The Sound of Trumpets

Teenaged Domenico Cantoni lives in a small apartment in Meda with his working class family consisting of his parents and his younger teenaged brother, Franco. In what is among his first major steps in the transition from being a boy to being a man in the completion of middle school, Domenic, in an effort to help support the family, is traveling into Milan as one of the invitees to apply for the many white-collar jobs within a major corporation, the process including an aptitude test. Many of the other applicants are like him in that they are young, and a job with the company would be their first work experience. Although the assumption is that the entry level jobs do not pay much, he, his family and most of the other applicants see getting one of the jobs as setting one up for life in terms of job security. As such, most of the applicants place great importance in this application day. Domenic makes a connection with one of the other applicants, Antonietta Masetti - who goes by the nickname Magali - much like him who needs a job to help support her family. Domenic hopes to have her as a friend in the city if they both get one of the jobs. They do indeed both gets jobs, but are in different sections physically and functionally within the company, and thus would not see each other on a day-to-day basis. As Domenic settles into work at the company, the prospect of a job for life with the company is not quite as attractive as it was on application day.