L’occhio selvaggio

Paolo Cavara is a somewhat forgotten maverick of Italian cinema, a minor master whose original influences include Jacopetti & Prosperi, who revolutionized cinema with Mondo Cane (1962). Mind you, not all revolutions make the world a better place – the Mondo movies certainly didn’t. Here, life is a freak show, a locus of senseless suffering. It’s probably fair to see the Mondo movies as Dark Surrealism… The Wild Eye was Cavara’s first fiction essay, after debuting in 1964 with Malamondo, a work less Mondo than the title promises. The film also has a sensationalist angle: Cavara tells the story of a Mondo auteur in search of the ultimate shock image – only to find himself arranging ever crueler ‘situations’. Contemporary audiences understood the film as a comment on Jacopetti & Prosperi’s infamous magnum opus Africa addio (1965).

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