Mondo Cane (literally "Doggish World" or "Dog's World", a mild Italian profanity) is a 1962 Italian mondo documentary film and directed by the trio of Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, and Franco E. Prosperi, with narration by Stefano Sibaldi. The film consists of a series of travelogue scenes that provide glimpses into cultural practices around the world with the intention to shock or surprise Western film audiences. These scenes are presented with little continuity, as they are intended as a kaleidoscopic display of shocking content rather than presenting a structured argument. Despite its claims of genuine documentation, certain scenes are either staged or creatively manipulated to enhance this effect.
The film was an international box-office success and inspired an entire genre of mondo films in the form of exploitation documentaries, many of which also include the word mondo (meaning "world") in their title. The musical score by Riz Ortolani and Nino Oliviero gained considerable popularity outside of the film itself. Its main theme, "More", won a Grammy Award and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, and was covered by such artists as Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, and Roy Orbison.
Vignettes
A statue by Luigi Gheno is dedicated to Rudolph Valentino in his hometown of Castellaneta, Italy. At the event the narrator points out similarities in some local men's faces to Valentino's.
In the United States, Rossano Brazzi has his shirt torn off by a crowd of adoring female fans hunting for his autograph.
At the beach in polyandrous Kiriwina, one of the Trobriand Islands in New Guinea, a large crowd of topless native women run after a handful of men, trying to capture them "not only for autographs".
On the French Riviera, a small group of blonde bikini-clad young women on a boat drive by a ship with U.S. sailors, "wooing" them teasingly from the distance by sending them kisses, showing their tongues and flaunting their breasts.
In a New Guinean Chimbu community, a woman whose child was killed breastfeeds a piglet whose mother died. Also in New Guinea, at a celebration that recurs every five years, in a matter of hours, dozens of pigs are slaughtered by beating on their heads with wooden poles, and eaten, after which the partly cannibalistic community returns to its perpetual state of hunger. Dogs, however, are fed some of the pork and treated with affection and respect.
At the Pet Haven Cemetery in Pasadena, California, dog owners mourn their departed pets.
In Rome, hundreds of chicks are tinged in many colors and then dried at 50 degrees Celsius to be included in Easter eggs; according to the narrator, of each 100 that undergo it, approximately 70 do not survive the procedure.
For foie gras, geese in Strasbourg are force-fed using funnels.
In a farm 200 miles from Tokyo, Wagyu cattle are treated with care by being massaged and fed beer, so that their meat can eventually be served at luxury restaurants in Tokyo and New York.
On New Guinean Tabar, the most beautiful women are locked up in small wooden cages and fed tapioca until they reach 120 kilos to be offered as wives to the village dictator.
In a Vic Tanny health club in Los Angeles, overweight women work on losing weight to recover from a previous marriage.
At a Hong Kong market, exotic animals are sold for food.
At the New York restaurant The Colony, canned exotic animals are served for rich Americans.
At a Singapore snake store, a snake is chosen and butchered for consumption.
In the Italian village of Cocullo, on Saint Dominic's day, the statue and its followers in the procession carry live snakes.
In Nocera Terinese, on Good Friday, each “vattienti" beats their legs with glass shards and spill their blood on the streets where the procession will take place.
A parade of the "Life Savers Girls Association", all from 16 to 20 years old, march toward Sydney's Manly Beach beach, where they put on a surf carnival, including CPR on young men.
Due to the nuclear contamination on Bikini Atoll, swarms of dead butterflies drift at sea, birds hide in holes in the ground, a species of periophthalmus fish migrated to the trees, sea gulls brood over sterile eggs, and disoriented turtles move inland and die on the atoll's dry sand dunes. Birds nest in turtles' skeletons, which move in the wind as if they were still alive.