‘Carol Doda Topless At The Condor’ Review – A Wild Excavation Of A Cultural Icon

Photo Credit: Picturehouse

Carol Doda Topless at the Condor is all about the sixties when music was great and nightclubs were overcrowded. Women danced on pianos and singers glided from underneath dancers with sequined leotards. Those were the wild times of partying and hanging out with friends, participating in dance contests, and drinking without worrying too much about the health implications of a raucous lifestyle.

At a time of sexual and political liberation, deep in the heart of the women’s rights movement, Carol Doda – a successful cocktail waitress turned dancer at the Condor – decides to wear a monokini to work and turn the world upside down. The documentary does a great job of letting audiences enter the Condor and enjoy everything about it. It feels like a trip down ’60s lane to immerse oneself fully in the heat of the wild night spent dancing and drinking. The film makes Doda into a cultural icon in her own right, a witness to changing times and shifting platforms. Her dance in the monokini is a testament to the power of sexuality and femininity but also how society fears women’s bodies taking up too much space.

A monokini and a dancing lady on a hanging piano become the map on which the film tells the story of a nation amidst political unrest, youth rebellion, and a new form of physical expression for women. Doda becomes a part of a bigger tale, a larger manifesto of how times have been, and how far the world has come in terms of female self-expression and bodily autonomy. The film tries faithfully to capture what it must have been to live through these rowdy times and paint the essence of what these men and women have felt through their varying interactions.

Doda is one of the most interesting, carefree documentary subjects. Her stage persona at The Condor, already brimming with daily activity, transformed it into a place where topless women dance and serve drinks – solidifying her status as a modern feminist icon.

Directors Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker perfectly capture the power of a body, and what it can do to the hungry mind. In this film, nipples whether shown or hidden become tools of exposure and resistance, showing or hiding breasts become more or less statements either to empower or to send a woman into submission. Carol Doda freed the nipple even before the term was coined in the 2010s.

Doda’s revolutionary act anticipates decades later what the situation for women’s expression through fashion will be, and her insistence on continuing her show, on owning her body, and on having agency is what secured her place in history’s feminist fashion hall of fame. No matter what the consequences of her choices have been, it’s been refreshing to see Doda take matters into her own hands, and her commentary on her breast size and how it changed her life. The interviews with many of The Condor crew add a refreshing perspective on what it must have felt to observe the Carol Doda phenomenon at the height of its success.

There’s not a dull moment in Carol Doda Topless at the Condor because it encapsulates the ’60s. It tells a lot in such a short time but also forces its way into the seeking minds of modern viewers. Feminism when it was just a baby of the women’s liberation movement. Modern sexual and bodily themes back when the conservative post-war society was starting to engorge the residues of its past. A fun ride at a time and place where rules were made to be deliciously broken in heels, wearing a monokini. 

Carol Doda Topless at the Condor is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Picturehouse. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTITyLpW9nI]