Rather than step into one of the spaces between the cars, the man keeps forging ahead, forcing the two blueoveralled workmen to give way to him. This they do, as though acknowledging the aura of power the man has about him, marking him as someone to be deferred to, not to be crossed. One of them moves to one side, between the silver-grey Alfa and its neighbouring vehicle, a battle scarred Fiat Uno. The other drops back, apparently waiting for the truck to pass so that he can fall in behind it and leave the way clear.

And this is where the strange thing happens. For as the male principal passes the first blue-overalled supernumerary, the latter turns around holding an object which must have been concealed in one of the many pockets of his costume. It appears to be a rolled-up newspaper, no doubt L'Unita or II Manifesto or some such publication devoted to the aspirations and struggles of the proletariat, thus tying neatly into the director's jejune rethink. In an oddly elegant gesture, the workman waves the newspaper at the man in the overcoat, as though swatting a fly circling his head. At the same moment, although without any obvious sense of cause and effect, the latter tumbles forward as if he had tripped on the raised edge of one of the black paving slabs — always a hazard, even in this relatively well-to-do area of the city Luckily the other workman, now level with the rear of the still moving truck, is just in time to catch the falling man, thus preventing him from doing himself any serious injury. The gesture seems at first to indicate a compromise in the directorial line already established — the essential goodness of people everywhere, despite the ideological gulfs that appear to divide them — which half the audience fears and the other half secretly hopes will spill over into what the latter will applaud as human warmth and the former dismiss as feeble sentimentality.