By way of saying farewell to Marcello Mastroianni, we offer a rare chance to see his wonderful performance in one of Monicelli's best films, which happens not to be a comedy per se. Mastroianni plays a stubbornly idealistic schoolteacher who comes from Genoa to Turin to lead the local textile mill workers in a much-needed strike. Monicelli draws on his neorealist roots to capture the late-nineteenth-century setting in seemingly semi-documentary style. Cinematographer Rotunno's grey-toned art photography etches an image of the times, when factory workers labored fourteen-hour days and a strike to demand thirteen could provoke violence. Monicelli's commentary in the cause of industrial justice is serious and unyielding, yet never less than compassionate in this essentially humanist look at the beginnings of the trade union movement in northern Italy. Mastroianni's down-at-the-heels pedant turned agitator is played with shaggy restraint against Annie Girardot's Niobe, who has taken up prostitution rather than subject herself to the grueling mill work. Unseen here for many years, The Organizer was nominated for an Oscar for story and screenplay.