Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

Stromboli

Stromboli (Stromboli terra di Dio). Roberto Rossellini, 1950.
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Edition screened: Italian Language version on Criterion Blu-ray #673 Stromboli, included in 3-Blu-ray set #672, 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman released 2013. English language with Italian dub and English subtitles. Runtime approximately 100 minutes.

Summary: Killing of a rabbit; fishing gore.

Details:
1) At 57:45 a caged ferret is set loose beside a small unsuspecting rabbit. The rabbit is attacked and killed through 58:13. Appropriately, the man responsible has repulsed the woman he was attempting to impress.
2) After a long wind-up showing fishermen arranging their boats and nets, an unbelievably ‘bountiful’ harvesting of huge tuna begins at 1:12:25 and runs through 1:14:55. Uncountable enormous fish are dragged out of the water with grappling hooks and pulled into the boats. It is very alarming to watch, with the multiple hooks digging deeply into the fish’s flesh and blood running out of their gills. 

Italian Neorealism is complicated and I am no expert. The rabbit/ferret scene and especially the long gory tuna haul are part of the earthy realism that combines with existential tensions to create works that are rooted in the gritty and speak to the ethereal. But damn it Roberto! There are so many ways to display the profound whatever of mankind. Animal cruelty is an easy cop-out, and beneath the creativity of a great director.

The Stromboli BD also contains the original 106-minute English-language version of the film, along with the 1998 documentary Rossellini Under the Volcano which returns to the island of Stromboli fifty years after the making of the film.


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