The Organizer (1963) on Netflix
In late 19th-century Turin, textile workers endure 14-hour days until an accident mangles a hand. A labor activist on the run, Professor Sinigaglia, urges them to strike.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb8.0/103,843 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Workers in a Turin textile factory rise at half past five and stay on the floor until half past eight in the evening. When exhaustion causes an accident at the machines, Pautasso, Martinetti and Cesarina ask management to cut one hour from the day. The request is brushed aside with warnings to be more careful, and an attempt to walk out early collapses. Professor Sinigaglia, a labor activist hiding from the police in Genoa, steps off a freight train into the neighborhood and finds the workers debating how to press their case. He argues for a full strike instead and shows them how to lay in supplies. The committee lodges him with Raoul, a worker who doubts both the others' resolve and the strike's chances.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Organizer (1963)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Mario Monicelli populated The Organizer with actual factory workers rather than actors, aiming at a neorealist period piece three years before The Battle of Algiers (1966).
- Because little remained of nineteenth-century Turin, Mario Monicelli shot The Organizer in the nearby Piedmontese cities of Cuneo, Fossano and Savigliano, and filmed its vast factory interior in Zagreb, Yugoslavia.
