4 out of 5 stars

A celebrated neorealist with an interest in documenting the realistic trials and tribulations of life, Italian director Ermanno Olmi is perhaps best known for his second feature film, Il Posto. A searing indictment of working life and its effects on the human spirit, it makes for a fitting double feature alongside his follow-up film, I Fidanzati. In the former, a teenage boy travels from his home in the countryside to Milan, where he must earn a living in this big city to provide for himself and his family back home. In the latter film, a man risks his relationship with his fiancé to travel from his urban environment to rural Southern Italy, where he must reckon with the isolation and alienation that follows him without his beloved.

In both cases, Olmi takes a quietly tragic view of these characters’ lives, yet never sacrifices their dignity by descending into pure melodrama. His appreciation of the everyday keenly captures the small joys and defeats embedded in working life and the sacrifices people make to get by. Sparse dialogue and abundant close-ups prioritise his actors’ wonderfully naturalistic performances, a quality that is found throughout both feature films and across their director’s filmography.

A former documentary-maker for the mining company Edison, Olmi gradually looked towards fiction to satisfy his creative outlets, yet these films still bear the keen eye of a documentarian in their depictions of everyday life. In this double feature Limited Edition Blu-ray from Radiance, film lovers can appreciate the gorgeous black and white cinematography and rich environments that Olmi uses to elevate the mundane into the sublime.


Il Posto

4 out of 5 stars

An Italian teenager goes to Milan to work in a big impersonal corporate office, where he becomes disillusioned and drained of all his individualism.

In this comedy-drama about the drudgery of working life and the toll it takes on the human spirit, Ermanno Olmi tricks viewers into becoming invested first and foremost in a romance plot between two teenagers, Domenico Cantoni (Sandro Panseri) and Antonietta Masetti (Loredana Detto). The pair meet shortly after their first test for a job at a corporation in Milan, a tense affair where one can feel the palpable awkwardness of these competing candidates, who appear stiff and uncomfortable in this new environment. Simple details, like the receptionist at this business appearing anxious to please his boss, but treating Domenico as if the prospective employee is not worth a moment of his time, lend an authentic air to this farcical procedure.

But this deceptively searing satire of workplaces and their effect on one’s happiness is still looming in the distance. A chance encounter at a restaurant sees the two youngsters, who forwent continuing their education so they could financially support their families, come across one another. They wander through the city together, where the pair can forget all about their responsibilities for a short time. It’s here that their youth and innocence are most apparent, like when young Domenico is caught in rapt concentration and shaken by barely concealed nerves as he attempts to pay for coffee for himself and this new acquaintance. Whether Antonietta notices his anxiety or not, she’s kind enough not to call attention to it, appreciating the chivalrous gesture.

And yet in this scene, just as in the rest of Il Posto (also known as The Job or The Sound of Trumpets), we see his emotions as clear as day. Part of that is through Panseri’s wonderful acting, who can communicate an entire spectrum of emotions without uttering a word. Impressive too is his keen understanding of the anxieties and insecurities of a smitten teenage boy, who has to reconcile two equally horrifying realities: not being around this girl he has become infatuated with, and opening up to her. One does not need to be told when this protagonist’s heart is racing, or when his blood has run cold and he feels like his stomach has sunk deep within him: it’s all written so plainly on his face.

This phenomenal leading performance becomes even easier to appreciate given that Panseri was not a trained actor, but a teenage student who came across a callout for auditions for the role and signed up. Aside from having the looks to succeed as an actor (he bears a strong resemblance to Timothée Chalamet), Panseri does his best work here without speaking, with the emotional weight of entire scenes resting on his constantly shifting expressions. When he returns to the company building for his first day of work after finally securing employment, he is a silent maelstrom of turbulent emotions. It’s in moments like these that one can see once again how childlike he is, as he scans the room for signs of Antonietta and hopes she will soon arrive. This feeling isn’t dissimilar to a child performing for their school play as they silently register the people in the audience, desperate to see their parents in the crowd of unfamiliar faces.

The real talent that shines through in this film is Olmi, though, with this director making each of these interactions, no matter how typical of daily life, feel authentic and alive. As a satirist, he’s second to none in Il Posto, where the simplicity of his scenes ends up amplifying their ridiculousness. Occasionally moving away from this protagonist, we focus on a cluster of office workers stuck in a small room together. These workers also behave like children, whether they’re acting immaturely by throwing paper at a co-worker or making a fuss at the back of the room about a great injustice they feel they’ve been dealt, only to appear stooped and desperately meek when they take it up with their superior, who sits at the top of the room like their teacher. It’s as funny as it is depressing, with this comedy of manners gathering steam as these minor moments build on one another wonderfully throughout a single scene.

And yet, despite the satirical edge that harshens this sharp critique of workplace environments, Olmi isn’t looking to strip these characters of their dignity. If the adult workers appear frivolous, it’s part of the film’s design to show that we never truly grow up, but instead allow ourselves to become moulded by our stations in life, especially in our working lives. Their lives contain few possibilities, so they instead puff out their chests over minor squabbles with their equals and bow their heads in submission towards their superiors. Young would-be lovers Domenico and Antonietta only share one day, and even that is broken up by the various tests they undergo for the corporation, which are hilariously arbitrary. It isn’t just their mathematical ability and general health that are measured; they are also asked a series of questions that attempt to assess the interviewee’s character, yet do nothing of the sort.

It’s fitting that we follow two youngsters going about these tasks, as the ridiculousness of the hoops the pair must jump through for financial security isn’t only alien to us, given the film’s satire, but also just as foreign to the pair, seeing as how they know nothing about this core aspect of adult life. It’s an intelligent way of demonstrating how young and inexperienced workers will accept low pay or poor working conditions, since as well as having no leverage, they often have no understanding of the world that lies before them. Il Posto so tenderly showcases the innocence and purity of young love and blossoming romance that it is easy to be fooled into thinking that the film will try to make its wider societal points through a romance doomed for tragedy. While that’s not entirely wrong, what’s most striking about Olmi’s film is how little the pair interact. Instead of a romance tragically cut short, this is a tale of a spark that is never given the conditions to grow, gradually dying out as Antonietta and Domenico, who both end up being hired, are never able to find an opportunity to interact with one another.

The Italian director isn’t content to let these characters sink into abject misery, degrading their dignity and self-respect by turning them into purely tragic figures. That is why, close to the very end of the film, a scene in a dance hall ensues where Domenico grows more and more forlorn over the fact that Antonietta never showed up. Despite being one of the first to arrive, he is still seated when the hall is practically full of partygoing revellers, who all happily dance to their heart’s content. Any other filmmaker would let the moment end there, emphasising Domenico’s forlorn look and how effortlessly Panseri conjures a feeling of despair in his expression. Instead, Domenico is cajoled into dancing by an older co-worker (this is an office party thrown by their employers), and ends up having a good time almost despite himself.

For any other filmmaker, such a joyous occasion would take away from the tragic outlook or searing satire they’re attempting to craft. But Olmi never loses sight of the humanity at the heart of his film, just as his curious diversions from this protagonist wind up becoming deeply relevant to this story by its conclusion. Though its unhurried pacing and humble attitude might prove a barrier of entry for some viewers, this is a quietly tragic work that tenderly illuminates the beauty of youth and the tragic loss of innocence amidst systems that extend far beyond any one individual’s hopes and dreams.

Though we are only shown a brief glimmer of Domenico’s life, screenwriters Olmi and Ettore Lombardo have demonstrated all that they need to. Before he even had the time to recognise that it was happening, let alone reverse his fate, his future was sealed before our eyes. It takes time for viewers to recognise Il Posto’s misdirection, at which point it becomes clear that the dignity and grace it affords this protagonist is as much for our sake as for his, cushioning the crushing sense of defeat by its conclusion.

ITALY | 1961 | 97 MINUTES (RESTORED VERSION) | 1.37:1 | BLACK & WHITE | ITALIAN


I Fidanzati

4 out of 5 stars]

Despite his fiancee’s reluctance, a young man moves to Sicily for a better job… but soon starts questioning his decision.

In I Fidanzati / The Fiancés, it’s a wonder how lead actor Carlo Cabrini, who portrays protagonist Giovanni, was able to effectively guide us through this fictional world. Some of these scenes are seemingly mundane beyond reason, where a rote description of the film’s plot in chronological order would come across as painfully tedious to the uninitiated. It isn’t merely that this film is slow-paced, or neorealist, that prompts this feeling, but that several scenes are so patient and mundane they wouldn’t go amiss in a picturesque but routine documentary of a regular person’s life.

That’s not to say there aren’t great qualities to appreciate about the film’s documentary-like approach. This director’s use of handheld cameras is sublime, creating a patchwork of compositions that gradually build through I Fidanzati’s runtime to form a collage of this protagonist’s subjective reality. Though reality is often awkward and lumbering, both in conversation and action, it has its moments of grace, a notion this film adopts with a terrific degree of authenticity. Simple scenes are wide awake to the unique hums and rhythms of life, the unspoken connective tissue lurking beneath all that we do in this earthly realm, keenly mimicking authentic interactions.

Sequences that depict scheming colleagues performing juvenile pranks in a public area where people are trying to sleep, and the hushed tones that eclipse not just these characters’ dialogue, but their movements also, are easily felt and astutely realised. As Giovanni wanders through an outdoor gathering thronged with partygoers, all of whom seem to be of one mind as they live purely in the moment, such a lengthy scene, with its uniformly feel-good music and visuals, should be grating. And yet these moments are the lifeblood of this movie. Improbably, this formula works.

It shouldn’t coalesce whatsoever, as despite this filmmaker often taking on the sensibilities of a documentarian, this is a drama first and foremost. One could easily be fooled by out-of-context snippets from the film, like when Giovanni travels to work, washes his sink and then people-watches revellers outside from far above, or wanders without direction through a land he will never fully recognise, that there is no plot whatsoever. They would be half right. After Giovanni, a welder, agrees to relocate for work merely for the prospect of a promotion, his long-time fiancé, Liliana (Anna Canzi), is none too pleased that they will be separated from one another. When Giovanni isn’t tirelessly toiling at his physically demanding job, he is left to ponder the depths of his loneliness, which, after a lengthy separation from his beloved, have taken their toll on his spirit. Liliana is plagued by a similar degree of isolation, even when she is still connected to every aspect of her old life besides Giovanni. The only thing left to bridge their separate lives are the letters they send one another.

The plot seems obvious to map out just from this description. Giovanni and Liliana will be further separated from one another as time passes, with the film’s themes lingering in the unbearable agony of separation, and rank dehumanisation of the human spirit, that working life imposes on this couple. Ravaged by needs that shouldn’t  be (but are) stronger than their love, the young lovers are gradually torn apart, both from one another and within themselves. Again, those making this assumption would be half right. The movie indeed imposes a hollow feeling on both characters, with Giovanni’s strolls taking him through towns marked by desolation and buildings that are more akin to rubble than complete structures. These lonely jaunts through isolated streets and half-ruined buildings are obvious representations of his hopeless journeying down his own psychic depths. The piercing sunlight, absence of other people, and unrestricted view of clear skies only further underscore this sense of melancholy, where there is nowhere for Giovanni to hide from such feelings.

And yet these moments are also admirably humble, sparing little mercy for this protagonist without going to great pains to emphasise their melancholy. Giovanni’s days are aimless, but this also prompts new sights and sounds, including some light-hearted amusement along the way as he observes the local population. His despairing mindset is fixed in a general sense, but that doesn’t mean he is incapable of having fun on occasion. I Fidanzati might seem like a constant swirl of contradictions given its unwillingness to sink into despair or offer easy antidotes for this protagonist to cope with his circumstances. But its commitment lies in documenting the contradictory nature of life itself, where a new environment and an unbroken spirit give Giovanni plenty of opportunities for happiness, even when these moments are all too fleeting and won’t provide him with lasting contentment or a sense of purpose.

In any other drama, his and Liliana’s letters would punctuate this entire experience, but instead, we hear very little from the pair until the film nears its climax, whereupon the couple come to recognise that there is great beauty lodged in the painful feelings that absence prompts, strengthening their bond even as their memories of one another turn into phantom relics of an old life. Such memories occasionally float to the surface of Giovanni’s thoughts as he goes about his day, seamlessly integrating themselves into a story that, on its surface, has no interest in interiority. Yet, through the rich environments that Olmi crafts, his love of close-ups, and Gabrini’s wonderfully understated but deeply felt performance, there’s nothing unwelcome or abrupt about these brief shifts towards this protagonist’s past, and his thoughts override the external reality before him.

The director is particularly strong at depicting scenes that slowly build towards a lengthy climax, like a night at a dance hall that begins in hushed silences, awkward glances, and reluctant hands gesturing equally reluctant offers of a dance. But as this dance hall transforms from a room with a group of awkward stragglers hanging by its fringes to one that’s alive with music, movement, and possibility, the past and present collide with the grace of a beautiful piece of music. This is a deceptively rich film that should make for a profoundly boring experience, but somehow Olmi does the impossible and suffuses this gentle drama with beauty and sorrow. That beauty, whether it arrives in the brutal starkness of industrialisation, the faded glory of withered towns and ruined buildings, or domestic scenes that are rich in spirit, couldn’t be achieved without the film’s gorgeous cinematography. That it’s in black and white only underscores its beauty and pain, romanticising old memories while also creating harsh contrasts between its images and within them.

I Fidanzati’s ending, which at first appears to lack a definitive quality, petering out instead of hammering home its themes or emotions, cleverly ties into an earlier piece of dialogue about workers’ willingness to put up with certain conditions. It presents a desperately simple, yet nonetheless important, decision for Giovanni to make. Neither option will grant him salvation, just as they’re unlikely to bring him much suffering, either. What can be sure is that, pretty soon after reflecting upon these rain-streaked streets, his thoughts will drift once more to another world, another life, its distance from his current circumstances infusing it with more beauty than his old self could ever understand or appreciate. 

ITALY | 1963 | 77 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | BLACK & WHITE | ITALIAN

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Limited Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

  • 4K restoration of both films from the original camera negatives by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Titanus, presented on two discs.
  • Uncompressed mono PCM audio for both films.
  • A booklet with NEW writing by Christina Newland.
  • NEW Appreciation by filmmaker Maurizio Zaccaro (18:37). The filmmaker discusses the profound impression that Olmi made on him as a mentor, and sheds light on the intimate way the director attempted to relate to actors, emphasising behaving as naturally as possible. Zaccaro also offers moving personal reflections on discussions he had with the late director in his final years.
  • NEW Interview with cinematographer Lamberto Caimi on both films (10:41) and (17:06). Caimi discusses his surprising and impromptu career in filmmaking, where he became part of Olmi’s core film crew and gradually learned the trade of photography to become his director of photography. He relates the very interesting—and very slow—filming process for Il Posto, where entire days could go by without shooting since the filmmakers were busy with their day jobs. These behind-the-scenes insights are fascinating to hear, given the haphazard form of film-making involved, which ended up creating such a precise and heartfelt result. The director of photography also offers intriguing behind-the-scenes insights into the filming of I Fidanzati, including the surprising lack of location scouting, and that its lead actor, Carlo Gabrini, had no professional training as an actor. Most interesting are the still images Caimi discusses, which depict an alternate ending for Il Posto that didn’t see the light of day.
  • NEW Interview with author Richard Dyer on both films (22:57) and (39:10). The English critic and academic explores how Il Posto blends neorealism and more stylised artistic choices. Dyer discusses the idiosyncratic editing in I Fidanzati, the background of its two lead actors, and how the sense of emotional dislocation that the film explores is mirrored in what was a modernised Italian society. He cleverly dissects how both films uncover the interior thoughts and emotions of their respective protagonists through the films’ camerawork alone.
  • NEW Interview with programmer Ehsan Khoshbakht on Ermanno Olmi (16:23). The filmmaker and curator offers an engaging and passionately delivered overview of the director’s career, including his early life as a director for the mining company Edison, and how his occupation in documentary filmmaking gradually led to an interest in directing fictional, feature-length films. It is worth watching to hear about Olmi’s uncertainties over Il Posto‘s ending and his attempts to get the film financed, as well as some of the negative responses to I Fidanzati and its more subtle critique of industrialisation.
  • Alternate 2018 version of ‘Il Posto’ with one deleted scene. This deleted scene depicts a more light-hearted moment in Domenico’s working life. Taking a stroll through a funfair to distract himself from not being able to interact with Antonietta, he winds up winning a goldfish in one of the games, before giving it to a colleague who wistfully expresses his fondness for this particular type of goldfish. Like the rest of this film, it is a simple moment told with extreme care, making for a heartfelt and sweet scene. However, these interactions are inessential to the film’s plot, and would likely have caused Il Posto to feel a tad overlong if they were included in the theatrical cut.
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista.
  • Limited Edition booklet with NEW writing by critic Christina Newland.
  • Limited Edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.
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Cast & Crew

director: Ermanno Olmi.
writers: Ermanno Olmi & Ettore Lombardo (Il Posto) • Ermanno Olmi (I Fidanzati).
starring: Sandro Panseri, Loredana Detto, Tullio Kezich, Guido Spadea, Mara Revel, Guido Chiti, Bice Melegari & Corrado Aprile (Il Posto)
Carlo Gabrini & Anna Canzi (I Fidanzati).