Sweet Movie (The Criterion Collection)
by Dusan Makavejev
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Actor: Anna Prucnal, Carole Laure, Jane Mallett, Pierre Clémenti, Sami FreyDirector: Dusan Makavejev
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Original Language); Polish (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-06-19
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: The Criterion Collection
DVD Reviews of Sweet Movie (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Cult Movie Waiting To Find it's Cult
Summary: 5 Stars
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
Description of Sweet Movie (The Criterion Collection)
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