Make Mine Mondo

I was thinking I should do a good old-fashioned movie post every month or so. Mostly just to spread word of movies, usually obscure or anything I have a few words I like to share. I try to keep it casual, though, so as not to taint my writing with too many expectations, as I usually do.

This weekend I saw some special films courtesy of the National Film Archive. The most precious of these was a very rare film never before seen on Finnish cinemas, and probably only screened in Italy before this. The films were of the notorious "mondo" genre, an Italian offshoot of documentaries which feature sensationalist subjects and usually short vignettes. Many scenes have been staged and the truth value of these mondos is notoriously low.

Dove non é peccato ("The land without sin", 1969)
Director: Antonio Colantuoni

These were the reasons why it's been such an incredible thing to actually find a mondo film depicting Finland from 50 years ago. Us Finns are superbly curious on what anyone else thinks of us, and since Sweden got its own propaganda piece (about more of which later) it's been popular among Finnish movie fans to think about what this sort of thing could actually be like.

As it turns out, as a mondo it's not particularly nasty, sensational or moralizing. Plenty of what is depicted has since become obsolete so it's a lot like watching historical documents home. The exception, of course is the Italian voiceover, in both male and female voices which tells us what to think about stuff we are seeing. It also has a patronizing, even racist outlook on Finnish people and cultures. For example, when talking about the Winter War with Russia, the camera lingers on a coat of arms depicting a caveman with a mallet. The narrator suspects Finns can't handle weather changes in one place, and in one depicts -25 degrees celsius to be an abnormally warm spring weather. And when some customs seeming strange to Italians are pondered on the voiceover to "perhaps be the legacy of habits from the far eastern plains of Mongolia". In other parts Finnish customs are mocked for having such a short history (probably compared to Italy, which has better historical records).

The film is particularly interested in Finnish drinking customs, having a long scene of students celebrating May Day with a strong punch, and women's place in the society. One expects plenty of nudity in these sensation movies, and thus it's a bit of a surprise that this part is quite minimized to a single (obvious) group sauna scene. The most ridiculous scene is four young women chasing a man through the countryside with the attempt of gang-raping him, before he dives into a lake to get away. This seems like a carbon-copy of the depiction of Polynesians and their mating habits in Mondo Cane, which probably is as staged and far from truth in there as well.

Since all the interviews are dubbed, one must assume that the words being put in the Finns' mouths are totally invented as well. For film fans, it is fun to see the film expert Peter von Bagh as a young man doing work in his Civil Service. Animal cruelty depicted is reserved to some seals getting shot, and some reindeer getting castrated.

★★ 1/2

Mondo Cane (1961)
Directors: Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi

The film that started the entire genre is the documentary by the trio of notorious filmmakers, that would wreack cinematic havock through much of the 1960's. For mondos were very sensationalistic, and contained a lot of racist and misogynistic messages right from the start. On the other hand, they belonged to the time when the world was still a large and wonderful place where everyone didn't have any idea on how people actually lived and what customs they had around the world. It has a sort of humanistic curiosity towards these, though it comes from a place of ignorance and projected superiority.

The film's central thesis is related to dogs. Much like the poor pupper in the opening scene, we are being dragged around by Jacopetti & co. and thrown to the mercy of a lot of threatening situations. The filmmakers say that the habits toward dogs are a good window whith which to see the differences in our cultures. In America, rich fools pay good money to bury their pets to their own cemetary. Meanwhile, in China, dog meat is a delicacy entire restaurants revolve around.

The messages, such as there are, are heavy-handed and play the viewer's emotions like a cheap fiddle. To document what nuclear waste has done to the ecosystems in Bikini Atoll, the film shows a lengthy scene of sea turtles losing their sense of direction and heading toward dy land after laying eggs, instead of the ocean. It's difficult to watch the dying struggles, but it drives the message across, whether its actually true or not. Plenty of filmmakers such as Werner Herzog and David Attenborough have since then resorted to this kind of "nature's alarm call" footage.

In the name of antropology, the filmmakers also go around the world showing plenty of tits & ass. I mentioned before on how the Polynesians are depicted. Likewise, the camera lingers on female bodies in places such as Papua, Reeperbahn and gives silly sound effects to the bouncing flesh of larger-sized women in American weight loss institute's various machines. The Chinese are depicted particularly viciously racist, and the most tasteless scene is probably smuggling a camera to a house in Singapore where the terminally ill and elderly are prepared to die.

Even though its hard not to find the film in generally poor taste and borderline pornographic in its racist hunt for ethnographic violence, it is not without its cinematic merits. The editing, cinematography and musical score (by the great Riz Ortolani) in collaboration frequently also give out scenes of eerie beauty and serenity. It does create a picture of a large, wonderful world, even though the means of which it does so were highly controversial even in its own heyday.

★★★

Mondo Cane 2 (1963)
Dir. Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi

As the mondo format went on, it gave out the way to ever more staged scenes. The more "fake" these documentaries are, the less a modern viewer has to take account on how vicious the racist motifs behind the camera might be. Thus, I prefer the second Mondo Cane, which is also a sort of answer to the controversial parts of the first one.

It even begins with a similar dog pound, only this time the dogs have been silenced (Jacopetti & co. seem to be very much like the modern populists that resort to shouting they are being silenced whenever they are being criticised). For animal lovers, they give out a disgusting scene of a vetinary operation with all the gore and guts audiences hungered to see.

The sequel is more interested in the festivities and other performances of togetherness around the world. Not all of them are very probable or truely depicted, with the Italian Festival of Hard Heads is particularly bizarre. It does touch upon some truly shocking areas such as African slave trade, which was the subject Jacopetti & Prosperi later took and made some of their most notorious films about.

As said, I enjoy the inventiveness of the obviously staged scenes a lot more. The final scene of the movie features a concert which is done by slapping men of various heights to the face. The dramatic milking of the close-ups whenever the hand hits faces marks another one of case in point that these movies were not done by clueless filmmakers, but highly skilled professionals. With a quite sick sense of humour to boot.

★★★ 1/2

Women of the World (Donna del mundo, 1963)

Dir. Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi

On the same year as the Mondo Cane sequel, the directors also had another film come out that focused on the women of the world. The reason why they were able to go around the world so quickly was that they also reused some footage shot for television stations. This film was supposed to have been made in collaboration with a journalistic series by Oriana Fallaci, but they couldn't come into terms with the filmmakers. It shows how it could have benefited the film a lot to have a female point of view instead of a bunch of peeping toms from a macho culture.

The film takes all it can out of the "madonna and whore" -themed bipolarity, and exoticizes anything non-white. Though it has a theme of breaking traditional gender roles, it tries to give out proof that this dichtonomy is still valid. Thus, female israeli soldiers are shown to be camera-hungry and vain, and a female priest from Sweden to be the only one of her kind.

The most disgusting parts include secretly shooting footage from prostitutes or a mother freed from her child's murder charges going about her day. The most exciting parts come near the end with a lady collecting shells in a war-torn shooting range. One would not go as far as to think these are in any way truthful, but in certain parts, they are somewhat interesting peeoping holes into how at the start of the sexual revolution, certain things seemed.

★★

Sweden: Heaven and Hell (Svezia, inferno e paradiso, 1969)
Dir. Luigi Scattini

Lastly, we'll get to the sensational mondo our western neighbour Sweden got, and we can once again be jealous. Not that the film gives out a vibe that Sweden is better, but since director Scattini's style of string moralizing and borderline mad misanthropia is so hilarious when applied to as harmless a country as Sweden. It's a totally hilarious movie, if one can find the funny side of it.

In the swinging sixties', Sweden was world-renowned for its liberal attitudes toward sexual liberation. The aim of this film is to show how all this progress is bad and good-hearted catholics can shun it all together. Of course, the moral heart isn't so pure as to avoid ogling young women's bodies in a sauna scene, for instance. The film tries hard to find stuff worth moralizing, but basically people just go about their day like usual, and the narrator has got to spit out the venom. A lot of footage and explanation thereof is bizarrely out of sync, and for someone from the Northern Europe who can easily see how much the film is putting you on.

Viewing today, the contempt shot at relatively innocents things such as a night club with women dancing with each other or sex education for children is so dated it seems like a wonder this used to be a problem for people at all. The film works as a viewpoint on how far the general attitudes have gotten in 50 years. Even the worst Conservatives nowadays don't seem to be as crazy as Scattini. In wagging its finger at footage of consuming pornography, the film is at its most hypocritical double standards, since itself is a piece of softcore for raincoatted men in the first place.

The film is also famous of its soundtrack. Piero Umiliani's song "Mah Nà Mah Nà" became a children's show favorite after it was used in a classic skit in The Muppet Show. The music has a sort of playful side which is more or less the exact opposite on what the actual movies is trying to say. It's been a long time that European countries could be exoticized by other European countries. It seems preposterous that even back in the day, people could be fooled by such obviously staged scenes such as blind orphans diving for stolen property in the bay.

★ or ★★★★★

The Road Movie (Doroga, 2016)
Director (editor): Dmitrii Kalashnikov

Are there any modern mondos? One could say that viral video footage from certain parts of the world can create a similar exoticized view. Case in point is Russia. Some of the footage shot through the cameras attached to the windshield of every car in the country are so wild, they were put together for a documentary film.

The film doesn't give context, or moralize. It has a lot of real traffic accidents, sometimes with such destruction it looks like it's from a video game. One can't know if someone actually got hurt. Likewise, it shows Russian prostitution, criminal gangs and mentally issued citizens in less than flattering light. If you think about the morality of all this, it soon becomes clear that this is not really any better than the mondo movies.

But what it is is constantly surprising, weird and funny as all hell. I don't know if it deepens prejudices toward Russia, or gives them a little more understanding. It is a huge country with endless roads, some horrible weather conditions and a certain mindet attached to these. That's why it gives out footage like this. And some truly terrible, terrible drivers.

★★★★