The Big Feast

La grande bouffe

The Big Feast, directed by Marco Ferreri, invites us to witness the most outrageous and debauched meal that cinema has ever seen in this vitriolic political satire that mercilessly lambasts the greed, consumerism, and spiritual estrangement of the urban elite. Above all, by making masterful use of food as both a symbol and an extension of an increasingly bestial humanity, the film brings the unspoken and innate desire for self-annihilation that plagues people in the modern day firmly to the fore. Four successful middle-aged men – who reflect key pillars of the transformation seen in the post-war European landscape and are played by four giants of the silver screen (Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, and Ugo Tognazzi) – go to stay at a villa one of them owns, where they set out on a journey of self-knowledge and self-punishment from which there is no return, determined as they are to see things through, right to the very end. Performing a tawdry suicidal ritual in which food is transformed into an instrument of lethal self-harm, they sweep us off on a binge-eating cinematic epic, on an unprecedented exercise in gluttony and immoderation that shocked critics and audiences alike, dividing opinion at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Marco Ferreri
Script: Marco Ferreri, Rafael Azcona, Francis Blanche
Cinematography: Mario Vulpiani
Editing: Claudine Merlin, Gina Pignier
Music: Philippe Sarde
Actors: Marcello Mastroianni, Andrea Ferreol, Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli, Solange Blondeau, Florence Giorgetti, Michèle Alexandre, Monique Chaumette, Henri Piccoli, Maurice Dorléac, Simon Tchao, Louis Navarre, Bernard Menez, Cordelia Piccoli, Jérôme Richard, Patricia Milochevitch, James Campbell, Eva Simonet
Production: Films 66, Mara Films
Producers: Vincent Malle
Co-production: Capitolina Produzioni Cinematografiche
Production Design: Michel de Broin
Format: DCP
Color: Color
Production Country: France, Italy
Production Year: 1973
Duration: 131'
Contact: Tamasa Distribution
Awards/Distinctions: FIPRESCI Prize – Cannes FF 1973

Marco Ferreri

Marco Ferreri (1928–1997) was simply the most punk Italian filmmaker of his generation. A cine-provocateur of the highest order, Ferreri developed an oeuvre that is one of the most eclectic and surprising in all of Italian cinema, composed largely of black-as-night social satires and uncannily affecting dramas. From his earliest features—produced in Spain—to the vital skewerings of the European bourgeoisie he made upon returning for a long, prolific run in the Italian film industry (such as the 1969 Dillinger Is Dead and the 1973 The Big Feast), Ferreri's films take a delirious and critical view of the times in which he lived and worked and remain some of the funniest, darkest, and most thought-provoking works of their era.

Filmography

1963 The Conjugal Bed
1966 The Wedding March
1969 Dillinger is Dead
1973 The Big Feast
1976 The Last Woman
1978 Bye Bye Monkey
1981 Tales of Ordinary Madness
1984 The Future Is Woman
1991 The Flesh
1993 Diary of a Maniac
1996 Nitrate Base