FERRERI, MARCO

(1928-1997)

Actor, producer, and director. One of the most iconoclastic directors of Italian postwar cinema, Ferreri began his film career in the early 1950s by collaborating on the production of current affairs documentaries. After acting as executive producer forCesare Zavattini'scompilation film,L'amore in citta(Love in the City, 1953), Ferreri moved to Spain, where he began his long association with writer Rafael Azcona, making three films that anticipated the anarchistic black humor of his major films to follow,Elpisito(The Apartment, 1958),Los Chicos(The Boys, 1959), andEl cochechito(The Little Coach, 1960), the last being nominated for the Golden Lion at theVenice Festivalthat year.

Returning to Italy in 1961, Ferreri contributed a short episode to the Zavattini-inspired compilation film,Le italiane e I'amore(Latin Lovers, 1961), before makingL'ape regina(The Conjugal Bed, 1963), a caustic satire on sex and marriage that immediately drew the ire of the censors, who forced changes on the film, including its title. Similar hostility from the censors greetedLa donna scimmia(The Ape Woman, 1964), although this did not prevent it from being nominated for the Palme d'or at Cannes and winning aNastro d'argentofor Best Original Story. AfterIlprofessore(The Professor), one of the episodes ofControsesso(Countersex, 1964), and the four-partMarcia nuziale(Wedding March, 1965), another satire on modern Italian male-female relations, Ferreri ironically reversed the traditional male-female positions inL'harem(The Harem, 1967), where the harem is made up of men.This provocative take on the gender wars was followed by the sardonicDillinger e morto(Dillinger Is Dead, 1969), the apocalypticIl seme dell'uomo(The Seed of Man, 1969),L'udienza(The Audience, 1972), a Kafkaesque tale in which an audience with the pope is forever forestalled, and then the film for which he would become most renowned,La grande abbuffata(The Grande Bouffe, 1973). The story of four culinary libertines who commit collective suicide by eating themselves to death, the film caused enormous controversy, especially in France, but it was also nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes and, in the event, received the International Federation of Film Critics prize.

Continuing to play the agent provocateur, Ferreri madeNon toccare la donna bianca(Don't Touch the White Woman, 1974), a burlesque revisitation of the Western genre that restaged Custer's Last Stand as a confrontation between the first and third worlds in the hollowed-out building site of Les Halles in Paris, before returning to the sex wars withL'ultima donna(The Last Woman, 1976) and the more surreal and apocalypticCiao Maschio(Bye Bye Monkey, 1978). The milderChiedo asilo(Seeking Asylum, 1979), in whichRoberto Benigniplays a lovable nursery-school teacher, was followed by an adaptation of Charles Bukowsky's semiautobiographical novel,Stone di ordinaria follia(Tales of Ordinary Madness, 1981), before Ferreri's taste for the absurd returned to the fore inI Love You(1986), a portrait of modern alienation presented through the story of a man's fetishistic sexual attachment to a talking keyring. The ironically titledCome sono buoni i bianchi(How Good the Whites Are, 1987) excoriated the well-meaning but ultimately self-serving stratagems of Western food aid to Africa whileLa casa del sorriso(The House of Smiles, 1991), a love story between an elderly couple set in an old people's home, was refused a screening at Venice but awarded the Golden Bear when shown at Berlin. AfterLa carne(The Flesh, 1991), another excessive love story, this time involving priapism and anthropophagy, Fererri's final film,Nitrato d'argento(Nitrate Base, 1996), was an affectionate celebration of silent cinema.

A competent actor as well as director, Ferreri appeared in Luigi Malerba'sDonne e soldati(Women and Soldiers, 1954) and inMario Monicelli'sCasanova '70(Casanova 70, 1965), and played Dr. Salamoia inUgo Tognazzi'sIl fischio al naso(The Seventh Floor, 1967), but he is probably best remembered as the sardonic Hans Guenther inPier Paolo Pasolini'sPorcile(Pigpen, 1969).