Il seme dell'uomo

Marco Ferreri's surreal film "Il seme dell'uomo" ("The Seed of Man" in English) looks more plausible today than it probably did when it first came out. The movie portrays a young man and woman who, after learning of a plague ravaging the populace, take refuge in a house on the coast and turn it into a miniature museum displaying cultural relics from the days before the plague. But that's not the end...

An interesting point is that the movie never identifies what the plague in question is specifically. It could be any scourge. Certainly plenty of bad things have afflicted the planet recently - the combination of global warming and the financial crisis constitutes a perfect storm - to the point that the events portrayed in this movie look as though they could come true. I bet that Marco Ferreri never realized what a prescient movie he was making!

So, I recommend this. Not just as a warning about what the world could turn into, but as a look at Italy's changing cinema in the late '60s (in which Ferreri played a major role). Definitely worth seeing.