"Abel Ferrara", Nicole Brenez

Abel Ferrara (1951) is an independent American filmmaker, known for his violent films with psychologically disturbed protagonists looking for redemption. With its claustrophobic urban environments,  hallucinatory sequences, schizoid characters and plastic excesses, his films have encountered difficulties in being accessed by more mainstream audiences, although they are very appreciated by European film critics. Like Martin Scorsese, Ferrara sets his films on the streets of New York, as a depiction of the capitalist suffocation and chaotic climate that lead his imperfect protagonists to go through a paranoid and self-destructive journey. But Ferrara never culminates his films with a Bressonian grace (as, for example, Paul Schrader, another director who approaches Ferrara in characterization), but with ambiguous and sacrificial endings. Revenge (Ms. 45, 1981), collective historical guilt (The Addiction, 1995), the Apocalypse (Body Snatchers, 1993; 4:44 Last Day on Earth, 2011), capitalism as a morally corruptible system (King of New York, 1990, Welcome to New York, 2014), the respect and love for the family among criminals (The Funeral, 1996; 'R Xmas, 2001) are all themes present in the Ferrarian oeuvre, that show the complexity of his work. His films, with fragmented narratives and dynamic and unpredictable acting (similiar to John Cassavetes's films), disturb the viewer and are far from the comfort that commercial American films nowadays require in order to succeed financially. Perhaps his most well-known film, Bad Lieutenant (1992), is the apotheosis of this conflict between Catholic iconography and modern chaotic mentality that keeps tormenting the filmmaker. 

Nicole Brenez (1961) is a French teacher and researcher. Author of several books, she looks for new forms of cinematographic expression in films that don't receive much worldwide attention. Her book Abel Ferrara (published in 2006, translated by Adrian Martin) is the most complex and detailed study of the director's work, showing his precision and artistic originality, oscillating between the avant-garde and the industry.

Excerpts:
"Abel Ferrara is to cinema what Joe Strummer is to music: a poet who justifies the existence of popular forms. Without them, the genre film or the pop song would be no more than objects of cultural consumption."

"Ferrara’s passionate films offer an inexhaustible repertory of torments (obsession, trauma, guilt, anguish, disgust, abandonment neuroses, and melancholy) that are depicted through states of trance, inebriation, and exaltation, whether cold (Frank in King of New York) or hot (Mickey in The Blackout). The event here is psychic (L. T.’s forgiveness in Bad Lieutenant, Kathy’s discovery of images in The Addiction), the drama consists of having ideas (“I have ideas!” cries Jean in The Funeral), and the characters are moved by intuitions, visions, and hallucinations."

Link to the complete book in PDF:

Abel Ferrara

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