Daily Archives: November 28, 2017

The Organizer (Il compagni)
Directed by Mario Monicelli
Written by Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli and Mario Monicelli
1963/Italy/France/Yugoslavia
Lux Film/Vides Cinematografia/Mediterrannee Cinema Production/Avala Film
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Raoul: [Referrinfg to Arro, a Sicilian] If that Ethipopian goes to work tomorrow, one by one they will go back with yours truly first in line.[/box]

A gem of a film with a very different performance from Marcello Mastroianni.

The setting is Turin, Italy at the end of the 19th Century.  The community mostly works at the local textile mill.  The shift is 14 hours long and conditions both in the homes and at the mill are squalid.  When one dog-tired employee loses his hand to a machine, the other workers vow to quit an hour early in protest.  But with no real organization, the walk-out fizzles.

Enter Professor Sinigaglia (Mastroianni), an ex-high school teacher turned union organizer who is a fugitive of justice resulting from his activities in another town.  Sigigaglia is an odd-ball kind of egghead that proves to be a surprisingly inspirational speaker.  He convinces the workers that they need a lot more than one extra hour off work and they go on strike.

The management is unshakeable and the strike stretches out beyond economic endurance.  Finally, unable to fob off the workers, the management turns on Sinigaglia. With Renato Salvatori, Fulco Lulli, and Bernard Blier on the strike committee and Annie Giradot as a prostitute.

I was preparing for a lot of violence and there was some but the ending holds out a ray of hope for the future.  There are also quite a few light-hearted moments.  Cinematographer Giuseppi Rotunno’s lighting evokes black-and-white photographs of the era.  Warmly recommended.

The Organizer was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment
Directed by Robert Drew (uncredited)
1963/USA
ABC News/Drew Associates
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Robert F. Kennedy – Attorney General of the United States: I’m not very much in favor of picking the governor up and moving him out of the way. I think it’d be much better if we develop some system if we had enough people to just push him aside.[/box]

Robert Drew was granted special access to President John F. Kennedy’s administration. This is one of several documentaries he made showing the inner workings of the White House.  It centers in a confrontation Alabama Governor George Wallace provoked with the Federal Government over the admission of two African-American students to the University of Alabama.  Although the federal court had ordered their admission and the university had in fact admitted them, Wallace said he would simply physically bar the door to their entry.

The documentary contains several fascinating strategy sessions in the White House along with straight-forward news style coverage of the events of the day.  As it worked out the Alabama National Guard had to be nationalized before the governor backed down.

[box] This is not a sectional issue…. Nor is this a partisan issue…. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. — John F. Kennedy, Civil Rights Address, June 11, 1963[/box]

This is a now heart-wrenching look at a time when idealism prevailed in the White House. My favorite part, though, is George Wallace’s pathetic attempts at justifying his position.  He explains that segregation benefits the Negro because otherwise how would he know which cafes were for him and which were for White people!  Recommended if you are interested in the subject matter.

Clip