Marco Ferreri Retrospective 1 – 14 December at Ciné lumière

press release
nov 06
Marco Ferreri Retrospective
1 – 14 December
at Ciné lumière
About the Retrospective
The Italian Cultural Institute and the Institut français, London, in collaboration with Cinecittà Holding are delighted to
present a fortnight-long tribute to maverick Italian director Marco Ferreri. The retrospective features a representative
selection of 13 films from all four decades of his filmmaking career, and showcases impressive (and surprising)
performances from some of European cinema’s finest actors, including Marcello Mastroianni, Roberto Benigni,
Gérard Dépardieu, Catherine Deneuve, Philippe Noiret, Michel Piccoli and Ugo Tognazzi. A highlight of the
season will be the two screenings of Ferreri’s masterpiece La Grande Bouffe (Blow-Out) on a newly-restored print
provided by Cinecittà especially for the occasion. As many of Ferreri’s films received no, or very limited, UK release,
this season represents a valuable opportunity for film fans to assess or re-asses the work of one of Italian – and world
– cinema’s most singular talents.
L’Ape regina (The Queen Bee) • La Donna scimmia (The Ape Woman) • Dillinger è morto (Dillinger
is Dead) • L’Udienza (The Audience) • La Cagna (Love to Eternity) • La Grande Bouffe (Blow-Out) •
Touche pas à la femme blanche (Don’t Touch the White Woman!) • La Dernière Femme (The Last
Woman) • Ciao Maschio (Bye Bye Monkey) • Chiedo asilo (Pipicacadodo) • Storie di ordinaria follia
(Tales of Ordinary Madness) • La Carne (The Flesh) • Diario di un vizio (Diary of a Maniac)
Venue: Ciné lumière at the Institut français, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
Tickets: £7, conc. £5; double bills £9, conc. £7
Box Office: 020 7073 1350
www.institut-francais.org.uk/ferreri
Retrospective organised in collaboration with Cinecittà Holding, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca
Nazionale and Istituto Cinematografico dell’Aquila “La Lanterna Magica”.
About Marco Ferreri
“The two most heterodox [Italian] filmmakers of [their] generation were Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco
Ferreri... A fierce moralist and tender misanthrope, Ferreri’s films alternate between realism and metaphor,
concentrating on such themes as destruction, negation and death, but they are also, as in La Grande Bouffe,
tempered by a vitality and a sense of gallows humour.” (Morando Morandini, Italian film critic)
“The Italian cinema has lost one of its most original artists, one of its most personal auteurs. No-one was
more demanding nor more allegorical than [Ferreri] in showing the state of crisis of contemporary man. The
Cannes Film Festival, which screened eight of his films and gave three of them prizes, will not forget him.”
(Gilles Jacob, Director, Cannes Film Festival)
“Too ecclectic culturally to be given an ideological label, too whimsical in his poetic style to be defined once
and for all, Ferreri is among the most solitary and elusive personalities of the entire Italian cinema since
Neorealism. But he is also one of the greatest.” (Lino Miccichè, Italian film academic)
Marco Ferreri (1928–1997) was one of cinema’s true originals. Though he was the recipient of numerous top prizes, he
has never been fully accepted into the pantheon of great directors. Perhaps his work is just too disturbing.
Ferreri’s directing career began in Spain in 1958 with a series of three films co-scripted with Spanish writer Rafael
Azcona, but really took off back in Italy, with such offbeat, acidic comedies as L’Ape regina (The Queen Bee, 1963) and
La Donna schimmia (The Ape Woman, 1963). Together these films stake out the territory that Ferreri would continue
to explore in his later work – human folly, perversity and male-female relations – and introduce two Ferreri ‘regulars’
Italian comic Ugo Tognazzi and French actress Annie Girardot.
After 1969’s bleak satire of contemporary morality Dillinger è morto (Dillinger is Dead) starring Michel Piccoli,
Ferreri’s work turned still more savage and broadened out to consider Feminism (Ciao Maschio, Bye Bye Monkey,
1978), the Catholic Church (L’Udienza, The Audience, 1971) and the Vietnam War (Touche pas à la femme blanche,
Don’t Touch the White Woman!, 1974). The undoubted triumph of this period is 1973’s La Grande Bouffe (Blow-Out),
a blackly-humorous tale of four world-weary middle-aged men who decide to gorge themselves to death in one final
orgiastic weekend of sex and gourmet food. The film caused a nationwide scandal (not least for its assault on the holy
of holies – French cuisine), and at its Cannes premiere the director and his stars (Ugo Tognazzi, Marcello Mastroianni,
Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret) had to literally fight their way out of the cinema.
Entering his fourth decade as director, Ferreri lost none of his desire to provoke and disturb. There was more boozing and
sexual excess in Tales of Ordinary Madness, his 1981 adaptation of a collection of short stories by Charles Bukowski,
and still more shocks in his 1983 tale of incest, La Storia di Piera (The Story of Piera), starring Isabelle Huppert. A
notable late-career triumph was 1991’s La Casa del sorriso (The House of Smiles), a mischieviously subversive and
surprisingly tender film centred on the love affair between two sprightly ‘inmates’ of a repressive retirement home
which won Ferreri the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Neither Catholic or Marxist like his Italian contemporaries, Ferreri described himself as a ‘comic anarchist’. He believed
that the cinema was a place where society could forget its divisions, and intended his films to appeal to a mass
audience, not a small elite of arthouse cinema-goers. Combining surrealist satire, scathing social criticism, savage
sexual politics, not-for-the-squeamish scatology, and an often apocalyptic sensibility, Ferreri created a truly unique
body of work that continues both to entertain and to challenge audiences’ sensibilities.
Calendar
fri 1 dec, 6.30pm
fri 1 dec, 8.30pm
Dillinger è morto
La Grande Bouffe
sat 2 dec, 6.30pm
sat 2 dec, 8.45pm
Ciao Maschio
La Dernière Femme
sun 3 dec, 5.30pm
sun 3 dec, 7.30pm
L’Ape regina
La Donna scimmia
wed 6 dec, 6.30pm
wed 6 dec, 8.30pm
Diario di un vizio
La Carne
thu 7 dec, 8.45pm
L’Udienza
fri 8 dec, 6.30pm
fri 8 dec, 8.30pm
Storie di ordinaria follia
Chiedo asilo
sat 9 dec, 6.30pm
sat 9 dec, 8.30pm
Touche pas à la femme blanche
Liza
sun 10 dec, 4.15pm
Dillinger è morto
tue 12 dec, 6.30pm
tue 12 dec, 8.45pm
La Dernière Femme
Ciao Maschio
wed 13 dec, 6.30pm Chiedo asilo
wed 13 dec, 8.45pm La Grande Bouffe
thu 14 dec, 6.30pm
thu 14 dec, 8.30pm
Liza
Touche pas à la femme blanche
Filmography
Los Chicos (1959); El Pisito (1959); El Cochecito (The Wheelchair; 1960); Le Italiane e l’amore (Latin Lovers,
1961); La Donna scimmia (The Ape Woman, 1963); L’Ape regina (The Queen Bee, 1963); Controsesso
(Countersex, 1964); L’Uomo dei cinque palloni (The Break Up, 1965); Oggi, domani, dopodomani (1965);
Marcia nuziale (The Wedding March, 1965); Corrida! (1966); L’Harem (The Harem, 1967); Il Seme dell’uomo
(The Seed of Man, 1969); Dillinger è morto (Dillinger is Dead, 1969); L’Udienza (The Audience, 1971); Liza
(Love to Eternity, 1972); La Grande Bouffe (Blow-Out, 1973); Touche pas à la femme blanche! (Don’t Touch
the White Woman!, 1974); La Dernière Femme (The Last Woman, 1976); Yerma (1978); Ciao Maschio (Bye
Bye Monkey, 1978); Chiedo asilo (Pipicacadodo, a.k.a Seeking Asylum, 1979); Storie di ordinaria follia (Tales of
Ordinary Madness, 1981); Storia di Piera (The Story of Piera, 1983); Il Futuro è donna (The Future is Woman,
1984); I Love You (1986); La Casa del sorriso (The House of Smiles, 1991); Come sono buoni i bianchi (How
Good the Whites Are, 1988); Le Banquet (1989); La Carne (The Flesh, 1991); Diario di un vizio (Diary of a
Maniac, 1993); Nitrato d’argento (1997).
Prizes
FIPRESCI Prize (El Cochecito, 1960 Venice Film Festival); FIPRESCI Prize (L’Udienza, 1971 Berlin International Film
Festival); FIPRESCI Prize (La Grande Bouffe, 1973 Cannes Film Festival); Grand Prize of the Jury (Ciao Maschio,
1978 Cannes Film Festival); FIPRESCI Prize (Storie di ordinaria follia, 1981 San Sebastián International Film
Festival); Golden Berlin Bear (La Casa del sorriso, 1991 Berlin International Film Festival); Pietro Bianchi Award
(1992 Venice Film Festival).
The Films
L’Ape regina (The Queen Bee)
Italy / France | 1963 | b&w | 88 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Ugo Tognazzi, Marina Vlady | cert. 18
Middle-aged car dealer Alfonso’s new young wife wants a baby. Male-drone to her female queen bee, Alfonso does everything he can to
satisfy his wife, but is quickly worn out by her insatiable sexual appetite. A satirical attack on the institution of marriage in a similar vein to
Divorce – Italian Style, Ferreri’s film caused a scandal in conservative 60s Italy.
La Donna scimmia (The Ape Woman)
Italy / France | 1963 | b&w | 92 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Ugo Tognazzi, Annie Girardot | cert. 18
Showman Antonio discovers the unusually hirsute Maria working in the kitchen of a Naples nunnery and persuades her to tour the country
with him as ‘The Ape Woman’. Treading similar territory to The Elephant Man, Ferreri’s film is a far more controversial proposition, playing as
a sometimes uncomfortably biting satire that had contemporary critics up in arms.
Dillinger è morto (Dillinger is Dead)
Italy | 1969 | col | 90 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg, Annie Girardot | cert. 18
Returning home one evening to find his wife in bed with a headache, Glauco cooks dinner, cleans the .45 hand gun he finds in the kitchen
cupboard, makes love to the maid... then shoots his wife dead. An offbeat blend of fantasy and reality, Dillinger was a cult film for Martin
Scorsese and his ‘movie brat’ contemporaries.
L’Udienza (The Audience)
Italy / France | 1971 | col | 112 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman, Claudia Cardinale, Enzo Jannacci | cert. 18
Ferreri takes on Vatican bureaucracy in this Kafkaesque story of one man’s vain attempts to secure a personal audience with the Pope.
L’Udienza stars legendary singer-songwriter Enzo Jannacci as the supplicant Amedeo, with the brilliant Vittorio Gassmann, Ugo Tognazzi
and Michel Piccoli as the assorted prelates and Vatican bureaucrats blocking his path to the top man. Winner FIPRESCI Prize, 1971 Berlin
International Film Festival.
Liza (La Cagna, a.k.a Love to Eternity)
France / Italy | 1972 | col | 100 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Catherine Deneuve, Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli | cert. 18
Playing like a twisted version of a Howard Hawkes comedy, Liza has Mastroianni as a reclusive cartoonist living with his dog on a remote
Mediterranean island. His solitude is interrupted with the arrival of Liza, a beautiful blond who has swum out to the island from a yacht after
a row with her rich boyfriend, and the two begin an affair. But Liza is soon jealous of the only other contendor for Giorgio’s affections – his
dog – and is driven to murder her ‘rival’ and assume its duties...
La Grande Bouffe (Blow-Out)
France / Italy | 1973 | col | 130 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi | cert. 18
Four world-weary middle-aged men (a pilot, chef, judge and TV personality) decide to gorge themselves to death in one final orgiastic
weekend of sex and gourmet food. Described by the New York Times as ‘vulgar vaudeville on an epic scale... a mordant, chilling, hilarious
dirty movie’, Ferreri’s blackly-comic satire of our modern consumer society won the Critics Award at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival.
Touche pas à la femme blanche (Don’t touch the white woman!)
France / Italy | 1974 | col | 108 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli, Philippe
Noiret | cert. 18
Ferreri’s follow-up to La Grande Bouffe was this outlandish, absurdist, spoof spaghetti Western, a riotous reenactment of the events leading
up to the Battle of Little Big Horn, starring Mastrioanni as a ludicrously vain General Custer and Michel Piccoli as an effeminate Buffalo Bill.
The political satire is both comic and caustic: anachronisms abound (Paris stands in for the Wild West, Nixon is President) and parallels are
drawn between America’s genocidal Indian Wars and its intervention in Vietnam.
La Dernière femme (The Last Woman)
France / Italy | 1976 | col | 108 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Gérard Depardieu, Ornella Muti, Michel Piccoli, Renato Salvatori | cert. 18
Picking up his young son one night from nursery Gérard meets the beautiful Valérie, and the two start a passionate affair. But the relationship
soon falters: Gérard is jealous of the maternal affection Valérie bestows on his son, and she in turn comes to believe that his passion for her
is based on sex alone. When Valérie threatens to leave, Gérard is driven to a shocking act of self-mutilation in order to prove her wrong.
Ciao Maschio (Bye Bye Monkey)
Italy / France | 1978 | col | 110 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Gérard Depardieu, Marcello Mastroianni | cert. 18
Set in a decaying, rat-infested New York of the future, Ferreri’s film stars Depardieu and Mastroianni as foreign misfits and neighbours who
one day stumble across the dead body of a 40-foot ape. Depardieu decides to adopt the young chimpanzee nestled in its arms, and gradually
comes to concentrate on the chimp to the exclusion of his girlfriend, work and friends. A richly symbolic film featuring Ferreri’s characteristic
blend of humour, the bizarre and the apocalyptic, Ciao Maschio was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.
Chiedo asilo (Pipicacadodo, a.k.a Seeking Asylum)
Italy / France | 1979 | col | 110 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Roberto Benigni | cert. 15
Italian comic Roberto Benigni plays a free-spirited nursery school teacher whose unconventional methods enthrall his young pupils but
stir controversy among the more traditionally-minded parents and school administrators. Pivoting on what Ferreri saw as the profound
separation between our society of alienated adults and the innocent, richly imaginative world of young children, Chiedo asilo is gentler than
any of the directors other credits, but just as resolutely non-conformist.
Storie di ordinaria follia (Tales of Ordinary Madness)
Italy / France | 1981 | col | 101 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Ben Gazzara, Ornella Muti | cert. 18
Though not obviously ‘toned down’ in content, this compelling, sometimes explicit journey through LA’s lower depths was apparently
Ferreri’s bid for mainstream acceptance. Based on the the autobiographical writings of infamous skid row poet Charles Bukowski, the film
stars Cassavetes regular Ben Gazzara as the grizzled, self-destructive poet, and a radiant Ornella Muti as the troubled barfly with whom he
becomes involved.
La Carne (The Flesh)
Italy | 1991 | col | 90 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Sergio Castellito, Francesca Dellera | cert. 18
Twenty years after La Grande Bouffe, Ferreri again caused a fuss at Cannes with this darkly comic look at obsessive love. Paolo and
Francesca’s excessive and energetic love-making leaves Paolo physically paralyzed yet in a state of constant physical arousal, a situation
whose drawbacks eventually come to outweigh the advantages. Yet when Francesca decides to leave him, Paolo comes to realise just how
addicted to her body he has become...
Diario di un vizio (Diary of a Maniac)
Italy | 1993 | col | 94 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Sabrina Ferilli, Jerry Calà | cert. 18
Benito keeps a diary or his sexual fantasies and cravings, which, thanks to his on-again, off-again relationship with the beautiful and
insatiable Luigia (Italian pin-up Sabrina Ferilli), have grow increasingly bizarre. As his sexual fantasies consume more and more of his life,
and grow darker and darker, Benito’s ordinary waking life becomes proportionally flatter and duller, until he disappears altogether... One of
Ferreri’s final films, this is also one of his most stylish and engaging comedies.
For more information, please contact:
Natacha Antolini, T. 020 7073 1365 or [email protected]
Giulia Maione, T. 020 7396 4402 or [email protected]