The Post

The next movie that I have on my DVR that's coming up on TCM is a foreign film that was new to me when TCM ran it several months back: Il posto. Various sites say that when it was first released in the US several decades back, it had the English-language title The Sound of Trumpets, but the print TCM ran only has the Italian title Il posto. It comes on early tomorrow (Dec. 17) at 4:00 AM.

A title card tells us that in the Italian region of Lombardy back in the time the movie was released (1961), people would try to get from the small towns in the region to the big and industrializing city of Milan since there was work there to be had. Cut to one of those small towns just outside Milan, where Domenico Cantoni lives with his parents and kid brother in an apartment so shabby that Domenico doesn't have a room of his own, while it's strongly implied that he had to quit his education since the family could only afford schooling for one child and the younger kid seemed smarter.

However, some sort of industrial concern in Milan is hiring for work at corporate headquarters, and Domenico has been accepted to apply for one of those jobs and take the aptitude tests. So the next morning Domenico sets out for Milan in the hopes of getting that job, which at least would provide him and his family with some stability. When Domenico gets to the office building and up to the fourth floor where the tests are to be administered, he finds a whole bunch of other people thinking as well that this is their big opportunity, despite the fact that the tests -- part aptitude, part odd physical testing, and part really weird psychological tests -- give off the decided impression that perhaps this isn't such a desirable place to work after all.

After the tests, Domenico meets one of his co-applicants, a nice young woman about his age whose legal name is Antonietta but who has the nickname Magalì. The two go out for coffee, and you get the feeling that perhaps they could start dating if they lived close enough to each other to do this on their off hours and if they were going to meet each other again. And, of course, if both of them get hired by the company.

Well, both of them do get hired, although they get assigned to different departments such that they work in different buildings and are rarely going to see each other as they don't even have the same lunch hour. And the next time Domenico sees Magalì, she accompanied by a couple of male co-workers about ther age as they're all exiting the building. So while that portion of his personal life is bad, he's also having to deal with a lousy professional life. Domenico has been assigned to administration, except that they don't have any real clerks' jobs open yet. So Domenico is going to have to work as a lowly messenger boy until one of the current clerks leaves. The good life is decidedly not as good as they might have thought.

Il posto is a movie that is more of a slice of life movie than one that has a fully-formed plot. As a result, I can see a lot of people, especially those who are predisposed not to like foreign films either for having to read subtitles or for the reputation of arthouse pretention, not particularly caring for it. However, as I watched Il posto I thought that it was trying to show how bleak things were for those who were in many ways being passed by as Italy was advancing from both a very rural state and the devastation of the war which had ended only about 15 years earlier. In the long run, such advancement is to the benefit of society as a whole, but for the people caught up in it without the proper work skills, it's a nightmare. And both the slowness of the plot as well as the stark black and white filming, really show this. So Il posto is a movie that I think won't work for everybody, but one that did work for me.