The long march

Job Film Days continues – through the “Long March” section – with a selection of movies pertaining to the history of Italian cinema presented in their restored versions. For this edition, two titles have been chosen, and they will be screened at Cinema Centrale. 

To continue offering a narrative and formal diversity of works that have succeeded in bringing labor issues to the forefront, this year the festival will present two masterpieces from the 60s, bearing witness to an approach within the era’s Italian cinema that was not just original, but unsettling: Mamma Roma (1962) by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sissignore (1968) by Ugo Tognazzi.  

Both works originate in neorealism only to manipulate it, and through that very manipulation, describe the sphere related to Italian society. 

On one hand, there is the pictorial view, filled with unforgettable and contrasting faces (that of the screen diva Anna Magnani, the multitude of “street kids” as well as that of writer Paolo Volponi in the role of the priest), of peripheries that are just as much protagonists as the characters themselves. In Mamma Roma, Pasolini transforms an actual event into an epiphany of paintings, framing the story of a woman determined to change her life and devoting  all her energy to offer her son a chance to redeem himself from his subproletarian condition.

On the other hand, there is the visionary view of Ugo Tognazzi (still vastly unappreciated as a director) that chooses to set in a dystopian world in Sissignore (with the artistic complicity of Tonino Guerra’s screenplay and writer Luigi Malerba), using a bitter comedy style, the relationship between industrialists and employees pushing it to a point of no return – a ferocious and prescient portrait conceived in the heat of the protest. 

The restored copies of these two movies come from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) – Cineteca Nazionale in Rome. Mamma Roma was restored in 2022, and Sissignore was restored in 2023.