La grande bouffe

press release: France/Italy | 1973 | DCP | 130 min. | French with English subtitles 

Director: Marco Ferreri; Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi 

Four friends (played by a quartet of Euro-cinema heavyweights using their own names) repair to a bucolic country estate with a company of prostitutes and a singular mission: to indulge in a feast so lavish that it kills them. Stuffing themselves with haute cuisine to the point of bursting, the men’s orgiastic death spiral takes them to the far horizon of hedonism. A triumph of bad taste, this debauched, darkly comic satire by Ferreri (Dillinger is Dead) mocks bourgeois bloat in all its ribald, grotesque glory. “Hilarious, stomach-turning, morbid, breezy, funny, and sad” (Chicago Reader). “Absolute masterpiece” (Sean Baker). Preceded by Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes classic Chow Hound (1951, DCP, 7 min.)

All summer screenings take place at 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Avenue. Admission free for all screenings, seating limited. No admission 15 minutes after scheduled start times. Please visit our website for a complete listing of programs and descriptions.

One of the most handsome and coolest of 1960s/'70s European leading men, Alain Delon is the subject of a three-film summer series of thrillers in which he stars. First up is Jacques Deray’s erotic and suspenseful La piscine, which became a repertory theater hit sensation when it was re-released in the summer of 2021. A real discovery, Georges Lautner’s Les seins de glace features Delon in a character role, a secondary lead to the lovers played by Claude Brasseur and Mireille Darc. Rounding out the selections will be a rare 35mm screening of Jean-Pierre Melville’s ultra-stylish, ultra-cool hitman saga, Le samouraï.