Sightlines · reception
How The Working Class Goes to Heaven was received
1971 · Elio Petri · The Working Class Goes to Heaven on Sightlines
The arc
It shared the top prize at Cannes in 1972, yet at home it was savaged from every direction — the establishment press found it crude and the militant left found it defeatist. After decades of Petri being weirdly forgotten, restorations and the Letterboxd-era rediscovery of Italian political cinema have pushed it back toward masterpiece status.
What’s debated
The eternal Petri fight: is his grotesque, everything-at-eleven style thrilling maximalism or a sledgehammer — and this film, attacked in its day by both right and left, is still the test case.
Its footprint
Ennio Morricone's clanging, machine-press score — music that sounds like the factory itself — is a legend in its own right, and Gian Maria Volonté sweating over the assembly line has become one of the defining images of 1970s Italian political cinema.
Where it stands
A cornerstone of the Petri–Volonté partnership and a 'you must see this' for anyone getting into Italy's political-cinema wave — long beloved-but-hard-to-see, now a steady canon climber.
Did you know? At Cannes 1972 it shared the festival's top prize with Francesco Rosi's The Mattei Affair — meaning Gian Maria Volonté starred in both winning films at once.