MONDO CANE
(“Dog World”)
Production: Italy, 1962
Director: Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi
Category: Mondo
The film that gave its name to a whole genre of cinema – the mondo movie. With Europa Di Notte in 1958, Italy’s cinema of the weird, exotic and shocking began to turn its attention away from distant cultures and closer to home to focus in on more sexual matters, and these two voyeuristic strands – definitively brought together in Mondo Cane – would form the fabric of the genre. In 1963 Jacopetti, Prosperi and Cavara followed up with the even more outrageous Mondo Cane 2, as well as La Donna Nel Mondo (mostly comprising out-takes from Mondo Cane), while Cavara went solo with Malamondo in 1964. By that time the “mondo” craze had well and truly exploded in Italy and beyond; Italian mondo films of this period include Mondo Infame (Roberto Bianchi Montero, 1963), I Tabù (Romolo Marcellini, 1963), Mondo Matto Al Neon (Carlo Veo, 1963), Nude Per Vivere (Elio Petri, Giuliano Montaldo, Giulio Questi, 1963), Questo Mondo Proibito (Frabizio Gabella, 1963), Le Città Proibite (Giuseppe Maria Scotese, 1963), Africa Sexy (Roberto Bianchi Montero, 1963), Ecco (Gianni Proia, 1963), Universo Proibito (Roberto Bianchi Montero, 1963), Mondo Nudo (Francesco De Feo, 1963), I Piaceri Del Mondo (Vinicio Marinucci, 1963), Sexy Magico (Mino Loy, Luigi Scattini, 1963), Tentazione Proibite (Osvaldo Civirani, 1963), Notti Nude (Ettore Fecchi, 1963), Le Schiave Esistono Ancora (Maleno Malenotti, Roberto Malenotti, Folco Quilici, 1964), Europa: Operazione Streep-Tease (Renzo Russo, 1964), Mondo Balordo (Roberto Bianchi Montero, 1964), Il Pelo Nel Mondo (Marco Vicario, Antonio Margheriti, 1964), Il Piacere E Il Mistero (Enzo Peri, 1964), Donne Calde Di Notte (Guy Perol, Sigmund Larsen, 1964), and Nudo Crudo E… (Francesco De Feo, Adriano Bolzoni, 1964). Luigi Scattini’s L’Amore Primitivo (“Primitive Love”, 1964) was one of the most unusual, featuring US actress Jayne Mansfield in a comic documentary on mating rituals around the world.
Posted by Cryptomaniac
