The Organizer

Last updated
The Organizer
I compagni - Film 1963.jpg
Italian theatrical release poster
Directed by Mario Monicelli
Written byMario 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
CountryItaly
LanguageItalian

The Organizer (Italian : I compagni [note 1] ) is a 1963 Italian-French-Yugoslavian-produced [1] drama film written by Mario Monicelli and Age & Scarpelli, and directed by Mario Monicelli. Set in Turin at the end of the 19th century, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as a labor activist who becomes involved with a group of textile factory workers who go on strike. [2]

Contents

The film had its premiere at the 35th Congress of the Italian Socialist Party. [1] [3] The script was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 37th Academy Awards.

Plot

The film is set in Turin at 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 an ad hoc committee 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 a walkout an 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

Background

Italy’s first capital after the Risorgimento ended in the 1870s, Turin was in the midst of rapid industrialization during the period of The 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 before The Battle of Algiers (1966), to create a sort of neorealist period piece; using a strategy that would subsequently be seen in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Organizer opens with a montage of historical photographs that skillfully segues into contemporary facsimiles. [3]

Style

Inspired, according to its director, by the revolutionary ghosts of Paris’s no longer extant Bastille and set in the slums of late-nineteenth-century Turin, the film accepts what the influential Italian Marxist leader Antonio Gramsci saw as “the challenge of modernity,” namely, “to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.” To that end, The Organizer is variously (and, for some, disconcertingly) jaunty, sentimental, comic, and baffling, as Monicelli applies the tonal shifts associated with the French New Wave to a straightforward saga of working-class solidarity. [3] Others attribute those tonal shifts to Age & Scarpelli, who "were among the leading screenwriters" of the commedia all'italiana. [1] 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." [1]

Notable for its period detail and Giuseppe Rotunno’s accomplished 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.) [3]

Reception

In May 1964 Walter Reade-Sterling released a 126-minute version of the film; according to Bosley Crowther, [4] 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 representedthat one feels right in the middle of one of those classic demonstrations in which the labor movement was born."

Stanley Kauffmann writing for The New Republic called The Organizer 'very interesting and very odd'. [5]

In 1964 the National Board of Review placed the film on its "Year's Five Best Foreign Films". [1] It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 37th Academy Awards.

Notes

  1. "I compagni" literally translates into "The Comrades."
  2. 1 2 3 The film features several well-known French actors: Bernard Blier, Franois Prier and Annie Girardot.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strike action</span> Work stoppage by employees

Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike and industrial action in British English, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act. When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">March on Rome</span> 1922 mass demonstration and coup détat by the National Fascist Party in Rome, Italy

The March on Rome was an organized mass demonstration in October 1922 which resulted in Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party ascending to power in the Kingdom of Italy. In late October 1922, Fascist Party leaders planned a march on the capital. On 28 October, the fascist demonstrators and Blackshirt paramilitaries approached Rome; Prime Minister Luigi Facta wished to declare a state of siege, but this was overruled by King Victor Emmanuel III, who, fearing bloodshed, persuaded Facta to resign by threatening to abdicate. On 30 October 1922, the King appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister, thereby transferring political power to the fascists without armed conflict. On 31 October the fascist Blackshirts paraded in Rome, while Mussolini formed his coalition government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mario Monicelli</span> Italian film director and screenwriter

Mario Alberto Ettore Monicelli was an Italian film director and screenwriter, one of the masters of the commedia all'italiana. He was nominated six times for an Oscar, and received the Golden Lion for his career.

Age & Scarpelli is the stage name used by the pair of Italian screenwriters Agenore Incrocci (1914–2005) and Furio Scarpelli (1919–2010). Together, they wrote the script for about a hundred movies, mainly satirical comedies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriele Ferzetti</span> Italian actor

Gabriele Ferzetti was an Italian actor with more than 160 credits across film, television, and stage. His career was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s.

<i>Mrs. Santa Claus</i> American TV series or program

Mrs. Santa Claus is a 1996 American made-for-television musical fantasy comedy film directed by Terry Hughes, with a score by Jerry Herman, starring Angela Lansbury in the title role.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1913 Paterson silk strike</span> Work stoppage involving silk mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey

The 1913 Paterson silk strike was a work stoppage involving silk mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey. The strike involved demands for establishment of an eight-hour day and improved working conditions. The strike began in February 1913, and ended five months later, on July 28. During the course of the strike, approximately 1,850 strikers were arrested, including Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

Franco Lucentini was an Italian writer, journalist, translator and editor of anthologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Years of Lead (Italy)</span> Period of social and political turmoil in Italy

In Italy, the phrase Years of Lead refers to a period of political violence and social upheaval that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism and violent clashes.

<i>The Great War</i> (1959 film) 1959 Italian film by Mario Monicelli

The Great War is a 1959 Italian comedy-drama war film directed by Mario Monicelli. It tells the story of an odd couple of army buddies in World War I; the movie, while played on a comedic register, does not hide from the viewer the horrors and grimness of trench warfare. Starring Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Its crew also included Danilo Donati (costumes) and Mario Garbuglia.

<i>Commedia allitaliana</i> Italian film genre

Commedia all'italiana, or Italian-style comedy, is an Italian film genre born in Italy in the 1950s and developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely considered to have started with Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street in 1958, and derives its name from the title of Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style (1961). According to most of the critics, La Terrazza (1980) by Ettore Scola is the last work considered part of the commedia all'italiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paolo Virzì</span> Italian film director, writer and producer

Paolo Virzì is an Italian film director, writer and producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turin</span> City in Piedmont, Italy

Turin is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is mainly on the western bank of the Po River, below its Susa Valley, and is surrounded by the western Alpine arch and Superga hill. The population of the city proper is 843,514, while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 1.7 million inhabitants. The Turin metropolitan area is estimated by the OECD to have a population of 2.2 million.

<i>Love Story</i> (1942 film) 1942 film

Love Story is a 1942 Italian drama film directed by Mario Camerini and starring Assia Noris, Piero Lulli and Carlo Campanini. It is based on the play Life Begins by Mary McDougal Axelson, previously adapted into a 1932 film of the same title and a 1939 film A Child Is Born. Along with A Pistol Shot it marked an attempt to showcase Noris as a dramatic actress, rather than the White Telephone comedies she had become known for. It was screened at the 1942 Venice Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1926 Passaic textile strike</span> Labor action in New Jersey, U.S.

The 1926 Passaic textile strike was a work stoppage by over 15,000 woolen mill workers in and around Passaic, New Jersey, over wage issues in several factories in the vicinity. Conducted in its initial phase by a "United Front Committee" organized by the Trade Union Educational League of the Workers (Communist) Party, the strike began on January 25, 1926, and officially ended only on March 1, 1927, when the final mill being picketed signed a contract with the striking workers. It was the first Communist-led work stoppage in the United States. The event was memorialized by a seven reel silent movie intended to generate sympathy and funds for the striking workers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Riccardo Gualino</span> Italian Business magnate and art collector

Riccardo Gualino was an Italian business magnate and art collector. He was also a patron and an important film producer. His first business empire was based on lumber from Eastern Europe and included forest concessions, lumber mills, ships and warehouses. The highly leveraged structure collapsed in 1912–13. Gualino was also involved in manufacturing and distributing cement, and during World War I (1914–18) built and operated cargo ships carrying goods such as coal from the United States to Europe. After the war he was engaged in many enterprises, some in partnership with Giovanni Agnelli of FIAT. His activities included banking, manufacture of rayon, confectionery, chemicals and artificial leather.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teresa Noce</span> Italian politician

Teresa Noce was an Italian labor leader, activist, journalist and feminist. She served as a parliamentary deputy and advocated broad social legislation benefiting mothers.

Carmen Lucia was a union organizer in the United States, nicknamed the "Hatter's Fighting Lady".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Celeste Negarville</span> Italian politician (1905–1959)

Celeste Negarville was an Italian communist, journalist and politician, first director of the post-war newspaper l'Unità and undersecretary for foreign affairs in the Parri and De Gasperi governments. He was born in Avigliana.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Steffen, James. "teaser The Organizer (1964)". Articles. Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved 2014-10-14.
  2. "NY Times: The Organizer". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-10-20. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Hoberman, J. "The Organizer: Description of a Struggle". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 2012-04-27.
  4. Crowther, Bosley (May 7, 1964). "The Organizer Opens at Coronet Theater". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-08-29.
  5. Kaufmann, Stanley (1968). A world on Film. Delta Books. p. 340.