The Wild Eye Reviews

One of a number of films about filmmaking ethics. Documentarist Leroy photographs, with Olympian detachment, people's miseries that he has helped to foster. Seducing Bloch's wife, Boccardo, he brings her to Bombay, where he films opium addicts undergoing a cure in which they are severely beaten. Finding fewer addicts than he feels the footage requires, Leroy recruits ringers to undergo the torment. Traveling to Bali, he records the denigration of deaf-mute prostitutes. He then unsuccessfully importunes a Buddhist priest to immolate himself for the benefit of his camera. In India, he cajoles a starving, old, deposed maharajah into eating insects in exchange for some canned goods. Finally fed up with Leroy's callous, impersonal attitude, Boccardo excoriates him for making money from misery. They proceed to Vietnam to film the atrocities of the war. When Leroy learns of Viet Cong plans to bomb a bar, he sets up a hidden camera and seeks safe haven. The bar is blasted, killing most people inside, and Leroy retrieves his film. When he discovers the lifeless body of Boccardo amid the ruins, he has his assistant, Tinti, focus on his own face to record his tears.