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| Marco Ferreri: L'uomo dei cinque palloni / Break-Up / The Man With the Balloons (IT/FR 1969) (2016 restoration in 4K L'Immagine Ritrovata) starring Catherine Spaak (Giovanna) and Marcello Mastroianni (Mario). |
1963–1967 Italia–Francia
Prod.: Carlo Ponti per Compagnia Cinematografica Champion-Les Films Concordia. DCP 4K. D.: 86’. Bn e Col.
Sog., Scen.: Marco Ferreri, Rafael Azcona. F.: Aldo Tonti. M.: Enzo Micarelli. Scgf.: Carlo Egidi. Mus.: Teo Usuelli.
Int.: Marcello Mastroianni (Mario), Catherine Spaak (Giovanna), Ugo Tognazzi (automobilista), William Berger (Benny), Ennio Balbo, Marco Ferreri.
Premiere of the episode L'uomo dei 5 palloni in the episode film Oggi, domani, dopodomani: in Italy, 22 Dec 1965.
Premiere: in France, 2 July 1969.
The film was not released in Finland.
Italian version with English subtitles
Recovered & Restored 2017
Copy from Cineteca di Bologna
Restored in 4K in 2016 by Cineteca di Bologna and Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino, in collaboration with Warner Bros., with the support of Massimo Sordella and Nuovo Imaie, at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from the 4K scan of a vintage interpositive and a sound positive preserved by Warner Bros. Thanks to CSC – Cineteca Nazionale for providing as reference for the restoration the 35 mm copy struck from the original negative at Turner International, Los Angeles
Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF) online 20 June 2021, with English subtitles.
Theme: Treasures from Il Cinema Ritrovato.
MSFF online, viewed on a 4K tv set in Lappeenranta, Midsummer Eve, 26 June 2021.
” I always liked him because he gave actors free rein and because he had a great quality: he said little. " – Marcello Mastroianni on Marco Ferreri
" I got him because he didn’t act, he naturally became part of the film, always present, especially in moments of silence. " – Marco Ferreri on Marcello Mastroianni
Gian Luca Farinelli (Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2017) : " Break Up is an invisible film, a film that not many viewers got to see. Despite being the first encounter between Mastroianni and Ferreri and one of Mastroianni’s most extraordinary performances, it is one of the least known films of European post-war cinema. Up until this restoration and its presentation at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, where it won the Leone d’Oro for best restoration. "
" Work on Break Up ended in December 1963. In January 1964 the film was ready, and it received the censor’s certificate, but Carlo Ponti decided to stop its release and transformed it into a 25-minute short as an episode of the film Oggi, domani, dopodomani, which included two other episodes directed by Luciano Salce and Eduardo De Filippo. In 1967 Ponti and Ferreri met up again, and Ferreri shot a new episode in color. The film was ready, but after a short distribution period in France and the United States it vanished. In 1979 Ferreri donated a black and white 16 mm print to Lab80 in Bergamo for small independent distribution. "
" For such a little-seen movie, it certainly has many names: L’uomo dei palloncini, L’uomo dei cinque palloni (L’Homme aux cinq ballons) and finally Break Up, which was probably Ponti’s invention after the success of Blow-up. Ponti sold the film to MGM, and later the rights were passed on to Warner Bros., where the interpositive was found (the negative, instead, has been lost). "
" Seeing the film today is an incredible experience: it anticipates the party of Hollywood Party, Kim Basinger’s striptease in 9½ Weeks, with a singer who looks like Belushi before Belushi ever appeared; a film in which we can admire Morandi’s paintings and listen to one of the most popular singers of that time, Orietta Berti. We can already see in it the Ferreri of abstraction, a non-ideological filmmaker, who creates paradoxical stories and reveals the contradiction of a consumer society. Break Up’s screenplay was written by Rafael Azcona, the screenwriter of all of Ferreri’s best films (El pisito, La donna scimmia, La Grande Bouffe…). " – Gian Luca Farinelli (Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2017)
AA: Having seen Marco Ferreri's La donna scimmia (1964) for the first time three years ago made me desire to see other films by Ferreri from what I surmise was his greatest period, 1963–1969.
Break Up unfortunately proves disappointing, but that may be partly due to its erratic production and distribution history, as outlined by Gian Luca Farinelli above.
As opposed to the deeply felt La donna scimmia, Break Up feels shallow in the same way as Ferreri's later great commercial hit films such as La grande bouffe. It belongs to the category of art exploitation.
In La donna scimmia, Ferreri and Azcona let themselves be inspired by Fellini, and the result was original and personal.
In Break Up, the inspiration is Antonioni: Blow Up but somewhat also his trilogy of solitude. However, the result feels meaningless and trivial.
For a moment I was thinking about Jörn Donner who started with a cycle of films inspired by Antonioni's trilogy of solitude but then changed tack and made a series of spoof sex films. In them, Donner was not following the Antonioni inspiration. But Ferreri seems to have had as his model the sex orgy sequence of Blow Up.
The title Break Up refers to a central theme in Ferreri's art exploitation films. In this film, Marcello Mastroianni wants to find out how much air an air balloon can contain until it bursts. Finally, balloons break up in the orgy sequence. In La grande bouffe, four friends eat themselves to death. In the all-nude sex tragedy La dernière femme, Gérard Depardieu keeps cutting pieces from salami with an electric knife, until he has had enough of coitus...
Marcello Mastroianni commits an even more desperate act in the end of Break Up. Ferreri's film is both shallow and desperate, and not a little boring.
Catherine Spaak is very appealing in the female leading role, and she is spared from sexploitation for a change. But she is given little to do. Her character is frustrated with Mastroianni's aloofness, and we can sense that the actress is equally frustrated with this Ferreri-Azcona nonsense.
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