Mandingo (1975)

Wow! Such a good movie.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A Brilliant Conflict

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

I guess before writing about Mandingo I should mention exactly what a Mandingo is. Realizing that in those days of slavery in the South that owners thought of their slaves as little more than livestock, they were interested in breeding. A Mandingo is a male black slave, young, more than likely fresh from Africa which can be used for breeding. And he's got all the attributes that make a woman swoon. In this film all kinds of woman.Martin Luther King in one of his reflective moments said that racism injures the perpetrator as much as the victim. That is the main idea behind the film Mandingo that people cannot relate to each other as people with these feelings in the way.Gone way beyond feeling anything is James Mason the owner of Falconhurst plantation in 1840s Alabama. All he wants is an heir, but his son Perry King who walks with a limp because of a childhood accident just wants to screw around with all the young black women he owns. Brenda Sykes is a particular favorite. But Mason demands he marry so King marries a kissing cousin played by Susan George.Like Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage, King has a nasty inferiority complex because of his limp. But when you're a young master you've got no need to be courting any white women on an equal basis. So when George proves not to be a virgin and knowing he's got some comparison to go by in the lovemaking department King rejects his bride and still keeps shacking up with Sykes.Here's where it gets stupid like a romance novel. Not doubting that such things did happen, but not like this. George starts eying her husband's Mandingo slave, trained also in the bare knuckle prize fighting trade. Not even London prize ring rules for these matches, the slavemasters went in for no rules, after these were just property to them. The Mandingo slave is played by boxer Ken Norton best known for breaking Muhammed Ali's jaw in a match. He does acquit himself well in the part.Anyway she starts getting a little excitement in her life, more than she bargained for.More than racism is dealt with here. Sexism 19th century style is talked about. But it's all in a crass, sensationalist manner. Mandingo was first a novel and then a flop play on Broadway that ran 5 performances with Franchot Tone in the James Mason part.The whole slavery experience could have been dealt with. We don't see for instance what the vast majority of slaves were doing in the field dealing cotton or whatever other kind of agricultural product these plantations produced. Developing and breeding Mandingos was a hobby for these slavemasters, not what they actually kept the slaves for.A good opportunity was lost with this film.

When it was first released, Mandingo was promoted as the one movie willing to tell the truth about American slavery. It features graphic depictions of every horror that slavery inflicted upon African Americans, ranging from brutal punishments to rape. In many respects, it is an antidote to the benign depictions of slavery in films such as Gone with the Wind and Birth of a Nation.It is also just as gross a distortion of slavery as they were.First of all, missing from the film is the most fundamental aspect of the slave experience: labor. Slaves were first and foremost used as workers. Based on this film, one would get the impression that slaves served no other purpose than to be beaten by or have sex with their masters and mistresses.More damning, despite the film's appeal to an African-American audience, Mandingo strips its black characters of all dignity. Yes, black slaves were subject to horrific abuses. However, they were also able to maintain their own religious practices, and formed families of their own. They were not simply the helpless victims Mandingo depicts them as.Furthermore, the film fails on a basic cinematic level. Most of the acting is downright terrible, with Susan George giving a histrionic, career ending performance.The only good things about this film are an opening theme by Muddy Waters and the atmospheric sets, which capture the dark, grim reality of a plantation house before the gaslight era.

In this film, the masterful James Mason plays the plantation patriarch, a Big Daddy you wouldn't want to be owned by. This is undoubtedly THE BEST Film made about the era of slavery in the USA. It puts the sanitised, romantic "Gone With the Wind" to shame. "Mandingo" will make you uncomfortable even in your most comfortable seat. "Mandingo" is a mirror. See your reflection; it will scare the living bejeezub out of you.This is a film about power. Racism is about power. When some people have absolute power over other people, they become sadistic and sometimes, the objects of their sadism become masochistic. Absolute power is always justified with ideological rationalisations become dogma, in this case the the dogma that black skin makes a person less than human. Power corrupts the individual's sense of morality. With power over others, one becomes more or less immoral, hardened to a subordinate's suffering. Self-esteem is generated by putting down the one perceived to be inferior and slaves were considered less than human, a notch or two down on the food chain. Slaves were treated as objects of power, like the organic results of animal husbandry, like the commodities you purchase and eat: cattle, pigs or sheep. Thus, having sex with a slave for a 'white' male owner was like breeding new animals for sale with a view to profit. 'White' females, of course, were not allowed to engage in this sort of animal husbandry with slaves. The patriarchal whisper one hears in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" becomes a murderous roar in "Mandingo".In "Mandingo" we see realities of absolute power's affect on the social psychology of a society. Even after more than a century of time, American society, especially the South is still scarred by the psychological damage which simmers under the surface of smiles, whiskey fueled tears and freshly mown lawns."Mandingo" is a must see. It's better than "Glory", although "Glory" would be an appropriate second on a double feature bill with "Mandingo". "Mandingo" is even better than "Burn" and much better than "Roots". The acting is superb. The screenplay is magnificent. The cinematography is choice. Yes, this movie is violent; but slavery was a daily violence on the lives of those who suffered it. Face it. Yes, there is sex in this movie: squirm in your seat as you feel a touch of titillation. Yes, there is abuse on all levels from pedophilia to outright murder. But the abusers aren't comic book level bad guys; they aren't Jokers on the set of "Batman". They are the ruling class of the Old South. Sometimes their humanity shows through. Sometimes bad guys are ever so well ensconced in the the rituals of polite society that they come across as the upholders of civilised behaviour. That they are also enmeshed in a daily life organised around the exploitation of those who produce their wealth speaks volumes about the quality of their humanity and our own social relations of power today.Get "Mandingo" however you can. Show it to your friends. Discuss it after you see it. Get ready for the movie experience of a lifetime. Forget about "Basterds"; forget the demented, ultra-violent comic fantasies of Quentin Tarintino. Forget about the sanitized films of the Antebellum Age. See "Mandingo". See the hard truth about chattel slavery and then do some reflection about how power over others functions to generate a generalised state of dominance and submission in the social relations of the here and now, wherever you live on this planet.

Conditions of slaves in the Deep South prior to The Civil War are given a fairly gritty and audacious treatment in this sometimes-sensational motion picture. Mason plays the patriarch of a large plantation who buys and sells slaves while looking for the perfect Mandingo (referring to an a-level breed of slave from a particular African region) with which to impregnate a female he owns. His son King, whose gait is affected by a childhood riding accident, aids him in his quest when he isn't deflowering the young female slaves, which is his right and privilege under the conditions of ownership. When it's time for King to marry, naturally he turns to a cousin (!) and proceeds to wed George. However, discontentment rears its ugly head almost immediately and he finds himself developing real feelings for one of his "bed warmers," the slave Sykes. Meanwhile, he has purchased towering Norton on his father's behalf and is using him as a stud for his female Mandingo and also as a fighter, which yields heavy cash for the estate. Unfortunately, when now-alcoholic George begins to grow jealous of Sykes, she puts into motion a series of events that leads to tragedy for many people. Mason gives an unfiltered performance of cranky, commandeering bigotry and, while it isn't the most pleasurable thing to witness, it is effective in its way. His character divests himself of rheumatism by pressing his feet against the abdomens of naked or semi-clad black boys! King somehow manages to invoke a strain of sympathy in his rash and regimented character, perhaps because even worse people surround him at various times. At around eighteen minutes in, he gives the world a glimpse of Perry, Jr. George is simultaneously desperate and vaguely sympathetic and yet riotously awful. Some of her tantrum scenes rank right up there with Faye Dunaway in "Mommie Dearest!" Her "hair" remains an enigma throughout, sometimes thin and fine with frosted streaks and other times a wealth of thick brown fluff. Former prize fighter Norton has a eye-popping physique, which is shown to great advantage, but as an actor, he is pretty much knocked out in the first round. His character is given quite little to say, which helps. Sykes uses a tenderness and vulnerability to make hers one of the more endearing characters even if her vocal delivery is sometimes a bit contemporary. Others in the cast include Ward as a long-suffering slave, Hayman as a poor man's Hattie McDaniel, Masters as a sadistic, entitled monster, and "The Jeffersons" neighbor Benedict as a pragmatic slave trader. Tedrow, best known as one of "Dennis the Menace's" neighbors, appears as a worried midwife. Despite its reputation as a tawdry, exploitive piece of screen excrement, there are top-level creative people in many departments including composer Jarre, production designer Leven, costumer Roth and cinematographer Kline. It's just such an in-your-face, no-holds-barred, non-gilded look at the situation that, compared to so many other films depicting that era, that it stuns with regularity. There's no chance of seeing Ashley Wilkes toddling by. The dialogue is rough and crass, the violence is vivid, the sexuality is (or, at least, was at the time) eye-opening. The film is guilty at times of taking pleasure in the unpleasant, but it has merit for the way it refuses to turn away from the cruelty and oppression that American slaves endured. It's interesting to note the hypocrisy of the characters, too. King sees fit to sleep with every virgin slave and yet expects his betrothed to be intact. Filmed entirely on location, there is a bleak, rotten quality to the setting that makes the events even more downbeat. It's not a film for everyone, but it is one that simply could not and would not be made today and that holds a certain curiosity value. An even more raunchy sequel "Drum" followed a year later.