AMERICA AS SEEN BY A FRENCHMAN

“A stunning and wistful piece of work.” -- On Magazine

The Mondo genre's heightened travelogue approach owes a debt to François Reichenbach’s AMERICA AS SEEN BY A FRENCHMAN, whose TRUE STORIES-like journey through America at the dawn of the Sixties came a few years before the landmark MONDO CANE. Prison rodeos; Miss America pageants; Disneyland a school for striptease; a town inhabited solely by twins; rows of newborns in incubators, like products on an assembly line -- all these weird and wondrous sights are captured sans jugdment by Reichenbach’s camera, aided by whimsical narration (provided by, among others, Jean Cocteau) and a jaunty score by the great Michel Legrand (THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG).