Thursday, October 23, 2008

Meta Marco! A documentary on Italian director Ferreri


A bonus feature on the first disc in the recently released Marco Ferreri is a feature length film about the director called Marco Ferreri: The Director who Came from the Future is the subtitle, and a formidable one at that. It is explored by the various actors, directors, and screenwriters who were peer to his peers. There are multiple interpretations and expansions on this theme. Some of his films do have a futuristic theme, but he also early saw the future of the suburbs, and social trends such as feminism were featured in Ferreri's work a bit ahead of the curve. Although it is complicated by his own admission that he is 50% feminist and 50% misogynist.

One can dispute if he came from the future or not, but certainly that he had a sharp eye. A 1960 film, El Conchcito, was about priveleged elders in disability carts which we now call scooters. A motivating idea behind that film Ferreri is that "The fate of all westerners that they would not walk anymore." At another point in this film documentary directed by by Mario Canale Fererri states: "An Idea is never born, it is mixed. There is always a link with reality. Every reality has something that precedes it and something that comes from it"

The Director who Came from the Future focuses in on Ferreri's processes as well as accomplishments and bigger than life personality, mainly through dozens of interviews with his former collegaues and with the Italian media over the decades he worked as a director. From his latter years (he died in 1997) there is quite a lot of footage on the set on various productions. Interestingly enough, there is no exploration of his private or personal life except for a brief discussion of his parental roots.

Several of the folks in the film refer to Ferreri as an anarchic filmmaker. And it is perhaps this characteristic that reminds me, even with the very limited viewing I have done of his work, of Robert Altman, who was able to create decades of his individualistic, against-the-grain cinema with a lot of range, but always at least a little bit devoted to mixing it up, to being anarchistic. For instance, MASH is one of the most anarchic of movies in both its content and temprament.

Ferreri stood up to censors, at a time they were lively and had some power in Italy and in the European film community. He replied to Cannes Jury head Ingrid Bergman's distressed review of La Grande Boufee (aka Blowout) where she said it was a punch in the stomach with "Why not give people a punch in the stomach?" A telling detail is that one of Ferreri's first projects was with other noted second wave Italian directors (after Rosselinni and DeSica) to create a film version of a literary magazine with the likes of Antonioni. It was intriguing to me that his first effort in film was to address a new and unique format for the cinema outside of the traditional feature.

It is notable that the biggest of international stars from the sixties to the eighties were featured in Ferreri films. The stars of Le Grand Bouffe and Don't Touch the White Woman (Marcello Mastrioni Michel Piccoli, Philipe Noiret and Ugo Tognazzi) were four of the biggest box office draws in the world when those films were made. Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve, Christopher Lambert, Claudia Cardinale, Ingrid Thulin, and Roberto Benigni were featured in his films at one point or another. But it was Rafael Azcona, screenwriter and collaborator first of the early Spanish films where he made his name. Ferreri in the film refers to the "grotesque humor of Azcana." And Azcana talked about how working with Ferreri was a joyful act in itself and getting paid was just a bonus in his eyes.

Ferreri made films in the US, Spain, and France. In the documentary he rants and rails against American film excesses, the nine-ten months it takes to get a film edited, the fact that there is no script shittier than an American script. At one point he talks about he doesn't expect perfection working for Italians adding that in America film is a job and a profession. One wonders what degree of seriousness intended when he says: "I'll go where the money is I take the money and I spit in the plate they give me."

The Director who Came from the Future convinced me to continue to work through the contents of the Ferreri box set along with anything else that comes along. He is a unique filmmaker that doesn't fit in necessarily and consistently with art house sensibilities that get foreign films in our theaters but he isn't exactly mainstream either.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:47 PM
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