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The Party's Over (Guy Hamilton, 1965)
Feb
13
party
The party crowd staggers its way home at dawn across Albert Bridge. DP: Mike Pratt.
– Let's keep this party going till Sunday.
– Why Sunday?
– The Hindus say the world comes to an end on Sunday.
– But, how will we know when it happens?
– Graves will gape and the shrouded dead will run gibbering and shrieking in the streets.
– Sounds like any other Sunday.
*which isn't until March 4 this year.
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Il posto [The Job] (Ermanno Olmi, 1961)
Apr
3
World Party Day
Two office workers awkwardly dancing cheek to cheek at the company Christmas party. She's in her finest cocktail dress and pearls, he listlessly wears a mock sheriff's hat. DP: Lamberto Caimi.
To support his family, small-town boy Domenico moves to Milan in the hope to find a job. Eventually he's employed, as a clerk in a drab office replacing a senior worker who died. While the days drag on, only interrupted by coffee shop small talk with fellow teenager Antonietta, the Christmas office #party draws nearer.
“My wife gave me a big kiss this morning. I only get kisses once a month, on payday.”
– Sartori
With the dark absurdity of coming out of fascism and having to run a real-world country with a naive ineptitude – represented by the too-large-borrowed-from-father-suits – and pretence childlike bureaucratic procedures, Olmi's Il posto is a wonderfully sharp observation of postwar Italy.