Movies: I Am Curious (Yellow) and (Blue)

Ran across the 2003 Criterion boxed set of these two companion movies for cheap, had to make the purchase. I knew that the first movie made a lot of money in 1968 and was the subject of an obscenity trial that went all the way to SCOTUS and overturned national obscenity laws.

But I had never actually seen the thing.

In the filmed introduction director (and star) Vilgot Sjöman explains he asked his producer for $100,000 to do a film in black & white with no script. It was to be entirely made up as they went along. Because this was 1967, he got the money.

So what you get is a lot of "man-in-the-street" interviews about politics, race and class. Some staged indoor scenes. And a couple of pretty tame (by today's standards) sex scenes.

In other words, incredibly amateur and incredibly boring.

The (blue) film is supposed to be unused footage from (yellow), the colors chosen to represent the Swedish flag.

This was supposed to be the start of a Swedish New Wave.

It didn't catch on in its native Sweden -- the politics was controversial, and nobody cared about the sex.

In high school, they screened "I am curious (yellow)", and made us watch it.They seemed to think it was educational. I guess attitudes in England and America were (are) a little different.

What surprised me was two interviewees.

Martin Luther King Jr. happened to be in Sweden at the time, campaigning with Harry Belafonte for African-American issues.  Sjöman got a few tentative minutes with him to talk about class and race, when he was 33 and still not a legend.  He would be assassinated what, two years later.

Also, Olof Palme who at the time was a mid-level government government operative (Minister of Transportation) but in the future (1969-1976) would become Sweden's Prime Minister.  His reputation was apparently not harmed by being in a controversial and explicit film.

"Explicit" in the sense that full frontal nudity, both male & female, is featured.  At the time this was forbidden in the US (Playboy still airbrushed out pubic hair) though not in the more developed nations.  There is no explicit sex, to speak of -- just simulated/implied.  You see a penis but it is not erect.

The class was supposed to be about relationships. I guess the flick did provide a few jumping-off points for discussion.

This is really surprising — I remember the controversy surrounding the movies when I was in high school and had just assumed that they were run-of-the-mill skin flicks.

Me too.