One of the cool effects of watching a movie every day is that my mind looks for patterns between them and I sometimes notice really cool pairings for double features.
Check this one out for example: How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman and The Wicker Man. The two films have many parallels that I don’t think I would have noticed if I hadn’t have watched them back to back.
First some background:
Spoilers I guess!
How Tasty… is a black comedy about a French man enslaved by the Portuguese and then captured by the Tupinambás. The Tupinambás are actually allied with the French, but because they found him among the Portuguese, they assume he’s one of them. One of the jokes involves him and a couple of Portuguese trying to convince the Tupinambás that they are French. He does so by reciting poetry, the others recite cooking recipes, and the Tupinambás conclude that they must all be Portuguese. One of the many ironies in this film is that, despite being taken as a prisoner and eventual meal, the Frenchman is treated with more dignity by the Tupinambás than he was by the Portuguese. He can walk around and generally do as he pleases. The tribe gives him a wife who helps him understand the culture. There’s a beautiful scene near the end where she explains what the ceremony will be like. They play out each moment and it seems like he has come to accept his fate. She talks about how she will eat his neck. It’s bizarrely tender.
The Wicker Man is a horror mystery about a lone cop trying to discover the whereabouts of a missing child. He flies to the banks of an isolated island where everyone appears to follow a pagan religion that is not ashamed of sex or sacrifice.
In each film, our protagonist is in a similar situation, outside of their culture and thrust into another that diverges sharply from Christian mores. The Tupinambás practice ritual cannibalism and do not cover their bodies with cloth. The people of Summerisle are open about sex and revere it. They also practice ritual blood sacrifice.
The Frenchman rolls with the circumstances he is in. He takes on the local hairstyle and form of dress and spends most of his time with a wife that is given to him by the tribe. Neil, on the other hand, despises the local people and their culture and outwardly shows contempt for nearly everyone.
The two of them meet almost the exact same end. Before he is killed and eaten, the Frenchman shouts that the feast will do nothing for his captors and one day, all of them will be exterminated. While Neil is dragged to his final destination, he screams that the sacrifice will be useless and the people’s crops are destined to fail.
All in all, these two gave me a lot to chew on concerning the socialization and acculturation of morality. They were also just really entertaining. I watched How Tasty… on YouTube in case you were wondering how you could see it.
