The Organizer

For the Lester Bowie album, seeThe Organizer (album).

The Organizer
Italian theatrical release poster
Directed by	Mario Monicelli
Written by	Mario Monicelli Age & Scarpelli
Produced by	Franco Cristaldi
Starring	Marcello Mastroianni Renato Salvatori Annie Girardot Folco Lulli Gabriella Giorgelli Bernard Blier Raffaella Carrà François Périer Vittorio Sanipoli
Cinematography	Giuseppe Rotunno
Edited by	Ruggero Mastroianni
Music by	Carlo Rustichelli
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	October 25, 1963(1963-10-25)
Running time	128 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

The Organizer(Italian:I compagni) is a 1963 Italian-French-Yugoslavian-produceddrama filmwritten byMario MonicelliandAge & Scarpelli,and directed by Mario Monicelli. Set inTurinat the end of the 19th century, it starsMarcello Mastroiannias a labor activist who becomes involved with a group of textile factory workers who go on strike.

The film had its premiere at the 35th Congress of theItalian Socialist Party.The script was nominated forBest Original Screenplayat the37th Academy Awards.

Plot

The film is set inTurinat the end of the 19th century and opens with a scene showing workers of all ages, including young teenager Omero (Franco Ciolli), rising at 5:30 in the morning before heading to a textile factory where they work until 8:30 in the evening.

Towards the end of the day, fatigue starts taking its toll and disaster strikes when the hand of a drowsy worker is mangled by a machine. Workers Pautasso (Folco Lulli), Martinetti (Bernard Blier), and Cesarina (Elvira Tonelli) decide to form anad hoccommittee and speak to management and state their case that the 14-hour work day needs to be shortened by one hour to avoid accidents arising from exhaustion. Their request is ignored and they only receive admonishments to be more careful. Moreover, a subsequent attempt by the workers to emphasize their grievances by staging awalkoutan hour early on the next evening results in a humiliating defeat when they lose their nerve and stay until the usual time.

Professor Sinigaglia (Marcello Mastroianni), a labor activist on the run from the police in Genoa, hops off a freight train and comes to hide in the neighborhood. There, he runs into a meeting where the undeterred workers discuss the idea of all coming to work an hour late to make their point. The bookish-looking, unassuming Sinigaglia becomes involved, and in a burst of fiery rhetoric persuades the workers to escalate their struggle by not coming to work at all and going on strike instead. Drawing on his own experience, he also helps them to prepare effectively by building up a stock of supplies.

The workers committee expresses its gratitude by assigning Sinigaglia as a guest to Raoul, a bitter worker who is skeptical about the others' determination as well as the movement's chances of success, and is displeased with this arrangement.

After a failed attempt at inducing the strikers to resume work by granting token concessions without shortening work days, management proceeds to bring in workers freshly laid off by another factory to take over. A confrontation ensues between the strikers and the replacement workers, resulting in Pautasso's death. This tragedy draws the attention of the press and the government, forcing the factory owners to send the replacement workers back home. However, the police also manage to track down Sinigaglia to Raoul's home, sending the professor on the move again after a narrow escape.

As the duration of the strike reaches a month, the factory owners are suffering severe financial losses and are close to giving in. Unaware of this and suffering from both low supplies and a low morale, workers meet and vote to end the strike. Sinigaglia then reappears, delivers yet more fiery rhetoric and convinces them not only to keep striking but to escalate the movement by occupying the factory. In a showdown between the strikers and an army unit dispatched to block access to the premises, soldiers fire into the crowd, killing Omero and sending the others fleeing. Sinigaglia is arrested by the police, and Raoul has to go into hiding after attacking a police officer.

The film's end mirrors its beginning: the grim-faced employees are shown crossing the factory gates to resume work, with Omero now replaced by his younger brother (whom Omero had hoped would obtain a better education and escape the fate of factory workers). Meanwhile, Raoul hops on a freight train to find shelter with a member of the underground labor movement in another city, and is now determined to pursue the struggle.

Cast

• Marcello Mastroianni- Professor Sinigaglia
• Renato Salvatori- Raoul
• Gabriella Giorgelli- Adele
• Folco Lulli- Pautasso
• Bernard Blier- Martinetti
• Raffaella Carrà- Bianca
• François Périer- Maestro Di Meo
• Vittorio Sanipoli- Baudet
• Franco Ciolli - Omero
• Mario Pisu- Manager
• Kenneth Kove- Luigi
• Annie Girardot- Niobe
• Edda Ferronao- Maria
• Anna Di Silvio - Gesummina
• Roberto Diamanti
• Elvira Tonelli- Cesarina

Background

Italy’s first capital after the Risorgimento ended in the 1870s, Turin was in the midst of rapid industrialization during the period ofThe Organizer,although the film unfolds some years before the growth of the industry. Populating his densely inhabited film with actual workers, Monicelli was attempting, three years beforeThe Battle of Algiers(1966), to create a sort ofneorealistperiod piece; using a strategy that would subsequently be seen inBonnie and Clyde(1967),The Organizeropens with a montage of historical photographs that skillfully segues into contemporary facsimiles.

Style

Inspired, according to its director, by the revolutionary ghosts of Paris’s no longer extantBastilleand set in the slums of late-nineteenth-century Turin, the film accepts what the influential Italian Marxist leaderAntonio Gramscisaw as “the challenge of modernity,” namely, “to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.” To that end,The Organizeris variously (and, for some, disconcertingly) jaunty, sentimental, comic, and baffling, as Monicelli applies the tonal shifts associated with theFrench New Waveto a straightforward saga of working-class solidarity.Others attribute those tonal shifts toAge & Scarpelli,who "were among the leading screenwriters" of thecommedia all'italiana.In an interview, Monicelli said "the subject is serious or tragic, but our point of view is comic and humorous. This is a type of comedy that grows out of the fact that Italians see reality and life precisely in this matter."

Notable for its period detail andGiuseppe Rotunno’saccomplished faux-daguerreotype cinematography, the film is not so much a call to action as to recollection—both a historical monument and a taboo-breaking depiction of a specific moment. Throughout, Rotunno’s black-and-white cinematography makes evocative use of flat lighting and gray skies to accentuate the sense of soot and smoke. (Because little was left of nineteenth-century Turin, the movie was actually shot in the nearby Piedmontese cities of Cuneo, Fossano, and Savigliano, with the vast factory interior filmed in Zagreb, Yugoslavia.)

Reception

In May 1964Walter Reade-Sterlingreleased a 126-minute version of the film; according toBosley Crowther,that version is a "simple social drama [that] turns out to be engrossingly human, compassionate and humorous....Marcello Mastroianni... plays the title role with a delightful blend of ardor, ingenuousness and whimsicality. He excels as the shaggy-haired, near-sighted, idealistic intellectual who leads a handful of downtrodden workers... in a revolt. But the whole thing is done with such veracity and the other roles are so strongly played or, at least, so graphically represented—that one feels right in the middle of one of those classic demonstrations in which thelabor movementwas born. "

Stanley Kauffmannwriting forThe New RepubliccalledThe Organizer'very interesting and very odd'.

In 1964 theNational Board of Reviewplaced the film on its"Year's Five Best Foreign Films".It was nominated forBest Original Screenplayat the37th Academy Awards.

External links

• The OrganizeratIMDb
• The OrganizeratRotten Tomatoes
• The Organizer: Description of a Strugglean essay byJ. Hobermanat theCriterion Collection