Abstract
This chapter focuses on the cinematic representation of alienation in Petri’s La classe operaia va in paradiso (1971), one of the first mainstream films in postwar Italian cinema to represent controversial issues such as class conflict, the worker–machine relationship, and the impact of factory work on mental health. This chapter contends that, more effectively than Marxist and Freudian theory, Lacanian theory makes it possible to tackle the twofold dimension of alienation portrayed in Petri’s film, as both a fundamental condition of human subjectivity and a sociohistorical manifestation of capitalism. Drawing from Lacan, it also argues that the political kernel of Petri’s film rests not simply on the representation of the class struggle but rather on conceiving alienation as a possible force of transformation.
One has to admit that there is a lot of this alienation about nowadays. Whatever one does, one is always a bit more alienated, whether in economics, politics, psycho-pathology, aesthetics, and so on. It may be no bad thing to see what the root of this celebrated alienation really is. May 27, 1964.
Lacan (1998, p. 210)
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10 October 2019
The book was inadvertently published with the given name and family name of the author differently abbreviated in all the chapters as A. S. Tarabochia; whereas it has been updated as A. Sforza Tarabochia.
Notes
- 1.
Despite its success, the film was harshly criticized by the Italian left (Matošević 2013, p. 36; Marrone 2016, p. 24) and, especially in early twenty-first-century, overlooked and neglected (Veltroni 2012, p. 11). A reappraisal of this “controversial” film (Vighi 2016a, p. 74) is thus not only beneficial for promoting Petri’s cinema, particularly in Anglophone scholarship, but also for appreciating its topicality in post-millennial society (Williams 2013).
- 2.
The film was shot in a factory in northern Italy (Novara) occupied by workers on strike, who ended up working as extras. Interestingly, that factory was the only one, amongst several selected as potential sets for the film, to grant Petri permission to shoot his film on the alienation of factory workers (Rossi 1979; Portis 2010b).
- 3.
This approach was severely criticized. For example, Allonge and Rivero (1971) contend that the focus on the existential crisis is entirely unrelated to the context of the working-class struggle, and Fofi (1977, p. 246) claims that the film does not go deeply enough on either a sociological or a psychological level.
- 4.
As Matošević (2013, p. 36) points out, the film was characterized by an “indifferent and almost critical reception […] on the part of the Italian left.” In particular, Spagnoletti (2012, p. 67) underlines that “il film scontentava tutti coloro che in teoria avrebbero dovuto apprezzarlo e/o sostenerlo: il partito comunista, il sindacato, la sinistra extraparlamentare, la critica ispirata al brecht-godardismo.” Criticisms from the left culminated in the reaction of Jean-Marie Straub who, during the premiere of the film at the Porretta Festival in 1971, “called for La classe operaia to be burned” (Brunetta 2009, p. 235). Amongst the reasons for these criticisms, scholars have identified: the portrait of extremely negative traits of the protagonist, which shed a negative light on the working class as a whole (Spagnoletti 2012); a “confused pro-labour ideology” (Moliterno 2008, p. 249); the controversial depiction of unionists and the student movement (Spagnoletti 2012); the controversial ending that conveys the impossibility of a proper revolution and, therefore, not a real intention on Petri’s part to promote social change (Uva 2015, pp. 24–26); and “an excessive spectacularity [which] called for emotional rather than intellectual spectatorial investment” (Lombardi and Uva 2016, pp. 7–8) and ultimately contributed to the perception of this film as “strongly compromised with […] capitalist values” (Lombardi and Uva 2016, p. 8).
- 5.
- 6.
For Lacan (2007a), all human social relations can be reduced to four fundamental discursive models: the discourse of the Master; the discourse of the University; the discourse of the Analyst; and the discourse of the Hysteric. In Seminar XVIII (Lacan 2007b) and in the conference paper “Du discours psychanalytique,” delivered in Milan on May 12, 1972 (Contri 1978, pp. 32–55), Lacan adds a fifth discourse that he denominates the Discourse of the Capitalist.
- 7.
According to Vighi, this Freudian stance is the “overriding cipher of Petri’s cinema, manifesting itself in a number of variations on the theme of neurosis” (2016a, p. 72). Unsurprisingly, La classe operaia va in paradiso is the second film of the so-called trilogia della nevrosi, which focuses on neurosis in relation to work. The other two films of the trilogy are Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (1970), which focuses on neurosis in relation to power, and La proprietà non è più un furto (1973), which focuses on neurosis in relation to money (Di Giammatteo 1994, p. 356).
- 8.
In this respect, Spagnoletti (2012, p. 71) claims that the film is rather premonitory of the trajectory from the “impegno pregno di ideologia utopista del Sessantotto” to the “progressivo disimpegno degli anni a seguire, sino all’individualismo esasperato del presente.”
- 9.
The issue of Petri’s political commitment in his films has always been highly disputed amongst scholars. For instance, Fofi considers Petri’s cinema as “non-political” (1977, p. 246). On the contrary, scholars such as Rossi (1979), Bondanella (2009), and Lombardi and Uva (2016) regard Petri’s cinema as predominantly political and consider La classe operaia as the “best example of the Italian political film” (Bondanella 2009, p. 242), a factory film (Williams 2013, p. 54), and a political film (Rossi 1979, p. 25), which is characterized by a “political-popular style” (Rugo 2015, p. 106).
- 10.
I am referring here to the renowned Lacanian statement “the unconscious is politics” (Lacan 1967).
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Filmography
Petri, Elio, dir. 1970. Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto. Rome: Euro International Film.
———, dir. 1971. La classe operaia va in paradiso. Rome: Euro International Film.
———, dir. 1973. La proprietà non è più un furto. Rome/Paris: Quasars Film Company and Labrador Film.
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Di Gregorio, L. (2019). From the Factory to the Asylum… and Back: A Lacanian Perspective on the Cinematic Representation of Alienation in Elio Petri’s La classe operaia va in paradiso. In: Diazzi, A., Sforza Tarabochia, A. (eds) The Years of Alienation in Italy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15150-8_9
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