The Ape Woman

In a convent in Naples, entrepreneur Antonio Focaccia discovers Maria, who is completely covered with hair. He opens a business where he presents her as "the ape woman" whom he allegedly found in Africa. When he tries to sell her virginity to a professor, Maria resists and returns to the convent. To have her back, Antonio is forced to marry Maria at the convent's insistence. After a successful audition in front of impresario Majeroni, the two are celebrated in night clubs in Paris, where Maria performs semi-nude. When Maria turns out to be pregnant, the examining doctor suggests an abortion as the baby might turn out a "monster". Maria rejects the possibility of an abortion and returns to Naples with Antonio to have her child. Both she and the child die shortly after the delivery, and their bodies are embalmed and presented at the museum of natural history. Antonio buys the bodies back from the museum and exhibits them in his own show. ==Cast==

• Ugo Tognazzi as Antonio Focaccia • Annie Girardot as Maria • Achille Majeroni as Majeroni (credited as Achille Maieroni) • Filippo Pompa Marcelli as Bruno • as Sister Furgonicino (credited as Linda De Felice) • Elvira Paolini as chambermaid • Ugo Rossi as retiree • Antonio Altoviti as professor ==Release==

The Ape Woman was first screened in Bologna, Italy, on 29 January 1964 released in French cinemas on 24 June 1964. the film was released on Blu-ray and digital platforms on 11 October 2021. ==Alternate endings==

The Ape Woman exists in three different versions. In the version intended by Ferreri, Maria dies during childbirth, Diverging statements also exist whether it was Italian producer Carlo Ponti who demanded an upbeat ending for the French release, or (as recalled by Annie Girardot) French co-producer Les Films Marceau Cocinor. ==Reception==

In their 1964 articles for ''L'Espresso and Paese Sera'', Alberto Moravia and Aldo Scagnetti criticised the decision to end the film with Maria's and her child's deaths and omit the presentation of their bodies for the Italian theatrical release. Jean de Baroncelli of Le Monde, reporting from the Cannes Film Festival, found the film "difficult to bear", lacking "prodigious comic force, an exceptional sense of the grotesque" and "extreme sensitivity" which the "unsavory subject" would have required. Reviewing the film for The Guardian upon its 2021 re-release, critic Peter Bradshaw saw a "broadly heartwarming, if strange cautionary tale of hubris, redemption and love", which gained "a new tenderness and complexity" by watching both Ferreri's and the French version side by side, comparing it, among others, with Freaks and La Strada. ==Awards==

• 1965 Nastro d'Argento for best original subject ==See also==