The most significant Manzonian characteristic of Olmi's cinema is its Catholicism: of all the major Italian filmmakers he has the least problematic relationship with the Church. He embodies the spirit of the "opening to the Left" which has characterized both religious and parliamentary politics in Italy since the early 1960s. For the most part, his films center upon an individual worker caught between employment and an individual quest to assert dignity through labor. Quite often this tension carries over from work to the conjugal or preconjugal love life of the protagonist.
After L'albero degli zoccoli, the predominately latent religiosity in his cinema became more manifest. Cammina, cammina recounts a version of the story of the Three Wise Men seeking the Christ child. La leggenda del santo bevitore turns the last days of a Parisian clochard into a parable of divine intervention. Its plot is perhaps more characteristic of Rohmer than Olmi, but the filmmaker uses it to reimagine the simple daily activities of proletarian life through the eyes of a drunkard bewildered by his sudden streak of good fortune.
We mourn Ermanno Olmi, one of the greatest directors of the many great directors that Italy has brought forth. His most lasting legacy will most probably be the neorealist masterpiece "L'albero degli zoccoli", which documents Lombard peasant life in the late 19th century through a heartbreaking story about how effortlessly society can turn an act of kindness and good will into a crime. A story of the ordeals of the everyman that go alongside it. An absolute must see.