''Mondo Topless'' is a 1966

pseudo-documentary A pseudo-documentary or fake documentary is a film or video production that takes the form or style of a documentary film but does not portray real events. Rather, scripted and fictional elements are used to tell the story. The pseudo-documentary, ...

directed by

Russ Meyer Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that fea ...

, featuring

Babette Bardot Babette Bardot (born 1940) is a Swedish actress who appeared in Russ Meyer's films, including ''Common Law Cabin'' and ''Mondo Topless''. After attracting attention for her roles in Russ Meyer's films, Babette Bardot began touring the United S ...

and

Lorna Maitland Lorna Maitland, born Barbara Ann Popejoy (November 19, 1943), is an American film actress. She appeared in three Russ Meyer films: '' Lorna'', ''Mudhoney'', and '' Mondo Topless''. Biography Lorna Maitland was born in Glendale, Los Angeles C ...

among others. It was Meyer's first color film following a string of black and white " roughie nudies", including ''

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! ''Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'' is a 1965 American exploitation film directed by Russ Meyer and co-written by Meyer and Jack Moran. It follows three go-go dancers who embark on a spree of kidnapping and murder in the California desert. The fi ...

'' While a straightforward

sexploitation A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit s ...

film, the film owes some debt to the

French New Wave French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...

and

cinéma vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or ...

traditions, and is known to some under the titles ''Mondo Girls'' and ''Mondo Top''. Its tagline: "Two Much For One Man...Russ Meyer's Busty Buxotic Beauties ... Titilating ... Torrid ... Untopable ... Too Much For One Man!" The film was banned in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...

Plot

The film presents a snapshot of '60s

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

before shifting its focus to

strippers A stripper or exotic dancer is a person whose occupation involves performing striptease in a public adult entertainment venue such as a strip club. At times, a stripper may be hired to perform at a bachelor party or other private event. Mo ...

. The strippers' lives are earnestly portrayed as they reveal the day-to-day realities of

sex work Sex work is "the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation. It includes activities of direct physical contact between buyers and sellers as well as indirect sexual stimulation". Sex work only refers to volun ...

, talk bra sizes, relate their preferences in men, all voiced over while dancing topless to a '60s instrumental rock soundtrack. Throughout a large portion of the film, the narrator talks about the women as if they are a subgenre of the counter culture movement, somewhat similar to the

beatnik Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle. History In 1948, Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation", generalizing from his social circle to characterize the under ...

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

movements that were highly prevalent during the same era. The "Topless" movement as it is called by the narrator could also be perceived as an allegorical subset of the

Sexual Revolution The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the United States and the developed world from the 1 ...

of the 1960s.

Cast

as Bouncy * Pat Barrington as Herself (as Pat Barringer) * Sin Lenee as Lucious * Darlene Gray as Buxotic * Diane Young as Yummy * Darla Paris as Delicious * Donna X as Xciting * Veronique Gabriel as Herself (''Europe in the Raw'' footage) * Greta Thorwald as Herself (''Europe in the Raw'' footage) * Denice Duval as Herself (''Europe in the Raw'' footage) * Abundavita as Herself (''Europe in the Raw'' footage) * Heide Richter as Herself (''Europe in the Raw'' footage) * Gigi La Touche as Herself (''Europe in the Raw'' footage) * Yvette Le Grand as Herself (''Europe in the Raw'' footage) *

as Herself (''Lorna'' screentest footage)

Production

Meyer made the film after his "gothic period" - four dramatic movies he did in black and white, starting with ''Lorna'' and going through to ''

''. It was shot to cash in on the San Francisco "topless boom" of the 1960s.

Documentary traditions

The title ''Mondo Topless'' derives from the series of "mondo" films of the early 1960s. The first and most successful of these was '' Mondo Cane'' (''A Dog's World''). The purpose of these films was to bypass censorship laws by presenting both sexual and graphically violent material in a documentary format. ''Mondo Topless'' shares some stylistic similarities with

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...

's collaborative effort, ''Le plus vieux métier du monde'' (''The Oldest Trade in the World''). ''Mondo Topless'', like most other Meyer films, drew much of its inspiration from the more relaxed European attitudes toward sex, and was followed by a host of imitators.

Reception

Author Jimmy McDonogh later wrote, "How is this movie to be taken? An intense magnification of a completely negative sexual mythology? Or only a frenetic drone, an unrelenting meditation on nothingness best put into words by Pat Barringer, the dancer on the electrical tower: 'All that you're doing is a dance it has no meaning whatsoever...'" Roger Ebert wrote ''Mondo Topless'' "is in some ways quite an interesting film, especially for the light it sheds on Meyer's attitude to his big-busted actresses" which mostly features "topless dancers in incongruous situations... The film's real interest is in its sound track, which consists of tape-recorded interviews with the dancers. They talk about the hazards and advantages of having large bosoms. There seems to be something subtly sadistic going on here; Meyer is simultaneously photographing the girls because of their dimensions, and recording them as they complain about their problems ('I have to have my bras custom-made'). This sets up a kind of psychological Mobius strip, and the encounter between the visuals and the words in ''Mondo Topless'' creates the kind of documentary tension Larry Rivers was going for in ''Tits''."RUSS MEYER: King of the Nudies Ebert, Roger. Film Comment; New York Vol. 9, Iss. 1, (Jan/Feb 1973): 35-46. Police raided a cinema in Cincinnati where the film was being screened.Film-Makers' Man Shurlock Is the Last Movie Censor By Bob Thomas. The Washington Post and Times-Herald 6 Aug 1967: E3.

References

External links

* *
Review of film
at the Spinning Image
''Mondo Topless''
at BFI {{Russ Meyer 1966 films Films directed by Russ Meyer 1960s English-language films Mondo films Films set in San Francisco