REVIEW: Dillinger e’ morte [Dillinger Is Dead ]
© A.J. Malouin 2010
(Rating: 2 by A.J. Malouin.)
(See our side-bar page “How We Rate Movies”)
(1969/Italy Directed by [and story and screenplay by] Marco Ferreri.)
This is an Essential Film. The fact is, after seeing this film, your reviewer started putting together a list for his forth-coming book, THE ESSENTIAL FILMS. “Dillinger e’ morte” is the first film in that book — although there will be thousands of “essential’ films in the final manuscript.
“Dillinger e’ morte” is not a well-known film. It is not a “film for the masses.” It was made by a subversive, “dangerous,” smart, “insane” writer/director who pushes against all the comfort levels of all the audiences who ever see any of the films he has ever made.
“Dillinger e’ morte takes place almost real-time over the course of 18 hours, or so.
It begins by showing us a protagonist who has just about everything an (Italian) man living in the late 1960s should have to be totally happy. Our protagonist Glauco, played brilliantly by Michel Piccoli, has it all: a high-profile job in a respected profession; a gorgeous, if somewhat aloof, wife; a sexy mistress who is, conveniently, their maid, and; a mastery of the Italian kitchen. Should not this be enough to help any man sink comfortably into oblivion?!??
No, my friends, it is not.
Writer/Director Marco Ferreri shows us, in a single solitary evening that this reviewer guarantees that you will Never Forget, that not even All Of That is enough.
The film is the story of a man who spends one solitary evening alone in the comfortable surroundings of his own home. His wife has gone to bed early, with a headache, leaving him a cold dinner on the table. His maid/mistress has come in after a wine-stained dinner, and taken another bottle of wine off into her quarters. The plaudits and concerns of his work colleague (they manufacture gas masks!) are still ringing in his ears. Ahead of him waits an evening of looking at home movies a work colleague has given him.
All is well in Glauco’s life… excepting that it is not.
He begins his evening alone by rejecting the cold dinner left for him on the table. He gets out the cookbook and goes to work expertly, preparing a loverly meal which enthralls the camera and the audience.
Whilst looking deep in kitchen closets for the gourmet ingredients for his meal, he finds a totally rusted revolver wrapped in a newspaper celebrating the gunning down of John Dillinger outside a movie theatre.
His gourmet meal over, Glauco spends the rest of the evening playing around with the home movies of his earlier life, the maid/mistress of his current life, and the totally rusty revolver for which he has a recipe of olive oil that eventually make the revolver operative. Glauco finds live ammunition for the revolver and, in further playfulness, spray-paints the now-operative revolver read and dabs white-paint polka-dots on it.
He then loads the revolver.
The next morning, miles away by small Italian motorcar, he swims in a ghetto, boards a yacht, becomes the ship’s new chef, and sets sail for Tahita.
All of the meaningful communications in this film take place without ANY dialogue being spoken. The physical expressions, emotions, and bombshells of the film are delivered by actions, not words. That’s the kind of “insane” approach that makes this a film, once viewed, is Never forgotten.
(1 hr30. Not rated in the USA. In Italian, with American subtitles in the USA. Starring Michel Piccoli as Glauco, Anita Pallenberg as Ginette, his wife, Gino Lavagetto as a sailor, Carla Petrillo, Mario Jannilli as the captain of a yacht, and Annie Girardo as Sabine, among a few others.)