Goat in The Merchant of Venice?
Posted by yabbitgirl on Mar 21, 2007 · Member since Apr 2006 · 14266 posts
I bought Al Pacino's "Merchant of Venice" on DVD. It's a beautifully done film, and Pacino, who is playing the bad guy, also manages to put the audience in his pocket and walk off with it...but I was disturbed at an early market scene in the film where they slit a young goat's throat--in closeup. I didn't see the trad "no animals were harmed" blip in the credits, but as it was filmed on location in Venice it may not have been a requirement. Can anyone reassure me that it was Animatronics or something??
BTW the scene was totally unnecessary and had nothing to do with the plot, which made it worse. :(
Here's the internet movie database entry on it:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379889/
I think they murdered a goat!
:'(
I may have been a little hasty in that judgement. But I've been reading the pdf on the film that's still on the Sony website:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/merchantofvenice/merchant_presskit.pdf
and it doesn't have the "no animals were injured. . . " disclaimer, either. The accuracy to the times, late 16th centiury, is emphasized over and over. On pg. 17, the wedding feast is described, and an "authenic boars' head and fully cooked rabbits" were provided. I think they probably did kill that goat.
I'm going to have to remember to check imdb before I rent from netflix. I don't want to see movies with the highlighted words!
Homosexual Subtext / Slit Throat / Homoerotic / Prostitute / Animal Killing
Crap, the changing color thing didn't work! The words "Slit Throat" and "Animal Killing" are what I meant, of course.
Yeah, that's what I thought...gulp...it looked awfully realistic. And, as I said, totally unnecessary. :'( He could just as well have been buying veggies or fruit...OK, so there's a visual parallel to the whole "pound of flesh" theme, but they could have shown a butcher's stall without the actual butchery!