Product Details

• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304633556
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #339,317 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Organizer" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, entertaining docudrama with a slight comedic view, August 24, 2007

By 

(Rizzo) Rizzuto (Denver) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Organizer (VHS Tape)

At the end of the 19th century, in Turin, Italy, textile factory workers are sweating out 14 hour days. From the very young to older family members are employed here, and sometimes it looks like the whole town is here. Overly tired and sleepy by days end, one worker carelessly is maimed by machinery. Next day, the workers plan to talk to the manager about the long hours, but they get nowhere.

A few are selected to lead the group and their first attempt is to work one hour less at days end by cutting off the steam to the machinery. Then they think about beginning their day one hour later. When a professor Dr. Sangrillia, comes to town, it is with his expertise that encourages a strike. They plan some benefits to hold themselves during the strike, like stealing coal. Meanwhile, we get the company's reaction to the strike.

This movie, it's Italian name I Campagni, is a grainy black and white filmed in 1963, a docudrama effect with a slight comedic edge. It is a sight to see when a trainload of scabs (unemployed men from another town) engage in physical battle with the strikers. Born in 1915, Mario Monicelli is known as one of Italy's finest directors, King of Italian comedy, directed numerous movies, written screenplay, and is an actor. He is known to have a role in the 2003 Under the Tuscan Sun. Not on DVD yet, the video subtitles are not perfected, and at times difficult to read. 130 minutes. There is a certain look to this film that clearly depicts the era. Try this! ........Rizzo

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Totally absorbing; one of Mastroianni's best performances., July 31, 1999

By 

RAUL DASILVA (Hamden, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Organizer (VHS Tape)

I Compagni is memorable. When we consider why films move us, affect our lives, indeed, create us to some extent, we think of films such as this. This is not just an artistic triumph for all its filmmakers, but also a moving document of humanity. We take measure of Mastroianni not by his range of performance but by his deep involvement. Like France's Charles Aznavour has his heart in his song, Marcello Mastroianni is fully engaged in his performance. As Professor Sinigaglia in I Compagni, Mastroianni is at his best form. The source of his intensity is not his surface emotion, but the depths of his soul.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A searing view of what those who experience the beginning of the industrial revolution, July 27, 2011

By 

Gloria Anchio - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Organizer (VHS Tape)

Italy in 1900 was at a stage similar to the United States in 1820. The industrial revolution was beginning. Textile and garment making factories were springing up. Desperate, poor peasants were moving from the fields to factories. This film depicts what this experience was like through the eyes of a boy of about 12. His father has died. He must go out to work to support the family. Without any preachiness, the film has the viewer enter a world where child labor is allowed, where there is no social safety net (no welfare, no unemployment compensation, no survivor's benefits, no sick pay, no medical insurance, no disability benefits). If you don't work, you starve. It's a world where there is no concept of an 8-hour day -- from 12 year old boy to old man, workers toil from sunrise to sundown, maybe 12 or 14 hours a day, six days a week. And near the end of that long day, workers in the textile factory are very tired. Without any safety laws, the machines are dangerous and tired workers can get their hands caught on the looms and be maimed. Working hard will not get one a better future (not mentioned in the film as Italians would know this -- there were no public schools, no way for a worker to get a mortgage to buy a tiny dwelling). Theirs will only be a life of drudgery.

What was unusual about Italy is who tried to help the workers. The union organizers were not workers but young upper middle class men, most of whom had been educated in France or England. They came back and thought Italy (newly unified) backwards, and in particular, that the peasants and workers were oppressed with no realistic chance of improvement unless they organized. Marcello Mastroianni portrays an idealistic young man, with no experience of the reality of grinding poverty, but who truly wants to help the workers. Although he is from a vastly higher social class, the workers do recognize his honesty and his true concern. There is no happy ending, and the film is brutally honest. There is no whitewashing of what life was like (including a humorous but touching scene where the organizer must hide from the police and the daughter of a worker hides him in her room -- she is a prostitute and stoutly defends her choice to do something that will make her enough money to escape from grinding poverty unmaimed). But one does see that the workers, having organized, have won something -- a sense of respect for themselves and the realization that if they act together they may be able to improve their future.