#franco prosperi

[strathshepard]

Goodbye Uncle Tom (Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi, 1971)

[weirdlookindog]

Mondo cane n. 2 (1963)

[kino-zoo]

Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia (1974)

[swampflix]

Wild Beasts (1984)

I have a bad habit of ordering Blu-rays every single time I see an advertisement for a boutique label sale.  It used to just be an occasional dip into the Criterion Collection during that prestige label’s regular Black Friday and Barnes & Nobles sales, but it has since escalated to include loving restorations of vintage genre trash from labels like Severin, Vinegar Syndrome, and Mélusine.  I’ve…

[alightinthelantern]

film reviews:  Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia

Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia is a 1974 Italian-Soviet comedy film directed by Eldar Ryazanov and Franco Prosperi.

Synopsis: Two ambulance drivers race through the streets of Rome, sirens blaring, so that one of them can drop his kids off at school. The two drivers, who are brothers-in-law, then drive to a nursing home to pick up an old Russian woman who is dying. They bring her to an overflowing hospital and squeeze her onto a bed where a man with a broken leg is recuperating. The Russian woman’s granddaughter arrives to hear her last words, and the grandmother tells her that in Russia before the Revolution she was incredibly rich, and she buried a treasure worth nine billion underneath a lion in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). The ambulance drivers, the doctor, the man with the broken leg, and a mafioso whose wife is giving birth all overhear this confession, but not what the woman subsequently whispers in her granddaughter’s ear. Everyone in the group decide separately to travel to Russia to search for the treasure, and all run into each other on the same flight. The men try to convince the granddaughter to team up with them unsuccessfully, while the mafioso decides to eliminate his competition one by one. However, everyone’s plans continually get derailed by each other, with hilarious results.

Review: This movie was hilarious, and I was shrieking with laughter throughout. I can’t recommend the film highly enough. It’s on YouTube and you can watch it here.

[anhed-nia]

So Paolo Cavara made the notorious MONDO CANE (1961) and WOMEN OF THE WORLD (1963) with Franco Prosperi and the especially-notorious Gaultiero Jacopetti, but when the latter two made the even more notorious AFRICA ADDIO (1966), Cavara wasn't involved for whatever reason. He then accused them of staging the latter movie's execution footage, helping touch off a whole avalanche of problems for them.

But backing up a minute, between MONDO CANE and WOMEN OF THE WORLD, Jacopetti dated this English actress Belinda Lee. She died in a car accident that Jacopetti and Cavara were in (as well as a third person), though I didn't find anything about who was driving, only that they were going 100 miles an hour when a tire exploded. WOMEN OF THE WORLD is dedicated to her.

So when I heard that Paolo Cavara made a movie about a Mondo-type director who is a manipulative sadist, I thought ok that tracks. But I didn't know all this stuff about Belinda Lee before, and THE WILD EYE (1967) is pretty bizarre. The main character is clearly supposed to be like Jacopetti, but he's called "Paolo", and he seduces "Barbara Bates", this British girl who you understood is automatically doomed because she won't leave this obvious creep alone. It's not great, in part because the relationship is so kind of shameful, but it's very interesting; there's something almost Ballardian about this guy bouncing from one exotic catastrophe to another and trying to make art out of it. But it's also impossible not to think that Cavara was in love with Belinda Lee or something, and does he see himself as sharing various forms of guilt with Gaultiero, maybe for more than the car crash? I mean what fucking gives? Crazy that this movie exists.

[dykepuffs]

Mateo JWHJ0715 knew what he was doing - It's a dark subversion of the beloved Russian comedy "The Unbelievable Adventures Of Italians In Russia" by Eldar Ryazanov and Franco Prosperi which was released to huge acclaim in 1974. In that, the granddaughter of an elderly Russian émigreé to Italy hunts for the treasure "Underneath a lion" in Leningrad, in a race against time as five Italians (Inevitably including a mafioso!) who overheard the story are hunting for it as well. Olga (the granddaughter) is helped by Andrei, an undercover police officer (...Which has obvious parallels with Goncharov's Andrei!) And it generally results in chaos and fun as the newly-arrived Italians stumble around Leningrad. Ryazanov writes and directs incredible comedies-of-manners, really deeply awkward studies of the petty foibles of normal people (His best works centre on a new year's eve, and on allocation of parking spots in a garage), and Mateo's Goncharov takes the same attention to detail, but shows it as tragedy rather than farce.

How much American fans of Goncharov, both at the time and now that it's been getting some critical reappraisal, really understand that the source material is built on Russian ideas of Italian culture, Italian ideas of Russian culture, and dialogue between the two (as well as being an explicit response to Ryazanov and Prosperi's comedy!) Is probably something worthy of its own essay.

Goncharov is SO obviously made by Americans I can't enjoy it though the concept is funny

You know Russian and Italian are entirely different cultures right lol

[mondocanebooks]

SOBRE MONDO CANE BOOKS En 1962, los cineastas italianos Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti y Franco Prosperi expusieron al público una película casi documental que consistía en una serie de viñetas de diversos lugares del mundo donde se mostraban detalles de las prácticas culturales que allí ocurrían, con la única intención de impactar o sorprender al público occidental. Estas escenas donde el folklore y las tradiciones se mezclaban con la excentricidad, lo grotesco y el salvajismo, expuestos con toda crudeza y autenticidad, se presentaban con poca continuidad, ya que pretendían ser una exhibición caleidoscópica de contenido impactante en lugar de presentar una estructura argumental clásica. Este inusual trabajo, que dio a luz a todo un género, se tituló Mondo Cane. Inspirados por esa intención visceral e imbuidos del mismo propósito fundamental, Mondo Cane Books pretende que cada publicación suponga un puñetazo en la boca del estómago del lector, al mismo tiempo que ofrece una visión particular de una realidad cultural de la forma más veraz posible. Así que advertido quedas. Puede que nuestros libros no sean para ti. De hecho, no son para ti. ¡No nos sigas! ─ Ilustración: Perros Atados Vol. 1 de IRRA.

[berezina]

Mondo Cane [trailer] (1962) (Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, & Franco E. Prosperi) [buy]

[librairiemelodieensoussol]

Nouveauté bientôt en ligne : Adios Africa Adieu Afrique (Africa addio) est un documentaire mondo italien réalisé par Gualtiero Jacopetti et Franco Prosperi, sorti en 1966. Le film porte sur la fin de l'ère coloniale en Afrique. #oiseaumortvintage #melodieensoussol #butindechine #retourdechine #vhs #cassettevideo #africaaddio #mondo #mondomovies #shockumentary #jacopetti #prosperi https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl-v9kVMiKq/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[strathshepard]

Mondo Cane movie poster by Wojciech Zamecznik via Posteritati

[gatutor]

Barbara Bouchet "The conjugal debt" (Il debito coniugale) 1970, de Franco Prosperi.

[take-it-sloooooow]

"La donna nel mondo" Movie, 1963 Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi et Paolo Cavara https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Femme_%C3%A0_travers_le_monde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_of_the_World

[howlingmadmoonwolf]

The Wild Beasts (1984)

“There's No Escape!”

[alightinthelantern]

Movies on Youtube:

Brief Encounter (1945, David Lean)

Opening Night (1977, John Cassavetes)

Close Up (1990, Abbas Kiarostami)

Taste of Cherry (1997, Abbas Kiarostami)

The Song of Sparrows (2008,  Majid Majidi)

Russian Ark (2002, Alexander Sokurov)

Dreams (1990, Akira Kurosawa)

Dersu Uzala (1975, Akira Kurosawa)

The Idiot (1951, Akira Kurosawa)

Drunken Angel (1948, Akira Kurosawa)

Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujirō Ozu)

Early Summer (1951, Yasujirō Ozu)

Late Spring (1949, Yasujirō Ozu)

The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952, Yasujirō Ozu)

Good Morning (1959, Yasujirō Ozu)

An Autumn Afternoon (1962, Yasujirō Ozu)

Sword for Hire (1952, Inagaki Hiroshi)

Rebecca (1940, Alfred Hitchcock)

Thunderbolt (1929, Josef von Sternberg)

Larceny (1948, George Sherman)

Among the Living (1941, Stuart Heisler)

Andrei Rublev (1966, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Solaris (1972, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Ivan’s Childhood (1962, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)

Fitzcarraldo (1982, Werner Herzog)

Medea (1969, Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Medea (filmed stageplay)

Is It Easy To Be Young? (1986, Juris Podnieks)

We'll Live Till Monday (1968, Stanislav Rostotsky)

Ordinary Fascism (aka Triumph Over Violence) (1965, Mikhail Romm)

Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein)

The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)

Johnny Come Lately (1943, William K. Howard)

Mister 880 (1950, Edmund Goulding)

Beethoven’s Eroica (2003, Simon Cellan Jones)

Katyn (2007, Andrzej Wajda)

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004, Brad Silberling)

Mean Girls (2004, Mark Waters)

The Neverending Story (1984, Wolfgang Petersen)

The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990, George T. Miller)

The Thief and the Cobbler (Richard Williams)

Osmosis Jones (2001, myriad directors)

Megamind (2010, Tom McGrath)

Ghost in the Shell (1995, Mamoru Oshii)

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004, Mamoru Oshii)

Steamboy (2004, Katsuhiro Otomo)

Badlands (1973), Terrence Malick

Wargames (1983, John Badham)

By the White Sea (2022, Aleksandr Zachinyayev)

White Moss (2014, Vladimir Tumayev)

The Theme (1979, Gleb Panfilov)

The Duchess (2008, Saul Dibb)

Bed and Sofa (1927, Abram Room)

Fate of a Man (1959, Sergei Bondarchuk)

Ballad of a Soldier (1959, Grigory Chukhray)

Uncle Vanya (1970, Andrey Konchalovskiy)

An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano (1977, Nikita Mikhalkov)

Family Relations (1981, Nikita Mikhalkov)

The Seagull (1970, Yuli Karasik)

My Tender and Affectionate Beast (1978, Emil Loteanu)

Dreams (1993, Karen Shakhnazarov & Alexander Borodyansky)

The Vanished Empire (2008, Karen Shakhnazarov)

Winter Evening in Gagra (1985, Karen Shakhnazarov)

Day of the Full Moon (1998, Karen Shakhnazarov)

Zero Town (1989, Karen Shakhnazarov)

The Girls (1961, Boris Bednyj)

The Diamond Arm (1969, Leonid Gaidai)

Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (1965, Leonid Gaidai)

Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession (1973, Leonid Gaidai)

Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia (1974, Eldar Ryazanov & Franco Prosperi)

Office Romance (1977, Eldar Ryazanov)

Carnival Night (1956, Eldar Ryazanov)

Hussar Ballad (1962, Eldar Ryazanov)

Kin-dza-dza! (1986, Georgiy Daneliya)

The Most Charming and Attractive (1985, Gerald Bezhanov)

Autumn (1974, Andrei Smirnov)

War and Peace: Part 1 (1966, Sergei Bondarchuk)

War and Peace: Part 2 (1966, Sergei Bondarchuk)

War and Peace: Part 3 (1967, Sergei Bondarchuk)

War and Peace: Part 4 (1967, Sergei Bondarchuk)

The Red Tent (first half) (1969, Mikhail Kalatozov)

The Red Tent (second half) (1969, Mikhail Kalatozov)

Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939, Sidney Lanfield)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939, Alfred L. Werker)

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942, John Rawlins)

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes: The Spider Woman (1944, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes: The Scarlet Claw (1944, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes: The Pearl of Death (1944, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes: The House of Fear (1945, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes: The Woman in Green (1945, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes: Pursuit to Algiers (1945, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes: Terror by Night (1946, Roy William Neill)

Sherlock Holmes: Dressed to Kill (1946, Roy William Neill)

If any of the links don’t work, try looking up the film in this playlist: link

[suspiria76]

THE WILD BEASTS

Italy

1983

Directed by Franco Prosperi