Mandingo. 1975. USA. Directed by Richard Fleischer. Screenplay by Norman Wexler. With James Mason, Ken Norton, Susan George, Perry King, Richard Ward, Brenda Sykes, Lillian Hayman. DCP. 127 min.
The box-office success of Mandingo, often described as a big-budget exploitation movie, was countered by overwhelming critical dismissal and controversy, which effectively sidelined director Richard Fleischer in Hollywood. Nevertheless, Mandingo is one of the decade’s most daring and political films, in which the film industry’s typically tamped-down depictions of American slavery (famously exemplified by the melodramatic obliviousness of Gone With the Wind) were replaced by a brutally honest, violent portrayal of cruelty, abuse, and viciousness on an 1840s Southern plantation. The film’s grittiness and tone are equaled only in the homage paid by Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.