The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La classe operaia va in paradiso | |
---|---|
Directed by | Elio Petri |
Written by | Ugo Pirro Elio Petri |
Produced by | Ugo Tucci |
Starring | Gian Maria Volonté Mariangela Melato Gino Pernice |
Cinematography | Luigi Kuveiller |
Music by | Ennio Morricone |
Production company | Euro International Film |
Distributed by | Euro International Film [1] |
Release dates | |
Running time | 125 minutes |
Country | Italy |
The Working Class Goes to Heaven (Italian: La classe operaia va in paradiso), released in the US as Lulu the Tool, is a 1971 Italian satirical [4] political drama film directed by Elio Petri. It depicts a factory worker's realisation of his own condition as a simple tool in the process of production. The film was awarded the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the 25th Cannes Film Festival, [1] [5] sharing it with Francesco Rosi's The Mattei Affair . [3]
Lulù Massa, 31 years old, has been working in the same factory for 15 years. Because the management uses his efficiency to justify their demands for higher output, he is disliked by his colleagues. Lulù cares neither for the unionists who demand higher pay rates and reduced working hours, nor the students outside the factory gates who appeal to the workers to rise up against the factory owners. From time to time, he visits his former colleague Militina who has been interred in a mental institution after collapsing under the working conditions. Militina phantasises about militant actions and "breaking the wall".
When Lulù loses a finger in a working accident, his attitude changes drastically. He joins a radical fraction among the workers who call for a strike, has an affair with a female co-worker and invites the students to move into his flat. As a result, his lover Lidia leaves him together with her son. After the unionists have reached an agreement with the management, the employees return to work, except Lulù who has been fired for his agitational behaviour. Lulù goes to see the student protestors, who declare that he is of no use for them because he is an individual case.
Lulù, now on the verge of madness, only vaguely realises that Lidia and her son have moved back in and that the unionists have convinced the management to rehire him. Back in the factory, working in an assembly line with other colleagues, he recounts a dream in which he broke a wall, finding himself and his co-workers emerge from a fog.
The factory scenes in The Working Class Goes to Heaven were shot in a factory in Novara, Piedmont, which had shut down and been occupied by its former workers, with many of the personnel serving as extras in the film. [2] [6] Other shooting locations included the Ospedale Maggiore di Novara and the Istituto Tecnico Industriale OMAR. [6]
The Working Class Goes to Heaven premiered at the 1971 Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero ("International exhibition of free cinema") in Porretta Terme, Emilia-Romagna. [7] Petri later claimed that, after the screening, filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub demanded that the film be burned. [8] Other sources attribute this statement to film critic Pio Baldelli . [9]
The film's reception by the Italian press was mixed. The Segnalazioni cinematografiche lauded its "solid cinematographic language" and the precise portrayal of its central character, but criticised the "overabundance of themes and some long-windedness". [1] Natalia Ginzburg in La Stampa accused the film of being superfluous and confusing, held together only by Gian Maria Volonté's presence. [2]
In the Spring 1973 volume of Film Quarterly , James Roy MacBean compared The Working Class Goes to Heaven to the prison drama The Brig as a "jarringly abrasive" portrayal of factory work. [10] The New York Times critic A. H. Weiler called the film "both fascinating and sobering" upon its 1975 New York premiere. [3] Contrary to this, author Mira Liehm referred to it as a "weaker" Petri film and "heavy-handed" in her 1986 book on Italian Cinema. [11]
Eraclio Petri, commonly known as Elio Petri, was an Italian film director, screenwriter, theatre director, and critic associated with the political cinema in the 1960s and '70s. His film Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the 1971 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, and his film The Working Class Goes to Heaven won the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.
Gian Maria Volonté was an Italian actor and activist, remembered for his versatility as a performer, his outspoken left-wing leanings, and fiery temper on- and off-screen. He is perhaps most famous outside Italy for his roles in four Spaghetti Western films: Ramón Rojo in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), El Indio in Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965), El Chuncho Munoz in Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General (1966) and Professor Brad Fletcher in Sergio Sollima's Face to Face (1967).
The Mattei Affair is a 1972 Italian drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. It depicts the life and mysterious death of Enrico Mattei, an Italian businessman who in the aftermath of World War II managed to avoid the sale of the nascent Italian oil and hydrocarbon industry to US companies and developed them in the Eni, a state-owned oil company which rivaled the "Seven Sisters" for oil and gas deals in Northern African and Middle Eastern countries.
Mariangela Caterina Melato, sometimes billed as Maria Angela Melato, was an award-winning Italian film and theatre actress. She is most remembered for her roles in films of director Lina Wertmüller, including The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973), and Swept Away (1974). In cinema, she also appeared in films of Claude Chabrol, Elio Petri and Vittorio De Sica, and on stage in productions by Dario Fo, Luchino Visconti and Luca Ronconi. Her roles in English-language films include the 1980 science fiction film Flash Gordon.
The 10th Victim is a 1965 science fiction film directed and co-written by Elio Petri, starring Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, Elsa Martinelli, and Salvo Randone. An international co-production between Italy and France, it is based on Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story "Seventh Victim".
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is a 1970 Italian crime thriller film directed by Elio Petri, starring Gian Maria Volonté and Florinda Bolkan. It is a psychological, black-humored satire on corruption in high office, telling the story of a top police officer who kills his mistress, and then tests whether the police would charge him for this crime. He begins manipulating the investigation by planting obvious clues while the other police officers ignore them, either intentionally or not.
The Nastro d'Argento is a film award assigned each year, since 1946, by Sindacato Nazionale dei Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani, the association of Italian film critics.
Ugo Pirro was an Italian screenwriter and novelist.
The 25th annual Cannes Film Festival was held from 4 to 19 May 1972. The Palme d'Or went to the Italian films The Working Class Goes to Heaven by Elio Petri and The Mattei Affair by Francesco Rosi.
We Still Kill the Old Way is a 1967 Italian crime film directed by Elio Petri. It is based on the novel To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia.
Todo modo, also known in English as One Way or Another, is a 1976 Italian satirical political drama film directed by Elio Petri starring Gian Maria Volonté and Marcello Mastroianni. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Leonardo Sciascia.
Flavio Bucci was an Italian actor, voice actor and film producer.
Mario Tronti was an Italian philosopher and politician, considered one of the founders of the theory of operaismo in the 1960s.
Caterina Vertova is an Italian actress. She studied in London and in Paris, as well as at the Actors Studio in New York City.
Days are Numbered is a 1962 Italian film directed by Elio Petri.
Un ragazzo di Calabria is a 1987 Italian comedy drama film by Luigi Comencini.
Ezio Marano (6 August 1927, Brescia – 26 April 1991, Rome) was an Italian actor.
Steel is a 2012 Italian drama film directed by Stefano Mordini.
Classe Operaia was a Marxist monthly magazine which was published in Italy for three years between 1964 and 1967. Its subtitle was "political monthly of the workers in struggle."
Armenia Balducci was an Italian actress, screenwriter and director.