Back in 2000s, I was the associate producer on a documentary about a rich white family moving their ancestorial plantation house. They had sold the land for millions to a shopping mall developer. They put the over 150-year-old house on wheels and moved it onto a different property. It was like an episode of Mega Movers with a slavery angle. One thing I learned fast is that everyone interviewed thought their ancestors must have been so nice to their slaves because they were nice people. The homeowner swore it. The director’s mother was also of that opinion. How could her great (or great great) grandfather be more than a saint who treated all with grace and dignity like her? The director who was cousin of the homeowner didn’t seem to care to investigate the truth about the guy beyond the family’s mythology. During the production we encountered two men that were descended from slaves that lived on the plantation. One was a college professor from New York City who grew up in Raleigh near the plantation. During a dinner, he shared how he was part of the group that protested the last segregated downtown movie theater in the ’60s. The white director bragged about how he snuck past their picket line because he had discovered auteur theory and had to see the John Ford movie playing in the racist-owned cinema. There was not a hint of regret in his voice. Later during the shoot, we went to a civil war battle reenactment where the director’s Mother insisted to the professor that the War was over state’s rights and not slavery. The professor disagreed by pointing out that only right the Southern states wanted was to keep slaves. The second man was an elderly gentleman who I believe was one generation removed from his ancestors that were owned on the plantation. He bore an extremely striking resemblance to the portrait of the slave owner that hung in the plantation house. This led to questioning what exactly being “nice to our slaves” really meant. Was this a sanitizing code phrase like “state’s rights?”
I made the suggestion that we get DNA tests for the director, his mother and the two men descended from the slaves. This idea was immediately shot down by the director (and I think his mother since she was a major backer of the film). While it was cute for them to pretend the two gentlemen were “cousins,” they feared scientific proof that they shared more than a name. Should the professor and the elderly man have gotten a piece of the millions that were given to the slaveholding family for the land if they were all connected by blood? We talk about repatriations to slaves, but what about the slaves who deserved to be recognized as part of the owner’s family. They all sprung from the same man on the family tree? How much advantages did the white side of the family receive that was denied to their blood relatives born with black skin? The director, his mother and the “real” cousin didn’t want to besmirch the “good” name of their slave owning ancestor to prove he procreated a black side to their family tree. The documentary ended up a sweet Southern story of family moving the plantation house. It played festivals, received a theatrical release, came out on DVD and even streamed on Netflix for years. Someone wanted to adapt it for an uplifting Broadway musical. It was cute. The “documentary” didn’t make people feel uncomfortable with questions about slavery and the two different “families” that the slave owner beget.
Goodbye Uncle Tom is a movie that didn’t hold back in its depiction of slavery and slaveowners. Directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi weren’t going to tone down slavery with a “they were nice to their slaves” narrative. These were the men who made the shockumentary Mondo Cane so they weren’t known for being timid. When Goodbye Uncle Tom came out in 1971, it upset audiences. Roger Ebert attacked it in the Chicago Sun-Time, “They have finally done it; Made the most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency ever to masquerade as a documentary!”
Jacopetti and Prosperi altered their Mondo documentary approach to explore slavery in the pre-Civil War United States. They didn’t create a narrative drama based around a character whether they be a slave owner or a slave. They used writings and drawings of the era to recreate what happened. Their camera showed up to capture the action and interview the people involved. The historic people aren’t taken back by an Italian camera crew wandering around.
How Africans were sold into slavery and brought across the Atlantic Ocean are often depicted as just a bit of a discomfort in most films. Goodbye Uncle Tom shows the pure horror of the journey. There are hundreds of naked extras crammed inside the ship’s storage space. The crew goes through their routines to keep the cargo alive and somewhat healthy on the passage. There is torture involved. A slave’s front teeth are broken so they can force feed him with a funnel. The large ship doesn’t dock. They drop the slaves into smaller boats since the captain doesn’t want anyone knowing what sort of cargo is being hauled. When the slaves get to America, their treatment doesn’t get any better. They have to be disinfected and quarantined upon arrival in Louisiana (which is really Haiti). The ones who might have issues are keep in a cage on the side of the building so they’re fully exposed. The person who inspects them isn’t a medical doctor, but a veterinarian. They don’t want to let the new arrivals be seen as human. Although unlike a new pet, there are plenty of white men eager to have their way with the slave women. There are also a few white women willing to cross the color line including Madame LaLaurie in New Orleans known for killing the slaves she humped. The camera visits a breeding farm operation where the owner doesn’t mind helping add to his holdings. This visit into the past is an immersive disturbing experience like a really messed up trip to Williamsburg.
Along into these recreated moments of the past, there are current events showing the civil rights struggle hasn’t made anything easier. White people are eager to cling to the beauty of the past. A home owned by a slave owner has turned into a tourist trap eager to sell people confederate flags and other souvenirs. They even hire black people to dress up to play the slaves. The ending of the film puts the slave rebellion of Nat Turner into a modern context on a beach in Miami.
There are two versions of Goodbye Uncle Tom in the limited-edition boxset. The first is the original Italian Cut that runs 136 minutes. The American distributor attempted to tone down the film by snipping away scenes until it tan only 123 minutes. The 13 minutes didn’t cause the critics of the times to freakout. Gene Siskel called it the second sickest film of the year right after Last House on the Left. The film hasn’t gotten any less shocking over the decades. It reminds us that slavery wasn’t a nice experience that can be easily rationalized away. Seeing the massive number of Haitians playing slaves in the scenes will overwhelm any feeling that there was anything sweet and charming about the Antebellum South. This wasn’t a small thing like that uncle claims during Thanksgiving dinner with his rant about the evils of CRT and DEI. Perhaps you should buy a copy of Goodbye Uncle Tom and put it in your 4K UHD player so that Uncle can get an eyeful between the turkey and pumpkin pie. See if he can stomach the recreation of the tortures?
The film ends with a weekend Civil War battle recreation like the one we shot. Unlike the film I made, Goodbye Uncle Tom won’t have you thinking that everyone in the South was so nice to their slaves. At the of my production, the descendants of the slave owner weren’t that nice to me. I was never paid for my months of work on the plantation house documentary. Even though we raised a decent budget and sold the film for theatrical, home video and streaming, somehow there was not enough cash to cut me a check. But I won’t refer to myself as slave labor. I was stupid labor. And I said goodbye to the director at the end of the experience.
The Video is 2.40:1 anamorphic. The 4K UHD 2016p upgraded image will make things look even more disturbing as you see deeper into slave operations with the mass of humanity behind bars. The Audio is DTS-HD 1.0 mono for both the English and Italian cuts of the film. The English version has subtitles in English and Spanish. The Italian version is only subtitled in English.
Behind the Scenes 8mm Footage (49:51) has audio commentary from Production Manager Giampaolo Lomi. He lets us know what’s being shown from the shoot in Haiti. What’s amazing are the huge crowd scenes and how small the core crew was. This was not a Hollywood production.
Mondo Mercenaries (27:15) talks with Mark Goodall, author of Sweet & Savage: The World Through the Mondo Lens. He gets into how Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi created this genre and how Goodbye Uncle Tom factors into it.
Abjection Under Authoritarianism (19:47) has Professor Matthew J. Smith get into how the film was made in Haiti. He views it as dreadful and exploitive. He was angered by the film’s depiction of the horrors of slavery. Smith is the Director, Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, University College London. He gives a biography on François Duvalier better known as Papa Doc who was a doctor and proved to be a brutal dictator. He declared himself President for life in 1964 and died in 1971 around the time Goodbye Uncle Tom was released. He complains how Papa Doc was able to get thousands of Haitians to strip down and act in the film as slaves. He has a major issue about the Haitians used in the film.
Image Gallery includes Posters from around the world, Advertising material, a Japanese Souvenir Program, Lobby Cards, Stills, Video and Soundtrack covers and Giampaolo Lomi’s Behin-The Scenes Photos. We even get to see the start of the sheet music for “Oh My Love.”
Goodbye Uncle Tom Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Riz Ortolani is on a Compact Disc. His music has the chipper flavor.
The Importance of Shocking: Gualtiero Jacopetti (93:59) is a feature documentary on the filmmaker’s career. We see how the director went all in on investigating a subject and showing it on film. His Mondo Cane was a massive hit as it showed the strange and violent way people live around the world. His own life was rather shocking including an incident with a young girl who he had to marry to avoid being put on trial for attacking. This ruined his career as a newspaper journalist so he took up working in newsreels. He made newsreels that were caustic and a bit shocking. This made them more anticipated than the usual dry newsreel. Eventually the newsreel became the feature film in Mondo Cane (1962). Co-director Franco Prosperi talks about his filmmaking partner. They get into what they had to do to make Goodby Uncle Tom in Haiti. They did shoot in Natchez, Mississippi and upset the town when they had black cast members take refuge in what was a Whites Only restaurant. The movie is in Italian with English subtitles.
The Godfathers of Mondo (89:16) gets more into the cinematic exploits of Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi. Jacopetti has an issue with the Italian “Neo-Realism” movement because it’s still drama and artificial compared to what he captured as a documentarian. Prosperi comes from a background as a biologist who learned the Mondo films were a bit more profitable than making “pure” nature documentaries. They made anti-documentaries that didn’t make people feel good about going to foreign countries. They discuss how they found things that were true and filmed them for Mondo Cane. They get into their show real dead people on screen such as The House of Death in Singapore. They get into how they mixed up the scenes so they could have shock and weird things building upon each other. There’s history of all the other Mondo films that flooded the market after the success of Mondo Cane. This is in Italian with English subtitles.
Goodbye Cruel Mondo (20:01) has director Franco Prosperi mention how they wanted to do an adaptation of the novel Mandingo. The person with the rights was kidnapped and murdered. They filmmakers decided to do something else with the subject of slavery in America. This was a new approach for them since they weren’t just capturing things in real life. They had to work out a script with dialogue. They went with all non-professionals to play the characters in Goodby Uncle Tom. composer Riz Ortolani
Blue Underground Presents Goodbye Uncle Tom: Limited Edition. Directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi. Boxset Contents: 2 4K UHDs with both versions of the film, 1 Blu-ray disc with Extras and 1 CD with soundtrack. Rating: Not Rated. Release Date: April 23, 2024.
