Italian filmmakers manage to produce an archetypal example of the male gaze.
This super poster was made to promote the Italian film La donna nel mondo, known in English as Women of the World, made by schlockmeisters Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti, and Franco Prosperi with leftover footage from their 1962 gross-out documentary Mondo Cane. This effort discusses women—full stop. It looks at different types of women all around the world, from Israeli soldiers to New Guinean tribeswomen to Cannes Film Festival movie star wannabes to Japanese amas, with occasional digressions into whether they’re hot and/or bedworthy.
It’s narrated by Peter Ustinov, who in his urbane and continental accent drops nuggets like this: “What are the deep rooted emotions that remove [these lesbians] from the company of men, yet at the same time cause them to emulate the masculine appearance with such pathetic results? Even though these emotions are covered up by a blasé attitude, one is still aware of their underlying sadness.” Ouch.
If we were to speculate, we’d say it’s possible that living in a repressed early-1960s society that treats you as persona non grata could cause some sadness, but in the here-and-now our lesbian friends don’t seem to have an underlying sadness about anything except not having enough time to do all the cool shit they dream up. There’s still plenty of second class treatment, but being able to exist above ground really makes a difference in one’s life. Ustinov’s narration is snobbish through most of the film, so it’s less purely anti-lgbt than anti-everything that isn’t middle ground and whitebread. You have to expect it for the period.
The movie goes on to feature drag performers, everyday cross-dressers, manages to work in insults toward trans star Coccinelle, and even briefly squeezes in a cameo from actress Belinda Lee. The title is “women of the world” and indeed, the filmmakers leave few corners of the globe unexplored. We suppose on some level that really does make it educational, if voyeuristic, so in the end we have to pronounce it worth a glance. At the very least you’ll get a primer on square-peg mid-century social attitudes. La donna nel mondo premiered in Italy in January 1963, and in Japan today the same year.
Jacopetti and Prosperi go on an African exploitation safari.
This colorful poster is innocuous, but the movie it promotes sure isn’t. Africa Addio is known in english as Africa: Blood and Guts, which speaks volumes to the content of the film. Shockumentary filmmakers Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi capture everything from executions to animal cruelty in an in-your-face attack on an entire continent that paints it as a bloodthirsty free-for-all. Is their point that colonialism was good and Africa retreated into savagery without a steadying white hand? Lucky no cameras were around to film Europeans murdering millions in order to steal Africa’s human, natural, and mineral wealth. That would have made a hell of a shockumentary. If one were familiar with the evils and terrors of colonialism, that person might see this film as an indictment of the same, but for any who don’t know that history, Africa Addio fills a knowledge vacuum with raw content that isn’t helpful. Jacopetti and Prosperi were probably opportunists, not ideologues, but in either case Africa Addio is rough stuff. It premiered today in 1966.
Addio Zio Tom takes on difficult subject matter but doesn't flinch.
Have you ever seen anything quite like this? The temptation to watermark this piece of art was unbelievably strong, but we couldn’t splash lettering across something so unique. You’re probably thinking to yourself that this poster, which as you can see is for a movie entitled Good Bye Uncle Tom, is some obscure episode of 1970s blaxploitation, and you’d be right—in a sense. The movie was originally an Italian production made by directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, and was released in Italy as Addio Zio Tom. Here’s the premise: two contemporary documentary filmmakers go back in time to film the American slave trade in person. Here’s the result: one of the most important motion pictures ever made about that period of history.
We live in strange times. Today, there are influential slavery apologists, and many people are perfectly content to believe them. Addio Zio Tom represents an inconvenient truth, because slave-era documents were culled for the first person writings of various prominent slavers. What the filmmakers end up with is essentially a step-by-step manual on the practice of slavery. And in an audacious screenwriting maneuver, snippets of those historical documents are converted directly into dialogue, so what you hear the slave owning characters say in Addio Zio Tom is exactly what real life slavers, pro-slavery politicians, slave owning Southerners, and slavery apologists actually thought.
In Addio Zio Tom we are shown how men and women were chained in the hulls of ships, where they lay in their own vomit and diarrhea for the weeks or months of the middle passage across the Atlantic. We are shown slaves literally tossed down chutes from the ship decks into holding pens once they arrived in America. We see depictions of the mass rape that slaves experienced. In one scene, white men too poor to own slaves of their own raid a slave plantation for the specific purpose of rape. We see torture, castrations, murders, and fugitives hunted down in the woods by vicious dogs. It’s an interminable and mindbending tableau of horrors, shot unflinchingly, indeed voyeuristically. Some say what Jacopetti and Prosperi depict is false. Those people don’t generally have any intelligent reason other than their personal conviction that slavery can’t have been that bad, or their “free”-market dogma that slaves were treated well because they were valuable cargo.
Actual history tells us different. Slaves were insured, as long as their deaths took place at sea, but that practice had little mitigating effect. The most commonly cited mortality figure for the middle passage is 2.5 to 4 million deaths. For a sense of the range of debate, though, consider that there are estimates as low as one million (still horrific), but conversely, as high as ten million if you include those who died during forced marches to African slave ports. But even without exhaustive research, it isn’tdifficult to understand that Addio Zio Tom’s depictions are broadly accurate. Consider rape. Today, in maximum-security prisons, between ten and twenty percent of men report being raped. The actual number is far, far higher. In the armed forces about 20% of women report being sexually assaulted. The point is, more than four hundred years after the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade this is how men in positions of partial or total authority treat those within their power. How did they behave centuries ago, when their victims were literally their property?
Addio Zio Tom will make you think about things like that, but only if you’re willing. Of course, being a thought-provoking or important movie (which is the phrase we used at top), is very different from being a good movie. And here we get to the crux of it. We wouldn’t describe Addio Zio Tom as good. Audacious, yes. Technically impressive, certainly. A bold satire, perhaps. And beyond a doubt it’s complex—we can’t even get into the film’s contemporary framing device without writing three more paragraphs, so we won’t bother. But good? Hard to say. It’s a very difficult film to judge on its merits because of the subject matter. It was disastrously reviewed—that much is indisputable. Roger Ebert called it a contemptuous insult to decency.
In many of those reviews, Jacopetti’s and Prosperi’s motives came into question. It’s easy to understand why. For example, can you guess how the movie was even logistically possible? Because Jacopetti and Prosperi filmed in Haiti, where the genocidal dictator François Duvalier rounded up thousands of Haitian extras to be subjected to Addio Zio Tom’s degrading recreations of slave trade practices for mere pennies a day, orsometimes just a meal. Did Jacopetti and Prosperi believe they were serving a higher cause, and make a painful decision that dealing with Duvalier was a necessary evil? Or did they simply see it economically and decide the way to bring their vision to life was to depend upon someone who could treat humans as property?
In any case, getting back to the art, if you look closely you’ll notice this is actually a Japanese poster (one of two that were made), though nearly all the text is English. But we shared it today because the movie opened in Italy today in 1971. Also, though it took a while for the idea to sink in, the mole made the difference—it’s possible that Radiah Frye is the model on the poster. Not 100%. But maybe. We featuredher as one of our earliest femmes fatales, so if it’s her it’s a pleasant surprise to see her again. In summation, watchAddio Zio Tom if you dare.
The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.
1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors
Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.
1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House
Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.
1949—Dragnet Premiers
NBC radio broadcasts the cop drama Dragnet for the first time. It was created by, produced by, and starred Jack Webb as Joe Friday. The show would later go on to become a successful television program, also starring Webb.
1973—Lake Dies Destitute
Veronica Lake, beautiful blonde icon of 1940s Hollywood and one of film noir’s most beloved fatales, dies in Burlington, Vermont of hepatitis and renal failure due to long term alcoholism. After Hollywood, she had drifted between cheap hotels in Brooklyn and New York City and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. A New York Post article briefly revived interest in her, but at the time of her death she was broke and forgotten.
Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.
