Cheap Mondo Cane (Video) (Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi) Price

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Customer Reviews of Mondo Cane

Unique
I don't quite get reviewers who critique the film along the lines of "maybe it was shocking in 1962, but by TODAY'S standards it's tame". This brilliant, beautiful pastiche of stories is as captivating today as it was then (I suppose---I was two at the time). Reviewers seem overly concerned about whether the film is dated, whether "modern sensibilities" will find it "tame"---do we worry about that with Casablanca, or Beethoven's 5th Symphony, or Hamlet? The film is the film, and as such it is startling different from practically anything I can name. The cinematography is astonishing, and the score combined with the narration achieves a brilliant ironic tone that is remarkably consistent throughout the film. Mondo Cane is an absolute essential in any serious film student's repetoire, and unlike some other essential films (heck, most of them---from Birth of a Nation to Citizen Kane to Dogstar Man, a lot of them are honestly a bore to sit through), this one is captivating. See it for it's own sake, it's great.

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LITTLE SHOCK...MUCH SCHLOCK...
I remember when this film first came out in the very early nineteen sixties. The advertisements were lurid, and the film was described as "shocking". Of course, as a girl on the cusp of becoming a teenager, my curiosity was piqued, but, alas, still being under parental supervision, I was forbidden to go and see what all the fuss was about. Well, over forty years after its release, I finally got to see what all that fuss was about. I am sorry to report that the answer simply is: not much. <
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>This Italian made documentary (or "shockumentary", as the critics of the time liked to call it) is little more than a newsreel of some of the more bizarre or seemingly strange practices prevalent in other parts of the world at the time that this documentary was made. Some of it even focuses on the decadence of some "civilized" nations. The film definitely has an anachronistic feel to it, almost amateurish. Some of the voice over dialogue is even patronizing or tongue in cheek, at times. The most shocking thing about the film is how tame most of it seems, although some aspects of it, those having to do with animals, might still be viewed by some as being a little controversial. <
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>Quite frankly, one scene where the well-heeled sit down in a pricey New York restaurant to lunch on a then extravagantly priced meal of fried insects, while repulsive and even decadent, considering other scenes in the film where third world people have undergone hunger, is pretty mild given what they eat nowadays on shows such as "Fear Factor" and "Survivor". Some of the religious self-mortification practiced at the time in remote villages in Italy is a little more shocking, as is the scene involving the "suckling" pig. The restaurant in Asia where one selects the dog one wishes to eat may be culturally abhorrent to us, but by now I think most people are sophisticated enough to realize that in this global village in which we all live, tastes will vary and some tastes will repulse us. <
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>Moreover, having naked, bare-breasted, native women running across the big screen may have been considered controversial and designed to appeal to the viewer's prurient interest at the time that this film was released. When viewed in today's climate and in the context of the current social mores, however, given the fact that today's actors and actresses run across the big screen naked at the drop of a hat, it seems pretty ho-hum. This is definitely not a film that will have wide appeal to today's generation of moviegoers. I suspect that its target audience is those, such as myself, who were around when this film was first released and remember the firestorm of controversy that surrounded it but who, for one reason or another, did not have the opportunity to see it then. <
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>I did not realize, however, until I viewed the film, that the song "More", which had received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song in 1963, originated with this film. As it is a song that I have always enjoyed hearing, the fact that such a terrific song was originally associated with such a mediocre film was probably the most shocking thing about this otherwise schlock film. This Academy Award nominated song is probably the real legacy of this film. If one is interested in seeing this film, which is a curiosity at best, one should rent, rather than buy, it. <
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A Must-See film
simply because it's the best and first of its kind. VERY well done. Yes, it's a bit gruesome, but nowhere near what some reviewers would lead you to believe. Unless you already have an incredibly weak constitution, nothing here is stomach-churning. Yes, people eat dogs in it, and snakes... but this goes on in the world. It's not like they pick up a live puppy and take a bite. I thought the NYC folks chowing down on ants and other oddities at premium prices ($20 for lunch in 1963!) was far more pathetic, since they were eating them not because they particularly liked them or were too poor to afford anything else, but because it was oh-so avant garde. I also had to laugh at one reviewer who was disturbed by the scene of a beheaded cow (actually a bull) "crumpling to the ground" And what else would you expect a beheaded cow to do? Stand there? But some made it sound as if those beheadings were done for fun. Not true. It's a centuries-old Gurkah ritual, and afterward, the cows are eaten. It's not like they suffered; it was over before they knew it. <
>What's truly revealing is that so many folks commented on the animal suffering in the film (the most visible is a residual result of nuclear tests) but not the human suffering, which is probably the most upsetting portion. Go figure.