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 ....

Amazon rejected my first review of this film because, among, other things, it didn’t “focus” on “specific features of the product.” The problem with the review, it seems to me, is that it was too “specific”—and I only pointed out in detail a few of the many objectionable things about this film, one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Now look, I don’t have any issues with sex or nudity in films, and none of those are “explicit” in Sweet Movie. Nor am I necessarily offended by awful table manners, but what is in this movie is simply beyond bizarre, patently unnecessary, and often nauseating—all done, apparently, for the sake of “art.” I’m sure John Vernon rues the day he agreed to do this film, and French actress Carole Laure certainly did, quitting half-way through the film after being forced to do one objectionable thing too many. Polish actress Anna Prucnal’s story line wasn’t even supposed to be in this movie, but Yugoslav director Dusan Makavejev had to add it in to fill out the runtime after Laure walked off the set in disgust. This film includes scenes of coprophilia (if you don’t know what that is, you don’t want to know anyways) and emetophilia (same thing). Pedophilia is also present, and if scenes of the remains from the Katyn massacre site was supposed to have some political “point,” it escaped me. The eating scene with frequent bouts of vomiting makes one wonder about the mental state of both the director and the “actors” who agreed to do this. I don’t care what all these five-star reviews say; just because Criterion released it doesn’t mean its “great” or a “lost gem”; it certainly deserves to be “lost.” What was there to "learn" from this film? I only felt like I needed to take a shower after watching it. I suppose that “avante garde” films like this do have their “apologists,” and some people might even “enjoy” this kind of thing. But I doubt even its defenders think this is something they’d want to watch more than once.

EROTICALLY SWEET...HOWEVER, IF YOU WANNA BE POLITICAL, BE FRANKLY POLITICAL, AND WITHOUT OVER-EROTICISM. MANY FILMMAKERS SIMPLY THINK THEY CAN BE FAMOUS WHEN THEY PUT POLITICS AND SEX TOGETHER, AND MAKE THEIR FILMS CONTROVERSIAL, THAT MEANS SUCCESS. HOWEVER, THE PRICE FOR THIS CAN BE SERIOUS, AND BESIDES, IT WON'T WORK SOMETIMES. SWEET MOVIE(1974) AND SUMMER PALACE(2007) ARE THESE ESSENTIAL EXAMPLES. IF YOU WANT SEX, DON'T BE TOO POLITICAL, AND THAT'S WHY I THINK SHROEDER'S MATRISSE(1976) IS A MASTERPIECE, IT'S PURE, SO IT GOES DEEPER IN BOTH EROTICISM AND HUMAN EMOTIONS. ALTHOUGH I RATE SWEET MOVIE LOWER THAN W.R., I STILL RATED BOTH OF CRITERION'S EDITIONS FIVE STARS, BECAUSE OF CRITERION'S SPECIAL VALUE FOR KEEPING DIFFERENT VOICES ALL OVER THE WORLD, AND ITS SUPERB QUALITY.

Sweet movie was good,great maybe.The movie was never dull and the further it went along the more interesting it became, right to the last scene where the Natalie Wood look alike did that extreemly erotic scene , nude bathing in chocolate syrup, this scene was a true masterpiece and will haunt me for some time to come.Where I would have liked to see things done a little diffrently.I,d like to see a little less human excrement and the erotic plays go a little further.All in all I,m glad I got the movie.

Im not sure where to begin. I think I bought this move, for Jack Nicholson, gave it a great review. I had to view this movie three times to get the full impact that it had to offer. Even now, Im not sure I got all the messages that Makavejev was giving us. He is and this movie, is that deep. If your the type that going to be offended by the "bizaare" settings and actions, I would stay away from this movie. God only knows the scene's in the sugar bins, or the dinner table will make you sick. If your able to view these images in a intellectul setting then "go for it" I would like to add also, that the acting by Carole Laure was extrodinaire'. She was in one word "beautiful" in body and setting the tone for this so deep controversal movie.