I remember it played in Boston uncut back in 1976. It had an X rating and I was too young to see it. It's got to be available somewhere. I'm interested in see it myself. But I heard the finale described (and I won't give it away) and it sounds pretty sick.
shareHi Folks, does anyone know where I can get a copy of this amazing film? I saw it at the Brighton Film Theatre in the UK in 1977, and it has stayed with me ever since. I would live to view it again after all these years. Any info would be appreciated.
shareHi. Did you try contacting Paramount Pictures? They're the ones who distributed it in the US--but that was a while ago.
shareI, also, saw the film in 1976, in Boston, in a movie theatre next to MGH (It no longer exists, the theatre, I mean). The heart-rending ending is indeed amazing, for lack of a better word, and it couldn't have been invented.
shareHi. Was it a small art cinema near the MGH? That was before my time but I heard about it. The only theatre I knew near there was the Sack Charles which had one HUGE screen and two small tiny ones.
shareI just rented it and saw it last night. I was curious to see what reaction I would have to it since the last (and only other) time I had seen it. I remembered it as fairly intense, dark and generally disturbing. I also remembered clearly the scene where Depardieu gets a quite visible hard-on after holding Ornella Muti in his arms (but what man wouldn't?)in the first part of the movie. It was actually the first time I had ever seen a film showing a real erection (this was 1976), and for that reason, it was quite memorable.
But all sexual audacity apart, this is a very, VERY sick movie. If Ferreri wanted to portray the end of male chauvinism, or the deep loneliness of a man still holding to the old model of male patriarchy in a rapidly changing society, it fails miserably. I was 21 when I had seen it back then, and I had got that much already, but I guess I was more complacent toward bad acting or bad scripting. Those were times where all taboos were thrown down just like they experienced in Berlin in 1990, so anything went, including bad taste.
Acting is absolutely dismal, but this is not due to bad actors. No matter how you look at it, Depardieu looks absolutely terrible in the role of an egocentric moron who mumbles anything that seems to cross his mind. The character he is portraying is so completely despicable that any audience, male or female, will despise him completely. Having established that simple truth, where does the movie lead, then ? If only this had been successfully used by Ferreri to build a solid contrast, leading the viewer to observe and understand and take a stand with those who seem to have reached some more balance in their life .... There are too few of these moments to make a durable impression on the viewer, and what we see most of the time is a bunch of completely dysfunctional and moronic losers: Ornella as Depardieu's new sexual partner (portrayed as an almost defenseless and emotionally troubled woman child completely enslaved by her carnal passion for Depardieu), Michel Piccoli as Ornella's ex-boyfriend, in his usual cold and pseudo-intellectual contained self, and more male and female characters who seem completely helpless in dealing with the viciously self-centered Depardieu.
All in all, I was totally disappointed by giving a second look to 'La Dernière Femme'. I speak French so that I could grasp all the dialogues. Let me phrase this for those who don't master French (or who think they were missing something in the subtitles): you're much better off that way. The dialogues were as erratic, pointless or even totally stupid as you would imagine from the rest, no matter at which level you hear them. Even in the remote possibility that Ferreri deliberately planned such miserable lines in the script, the end result makes the movie even more irrelevant and pathetically ridiculous.
Since we know what this set of famous actors are capable of, the movie has to be blamed on a poor screenplay and poor directing. Marco Ferreri was a kind of desperado director, and I suspect that he did not succeed in translating his extremely personal ideas into a minimum of coherence in the case of this movie.
This is one of the worst and most pretentious motion picture I have ever seen, and I did watch many weird movies, trust me. And the worst bad films there are are those that are really bad AND not even funny because of that. In fact, it was so painful that I had to overcome an almost irresistible desire to quit watching it. I am clueless when I read or hear that this movie is superlative or a masterpiece. It is just as poor and rotten as a movie made by any bad director. At least, Ed Wood was funny.