Man, Woman and Beast (1977)

the audience applauded

Good concept, poorly executed.

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is a very well made movie, but definitely NOT for everyone (like observant Catholics, for instance). It's like Luis Bunuel film, but with even more extreme imagery--for instance, where Bunuel simulated cutting open a woman's eyeball, in this film a woman actually DOES insert a cow's eyeball into her vagina (whatever THAT is supposed to symbolize). This movie may at times approach the arty sleaziness of Pier Paolo Passolini's notorious film "Salo", but I haven't personally seen that. Of the movies, I HAVE seen it reminded me of "Viva la Muerte" with its use of often grotesque animal imagery, and "The Highest of Skies" with it's combination of religious iconography and extreme scenes of sexual/bodily degradation.The main character is one of those weird European Communist/modern artist types (Stalin, of course,being a great appreciator of modern art). He has a wife who is very much and very dangerously insane (she drinks out of the toilet and at one point tries to cut off the nipples of her nurse/maid), yet he leaves her untreated perhaps as part of some "art" project (there are shades here similar to Lars von Trier's more recent art-house outrage "Antichrist"). Meanwhile, there is some kind of religious festival taking place in the local town. The younger townspeople are using the occasion for a drunken, naked bacchanal the saints would probably not approve of. The virginal teenage boys are doing their damnedest to get in the panties of the virginal teenage girls. A lonely young butcher gets so turned on staring at the breasts and asses of the local girls that he has to go graphically hump a side of beef. A bunch of younger kids are wandering around engaging in street fights. A prepubescent boy meets a slightly older pubescent boy who has been injured in a street fight, and takes the injured youth to the villa of the artist and the insane woman. Eventually, we learn why it is NOT a good idea to perform analingus (look that up in a dictionary if you need to)on an insane woman while her weirdo artist husband watches (not that most people WOULD do that. . .) This movie does get pretty outrageous, but it is well made and definitely worth seeing if you're not too easily offended. I'm not exactly sure the point of all this religious imagery, animal imagery, and general human debauchery and degradation, but it's definitely all presented in an interesting manner. And it's definitely not boring.

Alberto Cavallone was a scatter-brained filmmaker, latterly of interest merely because of the shock effects he employed (which naive film buffs associate with the avant-garde). In his heyday his work was not innovative nor well-crafted to the level of interesting film festival programmers, nor was it stimulating enough to make hay on the porn circuit, where its content was headed.MAN, WOMAN AND BEAST is more professional a movie than his later work, especially the idiotic genre stuff he made in the '80s or his bottom-of-the barrel porn signed "Baron Corvo" such as PAT UNA DONNA PARTICOLARE. But it is still slapped together drivel, a melange of half-baked ideas.He covers the required basis of Italian cinema: the Church, politics and sex. His protagonist is a collage artist (appropriately) who's a communist, but other than showing the red flag, photos of Lenin and a brief comment or two the political content is virtually nil here. A young priest is another key character, involved in religious processions, but his role is merely functional. Sex ranges from incest and masturbation to an odd touch of heroine Clara placing a cow's eye in her vagina. It is studiously anti-erotic, apart from a softcore interlude involving French kissing.Cavallone's musical score is banal, ranging from a dull rock concert to repeated use of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and even "Inner Sanctum" style library music for suspense.What matters to Cavallone is tossing in as many elements as time will permit into the stew and then dumping it on the viewer, symbolized by the inevitable scatological scene involving defecation (it established an entire career for John Waters, so why not?). I found his positing the bizarre behavior of his characters against a realistic backdrop of small-scale village life boring rather than the intended "exposé" approach some fans seem to love. Recurring image is a tight closeup of a chicken's eye, signaling the usual animal abuse that marks a "no holds barred" director in some folk's eyes.When he was active there were many provocateurs on the scene, notably Thierry Zeno with WEDDING TROUGH and Jens Jorgen Thorsen with QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY. Today we have Gaspar Noe filling this niche. They are mere poseurs, whose films appeal to a generation that confuses the notion of being open-minded to that of being empty-headed, the latter a leftover from the "everything is everything" philosophy that reared its ugly head during the Flower Power period of the '60s. Yes, it is quite possible to go with the flow and fill one's mind with Cavallone's brutal images, in vague hopes of them coalescing into something meaningful. Like so many nihilistic artists, his rough-cut film artifacts play more like homework assignments than finished features.

I was lucky enough to stumble upon this masterful work of pure genius from director 'Alberto Cavallone' and I must say I was in for a visual pleasure ride, the likes of which I was pleasantly surprised. I must admit, the version i saw was the 'italian-uncut-print, and so was able to sit back, and be completely mesmerized by the amount of artistic blasphemy that was presented for my viewing pleasure.Words that come to mind are, twisted,irrelevant,surreal, yet.....normal..to be blunt!......i'm still stumble'in about...muttering to my self...more.....MORE....yes..M....O......R.......E!........JUST DO YOURSELF ONE FAVOR, SEE THIS MOVIE AT ALL COST'S.................and...........heh,heh...exactly! P.s.-IVE ALSO SEEN ANOTHER OF his movies, 'BLUE MOVIE',another one to see..if...you...can.......find it!

Wow! What a movie! It's about... about... who knows? It follows a group of Italians: a school child, a murderous nymphomaniac, an artist who makes collages of beautiful women and medical textbooks, a drunken communist wife-beater, a beautiful young man christ-stud, a butcher who... er... LOVES his meat, and much more. The plot in incoherent. The visuals stunning. The acting... acting?I've never seen anything like this. But I want to see more. This director is an Italian softcore porn Ed Wood. Amazing.--KR