Nov 30

Nov 30 Marco Ferreri

Ferreri, master of the italian grotesque and ironic cinema, continues slyly -with The Ape Woman (1964)- his speech on the absurdity in family relationships and economic relations in contemporary society. Italian cinema of the 60's and 70's gathered under the inspiration of Ugo Tognazzi (Antonio Focaccia) and under the brilliant direction of Marco Ferreri, one of the most controversial and least acclaimed authors of Italian cinema. Among the few who had the courage and strength to go beyond the clichés of the 'scriptwriters' cinema that characterized the golden years of Italian comedy, Ferreri manages to represent those years with a very lucid forefront.

Antonio is a lonely man, who cannot accept to be able to feel affection for a person that others avoid, and who, even in the face of death, can't finds the strength to have the dignity of suffering. Occupied only in surviving, Antonio is an ambiguous character, so desperate in his poor condition that he has no scruples towards the weakest, a victim of the society in which he lives, he loses the only chance he has of recovering spiritually. A subtle game continually poised between humanity and cynicism, between cruelty and feeling. In search of new expedients to survive. Antonio discovers Maria (Annie Girardot), a young woman made monstrous by hypertrychosis, convinces her to abandon the nunnery in which she lives hidden, to perform publicly in a grotesque show as the only living specimen of woman-monkey . The woman accepts and ends up falling in love to Antonio. After some months the man for pity and for interest, marries