Watch Dillinger Is Dead For Free

the audience applauded

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Recently, "Dillinger is Dead" has apparently been re-discovered...at least that's what the host on Turner Classic Movies said. I would have just have soon had it remain a lost film!The biggest reason I watched this film is because it stars Michel Piccoli--a very fine actor who appeared in many French and Italian films. I have enjoyed his work a lot...and this film is the first of his that I truly hated. There isn't a lot of plot to this one and it mostly consists of Piccoli doing a lot of strange and nonsensical puttering around his house late one night while his lover sleeps. He discovers a hidden gun and although you'd think this would introduce some important plot element, after cleaning it, oiling it and painting(?) it, he prances about his home doing bizarro things--such as playing home movies and kissing the ladies in the film as well as playing with his fingers and watching a bullfight. Ultimately, The film is the epitome of the art film. The camera-work is occasionally jerky and amateurish. The plot, such as it is, makes no real sense and the main character is just weird and seemingly pointless (sort of like the lead in Godard's "Pierre le Fou"). If your idea of fun is seeing a lot of weirdness interrupted occasionally by a bit of nudity, by all means watch the film. As for me, life is just too short and I cannot imagine most viewers (95-99% perhaps) enjoying the film in the least.

"Dillinger è morto" is a bizarre Italian film by Italian director Marco Ferreri, made in 1969, and never shown in the U.S. until now, 2009, in its scattered special engagements. I had the good fortune to catch it in Rome in 1970, on my last night in the city, at the neighborhood Cinema Farnese in Campo de' Fiori.It deals pretty much with an evening in the life of a character named Glauco, played by Michel Piccoli, who comes home from work in a gas-mask factory, is disgusted with the cold supper left for him by his always sleeping wife, prepares a gourmet meal of his own as he cleans (with virgin olive oil) a revolver found in a closet and wrapped in old newspapers. The papers contains the story of the death of American gangster John Dillinger. The revolver, of uncertain origin, obsesses him. When done, he paints it red with white polka dots. This is an interesting man but hardly a sane one. And then...well, and then...what Glauco does with that revolver and how it becomes an invigorating turning point in his unwell life, gives the film a measure of its eerily fascinating allure. This lost cult movie is certainly an interesting counterpoint to Johnny Depp's current "Public Enemies," about the gangster himself.I never thought I would see it again, since it has never been available on video or DVD. Yesterday I caught it at the Brattle in Cambridge. You may like it; you may not. But, as with me four decades later, it will never leave your mind.

This is one for the Accatone set, those pseuds petrified in the Nouvelle Vague who haunt the movie theatre just off Boul' Mich sharing eternal spliffs and wondering why no one does Jump Cuts anymore. Michel Piccoli - alone on screen for over half the running time - does nothing all at once. Piccoli, who once starred in a REAL movie called The Things Of Life, contemplates the things of life on a conveyor belt that has been looped so we get the same things over and over but probably a centimetre away from where they were first second and third time around. For no apparent reason other than to make some sort of left-handed sense of the title, whilst rummaging in a closet he stumbles across a package that when untied turns out to be a gun wrapped in a newspaper that carries an account of John Herbert Dillinger, famously arrested in a movie theatre in Chicago. Piccoli strips the gun, oils and cleans it, reassembles it and shoots his sleeping wife. Why? Why not. It's THAT kind of movie. Having done so he goes for a swim, as you do, climbs on board a private yacht where they are just burying the cook at sea. Spotting a vacancy he puts himself forward for the job, is given a trial, no questions asked and sails away. Arrested development Godard fans will LOVE this one whilst those who like REAL movies will give it a wide berth.

You call this an experimental film...I call this... a trash movie. Sometimes boring, sometimes funny. Michel Piccoli acting like a dumb makes me laugh. You must see this movie. Marco Ferreri wasn't a good director but his clownish act wasn't so bad.