The Working Class Goes to Heaven AKA Lulu the Tool
(La classe operaia va in paradiso)
Screening on Film
Directed by Elio Petri.
With Gian Maria Volonté, Mariangela Melato, Salvo Randone.
Italy, 1971, 35mm, color, 111 min.
Italian with English subtitles.
With Gian Maria Volonté, Mariangela Melato, Salvo Randone.
Italy, 1971, 35mm, color, 111 min.
Italian with English subtitles.
Petri’s absurdist political fable shared top honors at Cannes in 1972 with compatriot Francesco Rosi’s The Mattei Affair. A giddy, gut-level, sex-and-politics critique of industrial capitalism, the film features Petri regular Gian Maria Volonté as Lulu, a gung-ho Turin factory worker caught up in the dehumanizing wheels of mechanical production and meaningless mass consumption. Sexual fantasies drive his productivity for the company, but his perspective on work and life undergo a radical transformation when he is injured in a factory accident and temporarily laid off. Petri opts for an aggressive, expressionistic visual and aural approach that effectively captures the brutality of modern industrial working conditions.
Part of film series
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The Films of Elio Petri
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion / Sin in the Afternoon
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Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember
Directed by Anna Maria Tat, 1997
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Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember
Directed by Anna Maria Tat, 1997
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The Films of Elio Petri
Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember
Directed by Anna Maria Tat, 1997
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The Films of Elio Petri
Property Is No Longer a Theft
Directed by Elio Petri, 1973
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