantoni), Mara Revel (donna anziana). |
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A man from the countryside of Italy arrives in Milan wishing to find a job in a big industrial plant. He eventually obtains a post but for a low salary as a receptionist. Here he meets a young woman and one day he invites her to the party held by the company where he is employed. But she will never arrive. In return, an employee dies and so the man can get his job for a better salary.
Italy, 1961
ERMANNO OLMI (1931)
He was born on 24th July 1931 in a village of the low lands of Bergamo province (Treviglio), in a Catholic family of peasant origin. Fatherless child, as he died in war, Olmi attends the scientific and then the arts high school without completing his studies. He moves to Milan where he enrols at the Academy of Dramatic Art to attend courses of acting; he is then employed by Edisonvolta, where his mother already worked, with the task of organizing recreational activities. Subsequently, he is asked to shoot and to documents the industrial process: from 1953 to 1961 Olmi produces about forty documentary films, where the attention is often focused on the conditions of workers than on the industrial plants: this experience gives rise to the division denominated "Servizio Cinema" by Edisonvolta, which will be under his supervision for many years. In 1955, with the movie "Il tempo si è fermato", Olmi makes his debut in the full-length cinema, dealing with some themes which will be also proposed in his maturity films: the sentiments of “humble” people, the solitude and the value of mountains. In 1961, he founds together with a group of friends the production company denominated "22 dicembre", within which he produces in the same year the movie entitled "Il posto – The sound of trumpets". This movie, commended by the critics for its lightness and the irony about the low middle-class environment, obtains the Italian OCIC award and is rewarded by the critics at the Venice Film Festival. After the movie "I fidanzati – The engagement", describing the alienation of work and sentiments, Olmi shoots in 1965 the movie entitled "E venne un uomo – And there came a man", a passionate portrait, but not hagiographic, of Giovanni Roncalli, a man of humble origins like the director, who became Pope with the name of Pope John XXIII. The peasants world comes back in a decisive manner as the dominant theme in the movie "L’albero degli zoccoli – The tree of wooden clogs", which in 1978 gained the Palm d’Or at Cannes Film Festival. Meanwhile, he moves from Milan to the mountain village of Asiago and, in 1982, to the small town of Bassano del Grappa, where he founds a cinema school denominated "Ipotesi Cinema" and produces "Cammina cammina", inspired by the long walk to Betlem by the Three Kings. In these years, he shoots many documentary films for the Italian national broadcasting company RAI and some TV spots. A serious disease forces him to the retirement from cinema until 1988, when he directs one of his greatest successes, "The legend of the holy drinker" – taken from a short story by Joseph Roth -, which obtains the Leone d’Oro at the Venice Film Festival. After 5 years, in 1993, he shoots the film entitled "Il segreto del bosco vecchio", taken from a short story by Dino Buzzati and with Italian comic actor Paolo Villaggio starring. This represents a rather odd decision by Olmi who generally prefers non-professional actors and who only in three films ("And there came a man”, "Il segreto del bosco vecchio" and "Il mestiere delle armi") has recruited professional actors for the role of protagonist. The year after he directs "Genesis: the creation and the flood" within the great international project entitled "The stories of the Bible". Olmi’s last movie, "Il mestiere delle armi", presented also at Cannes Film Festival, is the story of Joanni de’ Medici, a famous knight who was shot when he was only 28 years old by the fire of a gun, in the years after the invention of fire-arms.
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