Product Details

• Actors: Eva Ras, Slobodan Aligrudic, Ruzica Sokic, Miodrag Andric, Aleksander Kostic
• Directors: Dusan Makavejev
• Writers: Dusan Makavejev, Branko Vucicevic
• Format: Box set, Black & White, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Croatian
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 3
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion
• DVD Release Date: October 13, 2009
• Run Time: 295 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B002IVDLHI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,840 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Eclipse Series 18: Dusan Makavejev- Free Radical" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

There’s never been another filmmaker quite like Dusan Makavejev. Even in the 1960s, when all of cinema’s steadfast rules seemed to be breaking down and artists such as Godard, Cassavetes, and Marker were dissolving the boundaries between fiction and documentary, Yugoslavia’s Makavejev stood alone. His films about political and sexual liberation were revolutionary, raucous, and ribald. Across these, his wild, college-like first three films, Makavejev investigates—with a tonic mix of earnestness and whimsy—love, death, and work; the legacy of war and the absurdity of daily life in a Communist state; criminology and hypnosis; strudels and strongmen.

Eclipse Series 18 Includes:

Man is Not a Bird (Covek nije tica)
A copper-factory town in the mountains serves as the unexpected site for a strange brew of sex, hypnosis, and Beethoven in Makavejev's dizzying debut.

Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Ljubavni slucaj ili tragedija sluzbenice P.T.T.)
The romance between a young telephonist and a rat exterminator lays the groundwork for a tragic, funny, and modern look at relationships in sixties Belgrade.

Innocence Unprotected (Nevinost bez zastite)
In this documentary-fiction hybrid, one of Yugoslavia's most infamous (and ridiculous) lost films becomes the canvas on which Makavejev colorfully paints a violent national history and an absurd biography of a real-life escape artist and acrobat.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars radical, but watchable, November 9, 2009

By 

Daniela Ratcheva "Daniela" (Atlanta, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eclipse Series 18: Dusan Makavejev- Free Radical (DVD)

WR: Mysteries of the Organism may be the quintessential Makavejev movie according to the movie scholars, but I prefer these three movies instead. They are sad, funny, rude and bittersweet like the life itself. According to Dave Kehr "these movies are like ghostly dispatches from a long vanished country". I could not agree more. Buy this box set, for the price it is the bargain of the year.

5.0 out of 5 stars Criterion release of early Makavejev! Must See!, January 25, 2012

By 

KinoChelovek - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Eclipse Series 18: Dusan Makavejev- Free Radical (DVD)

Growing up, I really loved (and still do) reading about foreign cinema and its great directors. One of the greatest longings for me was to see some of the movies that foreign films made, but they just weren't accessible, especially in the late 70s and 80s. One of these directors was Dusan Makavejev. Because of Tito, Soviet Russia, and the Soviet Bloc countries, and how the good ol' USA felt about showing such movies, one could only READ about them and not see them, unless one was lucky enough to go to a film festival in a big city, or even abroad.

I had seen "Sweet Movie" and "WR: Mysteries of the Orga(ni)sm" (yes, the title was changed to "Organism"), because they were those "taboo movies" that mommy and daddy would not let you see (like "A Clockwork Orange," for example). I was also a fan of "The Coca-Cola Kid" in the 80s.

A couple of years ago, I decided to write a paper and do a presentation on Makavejev's work, and, VOILA, Criterion had a box set that I didn't even know existed! I was able to do a decent analysis which discussed his early works and their pertinence to Tito's Yugoslavia.

"Man is Not a Bird" is a great early work about Socialist Industrial Yugoslavia, with sex, relationships, and Ludwig von thrown together.

"Love Affair..." I consider his best work - about a rat exterminator and his romantic urges.

"Innocence Unprotected" is a GREAT documentary about the acrobat Dragoljub Aleksic and tells his story, which is eerily juxtaposed with that of good ol' Tito - showing how people place legendary status upon people that have dubious beginnings.

Yes, Makavejev's work no longer has the impact as it did back in the 70s, in the heyday of pornography and revolutions, but the seeming "datedness" of his pictures doesn't show with these films (my opinion). He was a writer and director who, like Anais Nin and Henry Miller, played with censorship and what is appropriate (for example, one could cross-analyze Pasolini's "Salo" and Makavejev's "Sweet Movie"). With these 3 movies, he was staunchly "in your face" with Titoism and made movies that teetered on the edge of political blasphemy, as far as poking fun at ideology and the "larger than life" Tito.

Must buy, especially for die hard cinephiles, like myself, who are interested in films, history, and how films were produced in socialist regimes.

5 of 5! Thanks, Criterion! (also, looking forward to those New Wave Czech movies in their UPCOMING 2012 box set, which includes "The Joke"!).