"The Essence of Cinema" A preview of Ermanno Olmi: a working class hero

Courtesy of Criterion Colection

"The Essence of Cinema"

An introduction to the work of Ermanno Olmi

“Work is man’s chance to express himself . . . What I am against is the relationship man has today with the world in which he works.”—Ermanno Olmi

Ermanno Olmi is the Italian director that you come across after you have seen everything else in the Italian Pantheon . You have screened Fellini, Antonioni, De Sica, Visconti and all the other titans that give Italian cinema its name and resonance. Andre Bazin used to say that what gives Italian film its weight is its sense of “economy mixed with pathos”. I usually tend to agree with Sr. Bazin but in this case I think he may have suffered from not being able to view the works of later Fellini ,Visconti and Pasolini. If there is anything that stamps the work of these late 60’s Italian directors it is the opposite of Bazin’s dictum, they are full of pomp, circumstance and aesthetic indulgence. Pasolini would be proud.

Ermanno Olmi, is another matter entirely. To get to the heart of Olmi the auteur, one must first understand the nature of work. The movement, cadence, intonation and internal rhythm that governs our daily work lives is critical to his vision. Work is a banal painstaking process that keeps the “miracle at bay”, always unfolding, always inside the heart of the quotidian; and Olmi sucks the marrow out of that daily miracle via the image. His obsessive search to unwrap the mystery behind the circadian wheel of our lives is manic, impressive, borderline psycho religious; Bresson would be proud.

In the Italians, the Catholic and the metaphysical cannot be excised from the nature of the work itself, and in Olmi this continues to be the case. However, the way that Olmi “sacralizes” his characters is not done in the usual mode that would recall Virgil or Dante; it is not medieval religious theatre that attempts to ostentatiously regale its subject. No, “For Olmi,” writes critic Kent Jones, “everybody is a hero.” This is a thoroughly modern idea and is one that Olmi clings to in every frame. Il Posto with its characters that suffer quietly and move through the mundane details of daily life with this strength of purpose are a perfect example of the hero in Olmi’s view. If anything these miniature films that depict the work and activity that seem insignificant are a poignant testament to us; those whose umbilical cords attached to their cubicles yearn for something to express as they keep the miracle at bay.

Notes from Individual Films below courtesy of Jason Sanders

Friday, September 25, 2009

6:30 p.m. Time Stood Still

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1959). An isolated dam in the snowcapped Italian Alps is the spectacular setting for this semi-documentary look at the relationship between two workers, young and old. “Olmi’s inconspicuous debut was an event of quite extraordinary importance for the future.”—Mira Liehm (80 mins)

Friday, September 25, 2009

8:15 p.m. Terra Madre

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 2009). A riveting look inside the famed Terra Madre conference, centerpiece of the Slow Food movement. “At times rousing, at other times contemplative, this beautiful documentary addresses the greatest issues of our time.”—Hollywood Reporter (78 mins)

Sunday, September 27, 2009

5:00 p.m. The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1978). Olmi won the Palme d’Or (and nearly swept the Cannes festival’s other prizes) with this intimate epic of life, love, and work among three peasant families in turn-of-the-century Italy, a film of majesty made from minutiae. “A fully articulated work of cinematic art.”—Andrew Sarris (186 mins)

Saturday, October 3, 2009

6:30 p.m. Il posto

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1961). Olmi’s humane, funny, and heartbreaking portrait of a young man embarking on his first job in Milan captures the alienation and regimentation of the working world. (93 mins)

Saturday, October 3, 2009

8:25 p.m. The Fiancés

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1963). A young couple’s love is tested, first by the man’s job in a massive Milanese factory, then by his transfer to Sicily. “Achieves a poetry as intense, as concentrated, as personal as a Japanese haiku.”—Sunday Times (76 mins)

Sunday, October 4, 2009

6:30 p.m. Cammina Cammina

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1983). Olmi’s retelling of the Journey of the Magi reconfirms the magic of his cinema. “Pure delight . . . feather light and full of life.”—Film Comment (165 mins)

Saturday, October 10, 2009

6:30 p.m. One Fine Day

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1969). A middle-class advertising executive suffers a crisis of conscience after a tragic accident in Olmi’s surprisingly tender portrait of bourgeois comforts, alternately neorealist and ultra-modernist. “Superbly disturbing and beautiful.”—Michael Armitage (102 mins)

Sunday, October 11, 2009

5:20 p.m. The Scavengers

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1970). Two desperate men—one older, one much younger—comb the rugged Dolomite Mountains for iron scraps in postwar Italy. “Deceptively simple, it speaks volumes about our rat-race civilization in its vivid, quizzically funny way.“—Time Out (94 mins)

Friday, October 16, 2009

8:30 p.m. The Circumstance

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1974). An upper-class Milanese family is brought together through a series of circumstances, some tragic, others bizarre, in Olmi’s “most complex, modernist film.”—Film Society of Lincoln Center (97 mins)

Saturday, October 17, 2009

7:30 p.m. The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1978). See September 27. (186 mins)

Friday, October 23, 2009

8:35 p.m. Long Live the Lady!

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1987). Six young hotel-management graduates prepare a very unusual feast for an even more unusual clientele in this food-centric satire of bourgeois hypocrisy and delusions. ”Irresistibly funny. . . an incredibly rich tapestry of human behavior.”—Tom Milne (105 mins)

Saturday, October 24, 2009

8:30 p.m. The Legend of the Holy Drinker

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1988). Rutger Hauer is a luckless drunkard in Paris whose life changes after a chance encounter in Olmi’s mystical look at redemption and spirituality, based on a Joseph Roth story. “Humanity breathes through this moving film.”—Dilys Powell (128 mins)

Sunday, October 25, 2009

5:15 p.m. The Secret of the Old Woods

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 1993). A retired colonel wants to cut down a forest, but the forest has other ideas in this eco-friendly fable, part children’s film, part industrial critique. (140 mins)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

7:00 p.m. Terra Madre

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 2009). See September 25. (78 mins)

Friday, October 30, 2009

6:30 p.m. One Hundred Nails

Ermanno Olmi (Italy, 2007). Olmi’s final narrative feature pits religious orthodoxy and book knowledge against spiritual humanism and direct experience as a philosophy professor abandons academic life and moves to live among the people. (92 mins)

Series curated by Susan Oxtoby. Presented in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco. PFA wishes to thank the following individuals and institutions for their assistance with this series: Camilla Cormanni and Rosaria Folcarelli, Cinecitta Luce S.p.A.; Amelia Carpentino Antonucci and Valeria Rumori, Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco; and Carmen Accaputo, Cineteca di Bologna.

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