Is certain that in this film they really killed animals?
I do not speak English good, I will do what can express to me. Is certain that in this film they really assassinated animals?
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MovieChat Forums > Il fiore delle mille e una notte (1974) Discussion > Is certain that in this film they really...
Yes. It's too low-budget to have faked it.
shareThey used to do this sort of thing surprisingly often in movies. E.g. see Two Mules For Sister Sara if you want to see Clint Eastwood actually decapitate a live rattlesnake in a scene played for laughs (director Don Siegel's autobiography matter-of-factly confirms this; Siegel seems to perceive no scandal in killing animals for the sake of a movie).
Bergman killed a horse onscreen in The Serpent's Egg. Horses were routinely killed (usually with tripwires that broke their legs, after which they were killed offscreen) to make westerns. The scene where birds are shot at the start of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid was done for real. A bull is killed onscreen in Apocalypse Now. The Monte Hellman/Warren Oates film Cockfightter shows real cockfights. A chicken is killed in a sex scene (!) in Pink Flamingoes.
According to an essay by Pauline Kael, John Milius had it written into his contract for writing The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean that he would get to kill the animals killed during the making of that movie himself.
Italian cannibal movies get bashed for this a lot, usually by people who seem to think those movies are unique in killing animals. They are probably the most explicit examples, with the killing done in gleeful closeup, but they are far from unique.
So yeah, animals were really killed in Arabian Nights.
Wow, talk about a comprehensive post. Are you an animals in films expert? :P thanks for the info though.
shareThis is all very disillusioning for me, as I am (or was) a huge fan of Pasolini. The Gospel According to Saint Matthew is one of my favorite films, and I managed to watch Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom without having nightmares afterward. I can tolerate sodomy and poop-eating (for artistic purposes, of course) but cruelty to animals is too much!
shareWassa matter, you vegetarian or something?
Seriously, if you are a vegetarian than your comment makes sense but if you eat meat (or jelly or cheese), or you wear leather (your belt? your shoes? the leather straps on your bondage gear?) then as far as I'm concerned the animals that died for your food or clothing were shown just as much "cruelty" as those that died making movies like this.
I'm not saying "Woo haa let's all get down and film ourselves killing animals," but there's a hypocrisy to many (and I'm not necessarily saying you - maybe you're a vegan who checks every product for animal products, I have no way of many) who have knee-jerk reactions to seeing an animal killed in a movie but then quite happily go and eat a hot dog without a moment's thought to the way the pigs the sausages are made out of are actually treated in battery farms and slaughterhouses.
In short, I don't see a quantifiable difference between an animal being killed for a scene in a movie, and an animal being killed so my feet can be dry and so my pants wiill stay up.
You go, sexy dancer! I couldn't have said it better myself. I don't take delight in animals being killed for any reason, but I'm not going to get my panties in a bunch about it, either. Some people just have to have something to concern themselves with. They get so crazy about protecting animals, they'll wish torture and death upon humans. Total nut cases! Here, we have someone going crazy over something that happened 36 years ago! LOL! Let's just hope she can jump in her way-back machine to go back to 1974 and stop it! LOL! And on her way back, maybe she can take the long way to stop all animal deaths between then and now. Man, she's going to be awful busy! Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll stop by her friend's house. You know the one - the one who owns the adult chimpanzee. LOL!
shareUm, I dont think the poster was "going crazy" or wishing harm upon humans in the place of animals.
Geez louise, calm down. The poster was simply expressing an opinion. Lighten up.
When an animal is killed for food, it is done so for the purpose of staying alive -- a cruel fact of life, one that could be avoided on a vegetarian diet, sure, but a fact of life all the same. Many animals kill and eat other animals, humans have eaten meat for millenia, and lean meats are an important part of diets. It is not a situation in which one kills something for entertainment or aesthetic effect.
When an animal is killed for clothing, it is still done for the purpose of staying alive, at least in some cultures. Again, this could be avoided if you have access to clothes made of various plant fibers, but not everyone does, and hides have been worn for millenia. But this too is not a situation in which one kills something for entertainment or aesthetic effect. (Fashion would be an example of aesthetics, but the purpose of fashion is not the actual killing of the animal.)
When an animal is killed for a film, it is killed for entertainment or aesthetic effect. It is the replacement of a cruel fact of life with a callous indifference to cruelty, or an appeal to sadistic urges. If one kills an animal for food or clothing, it is ultimately done in order to survive. This cannot be said of killing an animal for a film. The purpose is to kill the animal. This is patently different than eating meat or wearing animal hides: the death is the purpose, not the nutritional or other benefits of consuming the animal.
And no, I don't wear leather.
Pasolini had a specific vision of cinema as the language of reality. He rarely resorted to special effects, and when he did they were meant to look fake. (Salo is a notable exception to this.) In reality, people in the ancient Middle East would kill birds as sacrifices, so Pasolini insisted it be done in the film to reflect that reality. I hate watching that scene but try not to let it overwhelm my adoration of the film.
As you said it yourself, people today, at least in the "Western world", do have a choice not to kill animals either for food or clothing, so it's no longer a "survival" thing but, exactly that: a choice. Just as it is a choice for a film-maker to kill or not animals for artistic purpouses (and I do regard Pasolini's films as ART, not mere entertainment).
As I believe art as being just as important as any other primal activity that defines us as human being (eating, breathing, sheltering, affections...etc.) I am reasonably open to the fact that a film-maker who actually has a story to tell and not mere exploitation, might resort to that option.
Obviously if it can be done just as convincing by special effects, optical or mechanical, I am absolutely up for it but that, unfortunately, might have not been the case, quite often, in the past.
If a real animal's death scene in a movie is effective and shocking, it can actually work perfectly as a real-life deterrent against people who would want to try and do the same thing (I know cases of people who have turned to vegetarianism just because of that). Just as realistic screen violence against humans has a similar effect.
There are thousands of far more callous and unconsiderate ways we exploit and kill animals everyday without even noticing: even the mere fact of driving a car outside strict necessity and causing unnecessary pollution does precisely that and not to mention the ways we destroy the natural world by expanding our "natural habitat": hundreds of trees are burnt, cut down and eradicated every day for dubious reasons and, whenever one of these trees is destroyed, all the animals who live in it or depend from it are also killed or drawn a little step further towards extintion.
Just because we do not actually pay attention to these deaths, or do not end up on a film for us to see, does not make them any less worthy of outrage.
So for you it's the same thing to kill an animal to eat it than killing it for fun, entertainment and let it suffer for it..?
shareThings were very different in the world back then. People routinely beat their animals and there were few to no laws to protect animals. Of course people routinely beat their kids, and in public, slapped their wives, etc.
It's a whole different world now.
Somehow that is quite an oversimplification, but let's leave it there for now.
shareHorses were routinely killed (usually with tripwires that broke their legs, after which they were killed offscreen) to make westerns.Care to explain the logic behind your statement?
A chicken is killed in a sex scene (!) in Pink Flamingoes.A myth that has been debunked decades ago.
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Hmmm? share
A chicken is killed in a sex scene (!) in Pink Flamingoes.
A myth that has been debunked decades ago.
Woah woah woah, how is the chicken's death a myth? John Waters says so himself to this day that they killed that chicken on screen during that sex scene and that the crew later ate the chicken.
http://cuddercityfilmchronicles.blogspot.com/share
That's true. John Waters admits it.
They DID kill it.
Horses were routinely killed (usually with tripwires that broke their legs, after which they were killed offscreen) to make westerns.
Care to explain the logic behind your statement?
Certainly! In old westerns (and war movies) you will notice that there are scenes where horses fall over, apparently having been shot. These are not well-trained horses who fall on cue. They were tripped with wires. Often this would result in the horses' legs breaking, after which they were killed. Check out the 1939 movie The Charge of the Light Brigade for an example.
A chicken is killed in a sex scene (!) in Pink Flamingoes.
A myth that has been debunked decades ago.
Nonsense! Read that movie's writer/director John Waters's autobiography, Shock Value. He freely admits to it, and says that they ate the chicken afterwards.
His earlier movie, Mondo Trasho, actually opened with a scene of many chickens being decapitated, but it's hard to find that one because the soundtrack is chock full of music that he didn't bother to pay for. share
You forgot the decapitated chicken in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
Thats stock footage though, it doesnt count.
And the chicken in Pink Flamingos was killed for the scene but not DURING the sex scene. Basically they cut off the head off screen and starting shooting while it was still moving.
If you watch the scene you'll notice a cut just before it starts bleeding.
I Was Here But I Disapear
The animal killings for Heaven's Gate (1980) led directly to the Humane Society taking charge of supervising all filmed media that involves animals. So, that was the starting point for "No animals were harmed..." (Which The Critic (1994) later parodied as "No celebrities were harmed in the making of this episode.")
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