IL TEMPO SI E' FERMATO (TIME STOOD STILL) is a sensitive little story and Olmi's first feature film. It is set in a mountain hydroelectric station in wintertime. A young man assigned to work there gets to know and appreciate the older caretaker whose ways are so different from his own. The film is very visual and has hardly any dialog. It achieves, as do so many of Ermanno Olmi's later films like IL POSTO, THE FIANCES, THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS, and CAMMINA CAMMINA a sense of "mystical humanity", whereby mundane events reverberate with a kind of luminous dignity.
Review of Time Stood Still
