Customer Reviews

Il Posto (The Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Note that also included on this DVD is a short film Olmi did for Italian television called La Cotta. It is surely one of the most charming morsels of cinema ever made, and alone would be worth the price of this disk.

Five brilliant stars for two brilliant performances by Sandro Panseri and the beautiful Loredana Detto and to Ermanno Olmi for a masterful job in creating this wonderful film. I've watched this film several times after recently purchasing the DVD and I am amazed at how a film such as this can be constructed to convey the full spectrum of emotions. Why would anyone ever need to make a film with "special effects" when the most amazing "special effect" ever created is the human face and Sandro Panseri as Domenico in this film is so convincing and brilliant. I was one with Domenico, experiencing each and every emotion. The scenes between Domenico(Sandro Panseri)and Antonietta (Loredana Detto)are very moving and special and the scenes between Domenico and his brother are priceless. The DVD extras are very interesting; the interview with Ermanno Olmi, the film restoration demonstration as well as the written material that accompanies the DVD. Working for a corporation and in an office environment for many years, I can relate to many aspects of this film. Plus it's filmed in beautiful black and white! The great thing about viewing the DVD is the ability to freeze a frame and focus on an image of an aspect of life as portrayed in this film. Grazie a Ermanno Olmi, Sandro Panseri e Loredana Detto. Complimenti! Che bravo! Grazie ancora!

If anything else, Olmi's film is about human grace. The movie follows the life of a young man who's looking for a job to supplement his family's income. There's a social undercurrent to the film, but Olmi's concern is far more humanistic. He's interested in the joys and disappointments of his characters. I found the sequence when the young man attempts to hook-up with the young woman both touching and awkward. More importantly, at one point in the movie, the camera follows the lives of the other people in the company to reveal their lives already lived and filled with everyday drama. Kudos for Criterion for releasing this film to a wider audience. It's beyond me why the movie's not widely known. It should be up there in the pantheon of the great Italian neo-realist films.

Olmi can show the everyday life of an ordinary person and make it interesting. I've never seen any other director do that. In "Il Posto" that's exactly what he does. The film is slow paced the first time you watch it but for days ater you'll keep thinking about it and you'll want to watch it again.

Put yourself in the shoes of Domenico. Here's his big chance to leave the dead-end existence of his small-town life and get a job where he can find lifetime security. Note that is a big issue.
Apparently, good jobs are hard to find in the Italy of the day. Ambitious young people aspire to work for a large corporation in the big city where they will be assured of employment for life, even though as they know, the large companies don't pay particularly well. But then judging from the film, they don't have to work particularly hard either. You'll see that once Domenico is hired and placed temporarily as a messenger, the guy who is supposed to show him the ropes actually shows him how to spend the day doing the absolute minimum.
The questions asked in the interview process, the test they are given, and the impersonal and often brusque way prospective employees were treated should have given all of them a clue as to how lame the job is going to be. The problem they were given an hour to solve was a joke, I solved it in my head in under a minute. On break, the shy and hangdog Domenico is befriended by an attractive young city girl, Magali, who also hopes to find employment at the firm.
Once Domenico is accepted, he returns to the firm to get his assignment and anxiously looks around the waiting room for his new friend. He was almost about to give up but was relieved when she finally arrived with her mother. But he worries aloud about what will happen in life to the ones who were not chosen. That says a lot about the Italian economy at the time.
Nearly everything about Il Posto outside the friendship between Magali and Domenico paints a bleak picture of the soul-wilting future the young faced working in a corporation where advancement depends solely on someone senior leaving, usually by dying. The ruckus raised at the end by the older worker over the desk Domenico originally was assigned to shows that after so many years at the firm, all a worker had to look forward to were the meanest perks of seniority. That dimly-lit room where the clerks had to work makes modern cubicle mazes seem like heaven in comparison. Then there was that awful party...
Il Posto is realism at its starkest. There is no action to speak of, the black and white photography helps to imbue it with an aura of gloomy resignation. And once you see it and ponder the future of Domenico, you'll be ever thankful that such a life is not in your future and that such work is not looked upon today as one's economic salvation.

I am italian and have watched the three Olmi's movies, Il Posto, I Fidanzati and The Tree of The Wooden Clogs, the latter is now out on DVD at amazon.co.uk. I absolutely loved every one of these movies, every one brought back memories of my times in Milan, and The Tree of The Wooden Clogs brings back vivid memories of when I was a toddler, going to visit my father's relatives in the country, and yes, they were wearing clogs with very thick socks, we children were having baths in the cow shed in the wooden bucket, the old fashion bed warmer, oh boy those bedrooms were sooooooo cold and oh! what a lovely treat to get into a warm bed! I grew into a teenager and was still going to visit the gradparents and watched the daily struggles just to live, pulling up the water from the well, working in the fields no matter what the wether was like, sitting on the tractor on the way home after a long day from working in the fields, preparing for the grape picking and the killing of the pig, granpa's wine and salamis were the best, waking up with the smell of the bacon, sitting under the porch with the women doing their daily tasks, sewing, pulling out the peas from their pods. At the end of a hard day, a good clean up and gather together after dinner by the fire with family and occasionally neighbours to see the day off. This movie is so real that I could smell it!

If you think cinema is incomplete without roller-coaster thrills, suspense, sex and explosions, think again. Try something different for a change - it might wake you up. Here is a marvelously modest tale about a teenager seeking his first job, bewildered and intimidated by the rituals of the workplace. Although the director's empathy with his cast is clear, this film's main strength stems from its rigorously simple story-telling, leaving the audience free to enjoy the fact that the main pleasure of a tale is in its telling. This film goes far beyond the pedantry of the social realism of its time and the 'story' is transparent and uneventful and may seem almost non-existent, yet this film is so good that it'll get you off your couch and make you want to direct films yourself (that's what it did to me). A masterpiece.

It is one of those films that after the film ends you still sit on for a few minutes finding your way back into this world again. The story is very simple, too simple i can describe it in less than 15 words. But I wouldn't want to spoil your experience. I just wanted to say that Olmi made his films during the '60s and 70s, Italian economic boom era when there were great economic and social disparities created between the haves and have-nots and materialism prevalent in Italy which was probably best depicted in La Dolce Vita. Olmi's films were reminders of booming Italy's difficult past being fogotten and humanity alongside it. In this film you will see that humanity, humanity not in words but on the faces and lives of people struggling to make it through. It's touching and entertaining. My only complaint was that why did it have to end so soon. I wanted to see more of the main characters.
If you like this film, I suggest you check out The Tree of Wooden Clogs. To me, it's Olmi at his best. That film led me to check out his other films like this one and I Fidanzati. Unfortunately The Tree hasn't been out on DVD yet. But once you start watching it on tape you will soon forget about digital imageries and its niceties.

This is a sweet, innocent film about a young man who gets a job in a huge corporation. We see the laborious and unorthodox process he undergoes to get the job in the administration department, first as a messenger, then to clerk. It is a clean movie with absolutely no offensive language or situations.

In 1961 director Ermanno Olmi made a film that reflected his reality when he was a young man in the corporate world at Edison Company. The premise of the cold and faceless corporate world is that if you get a job there, you have it for life. He said that people in these huge companies lived in their own world, ate there, and didn't do much but go home and come back the next morning, They were separate from the rest of the world, met their loved ones, had affairs, etc. It was a community where much of an outside world didn't exist to them.

The movie is rather unconventional, but it has its tender and humorous moments. There is no invasive soundtrack and the only music comes from specific surroundings.

Domenico, meek and mild mannered, lives with his brother and parents. They encourage to land the corporate job, knowing that once in, he is guaranteed a job for life. During the weird hiring process, he innocently befriends a young woman. We never see the two intimate and their relationship is a backdrop to his pursuit in the company. We don't know what happens afterwards.

He is introduced to the corporate New Year's party where he attends alone looking for his special friend and then just gives in to the fun. Today, we still view this as the same corporate party we might attend today.

Special features in this DVD is commentary from the director who details how this movie reflected his life, his use of genuine characters and actual locations. Included are another short film about school boy's crush and about 10 minutes on the restoration process.

With the restoration, the movie is sharp, crisp although sometimes subtitles prove difficult to read. This is movie is unique and entertaining and most of all it is clean!....Rizzp

From 1961, IL POSTO (Criterion) is Ermanno Olmi's tender, witty, coming of age story. Domenico lives with his family on the farthest outskirts of Milan in the small village of Meda. Still a boyish teen, he commutes to Milan to get a job in a big, cold, bureaucratic company. Shy Domenico finds reason for hope in the fetching new worker Antonietta. But will Domenico realize that a life spent in this faceless company will totally dehumanize him? Director Olmi says the experiences of Domenico are in fact his own, that is, until he blossomed and became a filmmaker at the age of 33. This is a sharply observed and often very funny recollection of what it's like to suddenly step into harsh adulthood with a bit of your dreams and innocence still intact. Also newly available on DVD is Olmi's follow up to Il Posto, the equally charming I FIDANZI (Criterion) about two troubled Milanese fiances when the guy takes a job in Sicily. Olmi is a master at depicting the ordinary and humble among us and the strains on the heart when separation and discovery are experienced simultaneously. Recommended.