Dillinger Is Dead (1969)

When I eventually make a feature film, it will most likely be in the vein of this one. Ferreri's Dillinger Is Dead exists in the space between narrative cinema and avant-garde abstraction. Michel Piccoli plays a gas mask designer who discovers a revolver wrapped up in a newspaper full of articles about John Dillinger. Mostly he just skulks his uber-mod home with its garish pop art colors, while listening to the top hits on the radio and watching his homemade movies. The film is a complete breakdown of logic and bourgeois values into incomprehensible abstraction. There are elements of Bunuel and Godard, and Ferreri anticipates Rappaport in many ways, but his work is more whimsical, more subtle, less obvious, but just as stylized and cool. An easy one to fall in love with, and a hard one to forget.