Last year I saw a beautiful new 35mm print of Marco Ferreri's Dillinger is Dead at BAM. I went in cold, on the suggestion of a friend who hadn't seen the movie but knew its reputation. What I didn't know was that nothing happened in the movie. I hated it. So why did I sign up to review it for Blogcritics? I asked myself that. And sat on it for months. But when I finally braced myself for what I thought would be not just any pretentious art film snoozefest, but A PRETENTIOUS ART FILM SNOOZEFEST I WAS OBLIGATED TO WRITE 300 WORDS ABOUT ... I liked it. Expecting that nothing was going to happen was the perfect mindset to go into this film. As it turns out, a lot happens.
Michel Piccoli is Glauco, a gas-mask designer who becomes disillusioned with the whole military-industrial complex thing. But this is no simple anti-establishment film. Dillinger is Dead opens with Glauco overseeing gas-mask tests at the plant, then follows him as he drives through dark streets to the strains of a strange vocalese-heavy Italian pop song — one of the first of many numbers that make me wish the film came with a soundtrack album. What does this all portend? The pop-art music and pop-art colors and pop-art women combine with an absurdist plot in a movie that feels like Samuel Beckett writing an episode of Love, American Style.
While his wife (Anita Pallenberg) is in bed nursing a headache, Piccoli makes dinner and sniffs a spice jar suspiciously before tossing it into the trash. He rummages through the pantry looking for a fresh jar and knocks over a pile of magazines (hello, Hoarders fans!). Among the magazines he finds a package wrapped up in old newspaper. He unwraps it and inside it finds a dark cloth wrapped around what is clearly a gun. So what does he do next? He reads the old newspaper.
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