Bentin, Doug. “Mondo Barnum” in Rhodes, Gary Don; and Springer, John Parris (Eds). Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co, 2006. 144-153.

Mondo Cane (A Dog’s World), is a “documentary” by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, with a directorial assist from Paolo Cavara, who soon left the team. It was released in 1962 and went on quickly to achieve notoriety in Europe and in the US. Marketed as a documentary chronicling odd moments in human behavior and Third World cultures, it played like Ripley’s Believe It or Not! With the inclusion of animal cruelty and an emphasis on the anatomy of women. It was soon being described as a “shockumentary” for the inclusion of scenes of pigs being clubbed to death as prologue to a primate feast, a piglet being suckled at a woman’s breast, and other examples of barbarism, i.e., most behavior that did not adhere to the Western European cultural norm. 145

While watching documentaries, one is indeed occasionally taken aback by the camera operator’s luck in being set up in exactly the right spot. But this perfect camera placement occurs so often in the Mondo films, the viewer quickly realizes that these set-ups, like the ones in the Rossano Brazzi sequence, are highly unlikely when attributed purely to chance alone. 147

Even the moments that appear most spontaneous quickly reveal that they have been patted into shape. Men in the Italian Army seen marching along in long or medium shot look genuine enough, but then we get a quick cut to an attractive young woman watching them on parade, her bosom captured by her bodice but struggling for release, followed immediately by a close-up of a marching soldier’s face as he slides his eyes hard to the side to take in the view. The long shot is real; the close-up is staged. 147

The Monde Cane 2 footage was faked. “We were making cinema,” Prosperi explained. “We didn’t just do documentary: if something was missing to make a scene work well, we would fix it.” Prosperi admitted that the monk’s suicide was a total fabrication shot in Bangkok using a mannequin. 148

But on the other hand the term “Mondo” eventually became a signal for a cinematic brew of fact and fiction to be taken with little seriousness; it became an appropriate term to denote the viewing position we’ve analyzed. 152

All of what we could say of the earlier Mondo films could be said of their Faces offspring. Well, almost all, anyhow. One crucial element had changed, affecting forever our Mondo-inspired viewing position and perhaps all viewing positions. The proliferation of home video allowed for not only repeat viewing of entire films with ease, but also of specific scenes, specific edits, and specific shots. Our ability to stop and start a film, spreading out our viewing over hours, days, or weeks changed what it means to be a filmgoer (whose “going” leads him or her to a video rental store perhaps, instead of a theater). And it has definitely changed and increased our ability to keep images from washing over us too quickly, allowing us to perform the kinds of investigations our Mondo viewing position requires. 152

Of course, the legacy of Mondo Cane and its illegitimate brethren has become all too obvious with the proliferation of alien autopsies, Blair witches, Project Greenlights, and a slew of television “reality” programs that are, in fact, about as real as the Piltdown Man. Jeffrey Sconce, from Northwestern University, has observed that “The whole documentary wing at [the Fox Channel] uses the Mondo films as their playbook.” 152

It’s also though a viewing position where the pleasures we gain occur due to our initiative, through our own investigations of what is real or not, through our own game. It’s a viewing position that allows us to engage with film in a manner unlike almost any other relationship of spectator to cinema. It’s a Mondo-viewing position. 152