Tales of Ordinary Madness

Starring:Ben Gazzara, Ornella Muti, Susan Tyrrell, Tanya Lopert, Roy Brocksmith, Katya Berger, Hope Cameron, Judith Drake, Patrick Hughes, Wendy Welles, Stratton Leopold, Anthony Pitillo, Jay Julien, Peter Jarvis, Lewis E. Ciannelli, Michel Piccoli, Ugo Tognazzi, Ted Rusoff
Director: Marco Ferreri
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
"Style is the answer to everything," intones skid row poet Charles Serking, played by the suitably grizzled and worn Ben Gazarra, to his somnambulistic audience. Serking is, of course, a not-at-all veiled stand-in for beat legend Charles Bukowksi, whose autobiographical short stories were the basis for this film. But Serking, in many ways, comes off more like a gin-soaked fantasy of a skid row Hemingway whose sports of choice are alcohol, women, and sex. Behind the salt-and-pepper beard and rummy eyes lies an actor too poised to allow himself to fully sink into the alcoholic sloppiness that Mickey Rourke so easily brought to the screen in the less pretentious and more concise Barfly, which Bukowski himself scripted. But if Italian-born director Marco Ferreri stumbles over the self-conscious dialogue, he's right at home capturing the seedy atmosphere of dim, run-down apartments and underlit bars in the real Hollywood Serking calls home. When Serking's fling with the stunning, self-mutilating Italian hooker Cass (Ornella Muti, who puts her oversized safety pin to some rather startling uses) becomes too emotional, he takes the anonymous safety of the streets--crashing in a flophouse, passing around a bottle with a listless knot of derelicts. Serking melds right in with the littered streets and lost souls, a real man of the people. Suddenly you see it: he's got style. --Sean Axmaker
Description
Charles Serking, loosely based on the infamous poet Charles Bukowski, rejects a conventional lifestyle to journey through the underbelly of Los Angeles in "Tales of Ordinary Madness." He indulges an insatiable appetite for sex and booze in what the Hollywood Reporter calls "a cinematic walk on the wild side." Directed by Marco Ferreri, this 1981 film won four Italian Academy Awards and the San Sebastian Film Festival Grand Prize. Compelling, sometimes shocking, and explicit.

Tales of Ordinary Madness [Import]
Average customer rating:
Tales of Ordinary Madness [Import]
Director: Marco Ferreri
Manufacturer: Versatil
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000IL3D5A

Product Description

Charles Serking, loosely based on the infamous poet Charles Bukowski, rejects a conventional lifestyle to journey through the underbelly of Los Angeles in "Tales of Ordinary Madness." He indulges an insatiable appetite for sex and booze in what the Hollywood Reporter calls "a cinematic walk on the wild side." Directed by Marco Ferreri, this 1981 film won four Italian Academy Awards and the San Sebastian Film Festival Grand Prize. Compelling, sometimes shocking, and explicit.

Average customer rating:

Tales of Ordinary Madness
Starring: Ben Gazzara , Ornella Muti , Susan Tyrrell , Tanya Lopert , and Roy Brocksmith
Director: Marco Ferreri
Manufacturer: Manga Films
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Product Description

Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages: o Spanish (subtitles) o English (Dolby Digital 2.0) o Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0) Synopsis: The stories of Charles Bukowski, the drunken poet of the LA fringe, are the basis for this film, directed by Marco Ferreri. Ben Gazzara stars as Charles Serking, an aging beat poet, a role that is merely a stand-in for Bukowski. Serking travels the seamy side of life, seeking out a collection of bizarre women. As he continues onward in a series of drunken debauches, he engages in various forms of sexual excess with the compliant low-life women. Special Features: o Biographies o Filmographies o Interactive Menu o Scene Access

Average customer rating:

Must we - dear friends - die in our sleep ?
Tales Of Ordinary Madness
SAD, FASCINATING,POETIC,SPELLBINDING
strange, disturbed, frightening and facinating
Better than "Barfly"

Tales of Ordinary Madness
Starring: Ben Gazzara , Ornella Muti , Susan Tyrrell , Tanya Lopert , and Roy Brocksmith
Director: Marco Ferreri
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Horror | Genres | DVD | Video

( T ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

The Charles Bukowski Tapes
Crazy Love
Charles Bukowski - Bukowski at Bellevue
Barfly
Factotum

ASIN: 6305269122
Release Date: 1999-02-23

Amazon.com

"Style is the answer to everything," intones skid row poet Charles Serking, played by the suitably grizzled and worn Ben Gazarra, to his somnambulistic audience. Serking is, of course, a not-at-all veiled stand-in for beat legend Charles Bukowksi, whose autobiographical short stories were the basis for this film. But Serking, in many ways, comes off more like a gin-soaked fantasy of a skid row Hemingway whose sports of choice are alcohol, women, and sex. Behind the salt-and-pepper beard and rummy eyes lies an actor too poised to allow himself to fully sink into the alcoholic sloppiness that Mickey Rourke so easily brought to the screen in the less pretentious and more concise Barfly, which Bukowski himself scripted. But if Italian-born director Marco Ferreri stumbles over the self-conscious dialogue, he's right at home capturing the seedy atmosphere of dim, run-down apartments and underlit bars in the real Hollywood Serking calls home. When Serking's fling with the stunning, self-mutilating Italian hooker Cass (Ornella Muti, who puts her oversized safety pin to some rather startling uses) becomes too emotional, he takes the anonymous safety of the streets--crashing in a flophouse, passing around a bottle with a listless knot of derelicts. Serking melds right in with the littered streets and lost souls, a real man of the people. Suddenly you see it: he's got style. --Sean Axmaker

Description

Customer Reviews:

Must we - dear friends - die in our sleep ?.......2006-12-26

Marco Ferreri made a devastatingly lyrical, sinister and cruel portrait about the existence of Charles Bukowski, the poet of hopeless, the excesses, the alcohol; the legitimate sex' sybarite into a crude environment of loneliness and disillusion. Ben Gazzara is fabulous in this role as well the divine: Ornella Muti as Cass.

The final sequence in the beach embracing an unknown young girl in a visible childish attitude, dedicating her a free poetry is still haunting even the years, becoming a classic.

The poetry is a God that it doesn't go in the body; and that's why it scatter outside from it, and assumes multiple aspects.

Tales Of Ordinary Madness.......2005-03-21

`Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live'-Charles Bukowski

To understand Bukowski, one cannot separate his life from his writings, you must understand that they both depended on each other and created an insane, incestuous bond that drove his writings to such an incredible level of contained madness. Ferreri understands that, a poet of the excesses of human nature, just as Bukowski was the poet of his own excesses, he is the gutter anarchistic artist, the People's symbolist, whose films are ventures into the darkest parts of man's existence (and eventual self-destruction). His films all have a single theme: man's inability to make the world in harmony with his desires. Bukowski's eternal theme was to live with art, and he argued that banality was the most depressing thing that could happen to someone. In `Tales Of Ordinary Madness' Ferreri does not make a film in the conventional sense but a drunken poem in the form of a film, a venture into complete insanity. Something happens in a Ferreri film, something a little uncertain and inexplicable but ultimately moving, just as something happens in Bukowski's writings, which carry the whole universe with them in unpretentious attempts to describe futile things, the words break through the page, and suddenly art is there, an insane god-like feeling of immortality is present and nothing else matters, it is with the power of a genius that Bukowski can contain nirvana with such simplicity, such straight-forwardness. Just as Ferreri can make important philosophical statements in such un-stylized context. `Tales Of Ordinary Madness' is a masterpiece and the greatest film about the actual process of art ever made because it does not separate the art from the reality, in fact, it unites them, and argues that one depends on the other. Bukowski could not have written what he has written if he had not lived what he had lived, Ferreri understands that true art is born out of despair, demystified and separated of all its futile banalities. When the character inspired by Bukowski, in one of the film's most moving passages, is recruited by an organization to write for them and more or less sentenced to bourgeois acceptance if he settles into the conformity that they offer him, he declines, gets drunk and throws beer bottles at them, forever the anarchist, that scene alone is perhaps the greatest comment anyone has ever made on Bukowski. The film ends, tragically and hauntingly, in an act of utter desperation and eventual rebirth and Ferreri once again uses the sea as a metaphor for man's ultimate destiny, ending so quietly on that deserted beach, dirtied by the universe and carried away to die, forever alone but not dead, not yet, and not forgotten.

SAD, FASCINATING,POETIC,SPELLBINDING.......2003-04-15

I just first saw 'Tales Of Ordinary Madness' yesterday. I like this film. At times living through the eyes of Charlie seems gluemy and useless, but I'm constantly fascinated and wondering the outcome. I only brought this film because I'm a hugh fan and LOVE Ornella Muti, but I'm glad I've had the chance to see this film. I recommend this film. And not just because Ornella is in it.Although it does't hurt because Ornella is really good in this film. Ornella is just beautiful as always but her acting always leaves me wanting/craving for more. If your a Ornella Muti fan this should definitely be in your collection. But other than that this film is fascinating but if you havn't seen this film don't expect a uplifting, happy film. This film may not be for every one.
By Justine Ryan

strange, disturbed, frightening and facinating.......2001-12-15

This movie works only if you let your imagination sulk to the very Id of one's being. This is not commonplace material and is only for a limited audience. One needs to understand that madness is more norm than exception, and the beautiful almost lost art of self destruction is just below the surface of many of us.

Better than "Barfly".......2001-03-03

"Tales..." actually makes Bukowski sympathetic as he tries to find love and sex in the L.A. underground. His harrowing adventures are interesting because he brings them all on himself. Some of the scenes get too dark and go too long, but Gazzara is great. "Barfly" was tedious and dull, this is much better.

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