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Sweet Movie [VHS]

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Dusan Makavejev's 1974 film Sweet Movie is an indictment toward all forms of authority and convention. It does not obviously or even wittingly perhaps come from an honest political standard itself, but it instead exists to attack all that rules us. It skewers capitalism, communism, and absolutely everything in between. Perhaps it is a call specifically for some sort of Anarcho-Primitivism? Perhaps Sweet Movie is simply a celebration of life in its own sick and twisted way?

Sweet Movie follows two different stories and both feature a female protagonist. The first follows a contestant of the 1984 Miss Monde pageant. She wins and her prize is her marriage to some big corporate dude. She is shocked by how he degrades her in their first meeting and she runs away. Her rejection is met with displeasure by his cronies and she ends up getting pretty severely humiliated and then stuffed into a suitcase and shipped off to France. After that she gets stuck to some Latin guy and enters a commune and some pretty wacky things happen. This story operates as a criticism toward capitalism and consumerism at the beginning and the conclusion, while it seems to attack communism in the middle. The second story follows a young woman who is leading a boat down a river. The boat is full of candy and has a statue of Karl Marx on it. She seduces all who encounter her with sex, candy and propaganda. Then she kills them. Obviously it is a direct attack on communism.

There are some pretty shocking things in Sweet Movie but that shouldn't be a surprise when taking into account the time period and some of the subversive and surreal counterculture names involved in the film (e.g. Otto Muehl, Roland Topor and George Melly). The film captures a cultural movement in some respects and the significance is there but overall Sweet Movie was too obscure to have an impact. Only now does it resonate but for very different reasons. It stands out for its visual shock alone.

There is a very strong emphasis on bodily functions in Sweet Movie, more so than anything I've ever seen or even want to see again for that matter. I can't pinpoint why but it's more than likely Dusan Makavejev's attempt to compel us to revolt against all of our societal institutions by directly desensitizing us to his perspective that we are all just gassy and disgusting animals. Spend a few days resisting your normal cognitive functions or spend some time with dementia patients and you'll get a good smell of what Makavejev is trying to get at here...I think? I'm not sure I agree with him in those sorts of details, but in spirit I like where he is going with Sweet Movie. We all could use a good smack away from the restraints of everyday society.

Keep in mind; it is virtually impossible to get anything out of Sweet Movie if you take it too literally. It is designed to surprise the viewer and club them over the head with shock. The problem with that is Sweet Movie was so shocking for its time that it was hardly even seen. People were not ready then, but maybe the world has grown sicker since. Criterion may have picked a more accessible release date for Sweet Movie than Makavejev did. Asking ourselves the questions that this film might produce may be more important now than ever.

While typing this I still can't believe what I just watched and thankfully enough I had a couple of wine glass's to relax my senses. This movie is like all over the place but its essentially two inter-cut stories, but I can explain better by separating them two. Weirdly enough I'll start with the second story with a woman (Anna Prucnal) who helms a boat through the canals of Amsterdam with a bust of Marx on the bow. A sailor on a bicycle from the battleship Potemkin pursues her, as he wants to be her next lover. She is "revolution" and warns him that her lovers always die. While that is playing out, controversy occurs when she seduces several young children. Makevejev intercuts German footage of the uncovering of Polish victims of the Russian massacre at Katyn Forest. He contrasts Prucnal's victims with the dead Polish army.

In the primary plot line, a world beauty contest is held to find the most beautiful virgin in the world, who will become the bride of a rich Texas oilman (Dean Wormer!) who is obsessed with cleanliness. Miss Canada (Carole Laure) is the winner. The couple gets married and helicopters to his home. He undresses, scrubs her with alcohol, and then shows her his golden swhwartz, whereupon she starts screaming uncontrollably. Eventually, his overbearing mother sends her packing (literally packed into a suitcase) where she has adventures with a macho Mexican singer at the Eiffel Tower, but becomes increasingly withdrawn and mute, and ends up in the Otto Muehl Troupe commune. It is this section which earned the film's notoriety, as the troupe believes in a kind of therapy where we all get in touch with our base selves, and have monthly events where they target a member, and engage in overeating, public defecation and urination, debasement, etc. The film ends with an amazing nude bath in chocolate.

Despite the constant sexuality and shock value, few scenes are actually erotic. Director Makavejev has more on his mind than just sex, however. He spends a good deal of time on political satire. Some, like the Texas oilman sequence, is heavy-handed and cartoonish (though his vision of 1984 America and its sexual double standards, with the funding of the Chastity Belt Foundation, quite presciently anticipates Reaganite America). More fierce is his criticism of the Soviet denial of the Katyn Forest massacre, boldly using Nazi footage of the exhumations, then frequently disparaged as mere propaganda but now known to be the truth, to accuse the Russians of genocidal war crimes. Besides that "Sweet Movie" is clearly not for kids (though they like sugar), or even most adults, this is a movie only for those who want to have there buttons pushed.

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.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

What is it - a satire on social and sexual politics, government sponsored genocide, democracy for Eastern Europe and the stereotypes of the times? Or non-connected collection of shocking images that include "virgin beauty contest" the winner of which would marry a billionaire, Mr. Kapital (John Vernon) with golden penis; an intercourse in Eiffel Tour that ends up with a spasm; a dinner party with the members of Viennese commune Friedrichshof, a revolutionary/ siren /vampire, Anna Planeta who sails a riverboat with a huge Karl Marx head on its bow on the canals of Amsterdam and lures men and young boys aboard with her seductive songs for sex, candies, and death? "Sweet Movie" is all that and it shocks you even more, and I think it is a good and deep movie. It is extremely disturbing and it really tests its viewers on how much and for how long they would endure watching some of very disgusting stuff but everything what happens on screen does make sense and does prove the writer/ director's many points. Actually, first hour or so is a wild and funny surreal black comedy/satire of which my most beloved filmmaker Don Luis Bunuel would be proud.

The two scenes closer to the end really push all possible envelopes. After I found out that the participants in the "commune" scene were actually the real members of Friedrichshof, the Viennese commune that had been founded and run by artist/filmmaker/painter Otto Meuhl, and everything we see is pretty much real, I was shocked even more. Dusan Makavejev explains in the interview on the Criterion disc who the people are and why they engage in the shocking activities. From what I understood, the acts of people urinating on each other, indulging in emetophilia, coprophilia, were the part of Wiener Aktionismus or Viennese Actionism, the Art movement which is remembered for the willful transgressiveness of its naked bodies, destructiveness and violence. Makavejev added that what those people were doing to themselves and one another was also a part of the group therapy. Whatever it was, I had to fast-forward some of the scene.

The most disturbing and important scene in the movie (and it is often overlooked by the viewers and critics) is a real footage of the 1943 discovery of mass graves at Katyn Forest by Germany, after its armed forces had occupied the big European part of the former USSR in 1941.

From Wikipedia: "The term "Katyn massacre" originally referred to the massacre, at Katyn Forest near villages of Katyn and Gnezdovo (about 12 miles (19 km) west of Smolensk, Russia), of Polish military officers confined at the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp in 1940. Estimates of the number of executed persons ranges from 15,000 to 21,768."

The Soviet Union continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when Mikhail Gorbachev in his attempt to openness, acknowledged that the NKVD (People Committee of Internal Affairs, later known as KGB - Committee of State Security) secret police had in fact committed the massacres and the subsequent cover-up. The Russian government has admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacres, although it does not classify them as war crimes or as acts of genocide. Including the footage of the war crimes of such scale that were completely unknown to the West during the high point of the Cold War, and trying to get attention to those crimes and acknowledge their victims, was a courageous act from Makavejev. As he said in the end of his interview - as long as we remember the ones who died, they are not dead.

Reading the reviews and comments about "Sweet Movie", I realized that some posters were puzzled and somehow confused with the "revolutionary" part of the story that involves Anna Planeta and her killing boat. Since I also "came in from the Cold", like Dusan Makavejev did, his many references to the history of Eastern Europe of the last century, including two World Wars, and Revolutions, make a lot of sense to me. For those who want to learn more, I highly recommend watching featurette with the film scholar Dina Lordanova. This 20 minutes long documentary may help you to understand better what is behind all the shocking imagery and what Makavejev wanted to say. I already mentioned interview from 2006 with the director/writer which is very interesting. The last featurette presents Anna Prucnal who talks about the impact "Sweet Movie" made in her life and she sings the song "The Urchins Down In the Meadow" in Italian (it is performed in Greek in the movie during the Katyn Forest scene). Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote the Italian lyrics for the song.

Senior Pasolini, I think I am ready for your movie now.

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

After having watched Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Orgasm the other day, I decided to check out the director's even more infamous 1974 film Sweet Movie and while I can see why the film caused such a stir nearly 35 years ago, I found the film to be boring at best, and some scenes containing scatology, both coprophilia and emetophilia, were just a bit too much for me and I generally have a high tolerance for graphic film.

The film opens with the mother of a milk tycoon looking for the perfect virgin to marry her son so that he will end his wild ways. After meeting such women as Miss Congo and Miss Yugoslavia, who do not quite fit the model of the desired virgin, Miss Canada, Carole Laure, whose beautiful brown eyes and brown hair, not to mention her perfect hymen which apparently gives off soft golden light. However, the night of their wedding is less than successful when she becomes terrified of Mr. Kapital's gold-plated member. She is then shipped off to Paris where she makes love to El Macho and joins a commune who indulges in all the desires of the Id, such as the scatology I mentioned above.

Paralleling Miss Canada's story is that of a ship captain whose freighter sports a papier-māché head of Karl Marx. She picks up a young Russian sailor, Potemkin, get it?, and the two make love in a bed of sugar.

Without seeming prude, I do understand that the film was speaking out against both Communist and Rapid Capitalism, but there are limits, and this film definitely stretches those limits. Not for the weak of heart, Sweet Movie offers its viewers a number of "Oh My God" moments, but its vulgarity and vileness almost cover up any attempt as a social commentary. Nice use of chocolate though in the last scene!

Definitely the most offensive art film ever produced, Dusan Makevejev's "Sweet Movie" is some sort of masterpiece; however, its onslaught of scatological and distasteful images is likely to repel viewers who might otherwise be responsive to its merits. Alternately headily intellectual and extraordinarily crude, beautiful and disgusting, this is a film that could have only been made in the early seventies, when foreign cinema was at its most outrageous and excessive following the relaxation in the sixties of standards as to what was appropriate to show on screen. Makevejev pushes this permissiveness to its limits, fashioning an extreme exercise in political polemic and sexual perversity that holds up two decades later as one of the period's strangest and most vital films; the end result comes off like an unholy collaboration between John Waters and Jean-Luc Godard. One of the rare handful of films (such as Pasolini's "Salo") that is simultaneously completely depraved and absolutely wonderful, and a must-see for adventurous aficionados of foreign cinema.

To all those who said that this movie has not point I am sorry but you are wrong. The purpose of this movie is to basically give us a wake up call. The sugar represents how everything is sugar coated. All of the evil things that are done such as the children was sugar coated as if to make it less evil. Also the actual footage of the babies and the dead bodies, anyone know the significance here? It is real, this is not horrible things done by actors to make a movie. This is REAL LIFE but yet that does not phase us. Rather what freaks us out is people puking IN A MOVIE. The director reminds us at the end that this is a fictional movie because the children come alive, but the train in the background....any idea where that goes? It is a train to Aushwitz (dont think that is spelt right). The sailor that is picked up is the last suviving sailor from the ship that started the russian revolution(look at his hat). The rich man or Capitolistic america pisses and tarnishes all that is pure and innocent(his wife) in this world. There are so many connections to the real world. SO what he is saying is that actual footage of the true evil that has happened in this world should be more offensive to us then any finctional movie should be.

I have to begin by admitting this is not an easy film to watch. To the regular viewer, the scatological overtones are gratuitous, to say the least. However, watching this film within its politico-temporal context, one can see that it is rather mis-characterized. Allow me to explain my journey in watching this film:

Like many of you, I decided to watch it just because Criterion put it out. I've known Yugoslav cinema to be rather colorful and did not mind a bit. As things started, I immediately saw the transparent pointers to cartoon-like representations of the US, Soviet Empire and even Western Europe for good measure, and the end-conclusion/state of each one of the systems. Alright, assuming the film was made in the '90s, I said to myself, "For the sake of completeness and honesty, where is the depiction of the Yugoslav tragedy?"

Indeed, post-WWII Yugoslavia had been an interesting historic anomaly. Its president, the Croat Iosip Broz Tito, who had won the best anti-fascist credentials leading the partisan fight from the mountains, managed to steer his country clear of the two major blocs on a third way. In other words, he was a socialist leader of a socialist country, within a socialist geography, who did not take orders from the Soviet bloc. Tito's Yugoslavs were enjoying most freedom--of thinking and movement--from all socialist countries. Then in 1991, 11 years after Tito passed away, Yugoslavia went up in flames. So, I'd have expected a bit of self-reflection from an Yugoslav director. Then, pausing briefly, I checked the production date and was stunned to see it was turned in 1974.

To put things in perspective, in 1974, the Cold War was going strong, Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States, and Solzhenitsyn was deported From Russia. Now, why is this last point relevant? Because, before Solzhenitsyn made it to the West, large numbers in the western intelligentsia had been pro-Soviet, going as far as denying the atrocities perpetrated in the name of communism. So, you can imagine, it took a talented Yugoslav director, and a visionary in many ways, to say it all in "Sweet Movie," as we all have come to witness at high speed as we entered the 1990s. Yes, hear from any former subject of (East European) socialism and "eating s*h*i*t" was an usual metaphor describing the official discourse. Yes, many young and idealist had been figuratively drawn in by the sugar of, and then devoured by, the Socialist Revolution orchestrated by Moscow. And, yes, here in the west, a lot from what we do is put a mask on things to sell more/better.

So, unless one can watch this film taking into account its context, Dusan Makavejev and his "Sweet Movie" will get maligned. Context accounted for, this is an important document that stands the test of time and art. Yes, this can be art, the type that calls for attention not to itself but to the greater dangers we face as society at one point or another. Scatology is a means to militant art. In fact, Makavejev turns scatology into eschatology, and so should the viewer.

There is nothing I can say about this film that it can't say for itself. Some moments are disturbing (the lady basically exposing herself and deflowering young boys in a boat full of candy, which I still am astonished how illegal it should have been), some moments are depressing (our heroine weeping with a penis against her face as the hoard of people around her are behaving like scat-a-holic animals), some moments are comical (having gotten 'stuck together like dogs' after copulating on the Eiffel Tower, the couple have to be brought to some sort of kitchen to be seperated), and some moments are just plain weird (she's stuffed into a suitcase, for real, and sent to paris). Actually the whole movie was weird, and at many times, cryptic. I'm still unsure of the true 'point' if there even was one. But I know it has something to do with tyranny, communism, self indulgence, and the perversion of mankind. (?) Either way, it's an AWESOME movie, visually beautiful, grimly erotic, emotionally disturbing, and most importantly, ARTISTIC AS HELL. I'll be watching it again and again till I figure out what it's really about.