Destinazione Piovarolo

Antonio La Quaglia is posted in 1922 as stationmaster to a small town called Piovarolo. The town is permanently under rain and the place is like an exile. Antonio waits to be transferred somewhere else as soon as possible. But the transfer he is waiting for never comes. Years pass; fascism rises in Italy, then the war comes, then the war ends and the regime changes. Antonio is still at the same station. Totò plays Antonio and the film stands in an unusual place in his career; there is comedy, but something bitter runs underneath it. Domenico Paolella directed. The story runs thirty years through the inside of a station building; regimes change, flags come down and go up, and the man goes on doing the same job every time. Eighty-five minutes. What the film says is simple: the history of the small official never changes.