Al niente All roads lead to Rome. But for Italians who dream of a good permanent job, all paths are closed in Milan, especially if they live in Lombardy. Milan is said to be a city capable of embracing the immense. That's what he is. The Italian director Ermanno Olmi, who did not receive special film education, but managed to fill his hand in the filming of documentary films for the Milan energy concern Edison-Volta, will also match him. He and his second feature film “Place” (at the box office under the name “Vacancy”) shot as a documentary chronicle of a small period of the life of a young man Domenico, sending him for a job in one of the largest companies in Milan. A simple story about getting a position with everyday moves from the suburbs on the train suddenly turned into a poetic urban romance, and as an accompaniment sounds the knock of the wheels of trains and trams, the polyphony of the streets, and rustles and loud steps in the silence of corridors and reception rooms with rare conversations, sotto voce.
The office space of the main building, with its vast glass facade, where applicants gather on the fourth floor, is suffocatingly crowded, and Domenico is too young to think exclusively of work. After all, he is still quite a boy who did not even start shaving, which is noticeable in any lighting. His natural shyness easily gives way to the charm of Magali, who is also applying for a position in the same company and as young as himself. Loredana Detto, who played Magali, was fifteen at the time. A dark-eyed girl with a fashionable haircut and a name invented by a neighbor's boy, very feminine and incredibly similar to our contemporary Chulpan Khamatova not only externally, but also expressive facial expressions, such that words are unnecessary. She exudes so much charm in the shot that her partner Sandro Panseri (Domenico) has a restrained inner fire unwittingly breaking out, making an incredibly attractive and already expressive plastic face with slightly sad deer eyes. No wonder in one of the episodes they “talk with their eyes” literally reading words from them and Domenico like a magnet attracts to the young lady to exchange a few phrases half-whisper, morendo.
Time seems to slow down, becomes viscous and almost tangible, and together with the fading tempo of dialogue creates an incredible intimacy of what is happening on the screen, as if on the half fingers trail behind the characters, looking at the world through their eyes. Charmed. Passionate. With tenderness. The monochrome video sequence is scattered in different shades of gray depending on the place and time of day, creating an almost tangible sensation of the color palette, texture of fabrics and objects, emphasizing the details. Here they talk, reflecting in the shop window, but silently inspect the panorama of the unfolding construction site and suddenly the next minute, hearing what time it is, rushing across a thick grass lawn to have time to learn the results of the exam and pass a bunch of ridiculous tests and psychological questions that cause an involuntary smile. And in the evening, having parted with Magali, Domenico accidentally sits in the train car with the inscription “he will not go further”, without even noticing the signs, and in anticipation of departure will sing a light song, mezzo piano. And even if there is no musical ear or voice, it means so little when a beautiful, full of opportunities life and stable work with the prospect of getting a job of an employee looms ahead.
Throughout the film, Ermanno Olmi maintains a piercingly pure tonality and retains the delicacy of the statement until the very end, which makes the picture very close to Valerio Zurlini’s Family Chronicle, released a year later. “Place” is distinguished by elegant allusions to the works of Franz Kafka, a little grotesque, but some natural behavior of employees, a huge company with several buildings and a complex internal structure, Milan in all its diversity – everything is extremely natural and true. It was as if Olmi had grasped neorealism at its outset and breathed fresh thoughts and ideas, taking the baton from Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Giuseppe de Santis and faithfully following the precepts of writer and screenwriter Cesare Zzawattini, who urged directors to concentrate on real dramas in the lives of ordinary people. But, inspired by their early films (Bike Thieves, Earth Trembling, Bitter Rice), the young artist sets a new vector with his film and highlights the psychology of the modern “little man” and the social motives of his behavior in a bureaucratic machine. From the lips of several heroes, the cherished phrase sounds like a refrain: “If you get this place, you will be provided with work for life.” And at first it really seems like a fairy tale, the ultimate dream. Until the true meaning of the words is manifested, marcato.
The camera slowly slides through the rows, where employees sit behind each other, and the most prestigious place is ahead of the rest, and unobtrusively scans the most secret from those who have served for many years in the company: someone misses routine work, someone grooves over the papers, buried in them with his nose, one dashingly dressed employee meticulously cuts a cigarette into two parts and inserts half into the mouthpiece to immediately smoke, but never treat another colleague. Every man for himself. They're all young. And everyone is waiting for the moment when finally there will be an opportunity to take the vacant place, ahead of a less agile colleague. Shortly before the release of “Place”, the sophisticated modernist Antonioni in “The Scream” finds the way to the issues of alienation, incommunicability and loneliness among people, but Ermanno Olmi chooses a different path – his hero, in fact, is also lonely, but has not lost the ability to respond to human kindness and care, to feel the fullness of life. For this reason, he becomes completely defenseless against the spiritual aging of his colleagues, before the tradition of promotion, before the system. It doesn’t matter how talented, smart and capable you are when you’re young, because the only thing that matters is the age and experience of sitting in a chair. And a place that seemed happy can suddenly turn a person into dust on stationery folders, turn out to be a hopeless dead end, a spiritual emptiness, al niente.