Synopsis
The Organizer (I compagni, 1963) is Mario Monicelli's tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. Turin, the 1890s: a textile mill, fourteen-hour shifts, wages that barely buy bread.
A worn-out schoolteacher drifts into town — Professor Sinigaglia, played by Marcello Mastroianni in a threadbare coat, perpetually hungry, gifted at exactly one thing: talking exhausted people into standing up for themselves. The workers call a strike. Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, Bernard Blier and a very young Raffaella Carrà fill out the factory floor, where the laughs keep colliding with disaster.
Age and Scarpelli's screenplay was up for an Academy Award, yet Monicelli refuses to turn any of it into a slogan. The strike stumbles, splinters and turns bloody, and stays funny all the way through. It's one of Mastroianni's least vain performances — his professor is shabby and a little ridiculous, which is precisely why he rings true. Stream The Organizer (1963) online on iFILM.
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