194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

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sevenarts
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#26 Post by sevenarts » Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:35 pm

Well, agreed that the short has nothing on the two features, but I enjoyed the very Rohmeresque second half a lot. I guess it could veer fairly close to soap opera territory, but I thought the tight dialogue and the restrained performances did a nice job of ducking that danger. Your description of Il Posto is pretty much exactly how I feel about I Fidanzati -- so perfectly paced, beautiful, subtle, and deeply emotional. I was gasping at the end. Just a perfect film. Il Posto is great too, but didn't hit me quite as hard.

Also, I've been meaning to ask for a while, and might as well do it here, has anyone seen any later Olmi? I see that at least a couple of his 70s and 80s films seem to be on DVD, but I'm not sure how appealing they are (as films or as DVDs). Keep Walking sounds like a fascinating religious/Marxist amalgam, but is unfortunately only out from Facets. Yuck. The Tree of Wooden Clogs seems to be out in decent editions in the UK or Italy, but sounds much less appealing as a film. Any comments on these or others that might be around?

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zedz
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#27 Post by zedz » Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:02 pm

Tree of Wooden Clogs is a masterpiece. The UK disc is serviceable, and can be quite cheap if you look around.

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pro-bassoonist
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#28 Post by pro-bassoonist » Wed Apr 18, 2007 12:20 am

zedz wrote:Tree of Wooden Clogs is a masterpiece. The UK disc is serviceable, and can be quite cheap if you look around.
A new improved print is coming out in the UK towards the end of the summer!

Pro-B

Suzukifan
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#29 Post by Suzukifan » Thu May 03, 2007 12:38 pm

What's an "art house" film? Hell if I know. A friend says it is a film that is image rather than narrative based and I suppose that definition can be fruitful.

With that definition "I Fidanzati" is sure one hell of an "art house" film. A man's loneliness both missing his fiance and acclimating to a new environment and it's told in a series of stunning visual motifs and Olmi also manages to show the impact of industrialization on southern Italy to boot.

It's a little disconcerting that Olmi's editing blurs the time line and isn't explicit about the ultimate resolution. Disconcerting because I liked the main character. I'd followed him around watching him try to make the best of it, trying to lay a foundation for his and his fiance's future and I just plain liked him. To a large extent this film takes on the same themes as Visconti's rather bloated "Rocco and His Brothers" and is more effective because the film is more sympathetic. Or maybe that's just my bias but this one should not be overlooked.

I had held off this one for a while even though I thoroughly enjoyed "Il Posto" Decided to Netflix it and I put in my order for "I Fidanzati" this morning. It's one of those masterpieces that can so easily run under the radar. This is what you can say in a little when you have enormous talent and self discipline.

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skuhn8
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#30 Post by skuhn8 » Thu May 03, 2007 2:30 pm

I'm starting to believe that every time someone experiences that magic click upon first discovering the wonders of I Fidanzati an angel gets its wings. I know I've repeated this perhaps too many times: but this is really one of the prize jewels of the CC, and probably one of the least lauded.
It's a little disconcerting that Olmi's editing blurs the time line and isn't explicit about the ultimate resolution. Disconcerting because I liked the main character. I'd followed him around watching him try to make the best of it, trying to lay a foundation for his and his fiance's future and I just plain liked him. To a large extent this film takes on the same themes as Visconti's rather bloated "Rocco and His Brothers" and is more effective because the film is more sympathetic. Or maybe that's just my bias but this one should not be overlooked.
Couldn't agree more. It's amazing how Olmi pulls this off; I can't quite grasp it. Because he seems to give us so little--the character isn't particularly likeable, nor unlikeable for that matter. But there's something about situation, the pervading atmosphere and how he carries himself ever onward, with only a bare thread of hope (the letter the phone call, a losing endeavor). I think this is the greatest 'little film'.

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#31 Post by Suzukifan » Thu May 03, 2007 3:39 pm

It is a terrific film and very striking visually. One of those times I really have to thank Criterion because it's one I would have missed.

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sevenarts
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#32 Post by sevenarts » Thu May 03, 2007 4:12 pm

skuhn8 wrote:Couldn't agree more. It's amazing how Olmi pulls this off; I can't quite grasp it. Because he seems to give us so little--the character isn't particularly likeable, nor unlikeable for that matter. But there's something about situation, the pervading atmosphere and how he carries himself ever onward, with only a bare thread of hope (the letter the phone call, a losing endeavor). I think this is the greatest 'little film'.
I think a large part of its effect is the way the film is structured around emotional suppression and release. The bulk of the film is so quiet, so methodically paced and minimal in terms of dialogue, and its dominant emotional tone is a subtle melancholy as the man simply lives through his isolation. When juxtaposed against this, the sudden flurry of dialogue through the exchanged letters and phone calls at the end of the film is really invigorating and exciting. It's a sudden outpouring of emotion and expressions of hope. And then the ending is just as sudden and really ambiguous, so that it unsettles the otherwise upward trajectory. It's a truly ingenious structure. This is simply one of my favorite films ever.

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#33 Post by "membrillo" » Thu Dec 18, 2008 7:54 pm

skuhn8 wrote:Time to have a new thread dedicated to debunking the entire CC by reducing plots to either five sentences or 30 words or less. Thanks Godardslave: it's about time someone stood up and put this whole 'art' cinema nonsense into perspective.
HAHAHAHAHA

This thread is officially the best thread on this forum. Thanks skuhn8!!!! Or should I say thanks Godardslave!!!!

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HerrSchreck
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I Fidanzati

#34 Post by HerrSchreck » Thu Dec 18, 2008 8:28 pm

skuhn8 is the bomb. I can't believe I usedta fight all the time with this guy, who's one of the most lovable nutjobs on the board...

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GringoTex
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I Fidanzati

#35 Post by GringoTex » Thu Dec 18, 2008 8:51 pm

Glad this got bumped. I Fidanzati is the best film in the collection that nobody talks about.

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FerdinandGriffon
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#36 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Thu Dec 18, 2008 9:47 pm

sevenarts wrote: And then the ending is just as sudden and really ambiguous, so that it unsettles the otherwise upward trajectory. It's a truly ingenious structure. This is simply one of my favorite films ever.
I too was astonished by the ending. You could see something like it coming from a mile away, but for it to be that perfect, that harrowing, that absurdly unsettling, I would never have expected. I've had the "Fwu-tuh, fwu-tuh" sound stuck in my head ever since.
I'd have to agree, one of the most underrated in the collection. And looking at this thread has reminded me that I need to get around to watching Fidanzati and Tree of Wooden Clogs very soon.

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jbeall
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#37 Post by jbeall » Thu Nov 18, 2010 9:40 pm

Well, goddamn! I just finished Il Posto and it was charming, charming, charming. Domenico and Antonietta's aborted romance is played perfectly by the two leads, at least IMHO. We spend so much time looking at Domenico as he's looking at the world around him, trying to figure out his place, trying to figure out what to do next... I loved every minute of it. On to IF, and here's hoping CC picks up some more of his stuff (Genesis, please?.

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HerrSchreck
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#38 Post by HerrSchreck » Sun Nov 21, 2010 10:58 am

It can't be said enough times, so I'll repeat my crooning for these two titles (everyone thinks either one or the other is the best of the two, sometimes it seems it boils down to which of the two you saw first... for me it's Il Posto all the way. Christ I adore that film): these two little discs sort of signify what CC used to mean for me back in the mid 2000's-- astonishing little discoveries that I have Janus to thank for. It just doesn't get any better than these two discs which sit proudly on my old DVD mantle.

Getting ready to get down with L'albero degli zoccoli AKA The Tree of Wooden Clogs, actually, after reading this thread again.

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bottled spider
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#39 Post by bottled spider » Tue Nov 23, 2010 1:56 pm

I saw Tree of Wooden Clogs in the theatre when I was about ten, and recently watched it again on DVD. A very tactile film -- but it's as exhausting as it is excellent.

(I miss going out to the cinema. Aside from the immersiveness of the big screen, there's something to be said for the discipline imposed by a group audience, and for the way the rapt attention of one's neighbours entrains one's own concentration. Or maybe there's just something to be said for being ten years old.)

TheDoman
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#40 Post by TheDoman » Wed Sep 05, 2012 2:48 pm

Sorry to bump this old topic. I just bought this film on DVD and really enjoyed it. Definitely one of my favourite Italian films of all time. I'm curious to know where the essay is meant to be? I don't have a leaflet/booklet, and the disc doesn't contain a digital one. I've googled this, and found no information regarding it. I guess there was no essay/booklet? :D

Cheers

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knives
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#41 Post by knives » Wed Sep 05, 2012 2:50 pm

It seems you were ripped off. It does come with a sleeve (I'm not sure how much of a booklet it can be considered as).

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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#42 Post by TheDoman » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:14 pm

Thanks for letting me know. My DVD was sealed, so I guess when it is pressed they didn't add one. That is what I thought might be the case, as I thought Criterion included at least a sleeve in almost every release. I'll send an email about the missing sleeve :D

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Matt
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#43 Post by Matt » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:18 pm

Just don't call the booklet a "sleeve" in your email or you'll probably get a cover insert instead.

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htshell
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#44 Post by htshell » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:58 pm

Two essays by Kent Jones:
Il Posto
I fidanzati

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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#45 Post by TheDoman » Thu Oct 18, 2012 2:06 pm

I'd forgotten about this, and realised I hadn't heard back from Criterion concerning the booklet, and wondered if anyone had an email contact for these kind of issues? I sent to the suggestions one, which I guess was the wrong one. Would be really appreciated if anyone knows the email for that. It seems like others have had the same problem, as there was a topic posted on IMDB. Thanks

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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#46 Post by TMDaines » Thu Oct 18, 2012 6:05 pm

Use mulvaney@criterion.com. It took me a week or so to get a response, then another a week or so before my missing booklet(s) for I fidanzati was sent out, but my two were sent yesterday. I have two copies as I bought a second one before realising that there's a whole batch of them out there without booklets! These were bought at least two years apart too, if not two and a half or three years apart.

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ando
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#47 Post by ando » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:34 am

Just finished watching Il Posto and am fairly depressed. I have yet to form a fully coherent impression but the young character's road to a lifeless, automated existence couldn't have been more beautifully intimated, especially against the romance which is aborted because of his career/life projectory. Grim stuff.

Admittedly, images from Bresson's Pickpocket came to mind; in particular, the visual handling of the equally hopeful and obviously sensitive young man who moves in the opposite direction of the kid in Il Posto, emotionally and spiritually. The young man in Bresson's film has to lose what he knows; come into a kind of innocence with which the main character in Il Posto begins. Outwardly, the events which befall the young man in Pickpocket seem as tragically inevitable as the inner/emotional outcome of Olmi's young career seeker. Bresson's young man is redeemed from his dissolute and insecure life by love while Olmi's lad seems sentenced to an empty existence in a newfound material security which deprives him of the experience of love (or, at least, of expressing it).

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HerrSchreck
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#48 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Jan 26, 2016 6:30 pm

This -- Il POsto that is-- is still one of my very favorite films in the collection.

I can understand the parallels between Posto and Pickpocket, but the films are very very different. In one film (Posto) you are invited into the quiet inner life of the protagonist . . . and once in there with him, you are--equally important--invited to peek out at the world, his world, with him. Thus, although the camera never strays very far from his face, his personal orbit, the film is just as much about the entire world that he travels through... the tests, the girl, the absurd job routines, the coffee, the smarmy schadenfreude in the office, the songs he sings when elated; there's a quiet lust for the experience of life as he moves through it. The cafes, the offices, the faces of pretty girls, sad overweight faces, lost anonymous workers in a sea of daily business.

Pickpocket on the other hand is all about the protagonist in it's own tightly controlled way. There is no lust for sifting through the lives lived in the outside world because the character for the vast majority of the duration could care less about the cafes, the pretty girls, the jobs, the walks, the streets... he has no lust for life. So the film is a tightly controlled exercise of picking up the tight, narrow stimuli making it into the Pickpockets mind. Hands, purses, newspapers, tight maneuvers to tweeze a wad of cash. In terms of pondering all the elements out there in life, it is very dry, completely unreflective--completely devoid of any cinematographic lingering for the sake of photographic harmony or usual poetry, dry of sentiment, very little detail to help you smell the streets, taste the coffee in a café, or feel the pace of life in Paris the way the young boy in Posto is a quiet little vessel for our watching his shy and reserved reaction to the great big city and the boring repetition and absurdity that goes on in the offices that all report to, and the release of the streets, the cafes, the restaurants. In other words--to life itself.

No release for Pickpocket until the end. Because until the end, there is very little life--or any appreciation for the "life" lived by most--in his universe. So naturally Bresson very calculatedly deprives us of any poetic accumulation through the images whatsoever... it's all straight reportage, tightly edited, truncated down to the minimal essentials.

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ando
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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#49 Post by ando » Tue Jan 26, 2016 6:52 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:... it [Paris, the enviornment of the protagonist in general] is very dry, completely unreflective--completely devoid of any cinematographic lingering for the sake of photographic harmony or usual poetry, dry of sentiment, very little detail to help you smell the streets, taste the coffee in a café, or feel the pace of life in Paris the way the young boy in Posto is a quiet little vessel for our watching his shy and reserved reaction to the great big city and the boring repetition and absurdity that goes on in the offices that all report to, and the release of the streets, the cafes, the restaurants. In other words--to life itself.
I can certainly understand your objection in terms of the main protagonist's POV. Indeed, that is one of the most striking differences in the two films. However, one of the salient features of Pickpocket is the enviornment in which the young protaginist, Michel, operates! In fact, one of the most impressive qualities of Michel is the ease with which he is able to move through a modern cosmoplis like Paris. Visually, it's the most thrilling aspect of the film! And I'm not only speaking of the sophisticated series of shots which comprise "the pickups" but the physical advantage Michel takes of the very automation that life in a city like Paris has become. It's one of Bresson's strongest points in Pickpocket. And as far as the smells, sounds and general flavor of the city is concerned, many of the locales (the café, the race track, the subway, Michel's pitiful room) provide ample texture as setting through which Michel moves.

In almost the directly opposite fashion, Domenico, the main character in I'll Posto, is manipulated by his enviornment. He, indeed, may have a lust for it but he is always at its mercy. Reconsider the scenes. In nearly every new physical situation he attempts to conform to his enviornment but is almost never able to master it. Now, of course, his inexperience is part of the narrative. My observation was simply that Michel, at least on a purely physical - and therefore visual level, is on the directly opposite tragectory and will end up where Domenico started; isolated and immobile (though redeemed spiritually and emotionally - though that's an extension of his physical situation). The opposition was my point of comparison despite the obvious similarities (provocative b/w photography through very measured shots, very young protagonists, navigation of the big city, coming into adulthood, etc).

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Re: 194-195 Il posto and I fidanzati

#50 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Jan 26, 2016 8:00 pm

I think Il Posto is magnificent but I remember being thrown by the ending of the film, which stops at the most devastating point it possibly could have! Throughout the film we have been following our young protagonist making his way through the barrage of aptitude tests to prove he is a suitable candidate for employment
SpoilerShow
and then we get that final shot of him being allocated his desk station amongst much older clerks, seemingly slotted into a newly vacated slot like a fresh cog in a machine, and it is almost as if we've seen the end of his extremely brief moment of individual, passionate life and are left to infer the next 40-50 years of soulcrushing desk work that lie ahead of him. Perhaps it finally is better to be stood up, as in the tentative romantic plot of the film, than to have your potential recognised and exploited in the most mundane way?
Last edited by colinr0380 on Tue Jan 26, 2016 8:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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