Ferreri, Marco

La Grande Bouffe [Region 2]

Marco Ferreri: The Collection

Marco Ferreri's satirical and often surreal films embody a unique vision of humanity borne of exasperation and nihilism. Through these eight genre-bending black comedies the controversial director crafted a fiercely contemporary cinematic language of his own delving deep into the alienation of men women and children.Includes the films:El Cochecito (1960)The Seed of Man (1969)La Grande Bouffe (1973)Don't Touch the White Woman (1974)Bye Bye Monkey (1978)Seeking Aylum (1979)Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981)The House of Smiles (1988)System Requirements:Running Time: 821 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/LOVE & ROMANCE UPC: 741952316398 Manufacturer No: KLF-DV3163

Tales of Ordinary Madness

"Style is the answer to everything," intones skid row poet Charles Serking, played by the suitably grizzled and worn Ben Gazarra, to his somnambulistic audience. Serking is, of course, a not-at-all veiled stand-in for beat legend Charles Bukowksi, whose autobiographical short stories were the basis for this film. But Serking, in many ways, comes off more like a gin-soaked fantasy of a skid row Hemingway whose sports of choice are alcohol, women, and sex. Behind the salt-and-pepper beard and rummy eyes lies an actor too poised to allow himself to fully sink into the alcoholic sloppiness that Mickey Rourke so easily brought to the screen in the less pretentious and more concise Barfly, which Bukowski himself scripted. But if Italian-born director Marco Ferreri stumbles over the self-conscious dialogue, he's right at home capturing the seedy atmosphere of dim, run-down apartments and underlit bars in the real Hollywood Serking calls home. When Serking's fling with the stunning, self-mutilating Italian hooker Cass (Ornella Muti, who puts her oversized safety pin to some rather startling uses) becomes too emotional, he takes the anonymous safety of the streets--crashing in a flophouse, passing around a bottle with a listless knot of derelicts. Serking melds right in with the littered streets and lost souls, a real man of the people. Suddenly you see it: he's got style. --Sean Axmaker

Charles Serking, loosely based on the infamous poet Charles Bukowski, rejects a conventional lifestyle to journey through the underbelly of Los Angeles in "Tales of Ordinary Madness." He indulges an insatiable appetite for sex and booze in what the Hollywood Reporter calls "a cinematic walk on the wild side." Directed by Marco Ferreri, this 1981 film won four Italian Academy Awards and the San Sebastian Film Festival Grand Prize. Compelling, sometimes shocking, and explicit.

Bye Bye Monkey

Bye Bye Monkey has been called one of Italian director Marco Ferreri's most powerful and haunting works. Variety describes it as "a sort of fable on man's transient state today, which [Ferreri] intimates has about destroyed all the old standards, leaving little to replace them...[a] sometimes jolting, entertaining and disturbing look at a fringe side of mankind." In this richly symbolic work, Gerard Depardieu and Marcello Mastroianni star as two foreign eccentrics whose discovery of an abandoned baby chimpanzee causes them to question their own lives. Winner of the 1978 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize of the Jury.

La Grande Bouffe

Marco Ferreri's greatest international success, "La Grande Bouffe" scandalized audiences when it was released in 1973. Audiences were shocked by its tale of four world-weary middle-aged men (superbly portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret) who decide to gorge themselves to death in one final orgiastic weekend full of gourmet food, call girls and a hefty, lusty schoolteacher. This blackly humorous parable of modern society's collapse won the Cannes Film Festival's International Critics Award. The New York Times called it "vulgar vaudeville on an epic scale...a mordant, chilling, hilarious dirty movie." Nearly 30 years later, it continues to challenge audiences' sensibilities and test the limits of shockability.

Ciao maschio (aka Bye Bye Monkey)

Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages: o Spanish (subtitles) o English (Dolby Digital 2.0) Synopsis: 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. Special Features: o Biographies o Filmographies o Interactive Menu o Scene Access

Seeking Asylum

Young Roberto Benigni plays a nonconformist kindergarten teacher who brings his brand of creative chaos to the classroom in Marco Ferreri's comic drama. This is a much calmer Benigni than the hyperactive rubber-face we're used to, but though he manages to play the entire film reigned in at second gear, he takes just as many wild turns. In one scene he tries to convince his young charges that he's pregnant. In another he drops them off at the gate of the factory where their parents work and skedaddles out of sight to watch the fun. The title refers to a young runaway Roberto "adopts," but it could just as easily apply to Roberto himself, who seems to seek refuge from the real world in his little child-like paradise--in one scene he guiltlessly extricates himself from any responsibility when he gets his girlfriend pregnant. At times it comes off like an episodic sketch comedy as directed by John Cassavetes: comic scenes drag out into uneasy character dramas and uncomfortable confrontations, only to jump into the next lighthearted segment. Benigni cuts a cheerfully sincere (if indulgently irresponsible) figure in this pre-hysterical period of his career and pulls together this offbeat character drama with good humor and plenty of heart. Fans of the bouncing-off-the-walls Begnini may be better served with the slapstick Johnny Stecchino or his two collaborations with American director Jim Jarmusch: Down by Law and Night on Earth. --Sean Axmaker

Starring Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful, Down By Law), this is the rare Marco Ferreri "family film," where a fun-loving and highly unorthodox school teacher brings some magic into the lives of the young children when he takes a job at an unusually strict preschool. A visually stirring and emotionally riveting treat.

L' Historie de Pierra

Tales of Ordinary Madness [Region 2]

Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages: o Spanish (subtitles) o English (Dolby Digital 2.0) o Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0) Synopsis: The stories of Charles Bukowski, the drunken poet of the LA fringe, are the basis for this film, directed by Marco Ferreri. Ben Gazzara stars as Charles Serking, an aging beat poet, a role that is merely a stand-in for Bukowski. Serking travels the seamy side of life, seeking out a collection of bizarre women. As he continues onward in a series of drunken debauches, he engages in various forms of sexual excess with the compliant low-life women. Special Features: o Biographies o Filmographies o Interactive Menu o Scene Access

"Style is the answer to everything," intones skid row poet Charles Serking, played by the suitably grizzled and worn Ben Gazarra, to his somnambulistic audience. Serking is, of course, a not-at-all veiled stand-in for beat legend Charles Bukowksi, whose autobiographical short stories were the basis for this film. But Serking, in many ways, comes off more like a gin-soaked fantasy of a skid row Hemingway whose sports of choice are alcohol, women, and sex. Behind the salt-and-pepper beard and rummy eyes lies an actor too poised to allow himself to fully sink into the alcoholic sloppiness that Mickey Rourke so easily brought to the screen in the less pretentious and more concise Barfly, which Bukowski himself scripted. But if Italian-born director Marco Ferreri stumbles over the self-conscious dialogue, he's right at home capturing the seedy atmosphere of dim, run-down apartments and underlit bars in the real Hollywood Serking calls home. When Serking's fling with the stunning, self-mutilating Italian hooker Cass (Ornella Muti, who puts her oversized safety pin to some rather startling uses) becomes too emotional, he takes the anonymous safety of the streets--crashing in a flophouse, passing around a bottle with a listless knot of derelicts. Serking melds right in with the littered streets and lost souls, a real man of the people. Suddenly you see it: he's got style. --Sean Axmaker

Don't Touch The White Woman!

In this surreal, satirical comedy, Italian director Marco Ferreri presents his take on the classic American Western, sympathizing with the Indians instead of the cowboys. This time, the Battle of Little Big Horn, the scene of General Custer's humiliating defeat by the Indians, rages at the demolished site of a formerly thriving marketplace in Paris. Starring Marcello Mastroianni as General Custer and Catherine Deneuve as his ravishing frontier gal.