Addio, Onkel Tom

Goodbye Uncle Tom is a downright jaw-dropping and surprisingly professional production in the Mondo Cane series. Terrifically shot documentary-style, this film explores the interaction between the races in modern America. Slavery, Black Rage, White Oppression...Jacopetti and Prosperi are all showing it uncensored and without mercy. It's repulsive, shocking and the violence subtly get more under your skin as opposed to the average teenage horror slasher. The inhumanity of previous generations makes you bow your head in shame. Guided by a thrilling Riz Ortolani score (perhaps known best for his Cannibal Holocaust music) Goodbye Uncle Tom shows how black people are being exploited, raped and killed for no reason other than being "inferior". The films opens with a truly atmospheric portrait of how Martin Luther King's death mobilized the black community. Right from that moment, you just know that you're about to see a film that is a lot more intelligent than it seems and ahead of its time when it comes to being provocative. A history lesson that sticks to you! Of course, because of its realism, it cannot be recommended to everyone. Goodbye Uncle Tom is better not watched by the faint-hearted. Highly recommended piece of revolutionary cinema!

Addio Zio Tom: 7/10: Well they don't make them like this anymore and lets face it they never really did. This is really three separate films brought together in a blender set on random. The first film is a highly effective expose on slave treatment and the slave trade in the old south (the slave ship scenes blows Hollywood fare like Armistad out of the water). Using a cast of thousands and exposing practices such as selective breeding that are politely not discussed on American shores (just ask Jimmy the Greek) it simply is one of the most realistic display's of 18th and 19th century slave life ever shown on film.

Then there is a second film which is a dated, and looking back rather silly collection, of news footage from the late sixties and early seventies that documents race riots with all the participants speaking in Italian creating an almost Woody Allen feel to the dub (It gives What's up Tiger Lilly a run for its money complete with ragtime music cementing the silliness of what should be serious proceedings.)

The last movie is a sexploitation film dealing largely with Mandingo fantasies and containing a copious amount of child porn. (I guess National Geographic rules apply when showing thirteen year old black children naked). Needless to say tasteful does not enter into the conversation. Political correctness is shattered so badly one must feel for those sensitive souls that can't laugh at ridiculousness of the manipulation.

Making matters worse the three films are intertwined together seemingly at random with comic buffoonery breaking out during serious scenes (A slave auction is apt to turn into a Benny Hill episode for no apparent reason) and poorly done black revenge fantasies coming, narratively at least, out of nowhere. Anti-white, anti-black and for the sake of inclusion anti-Semitic they once again simply don't make them like this anymore. (It's highly illegal for one thing)

Overlong by at least an hour and very poorly thought out in places Addio Zio Tom wears out its welcome but for a short while at least it exposes the truth and makes one think.

I viewed this particular film in the summer of 1972 in New York City. I remember that it was opening day and the turnout was surprisingly large. The other thing that I remembered was that I thought the filmmakers had taken an original approach as far as their documentary-style on slavery. As if I were actually there, watching the events take place. As an African-American man, I found the film fascinating and enlightening. The only thing I did find questionable was, once again, the Black man was depicted as a sexual beast with over-sized reproductive organs. I do believe that this, to some, is what made the movie so titillating. Overall, I still had a pleasant movie going experience. I would like to ask any readers of this commentary that if they have any knowledge of how I may a obtain a copy of this film to please contact me through my e-mail.

MONDO CANE and AFRICA ADDIO creators Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi take us on a journey through time, back to the mid 1800's, not too long before the civil war. The movie is styled like one of their previous documentaries, with actors talking to the camera as though being interviewed, and just about every form of human cruelty being enacted on the Africans who have been dragged overseas to become slaves.

The movie is certainly disturbing, and it did indeed enrage me that ancestors of mine took part in this treatment of fellow human beings. But the movie lost me whenever it tried to create a parallel between the climate between blacks and whites in the 1800s and the 1960s.

Not that there weren't (and, unfortunately, still are) problems with racial tension in this country, but the movie seems to think that the average black person is still a savage at heart, just waiting for the right moment to break out an axe and slaughter the first white person he comes across. The movie climaxes with a radical black man reading The Diary of Nat Turner and imagining doing just that, including a horrific moment in which he smashes a baby's head against the wall.

To me, the movie seems to have a negative opinion of just about everyone. Obviously, due to its decidedly anti-slavery stance, the slave traders are viewed as sick, inhuman monsters with only the faintest mask of civility on the surface. But the African characters are portrayed largely as ignorant buffoons, too dim-witted to understand what's happening to them.

Later, during the modern day scenes, the sole black character is shown as having a major chip on his shoulder that has driven him nearly insane with rage, while the white people are a bunch of care-free bubble heads. Such generalizations and lack of depth or character development greatly lessens the power the movie may have had.

But, as a purely gut-busting exercise in sleaze and disgusting imagery, GOODBYE UNCLE TOM sits confidently alongside other such gross-out movies as CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, SALO and MEN BEHIND THE SUN. Also, like those movies, GUT (hmmm, interesting abbreviation) goes so outrageously over-the-top in depicting its atrocities, most of the movie's true power is lost, and it becomes little more than a freak show.

I hesitantly recommend the movie for fans of sick cinema as a curiosity. I warn pretty much everyone else to stay far, far away.

Many people who have claimed to see this film have not. Most of those who have seen it, have not understood. GOODBYE UNCLE TOM was directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco E. Prosperi, the two men who pioneered the documentary movement that came to be known as the "Mondo" film, a term the two dislike immensely. Hot on the heels of their controversial and still-relevant AFRICA ADDIO, it was meant to exonerate them from accusations of racism. Ironically, it would do the exact opposite. It was developed as an idea to adapt the novel "Mandingo" as an historical, documentary style drama. What emerged was a shocking, difficult-to-watch-at-times, treatise on the horrors of slavery, and the source of racism in America, if not the world, today. It was the filmmakers' intention not to pander to a politically correct theory that slaves of the 1840's had a 1970's awareness of their situation. The events are all historically correct. Many of the characters are people who actually lived. The dialogue is verbatim from true manuscripts of the day. The racism is a genuine depiction of plantation life of the day. It was felt that glossing over the African experience in America would be an insult to the pain and suffering of the millions who survived the "middle passage' only to welcome a life a slavery, no different from an animal or piece of property.

Years after it's initial release, the directors have expressed a regret at not opening the film with an explanation stating that this was a film about the emotions of that bygone era, not of the filmmakers themselves.

The controversial final scenes, which take place in contemporary America, are based on "The Confessions of Nat Turner", and are meant to represent an angry, reactionary vengeance on behalf of the millions, with whom the character identifies. Malice for sure, but not unmerited malice. This film should cause strong emotions. Any film that tackles a moral issue must cause debate and conjecture if it is to succeed. What makes the film even more extraordinary is that it succeeds without claiming a moral superiority, or taking a moral stance. What appears on screen are the most graphic, realistic depictions of the North American slave trade of the 19th century, and this film should be required viewing in Black History classes on college campuses, and high schools all over the world, particularly in America. This film preceded ROOTS by six years and stands as a much harsher indictment of the evils of human bondage. This is one of the bravest works of cinema and remains a misunderstood humanitarian masterpiece.