Marco Ferreri Movies
Savage, grotesque, funny, original, disturbing. All can be used to describe the social satires of Italian filmmaker Marco Ferreri. After having assisted on numerous Italian productions in the '50s, Ferreri began directing and co-scripting films in Spain in 1958. In Italy he made a reputation for offbeat and acidic satires of contemporary life, with such early-'60s films as L'Ape Regina/The Conjugal Bed and La Donna Scimmia/The Ape Woman (1963). After the tour-de-force of Dillinger E Morto/Dillinger is Dead in 1969, his work turned even more savage, most notably his '70s films La Grande Bouffe (1973), a Swiftian account of four men eating themselves to death; La Derniere Femme/The Last Woman (1976), a shocking exploration of changing sexual roles starring Gerard Depardieu; and Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981), a bizarre adaptation of the memoirs of Charles Bukowski. In 1992, Ferreri's La Casa del Sorriso/House of Smiles, a tale of romance and sexual liaisons in an old folks home, won the Golden Bear for best picture at the 1991 Berlin Film Festival. Throughout his career, Ferreri believed that the cinema was the one place where people from all of life's walk could be equal and so made movies for the masses. Near the end of his life, Ferreri was deeply troubled by the death of the grand old movie houses and by the trend to make artier films for more elite audiences. He expressed his views in his final film, Nitrato D'Argento (1996), a retrospective of cinema that made compelling arguments for his case. Ferreri died of heart failure in a Paris hospital on May 9, 1997. He was 69. ~ Rovi- 1963
In this Italian sex comedy, a middle-aged car dealer marries a young girl and gets more than he bargained for. She is obsessed with getting pregnant pronto. To this end, she keeps him in bed all the time. The poor man simply cannot keep up with her demands. He even tries a series of hormone shots. Finally his flagging spirits get the best of him and he goes to the coast to rest. Unfortunately, she shows up. Their love making is so violent that he has a heart attack. While safely recovering in the hospital he finds out that she is at last pregnant. Now that she has what she wanted, she totally ignores him. Nothing could make him happier and he ends up spending his last days in a maid's quarters enjoying the peace and solitude. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Marina Vlady, Ugo Tognazzi, (more)
- 1987
Survey of the history of Italian cinema, featuring clips from such classics as "Open City," "8-1/2," and "Seven Beauties," and interviews with illustrious stars and filmmakers, including Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Toto, Monica Vitti, Anna Magnani, Vittorio DeSica, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Roberto Rossellini. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi
Lafayette (Gerard Depardieu), a young-ish misfit Frenchman and Nocello (Marcello Mastroianni), an older misfit Italian, live in a run-down section of New York City and are friends. Lafayette works for Flaxman (James Coco), an excitable antiquarian who owns and runs something called the "Roman Museum," by means of which he upholds the standards of a former age. Lafayette also works for a women's lib group, which one day decides to "rape" him to see how the shoe fits on the other foot. Rather than being much bothered, Lafayette starts a liaison with the woman who actually had sex with him. In this rambling tale, these men are shown to have great difficulty enduring intense emotions, and the situations that arise force them to confront this difficulty repeatedly. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gérard Depardieu, Marcello Mastroianni, (more)
- 1965
Marcello Mastroianni portrays the handsome lover Casanova pitted against a thoroughly modern woman. This is a legendary hero often depicted in movies, but this time he is portrayed with a slightly different problem - the only time he's "in the mood" is when he feels that he is in danger. His job as NATO officer offers plenty of opportunity for his sexual arousal problems to be assuaged. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Michele Mercier, (more)
- 1971
A particular highlight of this symbolic Italian drama is that it marks the return of Lucia Bose to film. She retired from film when she married the famed Spanish bullfighter Dominguin in the 1950s. Socialite Danielo is a higher-up in the television world but is repulsed both by high society and the media. In his dreams, he is Gulliver in Lilliputia, and the Lilliputians torture him in various ways. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- 1964
The Italians continue their penchant for gang-directed features in this sexploitation comedy. Part one is entitled "Cocaine On Sunday" in which a husband (Nino Manfredi) and wife (Annamaria Ferrero) start snorting the stuff after the friend who owned the bottle is arrested. In part two, Ugo Tognazzi plays a professor who feels he is becoming too much like his elderly maiden aunts. In the final episode, a businesswoman agrees to meet a street musician, but he is frustrated when she is delayed by her vocational priorities. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Nino Manfredi, Anna Maria Ferrero, (more)
- 1993
In this stylish and offbeat black comedy, Benito ( Jerry Calà) keeps a diary of his sexual fantasies and cravings. As a result of his on-again, off-again relationship with the beautiful and insatiable Luigia (Sabrina Ferilli), his thoughts along these lines have grown increasingly bizarre. For his own part, he is driven to pick up and bed women at almost every opportunity. As the fantasies recorded in his diary consume more and more of his life, and grow darker and darker, his ordinary waking life becomes flatter and duller, until he disappears altogether. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jerry Calà, Sabrina Ferilli, (more)
This offbeat combination of reality and fantasy finds Glauco (Michel Piccoli) returning home from his job as an industrial engineer to find his wife (Anita Pallenberg) in bed with a headache. Deciding to fix dinner for himself, he reads from a gourmet cookbook as he watches television, or listens to the radio. He runs across an old .45 caliber handgun and he cleans the weapon between attending to his culinary creation. He later goes to bed, but rises when he is restless and goes to make love with the maid (Annie Girardot), after which he examines the newly painted revolver. After shooting his wife to death, he imagines he is driven to the ocean where he swims out to a boat bound for Tahiti and takes a job as a cook. The title is a reference to the notorious American gangster who could shoot his way out of any place but the police line in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg, (more)
Marcello Mastroianni stars in this French farce, an absurd "western" set in Paris, with Mastroianni as the incurably vain General George Armstrong Custer. Richard Nixon is the American president, but everyone is costumed appropriately for the previous century. Buffalo Bill (Michel Piccoli), the famous scout, is here portrayed as a limp-wristed bungler. Ugo Tognazzi plays one of Custer's Native American opponents; he runs a curio shop selling Native artifacts made in sweatshops by white women. The climactic battle is held in a large construction excavation where Les Halles market used to be. The language the two sides use to justify their conflict is lifted from that used in the then-current Vietnam War. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, (more)
- 1960
This was one of the first feature-length films for director Marco Ferreri, known for his interest in the grotesque, macabre, and darkly satirical side of life. In this black comedy, an elderly old man who lives with his mean-spirited, insensitive family, enjoys a happier side of life with an invalid friend of his who gets around on a special, adapted motorbike. After seeing that similarly impaired people are using the same conveyances, the man develops a yearning for one of the special bikes himself. But when he goes to his family with his wish, they all respond in the negative -- and none too kindly. His solution is murderous, though definitely lucrative. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jose Isbert, José Luis Lopez Vasquez, (more)
- 1995
This French biopic offers a dramatized profile of the notoriously earthy 16th-century French doctor, humanist and satirist, Francois Rabelais. It was filmed in the region of Lire where the author once lived. At the story's core is a tremendous outdoor banquet, for 500 people, in celebration of the author's 500th birthday. As they dine, scenes that evoke images from his works are depicted, including a giant puppet representing Gargantua, and a tribe of mud-caked men bursting out of a field of sunflowers. The diners are urged to revel until they die, and dinner conversation runs the gamut of earthy topics. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1986
In another indictment of the flaws of our so-called civilization, this satire from the late director (Marco Ferreri) features (Christopher Lambert) as Michel, a miserable man who has failed at love and finds solace in a mechanical key holder. Michel has just been dumped by Barbara (Anemone) because he has not been able to get her pregnant. He is feeling pretty low when he finds a key holder with blue eyes and big red lips that responds to the sound of a whistle with "I Love You." Michel tacks this gadget up on his TV set and whistles away. He seems happy with this fool-proof declaration of love until one day, the key holder responds to the neighbor's whistle and Michel goes berserk. After all, if your key ring can't be faithful, what's the world coming to? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Anémone, Eddy Mitchell, (more)
- 1967
In this unusual offbeat black comedy directed by Ugo Tognazzi, Giuseppe (Tognazzi) is a middle-aged industrialist obsessed with gadgets. When his nose starts to whistle uncontrollably, he checks into a clinic to resolve the problem. What begins as a minor affliction worsens, and Giuseppe is placed on a different floor as his ailments multiply. The sicker he gets, the higher he goes up in the floors of the clinic, until he is near death's door. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ugo Tognazzi, Tina Louise, (more)
- 1984
In this improbable, ponderous story about a couple who do not want to have children of their own, and a pregnant, single woman who needs a home for awhile, the relationship between the three protagonists is strange, at the very least. After Anna (Hanna Schygulla) and Gordon (Niels Arestrup) invite the expecting Malvina (Ornella Muti) to live with them, Anna becomes neurotically jealous and attempts suicide but is thwarted and in the end decides she really wants to be there for the baby when he/she comes into the world. Rather than trying to get rid of Malvina and the baby, both Gordon and Anna are in agreement on keeping it. When Gordon is accidentally killed, Malvina and Anna are left to plan for the future (now the best of friends), though it turns out the baby is destined to have only one mother after all. The confusion in the relationships of the main characters in this film is at times buried by clichés on the joys of motherhood and metaphors that overtake and bury the story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ornella Muti, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
- 1970
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, this Italian sci-fi thriller presents a dim view of humanity. Following the devastation of WW III, very few people are left and there is a big push to procreate. The dark tale begins on a decimated sea shore settlement were a young couple appears. The male wants his woman to have a child, but she, not wanting to bring life to such a terrible place, refuses to submit to his advances. When a different woman comes along and agrees to have his baby, the fellow promptly sleeps with her. The new woman, wanting to insure her status tries to kill the first woman. She ends up being killed and served for dinner by the first woman. Alone once more, the man continues his fruitless pleas to have babies with the recalcitrant woman until frustration forces him to take desperate measures. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Marco Margine, Anne Wiazemsky, (more)
- 1968
This satirical comedy illustrates that women are just as likely to succumb to the pleasures of the flesh as their male counterparts. Carol Baker enjoys a series of unashamed romantic romps with three different men. She tells her story to a homosexual male friend and a six-month-old cheetah when she is not enjoining the benefits of her harem. Her cozy arrangement is upset quickly when the men in her life get together and decide to take charge of their situation. Its slight nudity marked this film as an "exploitationer," but those seeking pornographic titillation will be disappointed, as the story is its main focus. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- 1971
This tiresome comedy features pop singer Enzo Jannacci as Amedeo, a country rube who comes to Vatican City seeking a personal audience with the Pope. Detailing Amedeo's battle with officious Vatican bureaucrats and bungling attempts to catch the Pope off-guard, the film rarely rises to the level of director Marco Ferreri's more subversive farces and resembles nothing more than a 1970s Neapolitan-style Pauly Shore vehicle. Italian film buffs will still appreciate the cast, which includes Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Piccoli of La Cage aux Folles as well as Claudia Cardinale, Vittorio Gassman, and Alain Cuny. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi
- 1976
This otherwise straightforward movie that chronicles the conflict between a man's romantic urges and the feminist ideal and a custody battle over the man's young son has a cataclysmic ending which is not for the fainthearted. In the story, Gerard (Gerard Depardieu) is an engineer who has just been left by his wife (Zouzou) for feminist reasons and has custody of his nine-month old son, whom he cares for deeply. When his next romance with Valerie (Ornella Muti), his son's daycare worker, threatens that custody, he responds by emasculating himself with a knife. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gérard Depardieu, Ornella Muti, (more)
- 1968
Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is a Milan industrialist who is constantly testing balloons to see how much air one can take before busting. His principle romantic interest in this feature is played by Catherine Spaak. The majority of the film seems to come from previous efforts from 1964 and 1965 which additional footage was added to, to insure an 85-minute full-length movie. A new soundtrack has been added as well. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Spaak, (more)
- 1991
- R
Paolo is a divorced father of two who earns his living as a nightclub entertainer. One night, he meets Francesca, a strangely attractive woman, and after some rather peculiar talk about her having had sex with an Indian guru, they head off for his beach house for an assignation. Francesca uses some special secrets taught to her by her guru to turn him into a paralyzed sex-slave. All he can do is talk, while his body is out of his control and his penis remains continually erect. He seems to accept the situation, although it becomes pretty awkward when his children come over for a visit. After that, things take a darker turn. Viewers who saw this film at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival considered it self-indulgent, and too much like Ferrari's earlier La Dernière Femme (1976). ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sergio Castellitto, Francesca Dellera, (more)
- 1990
- R
In the hippie era, the motto used to be "never trust anyone over 30." In this geriatric romance, the motto might be amended to read "never trust anyone under 60." Still sprightly and interested in life though they are in their 70s, the two lovers in this film are confined in an unsympathetic "rest home" by their relatives and are only able to meet rarely in a camper loaned to them by some black immigrant workers. When the staff at the home get wind of their affair, they take vigorous action to try and "calm them down" simply to reassert their deadening control over them. Eventually the two of them end their romance, but the woman escapes the rest home and finds freedom in the company of the immigrants. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ingrid Thulin, Dado Ruspoli, (more)
- 1963
Like The Elephant Man, The Ape Woman (original Italian title: La Donna Scimmia) is based on the real-life exploitation of a deformed human being. Ugo Tognazzi stars as a charming ne'er-do-well who happens upon young Annie Girardot, who outside of the fact that she is covered with hair from head to foot is a normal woman with normal desires and dreams. Tognazzi inveigles her into the European carnival sideshow circuit as "The Ape Woman", securing her cooperation by making love to her. She dies in childbirth; though overcome by grief, Tognazzi has not lost his cheapjack showman's touch, and he mummifies the bodies of both mother and daughter and continues to tour with them! The Ape Woman was inspired by the true story of 19th century Mexican "freak" Julia Pastrana, whose career was also covered in brief fashion by a half-hour episode of TV's Alfred Hitchcock Presents. While the original Italian version of The Ape Woman retains the cynical, faithful-to-the-facts denouement, the French version substitutes a happy ending in which the woman and her baby survive. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ugo Tognazzi, Annie Girardot, (more)
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