I fidanzati

A nice, small film much in the vein of Olmi's earlier Il posto, which was one of the best films I saw in 2012. The film follows an engaged couple (the title translates to The Fiances). The man (Carlo Cabrini) accepts a post in a far-away factory for an extended period of time, leaving his fiancée (Anna Canzi) home alone. There's not much to it plotwise. It's kind of a mood piece, as the two experience life apart, trying to enjoy it but not really being able to. It's quite lovely, but, I have to say, I didn't really connect to it emotionally anywhere near the level that I did with Il posto. I can see viewers reacting similarly to Il posto, because that, too, was a very small, simple, short film. In some ways, I thought that this felt kind of like Olmi was trying to recapture the mood of Il posto but didn't entirely succeed. Still, it's worthwhile.

The love of a worker for his fiancée is rekindled after a long separation. The poor state of the economy in Sicily and the upheaval of its industry provides the backdrop to this touching love story. Somewhat drawn out and clumsy, however.

This is elegant sixties modernism with a subtle socialist thrust. With a bit too much technique, concentration on beautiful, striking shots and fragmented narration studded with flashbacks, the story and characters, though interesting, don't have quite enough weight to involve the viewer. The modernist love of the cryptic goes a little overboard, though in an intriguing way, as for example in the long opening sequence in a dance hall as people gather for the dance and you take a while to figure out what's going on. The man takes a career opportunity to move up from welding by going to work at a distant, isolated plant. The plant and its environs represent industrial capitalism and the city overspreading the countryside. Arresting moments, like the dog straying into the church, or the young boy working very fast in the restaurant, as well as the individuality of a variety of people glimpsed in passing, give the movie a mysterious and moving charm. Yet telling so much of the story without dialog weakens our sense of the characters. It draws you in slowly but a bit too much is withheld. Il Posto stays closer to the characters and feels warmer, though the ending of Fidanzati has magic.

Giovanni is an engineer who leaves his fiancee in the North of Italy for promotion in Sicily but once there finds it very different from what he expected. Like "Il Posto" before it, Ermanno Olmi's masterpiece "I Fidanzati" uses mostly non-professional actors and a documentary-style approach to chronicle the everyday life of ordinary people in, for Giovanni at least, an alien environment. Sicily may as well be the surface of the moon though it does have its own rarefied atmosphere.

Olmi's genius has always been for focusing his gaze on the simple things of life. There are no great dramas going on; some may even find "I Fidanzati" boring and yet there is more truthfulness and beauty here than most films can only dream of. I could watch Giovanni drift through his less than exciting life until the cows come home and Carlo Cabrini's 'non-performance' as Giovanni is quietly magnificent, perfectly in keeping with Olmi's vision of the man. Not as highly thought of as "Il Posto" but just as fine, "I Fidanzati" is one of the greatest of Italian films and, sadly, one of the most underrated.

My first exposure to an Ermanno Olmi film was through 'Il Posto' and I thought that film was a small masterpiece. So clearly I was going to explore more of his films. Being the second Olmi film that I have ever watched, all 'I Fidanzati' did was to give me further evidence of Olmi's prowess in screen writing and directing.

To be honest, in a political sense, both 'Il Posto' and 'I Fidanzati' are in the same ball park. Both films explore the corporate scene of Post WW2 Italy and the varied effects of the economic boom on the lives of the working class people. 'Il Posto' dealt with the need to grow up prematurely and pledge allegiance to the corporate system as early as possible for survival in a cutthroat society. 'I Fidanzati' deals with a man who is older than the protagonist in 'Il Posto', but who is also dealing with the effect that the need and the urge to get ahead in the rat race has on his life, more precisely his love life. Giovanni and his fiancé Liliana's lives get turned upside down when he decides to leave Milan and go to Sicily for a job opportunity with more pay. The first scene of the film is very provocative. We are shown this dance hall where the atmosphere is as dull as ever. People are here just as a habit and their desire to enjoy themselves have probably become a chore now. Then we meet the main couple. Both Giovanni and Liliana's faces and the way that they behave with each other tells us clearly that all is not well between them. Then Olmi gives us some flashbacks to inform us about the reasons behind this tension between the two. We then see Giovanni leave for Sicily and what awaits him there is not something that enthralls him. His life becomes synonymous with his work with absolutely nothing to do during his free time. He just wanders around the streets observing people when he isn't in the factory toiling away. There is a scene in Sicily where we see a big carnival-like celebration which Giovanni visits. This scene beautifully complements the opening scene of the movie in the dance hall. This is because the atmosphere here is very energetic and frantic unlike the atmosphere in that scene. However, Giovanni still leaves this celebration feeling lonely due to the absence of Liliana. Ironically this separation actually helps both of them to understand each other a little better in hindsight. What I really love about 'I Fidanzati' is that although Olmi is clearly making a statement on the dehumanising nature of the rampant industrialisation, but just like Antonioni he does it through subtle storytelling and never allows his political statements to obscure what is the heartbeat of the film which is the romance between Giovanni and Liliana and the realisations that they make about their relationship over the course of the film.

In both 'Il Posto' and 'I Fidanzati', I have noticed the fact that Olmi's style of storytelling has an inherent innocence about it. His camera is non-judgmental. He understands his characters and observes them without forcing the viewer to draw rapid and concrete conclusions about them akin to the humanist filmmakers of the 50s and 60s. Just like 'Il Posto', he revels in just observing his characters observing things without doing much. His style of realism gives you hints of his documentary filmmaking past. There is also some French New Wave- esque use of jump cuts in certain scenes that I wasn't really expecting. He doesn't feel the need to cram a lot of stuff and incidents in his screenplays. However, for a film with very little plot development, he does manage to infuse some ambiguity. The scenes where his screenplay delves into non-linearity can be interpreted in more than one ways as per the desire of the viewer. The ending itself is ambiguous. For me, the film ends on a bittersweet note. However, I have read reviews where the ending has been interpreted in a far more pessimistic sense.

The acting in 'I Fidanzati' is tough to judge. One might say that the actors specially Carlo Cabrini doesn't do much except observe things. But I think Cabrini does bring an understated humanism to the role. You can clearly see the loneliness in his eyes when he is looking at himself in the mirror after coming back to his hotel from the celebrations or the subtle joy in his eyes when he sees the dog causing chaos in the church. Anna Canzi who plays Liliana has a very expressive face and very expressive eyes. She doesn't appear in too many scenes, but whenever she does, she makes you know what she is feeling and thinking just through her eyes. Considering that both of them were amateurs, one has to praise Olmi a lot for having the ability to get these subtle performances out of non- professionals.

'I Fidanzati' has cemented Ermanno Olmi's status as an auteur in my eyes whose work I should keep exploring. Although I love 'Il Posto' slightly more than this film, never the less the skill, artistry and humanism present in 'I Fidanzati' make it a great film.