Word: jacopetti
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Critic Goldberg may have a point. Africa Addio is a lengthy rape scene in which the predators are the continent's white and black citizens and the victim is Africa itself. Film Makers Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi (Mondo Cane) have assembled a grand guignol of atrocity scenes, strung together with a booming narration and a melodramatic score. Among them: the wanton slaughter of herds of hippopotamuses, zebras, elephants and other wildlife; the execution by a black and white firing squad of black Congolese rebels; mound of 54 amputated hands, the ghastly souvenir of Bahutu reprisals against their Watutsi...
Mondo Cane has one big flaw: the script, written by Jacopetti. The real impact of this film is visual; its point is adequately made by the sequences themselves and the way they are cut. Any narration beyond a minimal identification of what is on the screen is superfluous, and Jacopetti's is not only superfluous but also annoyingly stupid, full of bad puns, idiotic prejudices, clumsy writing, and leaden sarcasm...
Mondo Cane is probably one of the most fascinating films ever made. It is a collection of thirty-four separate color sequences, welded into a unified whole by the sense of irony and the pessimistic philosophy of its producer and creator, Gualtiero Jacopetti...
Given the quality of the documentary sequences, it would have been nearly impossible for Jacopetti not to have made an interesting movie out of them. Almost all of them are bizarre or shocking or pathetic in themselves. Those sections which fall within the normal range of experience are made to seem extraordinary by comparison. For example, shots of middle-aged women trying desperately to lose weight in a Vic Tanny gymnasium are preceded by films of a New Guinea tribe where the prettiest women are shut in cages and fattened to 270 pounds, after which they join the headman...
...Jacopetti has done a beautiful job of finding these films and arranging and editing them for the maximum ironic effect. His purpose is to show that human beings are cruel, stupid and pathetic; he succeeds, at least, in showing that they...