For this month’s first review for Genre Grandeur – Movies that take place or feature Italian settings – here’s a review of The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971) by David of BluePrint: Review
Thanks again to Emily of The Flapper Dame for choosing this month’s genre.
Next month’s genre has been chosen by Darren of Movie Reviews 101 and we will be reviewing our favorite Movies featuring beaches or waterfront scenes.
Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Mar by sending them to beaches@movierob.net
Try to think out of the box!
Let’s see what David thought of this movie:
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Director: Elio Petri
Screenplay: Elio Petri, Ugo Pirro
Starring: Gian Maria Volontè, Mariangela Melato, Gino Pernice, Luigi Diberti, Donato Castellaneta
Country: Italy
Running Time: 115 min
Year: 1971
BBFC Certificate: 15
Writer-director Elio Petri and actor Gian Maria Volontè had both been steadily making names for themselves in Italian cinema throughout the 1960s, but it was Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion in 1970 that truly put the pair on the international cinematic map. The film earned widespread acclaim and snagged a number of awards, including an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Buoyed by this success, Petri and Volontè teamed up once again for the director’s next film and focused even more closely on the politics the pair were both passionate about. This film was The Working Class Goes to Heaven (a.k.a. La classe operaia va in paradiso or Lulu the Tool). It too went on to receive international acclaim, being joint winner of 1972’s Palme d’Or at Cannes.
However, the film hasn’t remained as well-known as Investigation. Hoping to address the situation, newcomers Radiance Films are releasing The Working Class Goes to Heaven on Blu-ray. Having been highly impressed with Petri and Volontè’s previous collaboration, I eagerly got hold of a copy and my thoughts follow.
The Working Class Goes to Heaven sees Volontè play Ludovico ‘Lulù’ Massa, a middle-aged man who’s separated (or maybe divorced) from his wife and now lives with his girlfriend and her young son. Lulu works in a factory and is proud of his skill at operating the machinery there.
However, his fellow workers are not happy, with them and a group of student radicals staging protests against the bosses’ tougher demands of the piece work the workers already sweat and toil over. Lulu’s bragging only makes things worse when he shows the management how he can do his co-workers’ jobs faster than they are currently doing them, justifying the bosses’ increased output targets.
Lulu has a change of heart, however, when the frantic operation of his machinery results in him cutting off one of his fingers. His anger causes Lulu to side with the protesters and he becomes their poster boy.
As strikes begin and Lulu gets fired, can the troubled man maintain his career and sanity?
Like with Investigation…, right from the start, I was impressed by Petri’s bold use of cinematic language, with some exceptionally well-edited montages and unconventional use of sound and music, particularly when in the factory. Using a mixture of fast-cutting, intense close-ups and freely roaming long-shots, there’s a great sense of rhythm and propulsion, mirroring that of the machinery. Some sound effects are also used in Ennio Morricone’s often quite abstract and driving score, making that equally feel part of the mechanisation framing everything.
This idea is vital to Petri’s message. The factory management treats their workers like cogs in a machine, but it’s not as simple as just that. The unions and students aren’t as useful to the workers as they might seem either. All sides cause conflict, causing our protagonist to lose his mind. Even when Lou is on the side of the strikers, he’s pushed and pulled around, being used as a symbol rather than having his voice be truly listened to.
The workers in the centre of everything are being worn down by the whole system, which needs replacing, rather than simply renegotiating the terms of how it operates.
In fact, the whole modern world seems to come under fire from Petri. A number of scenes play on the mind-numbing nature of watching TV, for example, with the activity being the only thing Lou can bring himself to do after a hard day at work.
I’m often put off by overly political films, as they tend to ram simplistic messages down your throat, as admirable as some of their points may be (see Ken Loach’s more recent work, for example). Here, though Petri is clearly damning of the system and leans towards the left, he doesn’t make a simple, straight-cut choice. As mentioned, all sides of the conflict have their problems and even Lulu, our protagonist, isn’t particularly likeable. His bullish behaviour, particularly at the start of the film, marks him out as self-centred and uncaring of the world around him.
The complex idea of the left in the film reflects the complex shift going on in Italy at the time, when the popularity of Communism was moving towards something different. Petri isn’t arrogant enough to suggest a new solution but instead presents a film about class consciousness, about what it takes to set a worker to strike and why a change is necessary.
Whilst I wouldn’t call the film an out-and-out satire, there is some comedy to keep the film from getting bogged down in politics though. This is most notable in the banter between Lou and his colleagues, as well as in an awkward sex scene between Lou and a virgin co-worker. The film often links sex with factory work, in fact, with Lou and another colleague likening their production line rhythm to the thrust of copulation or masturbation. Some suggestive shots and editing emphasise this too.
Overall, The Working Class Goes to Heaven is loud and exhausting but passionate, bravura filmmaking. It’s fiercely political but thankfully too cynical to pick sides or grind us down with any ‘left’ or ‘right’ agenda. Instead, Petri has created an aggressive damnation of the mechanisation of modern life and a striking call to arms.
MovieRob 