A history without an ending

In this 75-minute documentary made in collaboration with RAI television, Comencini continues her preoccupation with work and its role in modern Italy, using a lot of footage from old archival RAI documentaries along with her own films and interpolated voice commentary to trace the story of post-war industrial development through the "economic miracle" of the early Sixties, the major strikes of the early Seventies and the loss of working class power during the Eighties, and the influx of foreign workers now taking the place of the old migrations from the Mezzogiorno to the industrial North, first to Germany, then to Milan and Turin and especially to the FIAT factory.

It is fascinating to compare the techniques of filmmaking and the personalities and faces of five decades of the Italian working class and to get a glimpse of some of the leaders of factory worker strikes and revolts during the early Seventies (including PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer, and others). However, the film suffers from a weakness that isn't entirely Comencini's fault: the fading away of the factory worker from the central place he/she had during the grand and turbulent period of Italy's primary economic development. This in part is due to the wave of downsizing in the Eighties. It's also due to the fact that factory workers still do enjoy improvements from the grim early days when southern Italians working at FIAT had to sleep in the Turin railway station because there was no housing they could afford, ten and fifteen year olds had factory jobs, and all production systems made workers mindless cogs in a big machine. For a variety of reasons factory workers have to a large extent lost their collective consciousness and lack the level of dissatisfaction or solidarity to appear to the public as an identity and a force in contemporary Italian society. It would have been nice if Comencini had explored this development further.

In the Factory/In fabbrica supplies us with a lot of nostalgic and evocative images and personal voices. Its history of worker organization and major strikes is probably valid in outline but a bit sketchy. It would have been a better film if the early section was reduced to vignettes and summary and the filmmakers had done more footwork in modern factories, interviewing retired and present-day workers in depth, comparing various current factory working situations, and in general producing an original piece of work rather than a compilation of RAI footage with old and some new voice-overs. For those of us who are only vaguely familiar with most of the material, this is a panorama that's fascinating. But it's a story without an ending, and surely what's happening now is what's most important to know about given the uncertain picture of working class today.

When the film was over somebody in the audience said "paid for by FIAT!" Another shouted "Down with Berlusconi!" Somebody asked me if Berlusconi owned the RAI--state television. Of course he doesn't, but his grip on Italian media is ironclad--and the right wing pro-business billionaire is back in power in the Italian government again at the moment. He has major ownership in the private channels that at least half of Italy watches as well as the publishing house Mondadori. Comencini seems fairly even-handed in this film, but the somewhat flabby latter portion may feel to some to be pro-management. Since it's hard to be neutral in questions of labor and management, her feel-good populism reads as at best a little naive.

Francesca Comencini is one of four daughters of mainstream "commedia all'italiana" filmmaker Luigi Comencini, considered to be one of the masters of classic Italian film comedy along with with Dino Risi, Ettore Scola and Mario Monicelli.

Shown as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center in June 2008.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.