An under-appreciated work of Italian neo-realistm, Il Posto

The 1961 Italian (Milanese) film Il Posto, written/directed by Ermanno Olmi, is another one of the great and somewhat unappreciated neo-realist works (this one made w/ no professional actors) that made Italian postwar cinema so great - possibly overlooked because it stands alone among Olmi's works (it was his first film, completely self-produced). The simple story line tells of a teenage boy in a working-class family in a rather dismal suburban housing project - it looks like and was an apartment complex developed from an abandoned set of farm buildings (terrific inside look at Italian working-class domestic life, particularly the kitchen setting, of the era) - who has the opportunity to apply for a job a an unnamed large company. As his gruff father says many times, if you get this job you're set for life. We follow the young man- Domenico - as he applies for and gets the position, as he meets a young woman who applies for and gets another spot at the company, and whom he pursues, but is too shy (and young) to keep her interest: She's obviously going to be popular and successful at the company. But Domenico - we're never quite sure. The depiction of the company (it was actually filmed at the offices where Olmi worked, for the Edison co., which provided all of the electricity to Italy at the time - huge props to the company for allowing this, unimaginable today) is one of the great feats of Italian cinema: the stultifying bureaucracy, the immature and bullying behavior and petty jealousy of the long-time employees, the sense that everything must proceed at the slowest possible pace, the extraordinary boredom the tedium of the job of a clerk, the toadying and deference to the bosses, the long hallways, the vast interior public spaces, the crowded offices, the uncomfortable and childish uniforms of the messengers - all of it almost Kafkaesque in its horror, and w/ the sense - Domenico feels this for sure - that it may be a lifetime job, but it will also be a killing, lifetime sentence - as we see it crush the life and spirit of a sensitive man who is secretly working on a novel, as we see the tiny little breaks in the tedium - a post-card received from a man on his annual vacation, a retiree who comes back every day to "visit" - sad and dreadful lives of peaceful boredom, and we wonder how anything ever gets accomplished. There's a great montage that unepectedly shows us a moment in the domestic life of each of the office clerks and a great scene toward the end at the company New Year's celebration, with Domenico sad and alone yet slowly joining in on the dancing and drinking - and a final moment of Domenico, at last at his desk as a clerk, looking around the room at the old men all around him, rolling his eyes - does he go or will he stay and be buried like the rest?

Note: Have just checked Olmi's bio and see that later in life he did the great film Tree of Wooden Clogs.