''Dionysos'' is a 1984 French comedy film directed by

Jean Rouch Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist. He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized b ...

, starring Jean Monod and Hélène Puiseux. It tells the story of an American drama teacher who after writing a thesis on

Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Romans ...

tries to combine Dionysian rites with the work at a car factory, in an attempt to create the world's first car built in joyous frenzy. The film competed at the

41st Venice International Film Festival The 41st annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 1 to 11 September 1984 under the direction of Gian Luigi Rondi. No Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was assigned. The main event of this edition was, out of competition, the pre ...

. It was released in France on 3 December 1986.

Cast

* Jean Monod as Hugh Gray * Hélène Puiseux as Ariane * Cookie Chiapalone as one of three

maenad In Greek mythology, maenads (; grc, μαινάδες ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Maenads were known as Bassarids, ...

s * Fifi Niane Raliatou as one of three maenads * Kagumi Onodera as one of three maenads *

Germaine Dieterlen Germaine Dieterlen (15 May 1903 in Paris – 13 November 1999 in Paris) was a French anthropologist. She was a student of Marcel Mauss, worked with noted French anthropologists Marcel Griaule (1898-1956) and Jean Rouch ...

as member of the teachers' choir * Roger Foucher as member of the teachers' choir * Enrico Fulchignoni as member of the teachers' choir

Reception

Harlan Kennedy of ''American Cinema Papers'' described the film as "entirely lunatic" in his report from Venice, and wrote: "It's like a 60s

hippy A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

charging round the icon-scape of 80s Capitalism with a

Super-8 Super 8 mm film is a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format. The film is nominally 8 mm wide, the same as older formatted 8& ...

camera and hoping meaning will accrue from the whir of disconnected imagery."

References

External links

*
Catalogue entry
at the production company's website 1984 comedy films 1984 films Cult of Dionysus Films about automobiles Films directed by Jean Rouch French comedy films 1980s French-language films Films about neopaganism Greek and Roman deities in fiction 1980s English-language films 1984 multilingual films French multilingual films 1980s French films {{1980s-France-film-stub