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The Only True Shakespearan Tragedy Ever produced in America ----
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex: Did a movie ruin your favorite book?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This year celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the publishing of Kyle Onstott's, "MANDINGO". Dino Delaurentis produced the film version over 30 years ago; Richard Fleischer, directing.
The film suffered ONLY from the paltry production budget it was afforded. Besides poor film quality, the cast was peopled with 2nd tier actors, the single exception being James Mason, who's long prestigeous career was ended with this Last Hurrah taking on a supporting role of one of Humanity's most dispicable characters.
The overall power of the author's printed word & the derived screenplay was so great that cast, scores locations and stage props were unessential matters. Like Willie Lowman's world, the entire tale could have taken place on a single stage without detriment to the experience.
When the film first hit the theaters in the immediate post-Vietnam, post-Watergate American Nausea of the mid-70s there was not a segment of society that held back in castigating MANDINGO for a very full range of criticism.
The Jesus People and those buggers on the Right decried it for its blatant violence, a no-apologies unearthing of a plethora of taboo subjects and its focus on the black-white, white-black Penalpusy co-minglings within the now defunct Slave Breeding Factory Plantation.
The 'Sixties Era' Left (then bristling with machismo and very much in the ascendancy of its influence on the national culture), thought the graphic brutality depicted throughout against the slaves to be an psychological elixir of payback for the White Audiance who had recently suffered a long ill-night spent with Riots and Panthers and the general overall meltdown of sunny whitebread america.
The Left felt a Need to be succored at the film's conclusion -- there ought to have been some degree of black retribution -- feel good stuff -- in order to help puff up black pride in the aftermath of seizing the Bastille. Meanwhile, the defeated cowering Conservative heirarchy wished nothing but a pox on the film; --- best to allow such disagreeable subjects to be swept under the rug of history ---
The genius of MANDINGO (both the novel and the film) was in the great array of characters that represented every role of the Great Dixie Plantation ---
All seem very, very human, with varying degrees of faults. And yet it becomes clear that all are incredibly ignorant people. They've all been 'programed' to believe that each is acting precisely how they ought to believe.
It is less their invididual human natures that cause them to take the actions they do, then it is the circumstances of the day, living as they did in the backwater country (no CNN or CBS to point out what Creatures they actually were). We are left then with a small, tight cast of interconnecting 'creatures' that are being bounced along, acting & dancing out their roles on a stage according to marionette strings that lead from No Where but the Tune of the Times; not unlike Poe's shadowy phantoms in his poem, "THE CONQUEROR WORM."
The student of Shakespeare will quickly note parallels between the schematic laid in Onstatt's novel and many of the Bard's human phantoms which pepper his tragedies; -- in this case, not all conniving insideous plots against one another, as in say, HAMLET, but instead all being naievely led about by Fate -- by the Tune of the Day, -- as in ROMEO & JULIET.
And so it is in the Lives of those at the Maxwell Plantation -- by themselves, none seem genuinely Evil -- each thinking their own personal morals, politics, etc are understandably decent ... even normal. The truth being that all are the greatest of ignoramuses. They mean to do what is expected of them --- whether goaded on by the Massa, by Cultured Society, .... or ... by The Great Jehosaphat himself (!!).
As the story proceeds the characters become increasingly pretzeled and interlocked withone another --- this in a stratified world where ever soul knows his or her place. At the conclusion of Act III, a boiling, whistling pitch brings all together in a fit of Human Insanity -- all are doomed, no survivors.
Not a single issue of the nightmare of the American psyche of the Plantation Era of our history is let be.
Blanche, the newly-wedded plantation matron is dim, but good hearted -- and innocent -- acting out the hand she was dealt in life. Raped by her brother at 13, she proved to be an experienced Delight on her wedding night, her new husband Hammond, being the young heir to Falconhurst.
Hammond too is seen to be a rather tenderhearted bloke --- a good joe (crippled with a hobble) who cares for his coloreds -- his 'duty' to pop cherries in the slave shanties is carried on without disregard, not unlike the other chores -- duties -- given to him. When he takes the slave girl Ellie as his concubine, Blanche takes to the bottle -- before taking the plantation's prize Mandingo fighter ($$$) to her bed.
The resulting mulatto is put out of its (falcolnhurst's) misery with the loosening of the plantatation's heir's umbilical claim to Firstborn Rights. The tale proliferates with incest, murder, child-rape, family breaking slave auctions, mysogeny, justice execution style, genuine love, genuine brutality, genuine Americana; all carried out in a genuine Ante-Bellum vernacular that would do Marc Twain proud.
It is not difficult to imagine sitting in a 19th century theater alongside Twain Lloyd Garrison & Harriet Tubman and Will Shakespeare all giving the film a standing ovation for its authenticity --- and its no-nonsense message. Of course both those in the bibble-belt as well as the unimaginative derelicts who have tried to ban & blacklist Twain from our schools will not agree.
MANDINGO was heavily critisized by all Camps, Left & Right, when it appeared. Although copies of the film are almost impossible to find, the book itself can be had at the library, at abebooksDOTcom or perhaps alibrisDOTcom. The film did as much justice to the book as the book itself was well reflected in the screenwriter's efforts.