Chi lavora è perduto (In capo al mondo)

The story takes place in Venice. Bonifacio, a young boy in his twenties, is waiting for a job. He just did an interview. (...) He has to wait for the results of a test, it takes one hour and a half, the length of the film. During this period of time he wanders around the city asking questions to himself; it does what the French call a soul-searching; but that is not really the case, his trouble is the relationship between who he is and who he should be in order to gain his place in society. (...)
So he begins to imagine all that he could do to avoid to accept the job: opening a brothel, commit a robbery, becoming a rower etc. After his wandering around Venice he comes back, unaware, to the headquarters of the firm to find out the results, but on the gate he notices a sign saying: “Work is ennobling”, so he sneaks away. As you understand, my film is against work.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

Is Bonifacio, the protagonist of the film, an intellectual?
No, he isn’t. But he is a thinking character. He is struggling against all of the established principles. Another important element: there is a Venetian used by Bonifacio to constantly play on the irony of language, with a sort of multifunctional use of words. I am sure that in Paris many are going to think of Boris Vian. (...)
Did the film have a good reception on the Italian market?
Yes, it did. I was surprised by the result. In only a few weeks we got back the 45 millions we had spent for it.

In my first film, Chi lavora è perduto, there was my love, which is towards minor characters, who I love because I hate powerful people who influence someone else’s life. Maybe this comes from my family heritage, my father was very authoritarian, so I had a violent intolerance towards institutions and powerful people, while I got along well with the defeated and the outcasts.
It used to happen also in my private life, I never spent time with people from my social level. Maybe also because I have Russian origins, so I always liked anarchy, not because it is violent but because it is above all an act of love. (...)
Chi lavora è perduto is about the bitterness of a generation against that boom, which I shoot in the boom years. The story deeply reflected my attitude: the more comforting the reality, the more challenging the cultural and artistic offer. That means that probably in such a provocative reality we should make comforting films...
This film is more autobiographic in the feelings than in the events. There is Venice, because it was the city I knew better, there were cold angers, quiet only on the surface, exactly as Venetian people show their anger, with irony, without any sort of fanaticism, but through the filter of disillusion. Venice is a disenchanted city, it faced so much that now nothing can surprise it, or when it is surprised, it shows it with irony, mocking...
It was my first film. I made it in 1963 and now it is considered a prominent first work. The critics didn’t see it this way, when it was released, and that is an ordinary behaviour for them, because they don’t usually catch innovation at once. The first version, before the changes due to censorship and the removal from the market, was called In capo al mondo. It got some troubles because there wasn’t the current law on censorship yet and so the committee considered it offensive against morality, family, country, everything, so much that they told me: “Make it again from the beginning, then we will see”. Instead of remaking it I changed the title in Chi lavora è perduto and in the meantime the government changed as well. The title didn’t modify the film, the government didn’t modify the shit situation we were into, but there was the centre-left, which we thought it would be more liberal. In the end: with this other title the staff pretended it to be another film and without the cuts and bans meant for In capo al mondo, the film was released, the same as the original one, without offending anyone.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

Regia, soggetto e montaggio: Tinto Brass.
Screenplay: Tinto Brass, Franco (Kim) Arcalli.
Dialogues: Giancarlo Fusco, Tinto Brass.
Director of photography: Bruno Barcarol.
Art director: Raul Schultz.
Costume designer: Danilo Donati.
Music: Piero Piccioni.
Cast and characters: Sady Rebbot (Bonifacio B.), Pascale Audret (Gabriella), Tino Buazzelli (Claudio), Franco Arcalli (Kim), Piero Vida (Gianni), Gino Cavalieri (il padre), Giuseppe Cosentino (il generale), Sartorelli (il sergente), Enzo Nigro (Marietto), Monique Messine (la modella), Carletto Chia (Bonifacio bambino).
Production company: Moris Ergas, per Zebra Film Roma-Franco London Film Parigi.
Italian distribution: Dear Film-20th Century Fox.