
Alberto Cavallone
Directing
Biography
Alberto Cavallone (28 August 1938 – 12 November 1997) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He was born in Milan, Italy. Cavallone's films are anti-conventional and often contain a mixture of graphic violence, surrealism and eroticism. When Cavallone was 17 years old, he traveled to Algeria, then in the throes of a war of independence, with a 16mm Paillard motion picture camera. The footage he gathered there formed the structure of his first film effort, La sporca guerra (The Bloody War), intended as a non-aligned political documentary. The film featured an early score by Pino Donaggio. The film, released in 1959, is now lost. His feature debut, Lontano dagli occhi (Out of Sight), the story of an Italian reporter's coverage of a trial in Frankfurt of former Nazi officers for crimes against humanity, was never completed and remains unseen. After a five-year period of apprenticeship, assisting direction on a score of Italian pictures, Cavallone returned to directing in 1969 with the feature Le salamandre, a story of an interracial ménage-à-trois between a Swedish-American fashion photographer, her lover, a black model, and a French psychologist. It was shot in Tunisia. The film was well-received and Cavallone's profile increased tremendously.
Known For

Torn by personal guilt, Italian General Umberto Nobile reminisces about his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the airship Italia.
The Red Tent

A tale that takes place at the dawn of history. The movie tells the story of a tribe that discovers how to fashion weapons out of iron and use them for their own survival. However, the creation of iron also causes the tribe to battle for possession of the new weapons.
Ironmaster

A small town in Italy is about to celebrate their patron saint. The city is full of people with different problems. A Communist in existentialist crisis that also must take care of his mentally ill wife. A woman who is tired of her husband's inability to show emotions and therefore more and more often slips into the world of dreams. A perverse butcher engaged in sex with the meat he sells when he's not peeping on young girls. A girl who became pregnant after having sex with her father. In this town a mysterious stranger show up and who turns on several of the inhabitants lives.
Man, Woman and Beast

A psychiatrist named Tony sees two identical twin sisters, Norma and Mary. Norma and Mary are apparently very different from each other, to the point of conflict.
The Erotic Twin

A child is kidnapped by a secret organization to force his father to be part of a drug-smuggling ring.
La lunga sfida

Two American soldiers fresh from the Vietnam War are haunted by the atrocities that they witnessed and committed while on a vacation in Copenhagen, Denmark.
From Our Copenhagen's Correspondent

There was once upon a time the Grand Duchy of Forilalì where Aladdin lived. After taking part in many robberies, he decided to turn honest for the love of the beautiful Princess Esmeralda. But his intention lasted only a few days. Afterward he found himself in jail with his old companions. They were freed by the magician Magrebì and in a night of lunar eclipse, Aladdin found a magic lamp. He succeeded in cleaning his sister Adalgisa's house with the help of the genie and then, with no help at all, to marry Esmeralda. But evil powers were in action.
Per amore... per magia...

Henry Davis and Zelda are a couple with peculiar sexual tastes. In order to have more freedom, they send their daughter Ingrid to study in a school away from home. They have a relationship with Ursula but, after some time, when they get tired of her, they involve Christian and his wife Clarissa in their erotic games. When Ingrid comes to spend some time home, her presence becomes the catalyst of profound transformations.
Zelda

Conqueror of the World, a thrilling and explosive story of violence...of human drama, of a rare man, strong and primitive. Set two hundred thousand years ago, when the human race had to adapt to their brutal, savage environment or disappear into oblivion.
Master of the World

A violent examination of male homosexuality in a time when it was considered taboo, where Ivano Staccioli and his lover engage in a self-destructive relationship against the background of Africa.
Afrika

A diamond heist with colorful characters and crisp cinematography, the humor is best described as unsophisticated Terence Hill and Bud Spencer larks complemented by crude animation, a bright and jazzy score by Cavallone regular composer Franco Potenza and a bevy of stunning women: Maria Pia Luzi, Beryl Cunningham, Magda Konopka and Claudie Lange.
Quickly, Shootings and Kisses for Breakfast

Originally shot in the summer of ’79 and released in May ’80 under the title of “La Strega nuda (The Naked Witch),” it tells of a young man (Danilo Micheli) who is tempted to a weird house by an ugly witch (Anna Massarelli) where he encounters a group of surreal characters in surreal circumstances. More a film of images and sensations than a cohesive storyline – including arresting shots such as the witch mutating from ugly to beautiful while circling Micheli, and the lead character foreseeing his own funeral escorted by bikers
Blow Job

Inspired by the writings of writer Fritz Fanon, who believed that a colonial population could only reach freedom by declaring violence towards their occupiers, Cavallone’s tale sees a white photographer who seduces a black model. A doctor then arrives on the scene, and Schurer falls for his charms.
Le salamandre
The inspiration, as the title tells, was Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror). Cavallone followed only loosely the poem, interpolating some of its most outrageous content within the story of a film director, Paolo (Gianni Garko) who’s undergoing a deep personal crisis. The first part (which producer Giuseppe Tortorella labelled "mythological porn") is set in Italy, as Marco is working on a film called Maldoror, and focuses on his tormented relationship with a married woman, Monica (Jane Avril). According to the script, it was filled with excessive and cruel images, extracts from the film-within-a-film which were liberally spliced within the plot, and in their uneasiness somehow predated Pasolini’s Salò.
Maldoror

A journalist travels to Germany during a trial against former Nazis.
N... come negrieri

Touching upon art, trauma, madness and sexual perversion Blue Movie centers around Silvia who has suffered an attempted rape. She escapes the attack and is rescued by Claudio, a photographer who takes her under his wing. Claudio is obsessed by war images that tell of death, devastation and pain. While working with a supermodel, Daniela, it appears that their relationship is bordering sado-masochistic. Things slowly build, with a fair dose of nudity and perversion. Observing all this as best she can Silvia begins to fall in love with Claudio, however she struggles to discern between reality and her traumatic past, especially while Daniela, who is locked in a room, regresses to an almost bestial dimension.
Blue Movie

A dwarf, a transsexual, and a stud lure young girls with acting ambitions to their villa, involve them in hardcore films, and then kill them. One, however, manages to escape and alert the police.
Pat, una Donna Particolare

Sabrina, a young and beautiful girl, is employed as a baby sitter by a couple. But the baby turns out to be a sex-crazed midget and the couple as his accomplices, who watch his sex torture via video camera.