Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971)

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Movie Poster English Version

Goodbye Uncle Tom or Addio Zio Tom (Italian Version) is an Italian Documentary-Mondo who directed, produced and written by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi. Based on historical documents, Farewell Uncle Tom re-enacts the horrors of slavery-era America in discomfiting accuracy from the moment it opens, hilariously enough, on a shot of the film crew’s helicopter gliding over bewildered and windblown slaves in a field.[1]

Plot

Set in the deep South prior to the Civil War, Zio Tom finds Jacopetti and Prosperi travelling back in time aboard a helicopter to investigate the nuts and bolts of slavery as it happened in the United States prior to abolition. Along the way, the filmmakers go aboard a slave ship as frightened Africans are brought to America under inhuman conditions; they witness the dangerous and degrading process by which slaves were made ready for market; and they visit a "breeding farm" for slaves after laws prohibit the importation of slaves from abroad. Also included is a sermon from a preacher who argues for the moral and spiritual necessity of slavery (while another man speaks out against it strictly on grounds of economics and practicality); the contrasting thoughts of men and women on the matter of miscegenation; and an interview with an educated slave who feels his circumstances are better for him than conventional employment. Also shown is the brutal torture and punishment of slaves for any number of real or imagined grievances.[2]

Black Racism

The movie depicts how evil the slavery, and shows about how Africans were brought to America and mistreated and tortured, and how terrible that all was. This movie itself humiliates its actors in the way the slaves were humiliated 200 years ago. A man without a hand is photographed shoving mash into his mouth from a trough. Very young girls are mocked in auction scenes. Pregnant women (women who are really pregnant) are corralled into a scene about the "breeding" of slaves.[3] It also shows a number of inhumane acts committed against slaves during this time, including murder, rape, torture, inhumane medical treatment, forced sexual partners together for controlled breeding purposes.[4]

Movie Poster Italian Version

Controversy - This movie received some critics from the reviewer, they says that this movie is cruel and exploitative and even thinking that the producers delighted in the rape and torture of the Blacks.

"Many reviewers claimed that Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, the movie's producers, delighted in the rape and torture of the Blacks in the movie, as evidenced by the way the camera lingered on Black women being raped and the way Black men were killed in slow motion."[5]

"It is a vile, cruel movie, a film that is exploitative in ways that will make even the most hardened connoisseur of envelope-obliterating cinema feel sick and violated. It is a film that feels like true evil, a film that makes the viewer complicit in its atrocities." [6]

Reference

  1. Jen Yamato. Inside the Most Racially Horrifying Movie Ever. Thedailybeast. April 14, 2017. Retrieved January 19, 2021
  2. Mark Deming. Synopsis. Allmovie. Retrieved January 19, 2021
  3. Roger Ebert. Farewell Uncle Tom. Rogerebert. November 14, 1972. Retrieved January 19, 2021
  4. Steven Kain. Film Review: Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971). Horrornews. March 04, 2015. Retrieved January 19, 2021
  5. Dennis Canon. Goodbye Uncle Tom. Ferrisedu. Retrieved January 19, 2021
  6. Devin Faraci. FAREWELL UNCLE TOM: Vile, Cruel, Amazing. Birthmoviesdeath. September 25, 2015. Retrieved January 19, 2021