; ee’ Organizer.” Produced by
4,260 Cristaldi. Directed by Mario
Onicelli. Screenplay by Monicelli

Age Scarpelli.
&
his is a film about the class
Struggle, It is the greatest
Portrayal of the working class
“ver done on the screen,

i say this is to suggest the
“redible measure of the fim’s
ovement, for it is very diffi-
i to portray a class, But this
| What the film does, and it is
aN with warmth, with dignity,
th humor, with understanding,
Md above all, with authenticity,

There are individual charac-
f Marvelously conceived and
“tei but these, with all their

Viduality as human beings,

Te striking panels in the larger

Wal of the class,

E With Eisenstein’s original

the ef the closeup to illuminate

: €mper and character of a

Mg the individual portrayals

feerve to delineate the diver-

tty human, emotional texture
he larger social fabric,

* KOK
aN Setting is a textile mill in
1, in the industrial north of
af Never before has a factory
he filmed with such over-
the INE realism, with the din,
Been, the incredibly or-
Chaos,

Ae time is the end of the 19th
Pt a It was a special time of

ty ition in Italian history, be-
Such completion as the
is democratic revolution
eme attain in Italy and the
Soeiat of the modern labor-

St movement,

Ur,
Wy feo

tag Period, heralded earlier in
and Atury by the “ Risorgimento”
as y, PTesented by such heroes
Dag pein and Garibaldi, was
Uhifio Bs been crowned by
reg a ton of the country and the
Capita N of conditions for modern
1st development,

T
a New century ushered in a
"a, and-as a matter of his-

|

ate Passion of the Hawks,” by
am Coffin. Published by Coi-
eo illan, Canada. Available
Ple’s Co-op Book Store. Price

: OrHOR Coffin has been an
y €rver in Washington for
eeades and from the jack-
this book this would appear
© his first attempt at a
T work of: serious. nonfict-
ny is an auspicious begin-
sg,’ the Passion of the Hawks
& {arching look at the arm-
"Ces of the United States
m erything connected with

Bea? the reader who has al-
one f00d general idea of
Mii, itary in the United States
Pts. will contain few sur-
Moon. but it is nonetheless well
ay pated, highly informative,
the i resting, An example of
boo on mative aspect of the
aaa eld be found in a two-
hin Ppendix (small print) con-
is the names of senators
Re gembers of the House of
"ang Sentatives who hold the
Sen Captain or higher in the

S of U.S. armed forces,

Th
Man book also deals in great
With the relationship be-

torical record—the country was
swept by industrial unrest, The
film recreafés an early herald
of such unrest,

The dramatic action is trig-
gered by an accident in the mill
—a worker is caught andmangled
in a machine, All the pent up
grievances erupt—against the 14
hour work day and the deadening
fatigue that makes maiming acci-
dents inevitable and’ frequent,
against the total lack of accident
insurance, against the regime of
indignity,

The workers plan a primitive
job action, They will blow the
whistle an hour earlier, shut off
the power, and thus institute the
13 hour day, But the plan goes
awry — a physically vigorous,
crude, vital, aggressive militant
(one of the memorable charac-
ters) blows the whistle, but the
others, under the apprehensive
surveillance of the overseers,
“chicken out,”

The militant is penalized, and
the workers gather to discuss
what to do next, At this juncture
“the organizer” appears, He
(Marcello Mastrolianni) is ahigh
school teacher, a Socialist agita-
tor, hiding out from the police
after an altercation in another
Italian city.

He persuades the workers to
strike, helps them draft their
demands, and thereafter serves
as counsellor and strategist, and,
at critical moments, as the effec-
tive strike leader,

Mastroianni’s organizer is the
intellectual “going to the people”
(in the phrase of the old Russian
radical intellegentsia), an alien
among the workers, as he con-
cedes, yet bound to them by con-
viction and idealism, which are
more conveyed than explained,

tween the military and other
groups such as the politicians,
the industrialists and the scien-
tists,

Coffin does not state in any
great detail what has made the
military the way it is, Nor does
he care to make any concrete
suggestions as to what should
be done to improve the situation,
This latter is a glaring fault

which could lead one to believe
the author had no other purpose
in mind but to be the author of
something controversial, The
closest he comes to suggesting
an improvement is a chapter in.
which he shows how and why
David M, Shoup (Commandant
USMC) is a good military man,

Another shortcoming should
be mentioned, As if throwing a
bone to a frantic dog, Coffin
throws a sop to frantic liberals
who may have become a little
worried about the situation,

In a chapter entitled ‘‘The
Mirror Army” he contends that

- Working class portra

He is terribly alone, desper-
ately hungry (for food, for com-
panionship, for affection); he is
fumbling, self-conscious about
his estrangement, but dedicated
—at critical moments he sur-
mounts intellectual indecision to
be the man of action, In his initial
conception of the role Mastroian-
ni is brilliant—but as the drama
develops his deadpan veils emo-
tion,

‘Much of the story hinges onthe
developing relationship between
the Socialist intellectual and the
workers, He encounters suspi-
cion, some hostility and at mo-
ments when things go badly or
there are casualties (two of the
principal characters are killed
in the course of the struggle),
grief-fed resentment is directed
against him,

But he perseveres, and ulti-
mately prevails, for he is abso-
lutely selfless, and his militant
counsel corresponds with the
workers’ own compulsion to
struggle against their intolerable
conditions, overcoming their own
fears and hesitations,

The film ends inconclusively,
for in Italy circa 1900 there were
no conclusive endings to the sort
of struggle that is waged, Yet the
ending is suggestive—in the last
sequence there is a report that
the workers have entered the
organizer as their political can-
didate, :

Thus the development pro-
gresses from the primitive job
action (little more than an ex-
pression of class instinct),
through a protracted, hard-fought
strike (expressing class con-
scousness) to the higher plane of
political action,

Phrased thus the whole thing
might seem schematic, but this
only proves again the distinction
between sociology and art,

For this film is alive and vital,
and not only believable but com-
pellingly so, A human being isno
less human for his identity with
a class; indeed, if the identity
is established with artistry and

Ong look at U.S. ‘Hawks’

the Red Army is just the same
as the military in the U.S, and
arrives at the conclusion that
the Red Army “‘is like a fat,
frowsy, old harridan,”’ It is un-
fotunate that Coffin hasneglected
to furnish us with an appendix
Similiar to the one concerning
members of Congress, showing
the number of Red Army offi-
cers who sit in the Supreme
Soviet. Nor does he relate the bio-
graphies of the counterparts of
Douglas MacArthur or Edwin
Walker,

Coffin has written in a style
which is for the most part ser-
ious but which is plentifully laced
with light satire, For instance,
in discussing the ‘‘credibility’’
thesis, he writes “Khrushchov.
boasted he had one hundred mis-
siles trained on the United
States in the Cuba crisis: we
said that was nothing, we had
four hundred aimed at Russia,
This is credibility’’,

The passion of the Hawks
is therefore not only informative
but even in places ironically
humorous, It makes for excel-

lent reading,
—E. Taylor

yed superbly

Marcello Mastroianni in the title role of “The Organizer.”

perception, as it is done here,
the humanity is larger,

In the remarkable gallery of
characters there is the previous-
ly mentioned militant, a child
laborer, several women; a young
worker expressing the greatest
suspicion and hostility towards
the organizer at first and the most
completely won in the end, andra
wonderful Sicilian, an alien inthis
industrial north, the butt of deep-
rooted sectional prejudice in the
more advanced Italian region to-
ward the backward South, There
is also the girl turned prostitute
to escape the mill,

A few brief glimpses estalish
the identity of the “other class”
—the tyrannical and sadistic mill
owner; the superintendents, rab-
bits in his presence and tigers
in the mill,

Once again, acritical catalogue
might be misleading, for it tends
to reduce the richness of creation
to a scheme, correct perhaps but
barren,

Such critical discomfiture is,
in a sense, the ultimate tribute
to the film’s genius, for it does
take the typical, that which is
“old stuff” in the Marxist con-
ception, and endows it with the
dimensions and substance of
humanity and life, with the beauty
that is truth,

All is combined to create the
film's effect—the settings; the
costumes; the earthy profanity of
the dialogue; ‘the unembellished
and stirring songs ofthe workers;
the almost-eerie quality of the
camera in rendering individual
frames as if they were photo-
graphs of the period; the little
touches that convey the monotony,
the fatigue, the exploitation in the
factory, and with it all the es-
sential humanity of the workers
in these most de-humanizing of
circumstances,

Director Mario Monicelli has
created an epic film in the great
tradition of that pioneer classic,
“Potemkin,” Thisisno thin “slice
of life’—this is a generous por-
tion of humanity.

—A. R. (People’s World)

Summer Puzzle

What is the trick?

Is it to get along like all the grubs
That work their way toward the shelter of cocoons
Through leaf after leaf after leaf?

Up and down the brown branches you go

Like some slow-motioned sausage dog
Perhaps you’ll get pecked at or swallowed down
Some pink wet throat, my distant friend!.

A fine colored butterfly is a great splash,

No one hurts a butterfly, Tit-toed in te sun,
Wings up in prayer then down in beauty

That draws in the breath and, for a shining moment,
Breaks off the thread of our despair,

This the reward? Yet well we know that few
Of all the crawling horde will win,

And they not all end up as butterflies,

Moths come, all monochrome ana grey,
Flopping two hours or so between the trees:
A silent, lonely life that stirs no heart

Or head to even notice such a short affair,-

Can this. be all? To grow by leaf,

To change by chlorophyll and strange secretions;
Suck rays from the sun and sip from morning rain?
The surge of elemental life that has its end
_In cycles interlocked, What is the trick,

When in these things all power and passion melt
And flow astray? What gods could really care---
Or caring, do much more than glance away?

For only Man, who long ago

Flung wide his future’s door,

Can see and, in his understanding, smile
And shake his head and stumble

On his upward way,

—John Hope

July 24, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9