The Organizer (1963)
aka. The Comrades
aka. The Strikers
★ ★ ★ – Good
I didn’t feel I should post in your Marathon and the main Respond thread doesn’t work because my thoughts are addressed more directly to you.
As you stated, I do like the film, though I wouldn’t have made such a bold claim myself for something that isn’t what you would call a crowd pleaser. In broad strokes it follows the basic pattern of a strike story (or the American Revolution), which you know will end in ultimate victory or grand tragedy for the oppressed rebels. (I’m sure there has to be a strike movie where the company is the hero, but I can’t think of one.) I’ve seen it play out both ways in Barbara Kopple docs, there’s silent Russian cinema and Matewan, which I love and this probably best resembles.
You could say the difference between me and you is that I’m more into the heavier approach of Matewan, where the bad people wear hats that literally cast a shadow over their eyes. It takes a tricky subject and boils it down to good and bad people. That said, what works best here is Monicelli’s much wider canvas. It allows for moments of unexpected humor (Salvatore’s knife that won’t open) along with the tragedy. Personal distractions don’t need to be directly connected to the main story, allowing one to affect the other in an interesting way. Best of all, it allows the film to surprise us with what we learn about some of the characters.
For Monicelli, I definitely liked this more than The Great War. At the time, I thought I preferred Big Deal on Madonna Street, but after reading other reviews and articles on this, I don’t know. I wasn’t AS gripped by the period detail as you. It’s fine, but not something that stood out to me. The cut to the lush house of the owners reminded me of the Christmas mansion that opens Fanny & Alexander and there’s an image that evokes The Gleaners that leads to a really interesting bit of geography when a girl goes over the wall.