#506: FERRERI, Marco: Dillinger Is Dead (1969)

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FERRERI, Marco (Italy)
Dillinger Is Dead [1969]
Spine #506
DVD


In this magnificently inscrutable late-sixties masterpiece, Marco Ferreri, one of European cinema's most idiosyncratic auteurs, takes us through the looking glass to one seemingly routine night in the life of an Italian gas mask designer, played, in a tour de force performance, by New Wave icon Michel Piccoli. In his claustrophobic mod home, he pampers his pill-popping wife, seduces his maid, and uncovers a gun that may have once been owned by John Dillinger — and then things get even stranger. A surreal political missive about social malaise, Dillinger Is Dead (Dillinger è morto) finds absurdity in the mundane. It is a singular experience, both illogical and grandly existential.

95 minutes
Color
Monaural
in Italian
1:66:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2010
Director/Writers


Story by Marco Ferreri.
Screenplay by Ferreri and Sergio Bazzini.
Ferreri was 41 when he directed Dillinger is Dead.

The Film

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Thirty-six page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Joshua Rowin and two reprinted interviews with Ferreri.
/
Commentary

None.

Video interviews

With actor Piccoli and Italian film historian Adriano Aprà.
Excerpts

From a 1997 roundtable discussion about director Ferreri, with filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Francesco Rosi and film historian Aldo Tassone, including clips of interviews with Ferreri.
Theatrical trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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