During one of the more predictable sequences of drunken meandering and wanton womanizing in Marco Ferreri’s “Tales of Ordinary Madness” (1981), I found myself wondering what the Coen Brothers would do with this material. Adapting Charles Bukowski’s short story collection, Ferreri celebrates Bukowski surrogate Charles Serking (Ben Gazzara), glorifying his predatory sexual exploits and infantile outbursts. It’s all too familiar, a mad genius acting a buffoon, expecting the world to serve him and appreciate his artistic brilliance. Unlike the Coen Brothers, whose best films subvert well-worn tropes (“Blood Simple’s” crooked cop) and genres (the money grab/kidnapping caper/road movie: “Fargo”), Ferreri (1928-1997) — whose films are playing at an extensive Film at Lincoln Center retrospective — aims low and hits his mark most directly only when Serking’s home turf takes center stage. The sordid, spatial Los Angeles ambience serves as both enabler and enemy to the brooding, directionless Serking.
It was hard to shake the Coen Brothers from my mind for other reasons: of course, Gazzara played Jackie Treehorn in “The Big Lebowski” (1998), the beloved gonzo detective story which also, like “Ordinary Madness,” featured an intermittent voiceover whose detached delusion mimicked Philip Marlowe. Problem is, Serking is not out to solve a mystery, nor does he possess the veiled humility or bumbling demeanor of Raymond Chandler’s sleuth. Serking’s goals are straightforward, and he pursues them with the single mindedness of a determined sociopath. And when he meets resistance from antagonists — such as his ex-wife/landlord or a New York publishing house — he retaliates with violence (gripping women by the throat) and petulance (throwing empty beer cans at officemates), opting to save self-examination for another day.
Drawing on Bukowski and Bringing Out L.A.
Serking opens the film in a lecture hall talking about style and how doing something dangerous with style is real art, but doing something dangerous with no style is dull. Joke’s on us, because that dynamic plays out exactly in a pattern of disturbing encounters between Serking and his prey. He follows Vera (Susan Tyrell) from Venice Beach to her Los Angeles home, forcing himself into her apartment and on top of her. For that, he’s arrested, but he rebounds quickly, meeting the enigmatic prostitute Cass (Ornella Muti, a Ferreri regular), a sacrificial object of lust who represents both Serking’s ideal (beauty, youth) woman and worst nightmare (independence, overt sexuality).
Ferreri’s character portraits might be lacking in originality, but Los Angeles, with its foggy glare and overripe neighbors, compensates for the shortfall. Bukowski’s downtrodden, beloved L.A. was always far removed from the stylized city we’d been accustomed to in so many movies, and in this movie, the city breathes life into characters whose morals and emotions lack the oxygen needed to sustain a feature-length film. In spotlighting the hazy, anti-romantic side of L.A. — blighted apartment buildings, dingy liquor stores — Ferreri articulates its appeal to an outcast like Serking. His apartment looks like the type of place where a writer lives and dies young, if he’s lucky, and the invasive outdoor signage casts the appropriate amount of light on his seedy, interior world.
Even the beaches come off as gritty, arid deserts, no longer the hopeful utopias a more optimistic writer than Serking might imagine. Towards the end of the film, Ferreri and Cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli follow the stumbling drunk Serking at a distance, struggling to chase after and bargain with a runaway (Wendy Welles). Finally he catches up, and when she asks his name and Serking offers to tell her, only if she takes off her shirt. The whole ordeal would be laughable, if it didn’t call to mind Dirk Bogarde’s desperate last gasps in “Death in Venice” (1971). Unlike Aschenbach, Serking survives! Triumphing above all odds so complete the pursuit of this teenage obsession, notching a victory that culminates in feeling her bare breasts.
The Most Punk Italian Filmmaker of His Generation
The Film at Lincoln Center festival (Marco Ferreri: Beyond the Absurd) is the most comprehensive program that the director’s films has received in this country. Described as the “most punk Italian filmmaker of his generation,” his major provocations shared a black humor that mixed political commentary with an experimental flair. Many of the films showing — including “Ordinary Madness” but also, star vehicles such as “La Grande Bouffe” (1973, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Michel Piccoli) and “Bye Bye Monkey” (1981, with Mastroianni and Gérard Depardieu) — are impossible to find on streaming, so each screening offers a limited opportunity to consider his mischievous and scathing voice at full volume.
And it’s that authoritative voice which is missing from “Ordinary Madness.” Ferreri’s adaptation is faithful to its source material, but it botches the transfer of Bukowski’s gruff language, which was most successful when exploring more prosaic subject matter. A man waters his driveway and shares a moment of downtime with a passing postal worker in the Bukowski poem “War All of the Time.” The dark, macho side of Bukowski — all booze and babes, ponies and pills — is missing in that poem, but that’s the point: it doesn’t have to be cranked up all of the time. And on-screen, that’s all we see: the extremes of Serking’s behavior, a zero-sum journey toward what suits his cock and destroys his liver.
An Auteur For Whom Style Was Everything
The appeal to convey this aggressive, aggrieved caricature is natural, and Ferreri wasn’t the last to try: Iranian director Barbet Schroeder’s “Barfly” (1987), written by Bukowski, is a lesser work than “Ordinary Madness,” and it’s anchored by an overwrought Mickey Rourke. With an exaggerated limp and a squeaky voice, Rourke diminishes Hank Chinaski (a frequent Bukowski alter-ego) to an irritating pest whose preferred pastime is instigating and losing bar fights. Compared to Rourke, Gazzara’s rendering, with his gravelly voice and accentuated paunch, evokes a beguiling charisma and allusive attractiveness that’s endemic in Gazzara’s best work with John Cassavetes (“The Killing of a Chinese Bookie”) and Peter Bogdanovich (“Saint Jack”). Ultimately, his natural charm is weighed down by a redundant narrative arc of self-destruction and attempted redemption.
Still, there’s a pleasure to behold this offensive, stubborn film, even if it undermines Bukowski by turning Serking into a one-dimensional vulgarian. The real Bukowski was a poet and a gambler, a drinker and a father, a lifer in the post office who loved Beethoven and Brahms. Ferreri’s version shuns contradiction, evades nuance, and turns the madman into a victim, and his co-conspirators into shrieking villains. It’s entertaining but disturbing, and at its worst amounts to grown men (Ferreri and Gazzara) acting out fantasies under the cover that another artist inspired it. But, to quote el duderino, that’s just my opinion, man. The title doesn’t promise a cohesive trip with a stable protagonist, so this narrow scope deserves a viewing, if for no other reason than to scrutinize this unrequited partnership of two messy, singular auteurs for whom style was everything.
The retrospective “Marco Ferreri: Beyond The Absurd” will run at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center until Thursday, June 22nd, and “Tales of Ordinary Madness” has its final screening on Monday, June 19th.
