Inspired , according to its director , by the revolutionary ghosts of Paris ’s no longer extant Bastille and set in the slums of late-nineteenth-century Turin , the film accepts what the influential Italian Marxist leader Antonio Gramsci saw as “ the challenge of modernity , ” namely , “ to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned . ” To that end , '' The Organizer '' is variously ( and , for some , disconcertingly ) jaunty , sentimental , comic , and baffling , as Monicelli applies the tonal shifts associated with the French New Wave to a straightforward saga of working-class solidarity . Others attribute those tonal shifts to Age & Scarpelli , who " were among the leading screenwriters " of the commedia all ' italiana . In an interview , Monicelli said " the subject is serious or tragic , but our point of view is comic and humorous . This is a type of comedy that grows out of the fact that Italians see reality and life precisely in this matter . " Notable for its period detail and Giuseppe Rotunno ’s accomplished faux-daguerreotype cinematography , the film is not so much a call to action as to recollection — both a historical monument and a taboo-breaking depiction of a specific moment . Throughout , Rotunno ’s black-and-white cinematography makes evocative use of flat lighting and gray skies to accentuate the sense of soot and smoke . ( Because little was left of nineteenth-century Turin , the movie was actually shot in the nearby Piedmontese cities of Cuneo , Fossano , and Savigliano , with the vast factory interior filmed in Zagreb , Yugoslavia . ) In May 1964 Walter Reade-Sterling released a 126-minute version of the film ; according to Bosley Crowther , that version is a " simple social drama that turns out to be engrossingly human , compassionate and humorous .... Marcello Mastroianni ... plays the title role with a delightful blend of ardor , ingenuousness and whimsicality . He excels as the shaggy-haired , near-sighted , idealistic intellectual who leads a handful of downtrodden workers ... in a revolt . But the whole thing is done with such veracity and the other roles are so strongly played or , at least , so graphically represented &mdash; that one feels right in the middle of one of those classic demonstrations in which the labor movement was born . " In 1964 the National Board of Review placed the film on its " Year 's Five Best Foreign Films " . It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 37th Academy Awards
37th Academy Awards
37th Academy Awards
The Organizer