Alberto Cavallone

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.