By DANNY STEWART (BearManor Media; 2023/25)
A new edition of a 2023 book by Danny Stewart, who writes passionate screeds about films, like SOLDIER, THE BLOOD OF HEROES and SILENT TRIGGER, which tend to be shunned by the mainstream. With Abel Ferrara’s 1996 gangster drama THE FUNERAL Stewart didn’t have to mount a defense, as its qualities really aren’t up for debate, with the major drawback being (as the title makes clear) that shockingly few people have seen it.
THE FUNERAL (1996) Trailer
THE FUNERAL is a low budget (“two cents” being the budgetary estimate put forth by producer Mary Kane) period piece that shunned the excesses of better-known Ferrara works like MS. 45 (1981) and KING OF NEW YORK (1990) in favor of an artful depiction of familial loyalty and underworld economics. It had one of the most auspicious casts of any Ferrara film—Christopher Walken, Isabella Rosselini, Vincent Gallo, Anabelle Sciorra, Benicio del Toro and, in his finest-ever role, the late Chris Penn—and an exquisite script by Ferrara’s longtime writing partner Nicholas St. John, in what was to be their final collaboration (as Ferrara writes of St. John in his memoir, “I never saw him again” after the completion of this film).
In this book Danny Stewart offers up a fully rounded analysis of “a film that deserves to be seen and appreciated by a wider audience, not only for its contributions to the gangster genre but also for its profound exploration of the human condition in all its complexity and ambiguity.” Featured are exporations of the outsized (by traditional gangster movie standards) role of women in THE FUNERAL, its visual aesthetics and its overall place in the American gangster movie hierarchy, which is chronicled from the silent era to the present day.
Also included is a heartfelt essay about THE FUNERAL’s cinematographer Ken Kelsch (who died in December 2023) by his son Chris, and interviews with the elder Kelsch, Ferrara, Rossellini, producer Mary Kane, production designer Charlie Lagola and costume designer Mindy Eshelman (I’d have liked to have heard from Mr. St. John, but he, sadly, goes MIA). An afterword by film critic Brad Stevens serves to flesh out a mighty bold claim: that Abel Ferrara is “perhaps the greatest artist currently active in cinema.” Of the book under discussion, Stevens makes another bold assertion: “Those wishing to comprehend THE FUNERAL are unlikely to come across a better guide than this vital contribution to Ferrara studies.” I fully agree.