Even though the title of I fidanzati translates as The Fiancés, with a story bracketed at beginning and end in romantic tones of lovers under duress en route to a tender reconciliation, I will remember it primarily as a workingman's movie that aims its message at and speaks more effectively to men. At least to men who enjoy watching films about young guys sorting out their options as they go about the serious business of becoming an adult. In this particular case, the focus is on Giovanni, a laborer somewhere in his late 20s or even early 30s. For several years, he's been engaged to Liliana, who patiently waits for him to get sufficiently established in work and finances to follow through on his commitment to marry her.
We're indirectly introduced to them through the film's opening as they emerge from the background of a dance hall scene that seems to pick up right where director Ermano Olmi's previous film (and breakout hit) Il posto left off. While other couples are happily, or at least complacently, whiling away the time by waltzing across the floor, Giovanni and Liliana are stuck in tense disagreement, each trying to nudge the other into seeing things more their way without conceding too much in order to win the point. The conflict is triggered by Giovanni's offer of a temporary job transfer from Milan to Sicily, for about a year and a half, in which he'd make more money, receive technical training and earn a promotion that could set him up for the long haul. It's a decent offer, a rung up the ladder out of poverty and toward something he'd consider respectable. More critical to Liliana is the risk that all that time spent so far away from her entails to their relationship. Would Giovanni remain true to her, and would he still be interested in marriage after eighteen months of separation? Would he even bother to return once he'd settled into a new place? All realistic, anxiety provoking questions that many couples have and will continue to struggle through as they try to keep their romantic and economic needs in balance.
After grinding their way to a truce that allows them to overcome the emotional distance and finally hold each other close as they share a bittersweet last dance, Giovanni takes the job. In doing so, he sets forth on a process of discovery and reflection, adjusting to a new environment more intent on exploiting his marginal value than in offering much in the way of support or constructive development. Adrift in a mundane, impersonal working-class milieu, Giovanni experiences the inevitable disappointment of finding the emptiness at the heart of this supposedly great advancement opportunity. Being a decent fellow, and as we come to discover, genuinely in love with Liliana, he remains preoccupied with her even as he wanders through the cities, the factories and the countryside of Sicily.
Olmi's narrative technique, which takes a bit of adjusting to at first but was perfectly in keeping with the abrupt, stylistic time shifts popularized in those days in films like Last Year at Marienbad frequently drops us out of the present moment into Giovanni's flashbacks as he remembers crucial exchanges he had with Liliana. The frequency of those memory moments subsides gradually throughout I fidanzati's middle third, indicating perhaps Giovanni's growing familiarity and contentment in his new surroundings. This section of the film is primarily spent recording his impressions of everyday life in the hot, sun-baked Sicilian village that he temporarily calls home. These scenes, some comic and festive, others more contemplative in tone, provide a nice counterweight to Salvatore Giuliano and its darker portrait of Sicily's deep-seated crime, corruption and violence. Olmi's sensitivity to our protagonist's struggles, his willingness to weave in subtle strains of social critique, naturalist and industrial documentary footage and a light touch of then-fashionable alienation (without actually going the "full Antonioni") conjures up a series of scenes that remind us of what we have all had to go through in our own way in making the adjustments imposed upon us as we establish our role in society. Giovanni stands as our surrogate, gazing with detachment at the morbid spectacle even as he recognizes that he stands on the brink of falling fully into the sad status quo himself, sooner or later. There's no easy escape, just an entanglement that tightens up with every gesture aimed at extricating himself from the knot.
And since there's no easy way out of his dilemma, in love with a woman who's far out of sight but never out of his mind, lacking the money and wherewithal to get back to her and in a work situation that covers basic expenses but not much else (although his welding assignment does generate an impressive light show each day), Giovanni does what comes naturally to fill the void. He's just a guy looking to have a little fun... which in turn adds additional stress into his relationship with Liliana, setting him (and us) up for I fidanzati's last fifteen minutes, a sweetly affecting sequence in which the fiances get together in an elaborately structured montage of narrated letters, shared memory images and tightly managed emotional reveals. Olmi does a wonderful job here, expertly evoking the anxiety and hesitation that a couple goes through in working through a conflict that, if poorly managed, could devastate a fragile relationship that each of them still hopes will succeed. Even though he steers us toward what looks to be a very satisfying and romantic consummation, as Giovanni and Liliana embrace and kiss in the finest happy ending tradition, Olmi throws in one last little scene, extending this brief hour-and-a-quarter romance just a few minutes longer to remind us that life's unpredictable elements are always lurking overhead and just beyond the horizon, ready to haphazardly disrupt the mental universe of hoped-for, imaginary possibilities that keeps us moving forward despite the resistance.
Next: Ivan's Childhood