It is a well known trick of the trade that American artists are sometimes more appreciated outside of their home country than in it. The past two centuries are littered with the names of famous American painters, musicians, dancers and filmmakers who had to travel the pond to Europe in order to receive recognition (and to make a living wage). That tradition continues to this day and one of the exemplars of this irony is the American filmmaker Abel Ferrara, who will be feted this week at the Locarno Film Festival in Italy. At the esteemed event held in the Ticino canton, Ferrara will receive the Pardo d’onore Swisscom, the prize for career achievement, awarded every year to a contemporary director for an outstanding body of work.
Ferrara has been shaking things up and pushing the envelope since the star of his fable career in the 1970s, a period when the Hollywood studios were in sharp decline and individualistic directors like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian de Palma and Robert Altman were making films that would redefine the cinema experience. Ferrara’s origins belie his later obsessions. Born in 1951 in the Bronx section of New York City, Ferrara was the product of a strict Catholic home. He attended the film conservatory at SUNY Purchase, where he directed several short films, which are actually available on DVD collections. After graduation and finding himself out of work, he directed a pornographic film titled 9 LIVES OF A WET PUSSY in 1976, which starred his then-girlfriend. This early stint led him into the world of underground genre filmmaking, and his first film in that direction was the grindhouse actioner THE DRILLER KILLER (1979), which was his first to find a cult audience. In the urban slasher film, which capitalized on the themes of Martin Scorsese’s successful TAXI DRIVER (1976),
His fortune took a turnabout in 1990 with KING OF NEW YORK, an evocative if brutal gangster film starring Christopher Walken as gangster Frank White, who runs a group of black drug dealers, including one played by Laurence Fishburne. The cast also included such rising talents as Wesley Snipes and David Caruso. As with most of Ferrara’s films, the screenplay was written by his boyhood friend and frequent collaborator Nicholas St. John. The film was a big indie hit and set the stage for what is perhaps Ferrara’s best known and most successful film. BAD LIEUTENANT (1992) featured a fierce performance by Scorsese regular Harvey Keitel as a foul-mouthed, sex-and-drug-addicted police officer who wrestles with guilt and eventually seeks redemption in the Catholic church. Both Ferrara and Keitel were nominated for Independent Spirit Awards and despite its controversial content, the film was lauded by critics.
With the success of those two films, it was not long before Hollywood came calling. Ferrara was hired for a remake of the sci-fi classic INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1993) for Warner Bros.; and DANGEOUS GAME (1993), starring Keitel and Madonna, for MGM. Neither film scored at the box office and Ferrara’s Hollywood option was dropped. He also could not easily adapt to the Hollywood system of scrutiny and interference, so he returned to independent filmmaking, directing two well-received movies: THE ADDICTION (1995), starring Lily Taylor as a university student who succumbs to the will of a vampire, and THE FUNERAL (1996), a taut thriller with an impressive cast including Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Isabella Rossellini, Benicio del Toro and Vincent Gallo. His next projects, THE BLACKOUT (1997), with Matthew Modine and Dennis Hopper, NEW ROSE HOTEL (1998), which reunited him with Christopher Walken, and ‘R XMAS (2001), with Ice T and Drea De Matteo, were embraced by his supporters but did not do much for his career.
In April 2011, Ferrara began shooting his first feature in four years. 4:44: LAST DAY ON EARTH, starring his frequent collaborator Willem Dafoe and the director’s long time companion actress Shanyn Leigh. The film is shot in one location, a cramped apartment, during the course of the last 24 hours before the biblical apocalypse. It has been rumored that the film will be ready for a Fall festival premiere, but so far it has failed to be listed as one of the titles at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival. As evidenced by the director’s career, this one will probably make the scene on the European festival circuit and have limited visibility in his home country. For this reason, Ferrara has been spending more time in Rome, making a base in Europe where he is revered as a major film artist.
The Locarno Film Festival’s honor this week only reinforces his stature as among the most independent of the independent filmmakers, a cinema rebel who remains true to his own vision and his own code. In this sense, his being awarded the Festival’s Pardo d’Onore is in keeping with some of the major filmmakers who have received the tribute in the past 23 years, including such giants as Manoel de Oliveira, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami, Wim Wenders, Alexander Sokurov, Hou Hsiao-hsien, William Friedkin, Alain Tanner and Jia Zhang-ke. For more information on the Locarno Film Festival, which continues for the next 10 days, visit: www.pardo.ch