Coming back to this film some twenty odd years since I first saw it was an interesting experience. It remains one of the few films that I’ve come across that had a palpable aura surrounding it. I remember feeling as if the very VHS box sitting on the shelf of the video store was somehow fundamentally different than those around it; powerful, menacing. The film itself was forbidden fruit. Sight unseen, Faces of Death had a great deal of influence on my future cinematic tastes: I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, to see what I was not supposed to see.
Most important of all, back then at least, was the fact that Faces of Death was the “real deal.” It wasn’t a movie; people really did die on camera. While watching itÑthrough my fingers mostlyÑI honestly believed that the film was everything I had been promised. The schoolyard tales I had heard about the film were largely false, however. The scenes of men being ripped apart by bears and cannibals devouring whole families were nowhere to be seen, despite the third and forth hand reports I had been given. Everything else certainly lived up to what I had been expecting.
Watching it again on a lark this weekend I am impressed at how powerful the atmosphere of the film is even today. Even amongst the glut of violence and death readily available at ones’ fingertips via reality television and the Internet, Faces of Death still has the ability to make each scene matter to the audience. Mondo purists loathe the film, but Faces of Death excellently uses Jacopetti and Prosperi’s aesthetics and montage techniques in a way that surpasses all but a handful of the Mondo cannon and this first entry is miles ahead of those that followed.
I am also keenly aware at the falsity of it all. Discounting the slaughterhouse/hunting footage, practically none of the film is authentic. I’m not disappointed in the film for lying to me, however; I’m disappointed that I’m able to recognize it now. Knowing that the magician doesn’t really saw the woman in half takes the “magic” out of the magic trick. Macabre as it sounds, I liked it better when it was magic, when it was real.
by David Carter | Source: Google Video
22 May 2008 12:54 AM | Submit Comment