Virtual CinéSalon
Dillinger is Dead

Dillinger è morto


Pick of the Week: Tuesday, October 20–Monday, October 26, 2020
Available on The Criterion Channel

Dir. Marco Ferreri, 1969, 95 min
With Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg, Gino Lavagetto, Annie Girardot
In Italian with English subtitles

In this magnificently inscrutable late-sixties masterpiece, Marco Ferreri, one of European cinema’s most idiosyncratic auteurs, goes through the looking glass and into a seemingly routine night in the life of an Italian gas mask designer, played, in a tour-de-force performance, by Michel Piccoli. In his claustrophobic mod home, he pampers his pill-popping wife, seduces his maid, and uncovers a gun that may have once been owned by John Dillinger—and then things get even stranger.

A surreal political missive about social malaise, Dillinger Is Dead finds absurdity in the mundane. It is a singular experience, both illogical and grandly existential.

Trailer