Arbeit macht glücklich

Piero Pastore returns from military service to work at the steel mill. His girl, Isa Pola, had no word from him while he was in uniform, and is to marry his friend, Vittorio Bellaccini. When Bellaccini is killed in a mill accident, the entire town turns against Pastore and Miss Pola.

It's a straightforward movie from a novel by Luigi Pirandello, but director Walter Ruttman fills it out with scenes from the mill, of white-hot steel in blocks and ribbons, so much so that between these images and the title, you see steel wherever it appears: railroad bridges and gates. Ruttman had begun directing ten years earlier, shorts that played with geometric forms. He is probably best remembered as a writer for Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS. He would continue to direct, mostly short subjects, until just before his death in 1941 at age 56. Pirandello would win the Nobel Prize for his body of writings in 1934 and die in 1936, aged 69.

Inspired by a Luigi Pirandello novel, who later disagreed with the definitive screenplay, this simple plot develops in the fascinating hellish atmospheres of the big Terni factories. Long sequences of incandescent iron bars coming out from the blast furnace, together with music/noise rhythms make this film close to the futurist style. Some of the actors were actual workers of the factory. A restored edition was released in 1997 by the Istituto Luce, but only in VHS.