Dillinger is dead
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Dillinger is dead |
| Original title | Dillinger è morto |
 | |
| Country of production | Italy |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1969 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Marco Ferreri |
| script | Marco Ferreri, Sergio Bazzini |
| production |
Ever Haggiag , Alfred Levy |
| music | Teo Usuelli |
| camera | Mario Vulpiani |
| cut | Mirella Mercio |
| occupation | |
| |
The Italian feature film Dillinger is dead ( Dillinger è morto ) from 1968 is an absurd farce by Marco Ferreri . It deals with a person's prosperity and meaninglessness, their consumption of goods and media and the “insignificance of modern life”. The film itself is not easy to consume, goes against narrative conventions, slows down the dramaturgy, contains omissions and prevents the audience from being identified . Without a logically comprehensible action, he describes, often in real time, both mundane everyday activities and inexplicable acts. The longest part takes place in the same place and mostly shows the same single person. The completely realistic style of play of leading actor Michel Piccoli intensifies the absurd effect of his actions.
The ambiguous work has often been interpreted as an escape from civilization. In doing so, contrast the superficial statics of the action with the mental mobility and the departure of the main character. In one night a citizen starts a revolution, in a process of "decultivation" an adult becomes an adolescent again, he gains freedom through regression, the director describes "the social and political liberation of a person". The film belongs to the environment of the cinema of the 68er movement , whereby the nihilistic Ferreri emphasized that one does not make revolutions with films. The film was shot for the small amount of 50 million lire for four weeks in July 1968. In the title, which mentions the American criminal John Dillinger , Ferreri implies that he thinks Hollywood genre cinema is dead. Some moviegoers felt misled because they had expected a gangster film about Dillinger. On the other hand, he liked Jean-Luc Godard , who pursued similar film policy goals as Ferreri here. Dillinger ran dead in the Cannes competition in 1969 .
action
Glauco works as a designer of gas masks. After work, he goes home, where his wife lies in bed with a migraine and takes two sleeping pills. He doesn't like the food in the kitchen, he puts it in the fridge, begins to prepare a multi-course meal and listens to radio music. While searching for ingredients, he discovers a package wrapped in newspaper in the rack. The newspaper reports on the death of John Dillinger.
There is a rusted pistol in the package, which Glauco takes apart and greases. In the meantime his housekeeper arrives at the house and goes to her room. Glauco eats the meal alone and watches narrow-gauge films from a vacation with his wife in Spain. He uses the projection for shadow games and makes all kinds of grimaces. He sneaks up to the housekeeper, gives her the money and goes to bed with her. Later he sprays the pistol with red paint and poses with the weapon, pointing it at himself and pulling the trigger. After loading them with cartridges, he goes to his sleeping wife and shoots her. In the morning he pulls up the shutters, gets in his car and drives away. In a bay where a plaque commemorates the stay of Lord Byron , he goes swimming, adorned with a large gold chain from his wife. The crew conducts a burial at sea on a three-master off the coast: the ship's cook has died. Glauco offers to replace herself and is hired by the owner of the ship, a young woman in a bikini. The travel destination is Tahiti .
Reviews from 1970
The "completely successful" film, it was said in Positif , has drawn admiration from even previous Ferreri opponents. It enables the viewer not only to watch a figure, but at the same time to look at himself as if in a mirror. From the success of the film one can draw the conclusion that “today there is room in Western Europe for a cinema of a purely individualistic kind that is openly and provocatively directed against the established bourgeois order. Paradoxically, the lack of analysis and precise political clues does not seem to affect the ideological impact of this film. "
The “remarkable” film, according to the Monthly Film Bulletin , established Ferreri as a master of Italian cinema. The director is reluctant to give precise meaning to the images and actions and keeps the audience caught between the real and the unreal. Despite being related to the surrealist Luis Buñuel , he is not a cheap imitator. It is not about specific issues, but about the general situation of people, ridiculed in the industrial age in which people treat other people as objects. The loneliness that follows leads to violence and death. "To put it briefly: A film in the dreamlike cloud chamber of poetry and ideology, worth a hundred films militants ."
Web links
- Dillinger Is Dead in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Dillinger is dead in the lexicon of international films
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b direct quotation from: Dirk Manthey, Jörg Altendorf, Willy Loderhose (eds.): Das große Film-Lexikon. All top films from A-Z . Second edition, revised and expanded new edition. Volume II (D-G). Verlagsgruppe Milchstraße, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-89324-126-4 , p. 626 .
- ↑ a b Bruno Venturi: Dillinger è morto . In: Fernaldo Di Giammatteo (ed.): Dizionario del cinema italiano . Editori Reuniti, Rome 1995, ISBN 88-359-4008-7 , p. 110
- ^ A b c Mike Wallington: Dillinger è Morto (Dillinger is Dead) . In: Monthly Film Bulletin , Vol. 37 (1970), p. 96
- ↑ a b c d Michel Maheo: Marco Ferreri . Edilig, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-85601-131-4 , pp. 39-43
- ↑ Maheo 1986, p. 39 third column; infantile regression also mentioned by Wallington 1970
- ↑ a b Emmanuelle Neto: Dillinger est mort . In: Jean Tulard (Ed.): Guide des films . Laffont, Paris 2005. Volume 1, A – E, ISBN 2-221-10451-X , p. 983
- ^ Paul-Louis Thirard: Le pistolet pop . In: Positif , October 1970, pp. 66-68