# The Working Class Goes to Heaven
**The Working Class Goes to Heaven** (Italian: *La classe operaia va in paradiso*; also released as *Lulu the Tool*) is a 1971 Italian drama film directed by Elio Petri, written by Petri with Ugo Pirro, and starring [Gian Maria Volonté](https://www.edgepedia.org/gian-maria-volonte) as a Milanese factory piece worker whose finger is severed in an industrial accident, triggering a political and existential crisis. It shared the [Grand Prix](https://www.edgepedia.org/grand-prix-cannes-film-festival) of the 1972 Cannes Film Festival with *The Mattei Affair*.[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) • [2](https://www.thedailystar.net/showbiz/movie-review/classic/the-working-class-goes-heaven-1971-150820)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title / English titles | *La classe operaia va in paradiso*; distributed in English as *Lulu the Tool*, translated title *The Working Class Goes to Heaven*[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) |
| Director and writers | Directed by Elio Petri; story and screenplay by Elio Petri and Ugo Pirro[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) |
| Principal cast | Gian Maria Volonté (Ludovico "Lulù" Massa), Mariangela Melato (Lidia), Salvo Randone (Militina), Gino Pernice (the union politician), Mietta Albertini (Adalgisa), Luigi Diberti (Bassi)[3](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html) |
| Key crew | Cinematography Luigi Kuveiller (Eastmancolor), music Ennio Morricone, editing Ruggero Mastroianni, art direction Dante Ferretti[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) • [3](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html) |
| Production | Euro International Film, produced by Ugo Tucci; distributed by CFDC; Italy, 1971, color[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) • [3](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html) |
| Cannes 1972 | Grand Prix (Palme d'Or), shared with *The Mattei Affair*[2](https://www.thedailystar.net/showbiz/movie-review/classic/the-working-class-goes-heaven-1971-150820) • [4](https://www.minervapictures.com/film/9535/?lang=en) |
| Other awards | 2 David di Donatello, 2 Nastri d'Argento, and the Italian Golden Globe for Best Actor to Gian Maria Volonté[4](https://www.minervapictures.com/film/9535/?lang=en) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Ludovico Massa, called Lulù, is a metalworker in a Milanese factory, in his early thirties, suffering from an ulcer and supporting two families.[4](https://www.minervapictures.com/film/9535/?lang=en) • [6](https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/files/140860894/The_Years_of_Alienation_in_Italy.pdf) A convinced supporter of piecework (cottimo), he works at exceptional speed, which allows him to buy a car and small consumer goods and perhaps, one day, a fur for his "lady".[4](https://www.minervapictures.com/film/9535/?lang=en) He is loved by the bosses for his production rhythms and hated by his colleagues for his excessive servility, because management demands the same pace from everyone without a corresponding rise in pay.[4](https://www.minervapictures.com/film/9535/?lang=en) • [7](https://www.thewildeye.co.uk/blog/reviews/elio-petri-the-working-class-go-to-heaven/)
While boasting of his rhythms to his workmates, he loses a finger in an accident at the machine to which he is assigned.[4](https://www.minervapictures.com/film/9535/?lang=en) • [5](https://mediasetinfinity.mediaset.it/movie/laclasseoperaiavainparadiso/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso_F000342102000101/) The injury, though not physically serious, begins a crisis: he discovers the solidarity of his mates during a strike protesting inadequate safety measures, joins the strikers, and is dismissed.[2](https://www.thedailystar.net/showbiz/movie-review/classic/the-working-class-goes-heaven-1971-150820) • [3](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html) • [5](https://mediasetinfinity.mediaset.it/movie/laclasseoperaiavainparadiso/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso_F000342102000101/) Rehired through the intervention of union officials, he becomes somewhat deranged and raves about a paradise that awaits the working class beyond a wall.[5](https://mediasetinfinity.mediaset.it/movie/laclasseoperaiavainparadiso/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso_F000342102000101/) A close friend is Militina, a former colleague and old worker now confined in an asylum, wrecked by the assembly line, whose lucid flashes of doom terrify Lulù; in the celebrated closing sequence the workers at the chain listen to Militina's dream, told by Lulù, of "breaking everything and going to paradise".[2](https://www.thedailystar.net/showbiz/movie-review/classic/the-working-class-goes-heaven-1971-150820) • [8](https://artesettima.it/2023/03/27/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso-sindacati-autonomi-e-rifiuto-del-lavoro/)
The first version of the screenplay had ended with Lulù Massa dying under a car while raising a clenched fist, an almost martyr-like iconography; Petri and Pirro abandoned this ending after 1968, judging that the time for exemplary sacrifices was over.[8](https://artesettima.it/2023/03/27/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso-sindacati-autonomi-e-rifiuto-del-lavoro/)
## Production and credits
The film was produced by Ugo Tucci for Euro International Film and distributed by CFDC.[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) • [3](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html) Petri and Pirro shared both the story (soggetto) and the screenplay.[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) The crew included the cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, the composer [Ennio Morricone](https://www.edgepedia.org/ennio-morricone) (whose score was conducted by Bruno Nicolai with the "Cantori Moderni" of Alessandro Alessandroni), the editor Ruggero Mastroianni, and the art director Dante Ferretti; the costume designer is listed as Franco Cerretti on the [Venice Biennale](https://www.edgepedia.org/venice-biennale) record and Franco Carretti on the English-language credits page.[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) • [3](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html) A union adviser, Mario Bartolini, is credited as "conseiller syndical".[3](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html)
Listed running times differ between catalogs: Mediaset Infinity gives 110 minutes, the English credits page 111 minutes, and a contemporary review 125 minutes.[5](https://mediasetinfinity.mediaset.it/movie/laclasseoperaiavainparadiso/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso_F000342102000101/) • [3](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html) • [2](https://www.thedailystar.net/showbiz/movie-review/classic/the-working-class-goes-heaven-1971-150820)
## Themes
The film's central subject is alienation. It is one of the first mainstream films of postwar Italian cinema to address class conflict, the worker–machine relationship, and the impact of factory work on mental health, and it revolves around two spaces, the factory and the asylum, that epitomize the notion.[6](https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/files/140860894/The_Years_of_Alienation_in_Italy.pdf) It is the second film of Petri's so-called *trilogia della nevrosi* (trilogy of neurosis), which concerns neurosis in relation to work.[6](https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/files/140860894/The_Years_of_Alienation_in_Italy.pdf)
Despite its title, the film portrays workers as individuals rather than as a class. Petri said in an interview that depicting a worker was for him like depicting any other human being, and that he had narrated "the story of us all, of how in this society, we cannot but live in alienation"; the working-class condition becomes a metaphor for a general existential alienation.[9](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/382066A840D74FBB9A5DC7247EF888B4/S1353294424000061a.pdf/imaginary-work-media-representations-of-work-and-gender-in-italy-from-the-economic-miracle-to-the-present-day.pdf) The protagonist's surname, Massa, ironically evokes the "mass worker" of the assembly lines who led the protests of the late 1960s.[9](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/382066A840D74FBB9A5DC7247EF888B4/S1353294424000061a.pdf/imaginary-work-media-representations-of-work-and-gender-in-italy-from-the-economic-miracle-to-the-present-day.pdf) A recurring scene shows Lulù walking around his home staring at his possessions, a crystal vase, a radio, an inflatable toy, candles called Magic Moments, and reckoning each in hours of labor, concluding that his material luxuries were bought at the expense of a lifetime of exhausting work.[10](https://classautonomy.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/The-Refusal-of-Work.pdf)
## Reception and re-evaluation
At Cannes, Petri called his film "propaganda for the working class".[2](https://www.thedailystar.net/showbiz/movie-review/classic/the-working-class-goes-heaven-1971-150820) It was a box-office success and won the Grand Prix of the Cannes jury together with *Il caso Mattei*.[9](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/382066A840D74FBB9A5DC7247EF888B4/S1353294424000061a.pdf/imaginary-work-media-representations-of-work-and-gender-in-italy-from-the-economic-miracle-to-the-present-day.pdf) Critics of the era who sympathized with the left assailed the film severely, calling it an inaccurate, reductive, and sometimes disparaging picture of the worker; it was not until recent years that leftist thinkers reassessed it, viewing it as a key depiction of the class struggle and a convincing rendering of the social problems it showed.[11](https://thesis.unipd.it/handle/20.500.12608/87921) Scholars such as Peter Bondanella have called it the best example of the Italian political film.[6](https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/files/140860894/The_Years_of_Alienation_in_Italy.pdf)
The film was shown in the "Venezia Ieri – Retrospettiva Elio Petri" retrospective at the 40th Venice International Film Festival in 1983.[1](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993) Its ending is described by commentators as nihilistic and politically ambiguous: the workers return to the factory in a foggy, livid atmosphere, flanked by the megaphones of the unionist on one side and the students on the other, resembling the automata of [Fritz Lang](https://www.edgepedia.org/fritz-lang)'s *[Metropolis](https://www.edgepedia.org/metropolis-1927-film)*.[8](https://artesettima.it/2023/03/27/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso-sindacati-autonomi-e-rifiuto-del-lavoro/)
## References
1. [Scheda film: La classe operaia va in Paradiso, ASAC – La Biennale di Venezia](https://asac.labiennale.org/attivita/cinema/10993)
2. [The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971), review, The Daily Star](https://www.thedailystar.net/showbiz/movie-review/classic/the-working-class-goes-heaven-1971-150820)
3. [Elio Petri – The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971), credits, UrbanSkin](https://www.urbanskin.org/ep_english/classe.html)
4. [La classe operaia va in paradiso, Minerva Pictures](https://www.minervapictures.com/film/9535/?lang=en)
5. [La classe operaia va in Paradiso, Mediaset Infinity](https://mediasetinfinity.mediaset.it/movie/laclasseoperaiavainparadiso/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso_F000342102000101/)
6. [L. Di Gregorio, "The Years of Alienation in Italy", University of Manchester](https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/files/140860894/The_Years_of_Alienation_in_Italy.pdf)
7. [Elio Petri: The Working Class Go To Heaven, The Wild Eye](https://www.thewildeye.co.uk/blog/reviews/elio-petri-the-working-class-go-to-heaven/)
8. [La classe operaia va in paradiso – Sindacati, autonomi e rifiuto del lavoro, ArteSettima](https://artesettima.it/2023/03/27/la-classe-operaia-va-in-paradiso-sindacati-autonomi-e-rifiuto-del-lavoro/)
9. [Imaginary Work: Media Representations of Work and Gender in Italy, Modern Italy (Cambridge)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/382066A840D74FBB9A5DC7247EF888B4/S1353294424000061a.pdf/imaginary-work-media-representations-of-work-and-gender-in-italy-from-the-economic-miracle-to-the-present-day.pdf)
10. [The Refusal of Work (classautonomy.info)](https://classautonomy.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/The-Refusal-of-Work.pdf)
11. [G. Venturini, "La classe operaia va in paradiso. Dal rifiuto all'apprezzamento critico", University of Padua thesis](https://thesis.unipd.it/handle/20.500.12608/87921)
---
*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1970s › Released 1970 to 1974*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license