Marco Ferreri: Dangerous But Necessary

Marco Ferreri: Dangerous But Necessary is a trip through the auteur's singular cosmos - at once supernatural and earthbound. He dropped out of his studies to become a veterinarian, choosing instead to concern himself principally with the human animal, in our corporeal and yearning essence. To ease the approach to the barbed, organic world - difficult for some - this film offers clips from his Spanish, Italian and French films, including El cochecito, Liza, La derniére femme, Dillinger Is Dead, La grande bouffe, Seeking Asylum, Bye-Bye Monkey, The Story of Piera, The Ape Woman. We listen as the controversial director considers the reputation of "provocateur" that has forever hounded him, accompanied by censureship, scandals, and poisonous vilifications. We hear the witty, ironic, whipsaw ripostes of his most famous and devoted supporters: Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi, and Ferreri himself, in archival interviews and backstage footage from Istituto Luce, Rai, Ina and other private and State holdings, some of them never before seen outside of their home countries long ago.

There are new, ad hoc interviews that shed light on Ferreri's directing methods, by protagonists who breathed life into his characters (Roberto Benigni, Hanna Schygulla, Isabelle Huppert, Andréa Ferréol, Ornella Muti), his closest artistic collaborators: the composer Philipe Sarde, the director Radu Mihaileanu, the production designer Dante Ferretti, the film-essayist, master critic and former editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinema, Serge Toubiana. The witty, insightful, enchanting poem dedicated to Ferreri that acts as a prologue to the film, was written and performed by Benigni himself. The film composes, as in a mosaic, the art, character, poetry, thought and visionary genius of an unclassifiable auteur.

The film strives to deliver a few clues to entering the prodigious and carnal universe of a laser-gazed Merlin the Magician, who possessed the savvy of a hip entrepreneur. We hope to communicate the fiery compassion with which Ferreri plumbs, with zero hypocrisy, the rocky road of our earthly passage.