The last woman
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The last woman |
| Original title | L'ultima donna La dernière femme |
| Country of production | Italy , France |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 112 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Marco Ferreri |
| script |
Rafael Azcona Marco Ferreri Dante Matelli Noël Simsolo |
| production |
Edmondo Amati Gian Maria Avetta |
| music | Philippe Sarde |
| camera | Luciano Tovoli |
| cut | Enzo Meniconi |
| occupation | |
| |
The last woman (original title Italy: L'ultima donna ; France: La dernière femme ) is an Italian-French film by Marco Ferreri from 1975. The film by the scandal director ( The big feast ) is a case study of the desolate relationship between the Genders. The engineer Gérard, embodied by Gérard Depardieu , is the single father of one son. When he met the educator Valerie, played by Ornella Muti , she took on the role of mother for his son. Gérard feels increasingly excluded and reduced to his sexuality. He decides to self-castration .
Nudity is dealt with quite openly here: For two thirds of the film Depardieu acts naked, in some scenes with an erect penis .
action
The engineer Gérard, who works in a factory in Créteil on the outskirts of Paris, is father and mother to his son Pierrot, who is not even one year old, after his wife Gabrielle left him for feminist reasons. When he wants to pick up his son from kindergarten after his company has shut down operations for a month for cost reasons, he meets Valerie there, who takes loving care of the little one. Both are immediately likeable and so she agrees to be taken by Gérard on his motorcycle. Apparently things get even better for Gérard, because Valerie is turning down a vacation with her friend Michel in order to stay with him.
After they both slept together for the first time, Gérard dreams of having a family again soon. After Valerie has moved in with him, he observes with increasing suspicion that the young woman is becoming more and more important to his child and is afraid of losing his son's love. Unable to properly classify his feelings and those of others, he makes more mistakes than the new connection is good for. There are more and more arguments between him and Valerie, as Gérard often shows great recklessness, becomes aggressive even with little things and often shows unbearable impudence in the bedroom. But Valerie is not without either. Mutual unfulfilled expectations do theirs. Gérard is so desperate to do the right thing that he keeps getting in his own way.
So it happens that he is convinced that something cannot be right with him and lets himself be carried away to a desperate step, a catastrophe that corresponds to his speechlessness. Feeling that he is generally marginalized by women and reduced to his sexuality, Gérard deprives himself of his masculinity with an electric knife after drinking plenty of alcohol.
Production, background
The film was produced by Flaminia Produzioni Cinematografiche and Les Productions Jacques Roitfeld for Columbia Pictures . The shooting took place in Paris.
Marco Ferreri had offered Romy Schneider a role in this film, stating that Gérard Depardieu would be her partner, but could not produce a finished script at the time, so Schneider was not interested.
publication
The film premiered in France on April 21, 1976 and in Italy on September 4, 1976, after it had already been presented at the Venice International Film Festival in August 1976 . In the same year it also started in the following countries: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, the USA (New York), Belgium (Kortrijk), Spain and Hungary. It has also been published in the following countries: Bulgaria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland and Portugal.
In the Federal Republic of Germany it was seen for the first time on September 12, 1976 under the title The Last Woman . The international title is: The Last Woman .
criticism
“Radical description of a man's dilemma between his self-image and the role expectations placed on him. Questionable in his statement, with a shocking ending, but worth discussing in the problem approach. "
The film magazine Cinema ruled that this "erotic drama" was a "scandalous film from the 70s by Marco Ferreri".
The TV magazine prisma was of the opinion that the drama was "an unvarnished case study of the basic conditions of human existence and the desolate relationship between the sexes". It also said that the "controversial work" like all Ferreri films "was both furiously attacked and showered with the highest praise".
Awards
-
Nastro d'Argento 1977
- Award of the Film Critics Association for directing the best Italian film (Migliore Soggetto) for Dante Matelli and Marco Ferreri
- Nominations:
- Regista del Miglior film for Marco Ferreri
- Best screenplay (Migliore Sceneggiatura) for Dante Matelli and Marco Ferreri
- Best Actress (Migliore Attrice Protagonista) for Ornella Muti
-
National Society of Film Critics Award 1977
- Second place for Gérard Depardieu (together with William Holden for Network )
- Depardieu was nominated in 1977 for the César in the category "Best Actor" .
Web links
- The last woman in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- L'ultima donna (The Last Woman) 1976 Marco Ferreri Interesting facts about the film
Individual evidence
- ^ Günter Krenn: Romy Schneider: The biography. Film Archive Austria. Construction Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-7466-7067-6 .
- ↑ The last woman. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ The Last Woman (1975) at cinema.de, accessed on May 18, 2017 (with 12 film images)
- ^ The last woman at prisma.de, accessed on May 18, 2017.