Marco Ferreri was simply the most punk Italian filmmaker of his generation. A cine-provocateur of the highest order, Ferreri developed an oeuvre that is one of the most eclectic and surprising in all of Italian cinema, composed largely of black-as-night social satires and uncannily affecting dramas. From his earliest features—produced in Spain—to the vital skewerings of the European bourgeoisie he made upon returning for a long, prolific run in the Italian film industry (such as the 1969 Dillinger Is Dead and the 1973 La Grande Bouffe), Ferreri’s films take a delirious and critical view of the times in which he lived and worked and remain some of the funniest, darkest, and most thought-provoking works of their era. From June 9-22, join Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà for a rare opportunity to spend time with Ferreri’s tales of ordinary madness in this extensive career retrospective of one of world cinema’s most indelible enfants terribles.
Highlights include Ferreri’s third feature The Little Coach, starring the famous comic actor José Isbert, which established young Ferreri as a European master of black humor; The Ape Woman, which underwent harsh censorship and is now presented with its three different endings: the one dictated by Italian censorship, the one provided by the French producers, and the one that Ferreri and his accomplice and co-writer, Rafael Azcona, had written; The Man with the Balloons, the virtuoso depiction of a sudden fall into the absurdity of life, starring a flamboyant Marcello Mastroianni at his best; Dillinger Is Dead, a mix of pop art and existentialist philosophy and one of Ferreri’s most famous films; La Grande Bouffe, one of Ferreri’s signature films, which is best remembered for causing one of the biggest scandals of the Cannes Film Festival but whose public success made it an immediate cult classic; Bye Bye Monkey, Ferreri’s first film shot in the United States, starring Gérard Depardieu and Marcello Mastroianni as two men trying to cope with the decline of man and the rise of woman; and the 1980 Berlinale Silver Bear–winning film Seeking Asylum, one of Ferreri’s gentlest films, starring Roberto Benigni as a kindergarten teacher who falls in love with the mother of one of his students.
Marco Ferreri: Beyond the Absurd is organized by Florence Almozini and Dan Sullivan of Film at Lincoln Center and by Camilla Cormanni and Paola Ruggiero of Cinecittà.