"A signifier of cheapness and toxically poor taste"
July 22, 2016 10:00 AM Subscribe
Sex, death and cannibalism: why mondo movies still shock (SLGuardian) — Mondo Mondo, a wide-ranging repertory series of films running at New York’s Anthology Film Archives from 22-31 July, serves up a platter of grotesque, chewy and challenging work that one would be hard-pressed to label as “entertainment” in any conventional sense.
Is Mondo Cane worth seeing, considering I grew up with Rotten.com?
posted by griphus at 10:17 AM on July 22, 2016
posted by griphus at 10:17 AM on July 22, 2016
Random factoid: part of the music from Mondo Cane eventually became Bobby Darin's "More", which you may recognize from, as I recall, some American retailer's Christmas commercials.
posted by kimota at 10:53 AM on July 22, 2016
posted by kimota at 10:53 AM on July 22, 2016
(disclosure, I wrote about mondo films in grad school) Mondo Cane is worth seeing, so long as you can supply a healthy dose of historical perspective, including ample considerations of exploitation, imperialism, sexism, and racism. really, the more the better. please for pete's sake don't go into it expecting a globe-trotting laugher.
in their way, the films are remarkable, and despite how they were initially received, and despite the tenor of violence and exploitation rampant in the films inspired by mondo film and culture, I believe mondo films are an important aspect of film history and 20th century history. mainstream "ethics" about filming weren't moving at the same speed as the available technology (I recognize this is a loaded concept with lots of viewpoints). because of that, you get these awful, closer-proximity-than-you-ever-imagined-you'd-get scenes of stuff like genocide, cultural imperialism, helicopter poaching, sensationalism in general, that are very difficult to watch. a lot of the "history" contained in the voiceover (and editing structure by extension) is biased at best, and dangerously inaccurate at worst. but at the same time, the aesthetics of mondo films are very illuminating of a particular time, place, sensibility, and historical context.
posted by oog at 11:02 AM on July 22, 2016 [9 favorites]
in their way, the films are remarkable, and despite how they were initially received, and despite the tenor of violence and exploitation rampant in the films inspired by mondo film and culture, I believe mondo films are an important aspect of film history and 20th century history. mainstream "ethics" about filming weren't moving at the same speed as the available technology (I recognize this is a loaded concept with lots of viewpoints). because of that, you get these awful, closer-proximity-than-you-ever-imagined-you'd-get scenes of stuff like genocide, cultural imperialism, helicopter poaching, sensationalism in general, that are very difficult to watch. a lot of the "history" contained in the voiceover (and editing structure by extension) is biased at best, and dangerously inaccurate at worst. but at the same time, the aesthetics of mondo films are very illuminating of a particular time, place, sensibility, and historical context.
posted by oog at 11:02 AM on July 22, 2016 [9 favorites]
...including ample considerations of exploitation, imperialism, sexism, and racism.
I think I gave the same warning to someone planning to visit a Ripley's museum.
posted by griphus at 11:09 AM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think I gave the same warning to someone planning to visit a Ripley's museum.
posted by griphus at 11:09 AM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
Is Mondo Cane worth seeing, considering I grew up with Rotten.com?
I honestly thought Mondo Cane is probably one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.
Mondo Cane is worth seeing, so long as you can supply a healthy dose of historical perspective, including ample considerations of exploitation, imperialism, sexism, and racism. really, the more the better. please for pete's sake don't go into it expecting a globe-trotting laugher.
This is good advice for just about anything. Perhaps even moreso for non-mondo movies. The thing about Mondo Cane in particular, at least with the English language release generally available in the US, is that it's hard not to take it as a mockumentary, emphasis on mock. I found it to play like a very tongue in cheek joke.
I can't really extend this endorsement to most mondo movies, which I find range from mostly boring to eye-rollingly grotesque.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:24 PM on July 22, 2016
I honestly thought Mondo Cane is probably one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.
Mondo Cane is worth seeing, so long as you can supply a healthy dose of historical perspective, including ample considerations of exploitation, imperialism, sexism, and racism. really, the more the better. please for pete's sake don't go into it expecting a globe-trotting laugher.
This is good advice for just about anything. Perhaps even moreso for non-mondo movies. The thing about Mondo Cane in particular, at least with the English language release generally available in the US, is that it's hard not to take it as a mockumentary, emphasis on mock. I found it to play like a very tongue in cheek joke.
I can't really extend this endorsement to most mondo movies, which I find range from mostly boring to eye-rollingly grotesque.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:24 PM on July 22, 2016
Is Mondo Cane worth seeing,
Mondo Cane is worth seeing, so long as you can supply a healthy dose of historical perspective . . . don't go into it expecting a globe-trotting laugher.
Reefer Madness it ain't.
Also, the 'footage' of the self-immolation of Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức is clearly a re-enactment -- the only such that Jacopetti ever copped to.
posted by Herodios at 12:26 PM on July 22, 2016
Mondo Cane is worth seeing, so long as you can supply a healthy dose of historical perspective . . . don't go into it expecting a globe-trotting laugher.
Reefer Madness it ain't.
Also, the 'footage' of the self-immolation of Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức is clearly a re-enactment -- the only such that Jacopetti ever copped to.
posted by Herodios at 12:26 PM on July 22, 2016
My favorite mondo-type movie is This Is America, part 2, because of this scene of nuns fighting that I uploaded to YouTube years ago (there's also a "disturbing" segment on Jello Biafra running for SF mayor).
posted by teponaztli at 12:29 PM on July 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by teponaztli at 12:29 PM on July 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
Also, there's a naked skydiving wedding.
posted by teponaztli at 12:30 PM on July 22, 2016
posted by teponaztli at 12:30 PM on July 22, 2016
Is Mondo Cane worth seeing, considering I grew up with Rotten.com?
As entertainment, no. As documentary, no. As a historic document of the creation of Yves Klein's lovely "Suaire de Mondo Cane" -- sort of, excerpt that the filmmakers fucked with the actual event, filming what was a theatrical presentation of the representation of the nude female form into something leering and mean-spirited, replacing Klein's one-note orchestral score with the theme to Mondo Cane, and likely helped kill Klein, who was so humiliated by his representation on film that he suffered a series of heart attacks and died at the age of 34.
I used to watch a lot of mondo films, but stopped because too many featured the actual onscreen killing of animals, which I hate to watch. But the films of Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacopetti are even worse than that, because you see the ruining of humans. Africa Addio was seized for a scene depicting the execution of a Congolese Simba Rebel, which authorities believed the filmmakers had actually paid to have happen; they were acquitted for murder, but there is no doubt actual death took place. Addio Zio Tom, besides being grotesquely racist (despite the filmmaker's attempts to make an anti-racist films), actually put money in the pocket of dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, who oversaw the murder of 30,000 to 60,000 Haitians.
The genre has the power to shock because it was designed to shock, and some of that design came from a flagrant willingness to do terrible, terrible things for the sake of the film. It's a fascinating genre from a historical perspective, but not one I am especially fond of, especially seeing as the films were so colonial and carnivorous in presenting everything outside the mainstream as being grotesque and bizarre and carnivalistic. It's a racist, chauvinistic, misanthropic, deeply anti-human genre of film.
posted by maxsparber at 12:30 PM on July 22, 2016 [7 favorites]
As entertainment, no. As documentary, no. As a historic document of the creation of Yves Klein's lovely "Suaire de Mondo Cane" -- sort of, excerpt that the filmmakers fucked with the actual event, filming what was a theatrical presentation of the representation of the nude female form into something leering and mean-spirited, replacing Klein's one-note orchestral score with the theme to Mondo Cane, and likely helped kill Klein, who was so humiliated by his representation on film that he suffered a series of heart attacks and died at the age of 34.
I used to watch a lot of mondo films, but stopped because too many featured the actual onscreen killing of animals, which I hate to watch. But the films of Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacopetti are even worse than that, because you see the ruining of humans. Africa Addio was seized for a scene depicting the execution of a Congolese Simba Rebel, which authorities believed the filmmakers had actually paid to have happen; they were acquitted for murder, but there is no doubt actual death took place. Addio Zio Tom, besides being grotesquely racist (despite the filmmaker's attempts to make an anti-racist films), actually put money in the pocket of dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, who oversaw the murder of 30,000 to 60,000 Haitians.
The genre has the power to shock because it was designed to shock, and some of that design came from a flagrant willingness to do terrible, terrible things for the sake of the film. It's a fascinating genre from a historical perspective, but not one I am especially fond of, especially seeing as the films were so colonial and carnivorous in presenting everything outside the mainstream as being grotesque and bizarre and carnivalistic. It's a racist, chauvinistic, misanthropic, deeply anti-human genre of film.
posted by maxsparber at 12:30 PM on July 22, 2016 [7 favorites]
Mondo Trasho is a fun film.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:34 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:34 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
I used to watch a lot of mondo films, but stopped because too many featured the actual onscreen killing of animals
It's my understanding that in one of the fictional entries here, Cannibal Holocaust (noted for being among the first in the "found footage" genre), there was mass slaughter of actual giant turtles. I can't really get my brain around the mindset that this kind of killing in the service of nothing but goreing up a schlocky horror film is okay.
posted by praemunire at 1:23 PM on July 22, 2016
It's my understanding that in one of the fictional entries here, Cannibal Holocaust (noted for being among the first in the "found footage" genre), there was mass slaughter of actual giant turtles. I can't really get my brain around the mindset that this kind of killing in the service of nothing but goreing up a schlocky horror film is okay.
posted by praemunire at 1:23 PM on July 22, 2016
They kill a sea turtle and graphically cut it up (to eat it) and also kill some adorable little jungle critter, like a Amazon squirrel or something. I'd look it up but the image of them killing that little animal still upsets me.
posted by maxsparber at 1:38 PM on July 22, 2016
posted by maxsparber at 1:38 PM on July 22, 2016
I've said this before, but the first movie I ever saw was "Mondo Cane". i was 3 years old, it was a drive-in, my parents thought I would fall asleep. I didn't. I ought to watch it again.
posted by acrasis at 3:48 PM on July 22, 2016
posted by acrasis at 3:48 PM on July 22, 2016
Nicolas Winding Refn presented Farewell Uncle Tom at Fantastic Fest last year and it is astounding. It's a wonderfully made film with theoretically honorable, anti-slavery/racist aims and it plays around with the "documentary" format in some interesting ways. For instance, it opens with a helicopter shot of slaves working fields and overseers on horseback. The helicopter comes lower to the ground and it starts kicking up dust and throwing stuff around. The horses rear and people scramble to get away. It's a pretty audacious opening shot.
Unfortunately, the execution is very (if unconsciously) racist and exploitive, both in content and in the circumstances of its production. The best way I can describe the feeling you get from watching it is "the uncanny valley except applied to morality." It's one of the most fucked up movies I've ever seen.
The version we saw had an ending that was excised from the American release for being too incendiary. It consists of a modern day black man reading The Confessions of Nate Turner. He imagines the revolt, but it's crosscut with a modern version of it, with black people brutally slaughtering suburban white people, including kids. I have no idea how to interpret it but it's absolutely bonkers.)
posted by brundlefly at 4:28 PM on July 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Unfortunately, the execution is very (if unconsciously) racist and exploitive, both in content and in the circumstances of its production. The best way I can describe the feeling you get from watching it is "the uncanny valley except applied to morality." It's one of the most fucked up movies I've ever seen.
The version we saw had an ending that was excised from the American release for being too incendiary. It consists of a modern day black man reading The Confessions of Nate Turner. He imagines the revolt, but it's crosscut with a modern version of it, with black people brutally slaughtering suburban white people, including kids. I have no idea how to interpret it but it's absolutely bonkers.)
posted by brundlefly at 4:28 PM on July 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
...and also kill some adorable little jungle critter, like a Amazon squirrel or something.
I think it's a small monkey? It's been a while. I think Cannibal Holocaust is fascinating and kind of brilliant in its own way, but I can't get past the animal killing. I'm not sure why, given that I don't have problems with other film that basically do the same thing, like Apocalypse Now, Stagecoach, Oldboy, etc. Maybe it's the generally exploitive vibe?
posted by brundlefly at 4:32 PM on July 22, 2016
I think it's a small monkey? It's been a while. I think Cannibal Holocaust is fascinating and kind of brilliant in its own way, but I can't get past the animal killing. I'm not sure why, given that I don't have problems with other film that basically do the same thing, like Apocalypse Now, Stagecoach, Oldboy, etc. Maybe it's the generally exploitive vibe?
posted by brundlefly at 4:32 PM on July 22, 2016
I spent a fair portion of the hours between 2 and 3am avoiding this film while my friends watched it in the other room in high school. In a geodesic dome house, natch.
posted by vorpal bunny at 5:50 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by vorpal bunny at 5:50 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
Watched some of the Mondo back when we were beatniks, fascinating awful stuff. Liked the soundtracks by Riz Ortolani, who went on to score some Tarentino.
posted by ovvl at 6:57 PM on July 22, 2016
posted by ovvl at 6:57 PM on July 22, 2016
« Older Vintage aerial photos of rural America | " Slavery, to begin with, was an important part of... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Don't @ me
posted by pxe2000 at 10:11 AM on July 22, 2016