Goodbye Uncle Tom

While Tony Richardson's The Loved One was famously advertised as "the movie with something to offend everyone," it's hard to imagine a film that more richly deserves such billing than Zio Tom, better known in America as Farewell, Uncle Tom. Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi made a career out of blurring the line between incisive social commentary and crass exploitation with such films as Mondo Cane and Africa Addio, but in Zio Tom this border is effectively crushed into dust; while the film takes a long and (for the most part) serious look at the mechanics of slavery in America prior to abolition, it does so with such broad strokes that nearly every character is reduced to a caricature, and both the oppressive slave owners and the oppressed slaves are portrayed in an equally repellent fashion. Jacopetti and Prosperi have the nerve to call this film a documentary, since it professes to re-create historical incidents, and while there's little in this film that can't be supported in some way by historical fact, the movie shoots its own credibility in the foot with a number of scenes straight out of a grade-B exploitation picture, such as the breeding farm for slaves (in which a terrified virgin is deflowered by a drooling simpleton with an oversized organ) or the crackpot scientist who performs bizarre medical experiments on slave children. The filmmakers' insistence on taking every moment over the top does result in a few striking sequences; if Steven Spielberg had a much larger budget for his slave ship sequences in Amistad, the willingness of Jacopetti and Prosperi to rub the audience's nose in the abject ugliness of the trade in human flesh results in a far more powerful depiction of this crime against humanity, and the casual brutality meted out against nearly all the slaves in the picture makes it clear that these horrors escaped no one (and reminds that these events occurred as recently as 150 years ago). But between the smug brutality of the wealthy slave owners, the imbecilic inferiority of most of the slaves, and the melodramatic brio that puts a cartoonish spin on nearly every moment of the film, Zio Tom is a film whose perspective will please no one on either side of the racial divide. Of course, the sheer cynicism of the film suggests it's possible this is just what Jacopetti and Prosperi had in mind, so it's difficult to say if Zio Tom is a bizarre misfire, or a purposefully off-putting masterwork. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Theatrical trailer
Behind-the-scenes 8mm footage with audio commentary by Giampaolo Lomi
Giampaolo Lomi's behind-the-scenes still gallery
Poster & still gallery