Umberto D.

So you're looking ahead to retirement?  But you're worried?  You're not sure you'll have that $5 million (or whatever) in your 401k account -- that impossible amount your financial adviser keeps insisting is essential?

For a little perspective, you might want to watch Umberto D., Vittorio De Sica's 1952 masterpiece, a film shown last night as part of the Seattle Art Museum's Italian cinema series.

Umberto is a retired civil servant living in post-war Italy.  (The film is worthwhile -- if for nothing else -- for its background documentation of a much poorer, more desperate Italy, with streets filled with pedestrians and streetcars, rather than automobiles.) 

Umberto apparently has no relatives.  He lives alone with his small dog "Flike" in a modest rooming house, whose landlady repeatedly demands overdue past rent.  He exists on a small, inadequate pension.  The film opens with scenes of street demonstrations by retirees demanding increases in their miserably low pensions.  Throughout the movie, Umberto spends his days trying to sell off his few meager possessions in an attempt to stay alive.

Umberto's landlady -- a pretentious, high-strung Signora who hosts absurd soirées in her run-down flat,  entertaining her guests by singing operatic arias  -- has decided to evict Umberto from the room in which he's lived for thirty years. 

Umberto, carefully dressed in respectable coat and tie, wanders about the city, accompanied by Flike, desperately attempting to scrape up enough lire to pay the overdue rent and to postpone the inevitable eviction.  He runs into former employers and younger fellow employees, all of whom are superficially friendly, but clearly uncomfortable -- especially once Umberto begins quietly hinting at how he needs just a bit of money to tide him over.  One by one, it's "great seeing you, hope all goes well," and they're gone.  Gone about their important business, business in which he himself once shared.

As his desperation deepens, he considers joining the ranks of the city's many panhandlers, but he can't force himself to accept the necessary but humiliating  sacrifice of his dignity.  (In desperation, he has clever Flike stand on his hind legs and hold an open hat in his mouth, while Umberto hides behind a post, hoping for coins from amused passers by.)

Bit by bit, Umberto gives up hope -- as do we, his audience.  He packs his bag and surrenders his room. He gives the last of his money to his landlady's unmarried, pregnant maid. He attempts unsuccessfully to find Flike a good home.  He then picks his beloved dog up in his arms and prepares to step in the path of a passing train, a double suicide.  Flike's intelligence and desire for survival exceed those of his master; he wriggles frees and the train-- and the moment -- pass by.  The dog, now somewhat leery of his undependable master, runs off and plays with some children.

Umberto sees the simple pleasures of his dog's life, and joins in the play, tossing pine cones for Flike to fetch.  Having given away all his possessions and money, Umberto is left with only his dog, the clothes on his back, and his life.  Like Flike, he grabs at the simple joys of the moment in the park, ignoring whatever the night and the days to come might bring.

And I guess that's our Guide to a Happy Retirement -- seize the joy of each precious moment, and ignore the uncertainties of tomorrow.  (Or, alternatively, I suppose, devote your life to saving up the five or ten million dollars recommended by your financial adviser.)