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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, October 31, 2003

'Mondo Cane Collection' is eight discs of weirdness

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

In the early 1960s, an Italian documentary called "Mondo Cane (A Dog's World)" and its sequel, "Mondo Cane 2," became the second-most successful documentaries ever released theatrically, after Disney's nature films. The problem was, they weren't exactly documentaries.

Gualtiero Jacopetti, co-founder of the Italian magazine L'Espresso, and Franco Prosperi, an anthropologist who specialized in tribal customs and taboos, teamed with news cameraman Antonio Climati to make a film that would expose some of the odder rites and rituals of cultures primitive and allegedly civilized.

Going "where no camera had ever gone before," they filmed dog-eating Asians, bug-eating Americans and, to the delight of teenage boys everywhere, women who walked around in broad daylight with no clothes on.

All of it was presented in a breathless, disbelieving and almost always condescending tone that led to the films being labeled "shockumentaries."

As many reviewers of the time pointed out, some of the more bizarre footage was obviously staged — although Jacopetti, apparently glimpsing a future that included reality TV, preferred to call it re-creation.

The sociological artifacts of Jacopetti and Prosperi are now collected for the curious and nostalgic in a limited edition, eight-disc set titled "The Mondo Cane Collection" (Blue Underground). The set contains restored versions struck from vault negatives of the two "Mondo" movies, the openly voyeuristic "Women of the World" from 1963, and two versions each of 1966's "Africa Addio," which purported to show the often tragic consequences of decolonization in Africa, and "Addio Zio Tom," aka "Goodbye Uncle Tom," which used re-creations to present the shocking history of slavery in the United States.

"Africa Addio" mixes ugly truths, including genocide in Zanzibar and Mau Mau massacres, with blatant fabrications and exaggerations that led to the filmmakers being charged with racism and even murder.

1971's "Addio Zio Tom," also presented in the original and English language versions, was praised by the defunct Detroit Chronicle as a "graphic, moving, nerve-paralyzing film," while esteemed critic Pauline Kael called it a "rabid incitement of the race war," and labeled Jacopetti and Prosperi as "perhaps the most devious and irresponsible filmmakers who ever lived."

More 'Sopranos'

Someday, "The Sopranos" will be analyzed as a social phenomenon; for the time being, it must content itself with being the best show on television, a point made obvious yet again with the release of the four-disc "The Complete 4th Season" (HBO).

It includes all 13 episodes of the 2002 series. Audio commentaries by creator David Chase and writers of various episodes address the criticisms, but defend the season as being transitional, for both the series, which is drawing to a close, and the characters.

Two crime series that failed to get the respect proffered "The Sopranos" in their lifetimes are boxed for posterity in "Homicide: Life on the Street — Season 3" (A&E) and "Brooklyn South — The Complete Series" (A&E). The latter is complete because creators Steven Bochco and David Milch's attempt to do for street cops what "NYPD Blue" still does for plainclothes barely survived one season (1997-98), despite being exceptionally well-cast and written. The 1994-95 season of "Homicide," meanwhile, was the first to have a full run of 20 episodes, and the last to feature the entire original cast save Jon Polito, whose absence was finally explained in the fourth episode.

What's new this week

The audience-pleasing fable "The Whale Rider" (Columbia TriStar), about a Maori girl who challenges her grandfather to become the first female leader of their tribe; "The Work of Director Spike Jonze" (Palm), a beautifully packaged collection of the "Being John Malkovich" director's short films, documentaries and rock and hip-hop videos; "The Hired Hand" (Sundance), a classic Western starring Peter Fonda and Warren Oates woefully overlooked on its original 1971 release, beautifully restored and available in an extras-packed two-disc set or a film-and-Fonda-commentary-only version; and summer disappointment "The Hulk" (Universal Studios).