I compagni (The Organizer). 1963. Italy. Directed by Mario Monicelli. Screenplay by Monicelli, Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli. With Marcello Mastroianni, Annie Girardot, Renato Salvatori, Gabriella Giorgelli, Folco Lulli. In Italian; English subtitles. 35mm. 130 min.
Marcello Mastroianni, who had starred in Mario Monicelli’s brilliant neorealist comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), gave one of his greatest performances in The Organizer as Professor Sinigaglia, the down-at-the-heels, would-be leader of an ill-fated strike by Turin textile workers in 1890. Together, the actor and director imbue the working class with fraternal bonhomie that only deepens the grimness of their circumstances. J. Hoberman would extol Mastroianni’s “Chaplinesque conspirator” as “a stunningly perverse embodiment of revolutionary hope.” It’s hard to believe that Guissepe Rotunno, who pollutes the tragicomic proceedings with a haze of grime and soot—Dwight MacDonald invoked the “bleak, grainy quality of photographs by Jacob Riis”—would also shoot Luchino Visconti’s lush The Leopard that same year.