{"id":3681,"date":"2016-10-06T17:53:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T17:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3681"},"modified":"2016-10-06T20:38:06","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T20:38:06","slug":"elio-petri-the-working-class-go-to-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/elio-petri-the-working-class-go-to-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Elio Petri: The Working Class Go To Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Working Class Goes to Heaven<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aka La classe ouvri\u00e8re va au Paradis (Fr), La classe operaia va in paradiso (It)
\nItaly
\n1972
\nA Euro International Films production
\nDirector: Elio Petri
\nStory & screenplay: Elio Petri, Ugo Pirro
\nCinematography: Luigi Kuveiller {Eastmancolor}
\nMusic: Ennio Morricone, conducted by Bruno Nicolai and featuring Alessandro Alessandroni\u2019s I Cantori Moderni
\nEditor: Ruggero Mastroianni
\nArt director: Dante Ferretti
\nCameraman: Ubaldo Terzano
\nRelease dates & running times: Italy (17\/09\/71, 111 mins), France (31\/05\/72)
\nFilmed:
\nItalian takings:
\nCast: Gian Maria Volont\u00e9 (Ludovico Massa, aka Lulu<\/i>), Mariangela Melato (Lidia<\/i>), Mietta Albertini (Adalgisa<\/i>), Salvo Randone (Militina<\/i>), Gino Pernice (the union politician<\/i>), Luigi Diberti (Bassi<\/i>), Renata Zamengo (Maria<\/i>), Donato Castellanetta (\u2018Marx\u2019<\/i>), Federico Scrobogna (Pinuccio<\/i>), Giuseppe Fortis (Valli, the factory manager<\/i>), Adriano Amidei Migliano (a technician<\/i>), Ezio Marano (the chronometer technician<\/i>), Luigi Uzzo, Corrado Solari (a new recruit<\/i>), Carla Mancina, Guerrino Crivello, Antonio Mangano, Lorenzo Magnolia, Giovanni Bignamini, Eugenio Fatti, Flavio Bucci (a factory worker<\/i>), Renzo Varallo, Marina Rossi, Orazio Stracuzzi, Alberto Fogliani<\/p>\n

Volont\u00e9 and Petri joined forces again for 1971\u2019s The <\/b>Working Class Goes to Heaven<\/b> and, impressively, they managed to concoct something that was even more hysterical than Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion<\/b>.\u00a0 Volont\u00e9 stars as Lulu, a model employee in a large, North Italian factory.\u00a0 His dedication to the job antagonizes his fellow workers, especially when his efficiency causes the management to raise their production targets (without, of course, a corresponding rise in pay).\u00a0 He begins, however, to question whether his commitment is a good thing: his family life is a mess (not much helped by the fact that he never speaks without shouting), he\u2019s impotent and his friend Militina (Salvo Randone) has ended up in a loony bin.\u00a0 Things come to a head when he loses a finger in the machinery whilst maniacally trying to achieve his self-imposed quota.<\/p>\n

Unhappy with the performance of his union in protecting his rights, he falls in with the anarchist students who make a habit of picketing the factory, becomes caught up in riots and loses his job.\u00a0 This causes him to have a mini nervous breakdown and, in the meantime, his plight becomes something of a symbol to the rest of the workers.\u00a0 Things end on a guardedly optimistic note when the union manages to win his re-employment and his relationship with his girlfriend and stepson takes a cautious upturn.<\/p>\n

Heavy stuff, and in the hands of some directors it could all have become a lumpen mess; Petri, however, is such a charismatic filmmaker that he manages to make it all more watchable than might have been expected.\u00a0 It\u2019s angry, for sure, but largely manages to seem less proselytizing (and patronizing) than a lot of self-proclaimed political cinema. To a large degree this is due to the fact that it is, on several occasions, laugh out loud funny.\u00a0 Particular instances that come to mind include a ridiculous psychologist (\u2018What do I remind you of?\u2019, \u2018A cock\u2019), and a hilarious sequence in which Lulu and a factory girl make love in his clapped out Fiat Uno (which aptly demonstrates the difficulties involved when shagging in seventies motors).\u00a0 As the alternative comedians made clear in the eighties, trying to put across a social message is often most effective when done under the cloak of humour; sorting through the accumulated junk in his flat (\u2018Magic Moments\u2019 gas powered candles!) Lulu is reduced to exclaiming \u2018Who makes this stuff?\u2019 repeatedly, as perfect a criticism of consumerism as you can get.<\/p>\n

The factory is portrayed as a bleak concentration camp of a place, constantly surrounded by snow, fenced in, guarded and almost featureless.\u00a0 No one who works there actually knows what they are making – is it components for an engine?\u00a0 The conditions aren\u2019t too dissimilar to those of the workhouse, only in this case the reward is money (which is spent on food and lodging) rather than, err, food and lodging.\u00a0 Petri\u2019s sympathies obviously lie with the students who argue that this kind of freedom is illusory, a happy convenience that enables the upper to exploit the lower class.\u00a0 On the other hand, these students are also shown to be annoyingly lacking in sympathy for the individual \u2013 they\u2019re so bound up in pursuing causes they actually forget what the cause means.<\/p>\n

\"Gian<\/a>
Gian Maria Volonte does the funky gibbon in The Working Class Goes to Heaven<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ugo Pirro explains: \u201cBefore writing The Working Class Goes to Heaven<\/b>, we did a lot of research.\u00a0 Every morning we\u2019d go to the gates of Fatme and we\u2019d film the procession of workers going in and conduct interviews with the students.\u00a0 We did dozens of interviews; with workers, trade unionists, the company directors.\u00a0 The biggest problem for the film was finding the factory, as no one wanted to let us shoot in one.\u00a0 Eventually we discovered an elevator factory which was in crisis and had been occupied by the workers, but they didn\u2019t have an assembly line.\u00a0 So they helped us construct one!\u201d<\/p>\n

Armed with the great cinematography of Luigi Kuveiller, Petri makes tremendous use of sets and art direction, and has the particular habit of shooting actors in front of bizarre paintings (as is the case with the final freeze-frame here).\u00a0 Morricone\u2019s dissonant soundtrack is not entirely disimilar to the his contribution to crime films such as Sollima\u2019s Violent City <\/b>(Citt\u00e0 violenta, 70<\/i>) and Lizzani\u2019s Wake Up and Kill<\/b>.<\/p>\n

At the centre of it all, though, lies Volont\u00e9\u2019s performance.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to forget just how intense a performer he was; dressed up in hideous jumpers and kipper ties he comes across as an unholy cross between David Jason in Open All Hours<\/b> and Dennis Hopper.\u00a0 Strangely enough, for a symbol of the proletariat his character is never actually very likeable; he\u2019s venal, selfish and hostile to virtually everything and anybody.\u00a0 That you can even tolerate the guy is something of an acting triumph.<\/p>\n

Petri certainly saw the film as a continuation of themes that had been long present in his work: \u201cThe initial idea was to show how in this society it\u2019s impossible to live in isolation.\u00a0 Also, how the\u00a0 conflict between existential and productivity needs, which you can also see as far back as I giorni contatti<\/b>. Another of the things that has always motivated me is the desire to break away from the neo-realist canon.\u00a0 In those days, you either respected or rebelled against this canon, and it acted as a kid of expressive imprisonment.\u00a0 They thought you should always \u2018respect\u2019 reality, whereas I believed reality was a matter of interpretation, made up of symbols and metaphors and never quite working to plan or systematically.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volont\u00e9 and Petri joined forces again for 1971\u2019s The Working Class Goes to Heaven and, impressively, they managed to concoct something that was even more hysterical than Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[68,1138,1139,1126,233],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4441,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions\/4441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}