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Rating:
It takes little to think about how many days are left until our end. Not that I want to be a harbinger of bad luck, it applies to me too. Just watch "The Seventh Seal," where death appears in flesh, bones, and cartilage, ready to challenge the intended victims in destabilizing chess matches.
For Cesare "the tinsmith," it was enough to board the daily tram and witness an unanswered question from a bystander about the ticket request routine. Heart attack. Dead without even realizing it. A dramatic experience that profoundly marks the protagonist, who decides to "go mad" by pondering the days left before the ultimate call. He chooses to dress in his best suit, spats on his shoes, and to wander the night exploring others' lives. But perhaps that's not enough. Something better must be done in this dreamlike race against time, gathering more useful results if possible.
He confides in his friend Amilcare, a nighttime painter, about wanting to quit his job to dedicate himself to something else and begins to list a series of reasons that seem rather "strange" to the latter. Funeral, pessimistic, gloomy, even extreme conversations paint Cesare's days black as he chooses to do something he never imagined before. Or perhaps never had the time for. Time that inexorably passes without any brakes, for better or for worse.
The rediscovery of an old love in the shadow of a public restroom or perhaps the possibility of exploring a mercenary one among the prostitutes frequenting the Lungotevere in broad daylight, inviting you to follow them among the shards of the urns' cemetery. Or discovering that the concierge's daughter wants to smoke secretly and prostitutes herself with wealthy adults. Or the abstract art of the southern merchant who entices you with philosophical talks and then collapses dramatically into repairing a sink clogged with enamels. But what is life? What is its value? What is the sense of living only to die at any moment? These are the questions that obsess Cesare, who is now reaching the peak of this disturbing thesis. His friends "fear" him, even announcing him as drowned due to a brief visit to the dance halls of a seaside resort. No result meets Cesare's expectations, who decides to end the madness by hesitantly returning to work. He boards the tram every morning and goes through all the stops until, after watching the film of his life akin to "Revolution 9," he decides to reach the terminus. In every sense.
An excellent film by the dearly missed Elio Petri on the futility of life in view of the sudden inevitability of death. The protagonist is the sadly forgotten Salvo Randone, an actor of the highest caliber who dominates the film in an almost constant monologue through a substantially arid screenplay. In the sense that the other actors, all brilliant and unfortunately semi-unknown (except for Vittorio Caprioli), serve as responding satellites. They appear to the protagonist's torment only to provide a hypothesis, advice, or a possibility of escape from the torment before disappearing from the scene. All this creates a chain reaction in Cesare's mind, leading him to seriously consider the idea of contemplating death to voluntarily dethrone a life dotted with too many defeats.
By a mocking coincidence or arithmetic fate, the soul of the film even conceals something unsettling, something terribly prophetic for the director, to the point of not underestimating the hypothesis of considering it as a sort of "film-testament". The film's protagonist claims to be 53 when he feels the weight of the counted days. Petri was consumed by illness at the same age.
To rehabilitate Salvo Randone, with Volontè one of Petri's favored interpreters, a remarkable theatrical artist and actor of great stature never truly recognized for the talents he expressed.
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