One Fine Day

One Fine Day is a carefully detailed study of a middle-aged, middle-class man named Bruno, the assistant managing director of an advertising agency, with a wife, family and mistress. When his boss suddenly retires after suffering a heart attack, Bruno gets his job (complete with a mandate for a new product: frozen "Job Dinners"). The film examines his sensitivity towards his old boss, whom he doesn't want to hurt, towards his employees, and towards his wife and mistress. In 1969, anyone else would have been merciless with such a bourgeois subject, but Olmi (working with a non-actor named Brunetto del Vita, whose own life was very close to his character's) refused to judge his hero, and looked at him and his prototypical situation with an extraordinary amount of tenderness and clarity. "Olmi observes people as they are and not as he would wish them to be. He will not make them serve other purposes at the expense of their individuality."