Expanding the Horizons
of Cinematic Narrative:
A Textual Analysis of Nietzchean
Themes in Five Abel Ferrara Films
Film director Samuel Fuller once said, “The cinema is like a
battleground. Love . . . hate . . . action . . . violence . . . death. In a word:
emotion.” In the truest sense of the auteur theory of film, the primary, although
not exclusive, source of a film’s emotional and ideational development resonates
from the director’s perspective, feelings, and philosophy. The more one sees a
director’s body of work, the more one comes to realize that the director is not
telling separate and unrelated stories. Instead, it becomes apparent that similar
ideas are being expressed through the use of images and dialogue infused with
themes (Sherman and Rubin, 1969, pp. v-vii).
This auteur theory is particularly evident in the cinema of American
independent filmmaker Abel Ferrara, whose fourteen films since 1979 have
mapped out an influential and controversial cinematic terrain. Working within
commercial genres and with established actors, Ferrara still manages to produce
dark, intense, thematically complex, and unapologetically controversial works
that often push the envelope of taste and moral propriety (Filmmaker, 1996, p.
55). Of particular interest for this paper are five Ferrara films {Driller Killer, Ms.
45, King o f New York, Bad Lieutenant, and The Addiction) that employ ongoing
themes and ideas inspired by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900).
Because of Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” his insistence
that the meaning of life is to be found on purely human terms rather than within
the precepts and doctrines of Christianity, and his concept of the Superman and
the will to power, his uncompromisingly provocative works have influenced
such writers as George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Similarly, director Ferrara—dubbed by some critics as the “bad boy of
American cinema” because of his raw, nightmarish, violent, at times profane
filmmaking style—trains his camera on characters wandering through a
Nietzschean landscape.
Each of Ferrara’s films has called upon, to varying degrees, the
development of philosophical themes and ideas. His first feature, the cult classic
Driller Killer (1979)—an early exercise in Nietzschean imagery—was a brutal
tale of a struggling artist (played by Ferrara) who purchases a battery operated
drill and vents his frustrations on New York City’s homeless. This was followed
in the eighties by Ms. 45, Fear City, China Girl, and Cat Chaser—each film an
intense, gritty exploration of the human condition.