Expanding the Horizons of Cinematic Narrative
19
we desire the immediate attainment of existence without end,
just as the medieval millenarians wanted paradise in real
time—God’s Kingdom on earth (1994, pp. 89-90).
Ultimately, the film stands as a stinging critique of established Christian tenets
and Christian notions of good and evil. Ferrara pushes the envelope of cinematic
narrative by infusing the treatise with Nietzschean themes and imagery.
Conclusion
Since the late seventies, Abel Ferrara has transformed the slasher,
revenge, vampire, and crime film genres into philosophical explorations into the
nature of evil, the moral concerns of guilt, and the search for redemption. These
philosophical excursions have been framed by Nietzsche’s ideas of decadence,
the “self-deceptive fraudulence” of Christianity, Christian pity as anti-natural,
and Christian concepts of good and evil being fraudulent and meaningless. This
Nietzschean framework is most compellingly utilized by Ferrara in his films
Driller Killer, Ms. 45, King o f New York, Bad Lieutenant, and The Addiction. By
melding the dark, intense, uncompromising vision of Ferrara with the concepts
of such a controversial and intellectually challenging philosopher as Nietzsche,
the horizons of cinematic narrative have been dramatically expanded.
Although his films are highly violent in content, Ferrara’s application
of Nietzschean themes, imagery, and metaphors removes them from the
exploitation category and places them within the ranks of the poetic, disturbing,
experimental works of Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Roman
Polanski. Stylistically, Ferrara is most influenced by Polanski; still, he is linked
to all three through his risk-taking, at times brave approach to narrative
experimentation. As evidenced by the five films examined in this paper,
Ferrara’s results prove to be intellectually invigorating, emotionally jarring,
visually haunting, and spiritually unsettling. Accordingly, Ferrara’s works are
ripe for scholarly film analysis and popular culture interpretation.
Arizona State University
Dennis Russell
Works Cited
Addiction, The. (1995, October Films). HV: Poly Gram.
Antonioni, Michelangelo. (1971). Blow Up. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Bad Lieutenant. (1992, LT Productions). HV: Live.
Baudrillard, Jean. (1994). The Illusion o f the End. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press.
Bouzereau, Laurent. (1996). Ultraviolent Movies: From Sam Peckinpah to Quentin
Tarantino. Secausus, N.J.: Citadel Press.
Driller Killer. (1979, Rochelle Films). HV: Magnum.
Ferrara, Nancy. (1996, August). “Abel Ferrara: Independent Filmmaker by Choice.”
Curio, 1 (2), 12-17.
Gallagher, John Andrew. (1989). Film Directors on Directing. Westport, Connecticut:
Praeger.