Dillinger Is Dead
Encyclopedia
Dillinger Is Dead is a 1969
Italian
art house film
directed by Marco Ferreri. It stars Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg
and Annie Girardot
. The story is a darkly satiric blend of fantasy and reality. It follows a bored, alienated man over the course of one night in his home. The title comes from a newspaper headline featured in the film which proclaims the death of the real life American gangster John Dillinger
.
The film proved controversial on its initial release for its subject matter and violence but is now generally regarded as Ferreri's masterpiece. It was acclaimed by the influential French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma
and afterwards Ferreri worked and lived in Paris
for many years. Since the mid-1980s the film has been screened only very rarely.
is dead" and an account of the famous American gangster's death. Glauco cleans and restores the gun, then paints it red with white polka dot
s. He also eats his meal, watches some television and film, listens to music and seduces their maid. With the gun he enacts suicide a number of times. At dawn he shoots his wife thrice in the head. Then he drives to the seaside where he gets a job as a chef on a yacht bound for Tahiti
.
Michel Piccoli when he visited the actor on the set of Alain Cavalier
's La Chamade
(1968). Ferreri had Piccoli read a few pages from Dillinger Is Dead and hired him immediately. Piccoli has said Ferreri did not direct his performance and only gave simple blocking
instructions. He played the character as solitary and volatile, comparing it to his role in Agnès Varda
's The Creatures (1966). He also recalled filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard
's advice for Contempt
(1963), that "[he] should be 'a character from Rio Bravo
acting in a Resnais
film,' somehow perfectly split between the physical and the intellectual."
is an attempt to "kill" something inside himself. Glauco repeatedly stages his own suicide throughout the film. The final murder, then, is a means to escape his life by eliminating the primary link to his bourgeois lifestyle, which he would otherwise be unable to leave.
Writer Mira Liehm posits director Marco Ferreri followed in the style of the Theatre of the Absurd
and did not apply psychology or logic to his characters but then placed his absurdist
creations in a real world context. The home with its many luxuries, such as the gourmet dining and film projector, as well as the cleaning and decoration of the gun, are meaningless diversions which trap Glauco in a metaphorical prison and suffocate him. His isolation leads to death or an "illusionary escape." As Italian film historian Paolo Bertetto explained, "The escape to Tahiti means a total closure of all horizons, the paralysis of all possibilities; we are brought down to zero, stripped of all perspectives, and restored to the original nothingness."
.
Dillinger Is Dead was the subject of controversy on its release for its violence and depiction of the parvenu
set. Critics have also called it director Marco Ferreri's masterpiece. The influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma
praised the film, interviewed the director and translated two of his previous interviews from the Italian magazine Cinema & Film. The acclaim opened the resources of Paris
to Ferreri and he spent much of the next 15 years living there. During that time he made his internationally best known films, including The Last Woman
(1976) and Bye Bye Monkey
(1978). Ferreri and Michel Piccoli became fast friends and worked together subsequently on films such as The Last Woman and La Grande Bouffe
(1973).
According to critic Viano Maurizio, by the mid-1980s Reaganomics
' effect on the film market resulted in Dillinger's near disappearance and it has been rarely seen since. It appeared in the 2006 Marco Ferreri Retrospective
in London
. A new print
was provided by The Criterion Collection
for the 2007 Telluride Film Festival
.
1969 in film
The year 1969 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Last year for prize giving at the Venice Film Festival until it is revived in 1980...
Italian
Cinema of Italy
The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
art house film
Art film
An art film is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience...
directed by Marco Ferreri. It stars Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg is an Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer. She was the romantic partner of Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist and guitarist Brian Jones and later the partner of the guitarist of the same band Keith Richards, from 1967 to 1979, by whom she has two surviving...
and Annie Girardot
Annie Girardot
Annie Girardot was a French actress.She began performing in 1955, making her film debut in Treize à table. Girardot won the Prix Suzanne Bianchetti in 1956, and in 1977 won the César Award for Best Actress portraying the title character in Docteur Françoise Gailland...
. The story is a darkly satiric blend of fantasy and reality. It follows a bored, alienated man over the course of one night in his home. The title comes from a newspaper headline featured in the film which proclaims the death of the real life American gangster John Dillinger
John Dillinger
John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations...
.
The film proved controversial on its initial release for its subject matter and violence but is now generally regarded as Ferreri's masterpiece. It was acclaimed by the influential French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
and afterwards Ferreri worked and lived in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
for many years. Since the mid-1980s the film has been screened only very rarely.
Synopsis
Glauco, an industrial designer, returns home from work. His wife is in bed with a headache but has left him dinner, which has become cold. He is dissatisfied with the food and begins preparing himself a gourmet meal. While collecting ingredients he discovers an old revolver wrapped in a 1934 newspaper with the headline "DillingerJohn Dillinger
John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations...
is dead" and an account of the famous American gangster's death. Glauco cleans and restores the gun, then paints it red with white polka dot
Polka dot
Polka dot is a pattern consisting of an array of filled circles, generally equally sized and spaced relatively closely in relation to their diameters. Polka dots are most commonly seen on children's clothing, toys, and furniture, but they appear in a wide array of contexts...
s. He also eats his meal, watches some television and film, listens to music and seduces their maid. With the gun he enacts suicide a number of times. At dawn he shoots his wife thrice in the head. Then he drives to the seaside where he gets a job as a chef on a yacht bound for Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
.
Cast
- Michel Piccoli as Glauco: a middle-age designer of protective masks which allow people to breathe under inhospitable conditions. Isolated, ennuyedBoredomBoredom is an emotional state experienced when an individual is without any activity or is not interested in their surroundings. The first recorded use of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, written in 1852, in which it appears six times, although the expression to be a...
and insomniac, he searches his house for diversion. Piccoli viewed the role as that of an "eternal child or this childlike rebirth of 'mature' man, between despair, suicide, simple insomnia, dream." - Anita PallenbergAnita PallenbergAnita Pallenberg is an Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer. She was the romantic partner of Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist and guitarist Brian Jones and later the partner of the guitarist of the same band Keith Richards, from 1967 to 1979, by whom she has two surviving...
as the wife - Annie GirardotAnnie GirardotAnnie Girardot was a French actress.She began performing in 1955, making her film debut in Treize à table. Girardot won the Prix Suzanne Bianchetti in 1956, and in 1977 won the César Award for Best Actress portraying the title character in Docteur Françoise Gailland...
as the maid
Production
Director Marco Ferreri first met leading manLeading man
Leading man or leading gentleman is an informal term for the actor who plays a love interest to the leading actress in a film or play. A leading man is usually an all rounder; capable of singing, dancing, and acting at a professional level, but never outshining his female co-star...
Michel Piccoli when he visited the actor on the set of Alain Cavalier
Alain Cavalier
Alain Cavalier is a French film director. He was born in Vendôme, Loir-et-Cher and studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He won several awards, including the César Award for Best Film and César Award for Best Director for his film Thérèse in 1987...
's La Chamade
La chamade
La Chamade is a 1965 novel by French playwright and novelist Françoise Sagan.It was adapted into a 1968 movie starring Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli.-Plot summary:...
(1968). Ferreri had Piccoli read a few pages from Dillinger Is Dead and hired him immediately. Piccoli has said Ferreri did not direct his performance and only gave simple blocking
Blocking (stage)
Blocking is a theatre term which refers to the precise movement and positioning of actors on a stage in order to facilitate the performance of a play, ballet, film or opera. The term derives from the practice of 19th century theatre directors such as Sir W. S...
instructions. He played the character as solitary and volatile, comparing it to his role in Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
's The Creatures (1966). He also recalled filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's advice for Contempt
Contempt (film)
Contempt is a 1963 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on the Italian novel Il disprezzo by Alberto Moravia. It stars Brigitte Bardot.-Plot:...
(1963), that "[he] should be 'a character from Rio Bravo
Rio Bravo (1959 film)
Rio Bravo is a 1959 American Western film, directed by Howard Hawks. The script was written by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, based on a short story by B.H. McCampbell...
acting in a Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
film,' somehow perfectly split between the physical and the intellectual."
Interpretation
The film, and especially its surreal finale in which the character Glauco leaves home and finds a job on a yacht, has been interpreted variously. Author Fabio Vighi approached it from a psychoanalytical standpoint, suggesting the uxoricideUxoricide
Uxoricide is murder of one's wife. It can refer to the act itself or the man who carries it out.- Known or suspected uxoricides:...
is an attempt to "kill" something inside himself. Glauco repeatedly stages his own suicide throughout the film. The final murder, then, is a means to escape his life by eliminating the primary link to his bourgeois lifestyle, which he would otherwise be unable to leave.
Writer Mira Liehm posits director Marco Ferreri followed in the style of the Theatre of the Absurd
Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...
and did not apply psychology or logic to his characters but then placed his absurdist
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
creations in a real world context. The home with its many luxuries, such as the gourmet dining and film projector, as well as the cleaning and decoration of the gun, are meaningless diversions which trap Glauco in a metaphorical prison and suffocate him. His isolation leads to death or an "illusionary escape." As Italian film historian Paolo Bertetto explained, "The escape to Tahiti means a total closure of all horizons, the paralysis of all possibilities; we are brought down to zero, stripped of all perspectives, and restored to the original nothingness."
Release and reception
The film was entered into the 1969 Cannes Film Festival1969 Cannes Film Festival
The 22nd Cannes Film Festival was held on May 8 - 23, 1969. At this festival a new non-competitive section called "Directors' Fortnight" is added, in response to the cancellation of the 1968 festival.-Jury:*Luchino Visconti...
.
Dillinger Is Dead was the subject of controversy on its release for its violence and depiction of the parvenu
Parvenu
A Parvenu is a person who is a relative newcomer to a socioeconomic class. The word is borrowed from the French language; it is the past participle of the verb parvenir...
set. Critics have also called it director Marco Ferreri's masterpiece. The influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
praised the film, interviewed the director and translated two of his previous interviews from the Italian magazine Cinema & Film. The acclaim opened the resources of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to Ferreri and he spent much of the next 15 years living there. During that time he made his internationally best known films, including The Last Woman
La Dernière femme
La Dernière femme is a 1976 French film directed by Marco Ferreri and starring Gérard Depardieu, Ornella Muti, Michel Piccoli, Zouzou and Nathalie Baye.Depardieu received a César nomination for best actor for his role.- Plot :...
(1976) and Bye Bye Monkey
Bye Bye Monkey
Bye Bye Monkey is a 1978 film, directed by Marco Ferreri and starring Gérard Depardieu, Marcello Mastroianni, James Coco and Geraldine Fitzgerald. It is about a man who brings King Kong's orphaned son to the city to raise it. It was filmed in English and shot in Long Island, New York...
(1978). Ferreri and Michel Piccoli became fast friends and worked together subsequently on films such as The Last Woman and La Grande Bouffe
La Grande Bouffe
La Grande Bouffe is a 1973 French–Italian film directed by Marco Ferreri. It stars Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret...
(1973).
According to critic Viano Maurizio, by the mid-1980s Reaganomics
Reaganomics
Reaganomics refers to the economic policies promoted by the U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s, also known as supply-side economics and called trickle-down economics, particularly by critics...
' effect on the film market resulted in Dillinger's near disappearance and it has been rarely seen since. It appeared in the 2006 Marco Ferreri Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective generally means to take a look back at events that already have taken place. For example, the term is used in medicine, describing a look back at a patient's medical history or lifestyle.-Music:...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. A new print
Release print
A release print is a copy of a film that is sent to a movie theater for exhibition.-Definitions:Release prints are not to be confused with the other types of print used in the photochemical post-production process:...
was provided by The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
for the 2007 Telluride Film Festival
Telluride Film Festival
The Telluride Film Festival was started in 1974 by Bill and Stella Pence, Tom Luddy and Jim Card in the town of Telluride, Colorado, United States. It is operated by the National Film Preserve....
.
External links
- Dillinger Is Dead at RAI International