La Grande Bouffe

Michel Piccoli Director: Marco Ferreri Marco Ferreri

Overview

Subversive Italian satirist Marco Ferreri directed and co-wrote (with Rafael Azcona) this grotesquely amusing French black comedy about four men who grow sick of life, and so meet at a remote villa with the goal of literally eating themselves to death. The quartet comes from various walks of life -- a pilot (Marcello Mastroianni), a chef (Ugo Tognazzi), a television host (Michel Piccoli), and a judge (Philippe Noiret) -- but all are successful men with excessive appetites for life's pleasures (food is used as mere metaphor here, as graphic as that metaphor becomes).

Product Details

Release Date:	08/18/2015
UPC:	0760137764397
Original Release:	1973
Rating:	NR
Source:	Arrow Video
Region Code:	12A
Time:	2:10:00
Sales rank:	20,538

Special Features

The Farcical Movie: Marco Ferreri-a television episode dedicated to the director in which he places his cinema within the context of Luis Buñuel and Tex Avery; Behind-the-scenes: footage from the making of the film and interviews with stars Mastroianni, Piccoli, Tognazzi, Noiret and Ferreri; Colours Around a Festival: an archive interview featuring Ferreri, Piccoli, Noiret, Tognazzi, and composer Phillippe Sarde; Forming Ferreri: a new video essay by Italian film scholar Pasquale Iannone that looks at the director's career prior to La Grande Bouffe; Select scene audio commentary by Pasquale Iannone; Extract form the stormy 1973 Cannes press conference

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Michel Piccoli	Michel
Marcello Mastroianni	Marcello
Ugo Tognazzi	Ugo
Philippe Noiret	Philippe
Andréa Ferréol	Andrea
Monique Chaumette	Madeleine
Florence Giorgetti	Anne

Technical Credits

Marco Ferreri

Rafael Azcona

Francis Blanche

Marco Ferreri	Director,Screenwriter
Rafael Azcona	Screenwriter
Francis Blanche	Screenwriter
Michel de Broin	Art Director,Production Designer
Giuseppe Maffioli	Consultant/advisor
Gitt Magrini	Costumes/Costume Designer
Vincent Malle	Associate Producer
Claudine Merlin	Editor
Gina Pignier	Editor
Pasquale Rachini	Cinematographer
Jean-Pierre Rassam	Producer
Philippe Sarde	Score Composer
Mario Vulpiani	Cinematographer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- La Grande Bouffe
1. Chapter 1 [12:05]
2. Chapter 2 [10:26]
3. Chapter 3 [10:34]
4. Chapter 4 [10:00]
5. Chapter 5 [11:05]
6. Chapter 6 [10:33]
7. Chapter 7 [11:31]
8. Chapter 8 [9:53]
9. Chapter 9 [:37]
10. Chapter 10 [9:48]
11. Chapter 11 [11:35]
12. Chapter 12 [12:42]

Menu

Disc #1 -- La Grande Bouffe
   Play Film
   Scene Select
   Special Features
      The Farcical Movie: Marco Ferreri
      Behind-The-Scenes
      Colours Around A Festival
      Forming Ferreri
      Selected Scene Commentary
         Play All
         Before The Bouffe
         Meat, Marcello And Michel
         Breakfast
         Brando And Ugo
         Andréa
      Cannes Film Festival News Conference
   Setup
      Subtitles: Off
      English Subtitles: On

Editorial Reviews

Upon release, Marco Ferreri's 15th credited feature earned a scandalous reputation from some American critics, who saw it as empty and pretentious. But this scathing attack on European "conspicuous consumption" reflects surprising refinement, self-control, and insight. Ferreri's intelligence undergirds the material -- he peppers the film with dozens of witty European sociocultural allusions and metaphors -- such as the old mansion (representative of the crumbling consumer class) and Marcello Mastroianni's sports car, which he accelerates recklessly in one scene without moving the vehicle (an existential symbol of how fruitless and empty these lives have become). That some Western critics would overlook this depth doesn't detract from the value of the film, but it makes perfect sense given the vast cultural differences between Europe and the States. Even the hilarious overriding joke -- that the French are known for their stingy portions, whereas these men feel content to gorge themselves on entire cows and pigs -- would go over the heads of many Americans. As for coprophagic comedy, Ferreri laces his picture with many lunges into wild and bawdy humor, but because he constantly resists visual tastelessness, none of the film's bursts of scatology come across as puerile or facile -- and the film retains a veneer of utter hilarity and affability. (Two highlights: the toilet that explodes, showering a horrified Mastroianni with excrement, and Philippe Noiret's chosen means of death -- whereby this rotund man, with a breast fetish and an incestuous craving for his obese nursemaid, gorges himself on two enormous, tit-shaped mounds of pudding, replete with giant nipples). The film's primary weakness is a towering one, though: Ferreri never carries the audience inside of the reasons for the men's desperation prior to dramatizing their final, shocking acts of self-destruction -- an inclusion that would give the whole film a much needed layer of depth. Nonetheless, he does poignantly reveal the men's towering self-delusions and double-mindedness when it comes to systematically killing themselves yet feeling revulsion when death slaps them in the face. (Witness Michel Piccoli's weeping and wailing over Mastroianni's corpse -- an act so histrionic that it almost becomes an outrageous in-joke.) This deludedness drives much of the film, but we eventually see through it, which makes the second half of the picture terribly sobering. And understanding this, Ferreri strips the surface-level humor after Mastroianni's character dies, turning the last act, by necessity, into a long, melancholic descent. Mirroring the lone, haunting piano theme that Piccoli plays throughout the picture, La Grande Bouffe's final notes are not in any way humorous, but ineffably, unbearably sad -- so sad that, when the story's inner desperation finally rears its naked head, the film's concluding moments break our hearts.

All Movie Guide - Nathan Southern