Mandingo

If you are going to study the history of race and film in America, you are going to have to get up close and personal with Mandingo--I taught it in a seminar a couple of years ago and will return to it again in Spring 2010. Onion's AV Club riff on the film is worth re-reading.

This particular scene, wherein a plantation wife, Susan George as Blanche Maxwell, metes out punishment to a slave, Ellen (Brenda Sykes) who has consorted with her white husband, Perry King as Hammond Maxwell, is excruciating to watch but essential to ponder!