(The Job, a.k.a. The Sound of Trumpets). An ingenuous lad just out of school is stuffed into a suit, shoved out of his suburban home, and pointed toward Milan in search of un posto sicuro: a steady job. In his deceptively simple style of observation, Olmi follows young Domenico’s progress through the dehumanizing labyrinth of the corporate world; along the way he finds and loses a girl scurrying through her own groove in the maze. On his promotion to clerk at a back-room desk, Domenico arrives with his cache of papers, paperclips, and paste-pots for the first day of the end of his life. A nonprofessional actor, Sandro Panseri, portrays Domenico, who with his wide, sorrowful eyes witnesses the tragicomedy that is life for his older colleagues. Il posto is a deeply moving explication of alienated labor, the meaningless regimentation that signifies being an adult.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Olmi, Ettore Lombardo. Photographed by Lamberto Caimi. With Sandro Panseri, Loredana Detto, Tullio Kezich, Mara Revel. (93 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Janus Films/Criterion Collection)