Fresh and Exciting

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I saw this film four times when it was showing in Stockholm around 1975.I just want to give you my interpretation of Dusan piece of art. This is NOT a comedy, it is pure art in its most advanced form, a motion picture.The film is a warning to human kind.I hear people saying it is two 'story's'. No it is two different perspectives of the same story: Ours. And to underscore - these perspectives are intertwined, so the film jumps between them back and forth.The initial story is about a girl, that moves like a red thread from the extreme right-wing peoples screwed-up environment, attributes, actions and behavior - to the far left peoples screwed-up environment, attributes, actions and behavior. And she takes the path via the romantic, Spanish culture, in the Eiffel tower, as a midpoint of the story.This is an interesting way to describe ourselves, a sort of 'this is basically how it is.'A thing Dusan is fixated with, for good reasons, is the 'male phallus phenomenon', as this is really an important ingredients around our, actually rather primitive life. Far, far back in time.We will see many cock-related scenes - but the movie start with a directly opposite scene - the clitoris of the best valued virgin on the planet - AND the film ends with the same, now resignated woman, crawling around in melted chocolate - naked - for a commercial ad. A description of the tragic trap we can find ourselves in. The salary slavery.In between those two scenes, we will see a pissing golden erection, an afroamerican rope-jumping dick, a situation where the Spanish romantic guitarist get stuck by her vagina in a spasmodic paralysis, AND in one of the greatest phallus symbols of the planet: the Eiffel tower! Talk about sublime filmistic language! Further on, a pissing-on-food cock scene and a poop contest on a chain-driven ship-goods elevator, with the chains clappering, and the choir on this barge, singing the 'Internationale' in a funny way.The second story, shifting in and out, is about how we are tempted to try to change the Status Quo of the other perspective - change the here-and-now. Instantly by more or less violent revolutions. Anna Planeta symbolizes the tempter, with her boat filled with candy and sugar. And with Karl Marx big head in the fore of her ship. And the 'Potemkin'-sailor is the good man trying to catch the ship, i.e. join the revolution. By waving, shouting and smiling back on Anna's inviting flirts. He is the clear sighted dreamer, that want to change the world, only he could join this "revolution". And he succeeds with that, gets f***ed and murdered by the same revolution. Anna.The blue and white documentary film material showing the polish mass-graves, underscores the seriousness of this, otherwise VERY funny movie. You will never forget Sweet Movie. A must see-reel!The "warning" is NOT to try to scare people from dreaming of a better world, it is about HOW we should do it. Never use violence. Learn historical facts. Learn to identify small groups propaganda from true facts. Develop the equality based democracy. And learn the basics of Jesus true message: The simple principles of socialism: Equality, Siblingship, Freedom (not the freedom to enslave or exploit the work of others) Eternal Love, Solidarity, Commonwealth for all, where we cannot own a limited territory, only lease our fair share from the elected state-function. I.e. lease it from ourselves. As a reference: There is a part in the new testament: Acts 4, v. 32-37 that shows how they looked at the socialistic way of living, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. The first definition of true socialism is from the message of the man, Jesus, and this part is also labeled 'Community of Property' in the New Testament. This is facts only, and I am not a Christian, but I have my personal belief-system.That was just my 2 cents! =)"Threat others as you want to be treated." , "Love all living, even your enemies." Quotes by J Von N.

Back in the days when I was a sapling - by which I mean I was still developing and the sap was constantly on the rise - I was always up for a good Art film. This was because it was the late 60s, and it was a good bet that I would find something in an Art film which wasn't easily available elsewhere, namely moving images of naked women. The endless quest for naked women, though not yet extinguished, has abated somewhat over the years, and I am now better able to assess Art films without such matters obscuring my judgement. And my conclusion is as follows: some of them are, indeed, art, but many of them represent their maker following a particular vision which is not necessarily obviously apparent to the audience. I am not a deep person, obscure visions do not suddenly reveal themselves in clarity to me, and Art films therefore frequently strike me as pretentious rubbish.Dusan Makavejev has certainly been among the trailblazers of personal visions, and that is the case here. I do not have the vaguest idea what he is trying to convey in this strange, almost plot-free collection of sequences, many of which seem calculated to make the audience challenge their conceptions of what can be considered acceptable viewing. The extraordinarily beautiful Carol Laure goes through a series of increasingly odd experiences until she ends up pleasuring herself while writhing around stark naked in liquid chocolate in a sequence which surprised me at how explicit it was, particularly for 1974, and especially given that it was intended for public exhibition. And this was one of the the "normal" bits. Murder, war crimes, borderline paedophilia, and bodily waste all feature as one continues trying to a) keep one's dinner down and b) figure out what it all means.I'm no wiser, but I am sure that it's not entertainment.

This is one of those great, "cinematic endurance test" films. It's really an amazing piece of cinema, maybe like Godard meets Jodorowsky. It is reminiscent of Pasolini's Salo, except it has more humour, and is nowhere nearly as bleak as that film. It has a well deserved reputation of being a shocking, polarizing film, but I think it's amazingly good.Dusan Makavejev is a great director, and there are other things going on here aside from a boring, staid debate over Communism vs. Capitalism. The "commune" scene is what really pushes people over the edge here. The participants were an actual real commune run by artist/filmmaker/painter Otto Meuhl, and everything you see is pretty much real. Even though Dusan explains who they are and what they were about in the interview on the disc, it doesn't detract from the strangeness or the mystery of why they are there, and why Little Miss Virginity ends up partying with them. The scene is so wild that you can't believe it actually happened. Here we see people urinate on each other here, indulge in emetophilia and coprophilia. And later a couple makes love in sugar and chocolate. Does this sound interesting to you? It should, because the film makes other points as well. It's not just shock value here.And despite the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the film hasn't really dated. An absolutely fascinating aspect of this film is that it starts out as a 70's time capsule, at least that's what I thought when I started watching it. The Little Miss Virginity contest would have shocked audiences in 1974, but not today. But as the film progresses, it gets stranger, more surreal, many things are left unexplained, and the ending is very haunting. It is not a time capsule, but a continuously challenging bit of cinema. It has retained its power over the years (quite like its stoic, humourless cousin, Salo). The movie burns into your retina, and you can't shake it, no matter how "jaded and hip" you think you are. It's really quite outstanding, and I'm very thankful that Criterion released this film on DVD. It has been notoriously hard to find, especially in its uncut, uncensored version. Many films use the word "uncensored" as a marketing gimmick, but this film was really censored in many countries (and is still banned in many of them today). I won't go into any more details about it, other than you will never forget this film.

First thing, this movie will certainly not be pleasant to most viewers. Even those who will like it (if they are any) or those who will find something interesting in it will still be left in a state of disorientation (and disgust). Contrary to many comments seen around, I really think one can make sense of this film. It helps to know that it was inspired, in part, buy W. Reich's psychology. This film aims at pushing to its limits the boundaries of the two world views (Weltanschauung) that dominated intellectual life in the 1970's western world: the bourgeois capitalist society and its anti-thesis named communism which is here presented bluntly in text and song or through the romantic experience of a commune (although the commune is everything but romantic!). The two women, who hold the narrative together, present each one of these world views. They reject both the conformism of bourgeois society (well, it is not totally conformist in this movie but I'll let you find out…) and the rigidity of communism. The bourgeois (the first woman's husband) is obsessed by cleanliness, has very bad knowledge of history (or reality?) and is incapable of sexually satisfying his wife (or rather his ways of satisfying them are not up to her standards – or any one else's by the way!). The commune members are obsessed with bodily fluids (all of them! which in a certain way, they share with the bourgeois), transgressing bourgeois values (showing that abundance often – if not always - makes you sick) and sexualizing every aspect of life. One of the key moments in the film is when the bourgeois woman leaves capitalism (exposed metaphorically through, for example, a game show and a helicopter ride over Niagara Falls). After a trip to Paris in a briefcase, she enters a commune in which she is incapable of feeling at ease as her new «friends» indulge in eccentricities for which she would not have imagined (or, analytically speaking, going back to them). The same thing happens albeit differently to the woman from a communist country. Travelling the world in a Marxist boat (that is a boat which has a huge head of Karl Marx on the front) she enters – almost dreamlike - a society of abundance metaphorically shown by the boat being full of sugar and candies. If the capitalist woman left her world for its antitheses – a commune - and stays incapable of satisfying her sexual desires (take note that she always seem to go back to were she came from although with different people and situations) – the communist one needs to seduce revolutionaries and pre-teens for that (she is sexually satisfied though – or so we are left to believe). But, in the end, she has to kill all who are seduced (does she have to destroy what gives her satisfaction?). The movie ends in a certain synthesis of those world views, as we see our capitalist woman sexually satisfying herself in a bath full of chocolate for television (again, she returns to were she started – on television). This movie, it seems to me at least, is much about creating discomfort in the viewer (maybe in a slightly Brechtian way, though without breaking the fourth wall, but certainly by creating discomfort). It also criticizes both capitalism and communism, nothing is left intact it seems. They are no clear winners. That is one of the reasons for which it is not for everybody. Yes, they are lots of graphic scenes which will, to say the least, shock most people, but those who limit their commentary to those scenes seem to miss the point completely. What will destabilize most viewers is that after all of this (and I haven't written about everything that we see), it does not try to answer any questions. What in the end is good or bad, Capitalism or Communism? I'm not saying this movie is great, but it got me thinking a lot. In such, this makes viewing it possibly rewarding (even if some of the scenes are really disgusting and others are plain silly). And depending on your sense of humour, you can get a good laugh at it - it got me laughing more than once.