Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
After losing a finger in a work accident, an Italian worker becomes increasingly involved in political and revolutionary groups.
Elio Petri's Palme d'Or-winning Italian drama is a fierce, visceral portrait of factory alienation and radicalization. Gian Maria Volonté delivers a ferociously committed, almost hallucinatory performance as the transformed worker. The film's novelty lies in its raw, near-documentary intensity and its unflinching critique of both capitalist exploitation and the limitations of organized labor—a genuinely singular political vision that refuses easy ideology. The cinematography is functional and gritty rather than artistically distinctive, and the narrative arc, while emotionally compelling, occasionally loses momentum in its didactic passages. The ending is deliberately unresolved and cyclical, reflecting the systemic entrapment of the working class, though this ambiguity may feel unsatisfying rather than profound to some viewers.