Mondo Cane

Paolo Cavara / Gaultiero Jacopetti / Franco Prosperi
1962

This shock documentary is the most well known of the Mondo flicks and still makes for an enjoyable viewing today, thanks primarily to it's globe-trotting variety and beautiful technicolor production values. As the Italian opportunists put humanity's many oddities in front of the lens much of the film's pleasure comes from divining fact from cheeky fiction. Several segments are undeniably true based on the footage, as the unflinching eye locks mercilessly on something as basic as the sad parade of drunks in a German bar. Other segments are cultural practices that are more commonly known today, like the massaging and beer swilling of Kobe beef. The truth of other segments isn't so apparent, like a family happily polishing bones in an ossuary in return for the roof it provides. There's still some nice shock value in a moppet dusting off skull after skull, but there is an undeniably staged quality about the whole affair. Of course the PC set will be turned off by the perceived "cultural insensitivity" and exploitative nature of "Mondo Cane," but the service of beautifully photographing and bearing witness to all the strange peoples and events in the picture is of far too much interest and value to be ruined by the ironic or arrogant voice over.