Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981) - Marco Ferreri
Related: Italian cinema - ordinary - tale - madness - 1981 - Marco Ferreri
Tropes: self-injury
Description
"Style is the answer to everything," intones skid row poet Charles Serking, played by the suitably grizzled and worn Ben Gazarra, to his somnambulistic audience. Serking is, of course, a not-at-all veiled stand-in for beat legend Charles Bukowksi, whose autobiographical short stories were the basis for this film. But Serking, in many ways, comes off more like a gin-soaked fantasy of a skid row Hemingway whose sports of choice are alcohol, women, and sex. Behind the salt-and-pepper beard and rummy eyes lies an actor too poised to allow himself to fully sink into the alcoholic sloppiness that Mickey Rourke so easily brought to the screen in the less pretentious and more concise Barfly, which Bukowski himself scripted. But if Italian-born director Marco Ferreri stumbles over the self-conscious dialogue, he's right at home capturing the seedy atmosphere of dim, run-down apartments and underlit bars in the real Hollywood Serking calls home. When Serking's fling with the stunning, self-mutilating Italian hooker Cass (Ornella Muti, who puts her oversized safety pin to some rather startling uses) becomes too emotional, he takes the anonymous safety of the streets--crashing in a flophouse, passing around a bottle with a listless knot of derelicts. Serking melds right in with the littered streets and lost souls, a real man of the people. Suddenly you see it: he's got style. --Sean Axmaker for amazon.com
Tales of Ordinary Madness (it: Storie di ordinaria follia) is a 1981 film by Italian director Marco Ferreri. It was shot in English in the USA, featuring Ben Gazzara and Ornella Muti in the leading roles. The film's title and subject matter are based on the works and the person of US beat generation poet Charles Bukowski.
The film follows the meandering (sexual) adventures of the poet and drunk, Charles Serking, laying bare the sleaze of life in the less reputable neighbourhoods of Los Angeles. Serking's life takes a turn for the better when he meets Cass, a young hooker with self destructive habits. They have a stormy relationship. When Serking gets an offer from a major publishing house, Cass tries to stop him from leaving, but fails. Serking gives in to the temptation of the big bucks, but soon realises his mistake and returns to LA only to find that Cass has killed herself in his absence. Devastated he hits the bottle in a nightmarish drinking bout, but finally reaches catharsis and returns to the seaside guesthouse where he spent his happiest moments with Cass. Here he rekindles his poetry with the aid of a young admirer in one of Ferreri's trademark beach scenes. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Ordinary_Madness [May 2006]
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