Sweet Movie (The Criterion Collection) [DVD]

Dusan Makavejev's SWEET MOVIE is a masterpiece of outrageous cinema that falls somewhere between the disturbing surrealism of Buñuel and Dali's UN CHIEN ANDALOU, the ironically vibrant color that Lynch uses in the opening of BLUE VELVET, and the subversive dark humor and scatology of Water's PINK FLAMINGOS. I was intrigued with a review I read, then I discovered that it featured Otto Muehl, a mysterious artist and sexual offender who was featured in Amos Vogel's classic book FILM AS SUBVERSIVE ART - which I read 25 years ago while studying film in college. Muehl filmed his "happenings" like a lot of people in the 1960s, but his "happenings" were like unfettered Id explosions of sex, bodily fluids, food and vomit. Just the stills in the books had something about them that made me realize this was the guy who took cinema right up to the edge in a free form that made Jean-Luc Goddard's films look like Hollywood blockbusters. These classic, seldom seen films can be viewed on Muehl's website. SWEET MOVIE has two plots that kind of converge: First there is the Carole Laure, as Miss Canada, who wins a "beauty contest" where the women are screened by a gynecologist on stage to see if they are virgins. PULP FICTION fans should note that when the doctor looks at Laure's vaginal, it glows like the famous suitcase. The contest is staged by the mother of a wealthy milk tycoon (John Vernon). After a bizarre concept of foreplay, it is revealed that the tycoon has a golden penis. Laure freaks out so bad that the mother has a servant take her to a secret room where she is further humiliated, then stuffed into suitcase and sent off as luggage on a plane. A good chunk of the film follows this luggage bag going all over Europe. Inter cut with these two stories is gruesome black and white documentary footage the Nazi's shot of the discovery of the mass graves from the Katyn massacre, where 21,000 people were Polish citizens were killed by the Soviets. Meanwhile Anna Prucnal play the Captain of a ship filled with sugar and candy, and it also has a giant head of Karl Marx on the front of it. Makavejev's original concept was to have Marx's mouth in the water, so you couldn't tell if his was swimming or drowning, but when the boat was launched his who face was above the waterline. Prucnal picks up a sailor, Potemkin, in an obvious homage to Eisenstein's famous film of the same name. She warns that if she falls in love she will kill him. She also seduces three young boys, first with candy, then with a striptease in a scene that I'm not even sure you could legally film today - think TIN DRUM times three. Meanwhile Laure finally finds herself at the Eiffel Tower where she meets "El Macho," a romantic singer who lip-syncs to old records. She is eventually taken in by Muehl's commune. After a dinner where everyone eats and then joyously throws up, I believe it is Muehl himself who is naked and pees on camera and a bucket of feces is poured on him as he screams and cries like a baby. Please note, I am not talking about special effects; he is peeing, and those are actual feces. Makavejev has noted that while that wasn't exactly what he was looking for, it was a collaboration between him and the infamous Muehl, so he left it in with all the ugliness. The grand finale there are two of the most beautiful scenes in the history of cinema. The first is of Prucnal and Potemkin having sex in a bed of sugar, where she stabs him - lots of red on white in the shot - and buries him in the sugar. The second is, rather than feces, Laure is covered from head to toe in chocolate for a commercial and makes designs on her nude body with it. The police stop the ship and have the bodies of the children Prucnal are discovered murdered. They are laid out in plastic body bags on the shore, which is edited with the bodies from the massacre being laid out in the same fashion. After all the black and white footage, the scene comes back to the children, who come to like and seem to be leaving their "cocoons." I'm sure I'm missing some of the point, as this was made for a young audience behind the iron curtain 30 years ago, but I get enough to love the bizarre beauty of the film. Not only is it obviously subversive, a strange humor runs throughout the film, and it is beautiful. Makavejev wanted to make the film a "love letter to color film," and he succeeded in spades. It's one of those films that's hard to describe in words; the poetic beauty and crazed comedy have to be seen to be understood. I would throw it in that group of films that dare to wallow in their own creativeness, no matter how alienating it might be to the general public, like the ANDY WARHOL'S FRANKENSTEIN, ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA, HEAD, THE TRIP, BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS, and even the subversive porn films like PARTY DOLL A GO GO or ULTRAFLESH. It's a cult movie looking for it's cult. If you got this far in the review; BUY IT! -copyright Wilhelm Murg, 2009

DVD looks great. The item is exactly as described & arrived on time.

There are movies that are devised from formulas developed to serve (and be served by) the Demographic ..... and then there are those rare films that create their own audience. Unfortunately, when Makavejev first unleashed his Sweet Movie in 1974, most interested parties of influence saw fit to have it banned, and the filmmaker himself was exiled (along with some cast members) from his native Yugoslavia for nearly 15 years. Multi-mega kudos to Criterion for rescuing this now very alive and relevant explosion of a movie from near-obscurity. Beautifully restored, looking and sounding better than I remembered it, and including in this edition interviews and more in-depth facts about the making and history of this one-of-a-kind movie, watching it again restored in this viewer an appreciation of artists who put themselves way out on a line to give life to a vision, one that can become more relevant over time, despite overall condemnation at its initial release. As stated in the accompanying literature, there are countries where the movie is banned for any sort of distribution, to this day. The dual story line, about two Women of Earth (Miss Monde 1984 and Captain Anna Planeta), is interwoven in a montage-like format that lashes out at Capitalism and Communism, spits in the eye of all manner of creative or sensual oppression, and does so in a take-no-prisoners satirical fantasy sense that helps lighten up the otherwise dark and intense subject matter. As Makavejev explains in an interview, had he tried to do any of it seriously, it would have hampered his film's acceptance all the more so, for it was fully his intent to make contact with his audience in an entertaining, circus-style (although somewhat abstract) manner. Anna Planeta commandeers a sort of ghost ship, Survival (sporting a huge carving of Karl Marx's noggin on front), through the canals of Amsterdam; she is a phantom, a political prostitute, and a reluctant predator, attracting victims with sex, candy and propaganda. She is joined by a nameless sailor who wears a cap from the Battleship Potemkin (another phantom?), and despite her warnings that her sweetened cargo is rife with corpses, he is swept up in the happy delirium of the Survival's relentless voyage to ...? Meanwhile, Miss Canada is inspected by a notable gynecologist on The Crazy Daisy Show, wins the title of Miss World 1984 along with an arranged marriage to a Texas milk tycoon who wants to buy Niagara Falls. The wedding night doesn't go so well, and next thing she knows she is knocked out, packed into a suitcase and shipped off to Paris ..... at which point things get weird on a Candide level. Much of the movie's final third, involving a near-explicit sex dance for young boys and some truly disturbing performance art (which was entirely improvised by Otto Muehl's Viennese Therapy Commune) involving eating, excreting, self-mutilating and acting like babies is certain to elicit squirms, and a private first viewing is highly recommended. Although, if you really wanted to mess with people at a party, play this film and follow it with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. As mentioned earlier, the included extras deepen the experience of the film, as well as introduce a welcome sense of normalcy after viewing. One outstanding addition is star Anna (Planeta) Prucal's interview about the effect the film had on her life (she was one of those who was exiled), and a stunning performance of a song from the film that will induce tears. Her blissfully unbound performance as Captain Anna carries Sweet Movie with a courage that is near unmatchable in cinema. No less courageous is the beautiful Carole Laure, whose surreal odyssey in the parallel reality we share in a nearly unspeaking performance, and whose undulations in a vat of chocolate syrup will linger long in the viewer's memory. A hard film to recommend, but great for one of those Dare-Yourself-To-Sit-Through-It evenings, Sweet Movie's return down the canal is certain to open up a whole new generation of discussion with its resurrection into the digital archives. The title itself is its own expletive; but like any significant work, its "meaning" is wholly about the effect of its experience.

I saw Sweet Movie in 1978, and twice at Reykjavík Film Festival 2000. In 1978 I was twenty and it went on screen in Laugarvatn High School as a part of Reykjavík Art Festival. The newspapers were full of noisy protest that the sweet movie was ugly and horrible. As youngsters we liked it in particular due to the uproar. We found the exchange of bodily excrements very funny. Next to me sat the school's prettiest girl. She found the chocolate bath at the end of the film beautiful, a different reaction from what Sidneysider describes below (Robert of Ashfield). She died of a terrible illness five years later, the same year Sidneysider saw his 10 minutes of Sweet Movie. In 1978 it was kind of fashionable to be open minded, and being old fashioned and prudish was very out. In 2000 Sweet Movie had got on well, though it was almost impossible to find a copy. It is a bit of a slide show of different ideas. I don't care about symbolism, it is just very beautiful. But it touches on various subjects. It even touches on sexual abuse. NOTA BENE: I should like to promote Sweet Movie as a music experience. Some of the music is quite strange, some indeed interesting, and all of it very pleasant. And the film is full of it. So, listen to the music. - I seldom watch films, but this one is a favourite, to be ranked with Orson Welles' The Trial, Kurosawa'a Dersu Uzala, and Tarkovski's Stalker. A grotesque world, but somewhat enviable ....

I can't even imagine sitting in the audience watching this in 1974, then again I'm not sure most people here could because it was immediately banned in the UK on release. Combined with that, the female lead got exiled from Poland for 7 years just for being in this film, that's how controversial it is. But my god it is brilliant, the set design replicating that of Caligula or the holy mountain, you can practically taste how vibrant the colours are. The plot is so straightforward and yet so unthinkable quite literally art in it's purist form. Plus criterion hits out the park with some amazing extras. I would really recommend this for any film lover who's into the surreal side of things.

不快、グロテスク、いわゆる一般的に悪趣味と言われる映画を、ピエル・パオロ・パゾリーニを始めに、ユング・ブットゲライト、更にアレハンドロ・ホドロフスキーらの代表作、そして最近では「セルビアン・フィルム」などを北米版ブルーレイで観てきた身でも、このドゥシャン・マカヴェイエフの最高作と言われる本作には、久々に驚かされた。嘔吐すること、嘔吐している人を見ること、またはその吐しゃ物によって性的興奮を得ると言う概念というかカテゴリーがあることを、この映画で始めて知った。後半に主人公の女性が全裸で、チョコレートまみれになるシーンはそこらのハードコア・ポルノ真っ青の、強烈さだ。ユーゴスラビア出身というこの監督は、映画表現の限界に臨んだ奇才という感じで、フェリーニの感じもあり。'74年の作品である本作を、デジタルリマスターの完全版で出してくれるクリテリオン・コレクションは、やはり偉い。

Weird Movie

Très très chaud

Extremer Film.