In Il Posto, a shy, ingenuous lad just out of school is stuffed into a suit, shoved out of his suburban home, and pointed toward Milan in search of un posto sicuro: a steady job. We follow Domenico's progress through the dehumanizing labyrinth of the corporate world, ending with his promotion to clerk at a back-room desk-the start of a lifelong bureaucratic career, or the first day of the end of his life. Along the way he meets a girl scurrying through her own groove in the maze; somewhere their paths diverge and their tentative liaison is aborted. A nonprofessional actor, Sandro Panzeri, portrays Domenico, who with his wide, sorrowful eyes witnesses the tragicomedy that is life for his older colleagues, and by extension for himself. The effect is a cross between Chaplin of Modern Times and Antonioni of Eclipse in its deeply moving explication of alienated labor, the meaningless regimentation that signifies being an adult in this world.