Mondo Cane is frequently challenging to watch, and even though programmatic horror inevitably causes levels of desensitisation, its depictions of savagery inflicted on the animals in this film are genuinely disturbing. It's a strange documentary hybrid, an amalgamation of mockumentary, pseudo-documentary and docufiction which director Paolo Cavara exhibits with seeming sincerity in attempting to reinvent what a documentary can be. It's additionally entirely unconventional in the subject matter it confronts, and it illustrates some scathing social commentaries on humanity among its many interesting observations. It's satirical and absurdist mannerisms are underscored with some comedic music, and interestingly the theme song More was nominated as Best Original Song at the 36th Academy Awards.

It regrettably established a subgenre of films, but…

As the founder of the eponymous mondo genre, the historical import of Mondo Cane is well-documented. Unpacking why it is this particular film launched a thousand grotesque ships is another matter. It's tempting to write this off as a collection of mashed up imagery organized loosely along shock and titillation, especially given that this is the product of three directors (Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacopetti). But more so than the obvious cues of animal cruelty and bouncing tits, there are some weirdly specific strains of imagery in here.

The film is strangely fixated on old people. For a slimy little travelogue with ample shots of bare breasted tribeswomen, I've never seen quite so many lingering, steady shots of…

How am I supposed to respond to an experience like Mondo Cane? Its exploitative, "shockumentary" reputation precedes it. It's easy to discount its probable usage of "alternative facts" as brash 1960s racially-tinged exotica. Yet to overcome such a thing, it should be entertaining. Like, that should be the bare minimum for an iffy pseudo-documentary, right? If I can't rely on you to inform, you can at least give me something shocking, repulsive, atrocious... entertain me.

Maybe in the 1960s this was truly shocking. If so, it has aged poorly. You've seen better, truer examples of everything within this. Heck, you can probably watch through a couple of episodes of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown and come away with 10 times the…

A groundbreaking travelogue around the World, showing its diverse cultures and customs.
Some banal, some extreme, some decidedly dull....

To fully appreciate the influence of "Mondo Cane" you have to remember that although the travelogue had existed for decades none of them garnered this much global distribution and recognition (famously a song from the Riz Ortolani score got an Oscar nomination and the film itself was nominated for the Cannes Palme d'Or), TV was still pretty much in its infancy and the internet was a thing of Sci-Fi.
For audiences in 1962 "Mondo Cane" truly offered an everyman view of the World very few could ever hope to see otherwise.

Its status and popularity not only garnered a sequel, "Mondo…

With tongue firmly placed in cheek, this travelogue exploits the bizarre and taboo cultures from around the world.

The movie's pretense is that it is an observational and unbiased look at various exotic practices and rituals around the world. In reality, they "documentary" is intended to titillate, repulse, and shock Western audiences. The funny thing is that the narration that persists throughout the entire film is cheeky and anything but neutral.

For a while I was reminded of the documentaries of The Maysles Brothers. They tend to choose oddball and eccentric people to document. Their movies, and the "portrayal" of the characters in their movies, are sympathetic but are also a bit exploitative.

With Mondo Cane the intent is a…

Mondo Cane genuinely has some nice footage. It's well shot, most of the subject matter is fascinating, and the presentation as a sort of travel vignette is clever. Where it fails is in the framing of its subjects. The narration is simply mean, better to just be tuned out, and overall it becomes far more cruel and exploitative than it needs to be. Capturing the dark underbelly of humanity isn't something filmmakers should shy away from, but this is just cynical, placing itself as somehow above the very things it portrays. It claims to be showing real content, but this immediately drives a wedge in its integrity. Theres no trust between the film and viewer, everything shown I have to…

I honestly don’t know why I watched this... Something about Riz Ortolani?
Anyway, I’ve become so depressed and misanthropic, I don’t need anything else to convince me humanity is a worthless cause, as people claim this movie convinced them back in the ‘70’s. Surprisingly, however, Mondo Cane is mostly a yawn-fest, pretty reliably sexist and racist, and occasionally kind of shocking. The movie has a weird fixation on Papua New Guinea, and while I can’t say I was not repulsed by the scenes of brutality depicted within, one can only hope that this film is a gross miscontextualization of a culture that is otherwise rich and interesting. In any event, I wasn’t shocked, because I guess at this point, we’ve…