The bleak The Seed of Man from 1969 is one of the strongest films by Ferreri that I’ve seen and visually is one of the most striking. The Film at Lincoln Center program note provides the following description:

 

Dora (Anne Wiazemsky) and Cino (Marzio Margine) are the survivors of a plague that has eradicated almost all of humankind. In a post-apocalyptic world, they need to decide whether they should have a child or refuse to repopulate a toxic planet. Cino collects objects from the ancient world and wants to force his consort to give birth. But Dora, faced with the potential to carry a child, refuses to perpetuate a sick humanity.

 

The popular Annie Girardot has a small but engaging role in the film.

 

Dillinger Is Dead—which was acclaimed by Cahiers du cinéma—from the same year, is a pessimistic and enigmatic work, a very strange one from an especially eccentric filmmaker, deploying a functional, even inelegant, style. In a useful article for The Criterion Collection, Michael Joshua Rowin has written the following about the film: “Dillinger’s trajectory may seem simple—a gas mask designer played by Michel Piccoli (Glauco, although his name appears only in the script) returns home after work, cooks himself dinner, discovers a gun, and shoots his wife in the head—but the film’s refusal of clear-cut logic, its contradictory symbols, and its moral ambiguity open it to endless interpretation.” He adds:

 

In a 2007 interview with Cahiers du cinéma, the actor described how Ferreri’s hands-off direction forced him to come up with his own ideas for the lead role inDillinger:“Ferreri didn’t direct me for a second during the shoot; he would simply give spatial indications. It was up to me to play this solitary person, this solitude, this eternal child or this childlike rebirth of ‘mature’ man, between despair, suicide, simple insomnia, dream.”

 

In his entry on Ferreri in Cinema: A Critical Dictionary, edited by Richard Roud, Edgardo Cozarinsky remarks appositely upon the film: “A certain disregard for finish, and frequently careless mise-en-scène, nevertheless contribute to the atonal quality of the most gruesome situations, most notably in Dillinger è Morto (Dillinger Is Dead, 1969).” Piccoli, one of the subtlest of French actors—he collaborated with Ferreri six times—is a brilliant practitioner of the verbal but gives a largely wordless performance. The incredibly alluring Anita Pallenberg here as elsewhere is an object of intense erotic fascination. (The film also features Girardot in another indelible supporting role.) Dillinger Is Dead was screened in a superb print from Janus Films which preserved its extraordinary color photography.

 

The 1974 Don’t Touch the White Woman!, an attractively photographed, postmodern, burlesque Western—a commercial failure about which maybe the less said, the better—struck me as a major disappointment despite the spirited defense of it—in Film Comment—by the estimable critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and notwithstanding an impressive cast including a characteristically amusing Marcello Mastroianni as Colonel George Armstrong Custer; a gorgeous and charming Catherine Deneuve as his object of sexual and romantic interest; Piccoli as Buffalo Bill; Ugo Tognazzi as Custer’s traitorous, Indian scout; along with Philippe Noiret, Alain Cuny, Serge Reggiani, and Franco Fabrizi. Rosenbaum’s brief description is accurate: “Acts follow one another, not constructive links, and each is another hit-or-miss detail. The result is a number of loose improvisations on a given theme, but rarely (or only intermittently) a cohesive story.” More pictorial in style thanDillinger is Dead,the final Battle of Little Bighorn generates some long overdue narrative excitement. The film was screened in an excellent print from Cinecittà.

 

Film at Lincoln Center encapsulates the disturbing The Last Woman from 1976 as follows:

 

Gerard, left behind by a woman who joined the feminist movement, raises his baby alone. He meets Valerie, a young caregiver who will become the last woman, and probably his greatest love.

 

The film stars Gérard Depardieu, Zouzou, Piccoli again, Renato Salvatori, the immeasurably desirable Ornella Muti, and features a luminous Nathalie Baye in a brief appearance. Ferreri co-wrote the screenplay with the eminent Spanish writer Rafael Azcona—with whom he collaborated on his early films produced in Spain and who is also known for his outstanding screenplays for Luis Garcia Berlanga, Carlos Saura, among others. Some sequences and compositions interestingly recall Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert. It was screened in its Italian-language version.

 

The transgressive Bye Bye Monkey from 1978—which tied with Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout for the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival—is also bizarre. Film at Lincoln Center’s note says: “Gérard Lafayette finds a young monkey by the seashore, and decides to raise him as his own child.” A seemingly post-apocalyptic ambience accords well with Ferreri’s fatalism. The film is consistently visually compelling with an effective use of New York locations but the lack of narrative drive here is a recurring weakness across the director’sœuvre. Many distinguished contributors were involved in the production, such as editor Ruggero Mastroianni and Philippe Sarde, who composed the score. The director co-authored the script with Azcona and Gérard Brach, who is most famous for his unforgettable collaborations with Roman Polanski. The film stars Depardieu again and features memorable supporting performances by Marcello Mastroianni and Geraldine Fitzgerald along with James Coco, Mimsy Farmer—the subject of Lewis Klahr’s amazing experimental film, Her Fragrant Emulsion—and pornographic actress Gail Lawrence. It was screened in another exceptionally good print from Cinecittà.

 

The less ambitious and seemingly resolutely minor Seeking Asylum from 1979—it won the Special Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival—is another curiosity, a utopian vehicle for the gentle, endearing and Chaplinesque Roberto Benigni who co-wrote the screenplay with Ferreri and Brach. Film at Lincoln Center’s summary is apt:

 

Roberto is a most unorthodox yet talented kindergarten teacher—perhaps because he is still a child at heart. As he tries to help a boy who doesn’t speak, he falls in love with the mother of one of his pupils.

 

The film’s visual approach and episodic—even rambling and diffuse—nature recalls neorealism but it also often has the uncanniness of a dream or even science-fiction. The fine color photography was fully appreciable in the superb print from Cinecittà.

 

Also unsettling is the depressing Tales of Ordinary Madness from 1981 adapted from stories by Charles Bukowski and starring Ben Gazzara. Film at Lincoln Center provides the following description:

 

Writer Charles Serking refuses to become an academic by day, poet by night. A drunkard, selfish, and a bit of an anarchist, he wanders around Los Angeles. While doing so, he meets the beautiful and mysterious Cass (Ornella Muti).

 

Susan Tyrrell appears briefly in a notable role. Sergio Amidei, famous as a scriptwriter for Robert Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica, collaborated with Ferreri on the screenplay. The film is enhanced by the work of one of the greatest cinematographers, Tonino Delli Colli, who shot unforgettable works by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sergio Leone, Polanski, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. But despite these and other promising elements, my impression on seeing this again is that Barbet Schroeder’s film from a Bukowski script,Barflyfrom 1987, seems like a more enduring treatment of similar material.

 

The atmospheric The Future Is Woman from 1984, also shot by Delli Colli, is one of Ferreri’s most satisfactory achievements, especially on a formal level. Film at Lincoln Center summarizes it thus: “A love triangle: a woman nostalgic for silent films (Hanna Schygulla), a man obsessed with saving trees (Niels Arestrup), and a lost pregnant young woman (Ornella Muti).” It was screened in the most beautiful print in the entire series.

 

Also a minor work was, despite some odd elements, the much more conventionalThe House of Smilesfrom 1991, which features a wonderful lead performance by Ingrid Thulin. The Film at Lincoln Centerprécisreads as follows:

 

Adelina (Ingrid Thulin), once crowned a beauty queen, has lost her teeth in the nursing home. She falls in love with Andrea (Dado Ruspoli), another patient. Their mutual desire shocks all of the home’s young nurses and employees.

 

The film won the Golden Bear at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival. It was shown in a good print from Cinecittà.

 

Diary of a Maniac from 1993, Ferreri’s last fiction feature, is another curiosity. The Film at Lincoln Center capsule provides the following description:

 

Benito (Jerry Calà), a middle-aged, half-broke salesman, writes in his diary all the details of his mediocre everyday life, including every subtle alteration of his physical state and his stormy worn-out romance with Luigia (Sabrina Ferilli). He is certain that his diary could become a literary masterpiece one day.