{"id":8142,"date":"2012-10-29T23:02:16","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T03:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=8142"},"modified":"2012-10-28T16:44:20","modified_gmt":"2012-10-28T20:44:20","slug":"love-affair-1967-dusan-makavejev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/8142","title":{"rendered":"Love Affair (1967, Dusan Makavejev)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opens with a sexologist talking to us from his office, then flashes of sex-oriented drawings amidst the credits, finally easing us into the story of the switchboard operator. She’s stalked at work by an annoying messenger, starts dating a sanitation worker. But we know how this will end, because documentary-style scenes keep cutting in, of the police finding her body in a water tower, and her autopsy. She gets pregnant, is unhappy with her situation with the exterminator, he finally kills her, as we know he will.<\/p>\n

Makavejev made this a few years before Mysteries of the Organism<\/a><\/em>, and I’m pretty sure I liked this one better, though I’m no huge fan of either.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Criterion:<\/p>\n

Despite such genre-flouting contradictions, Makavejev’s mix-and-match aesthetic creates visual and thematic harmony rather than Dadaist discord. In the most memorable sequence, a lovely shot of Izabela’s bare buttocks is graphically matched to eggs and then a mound of flour, into which a yolk is dropped, followed by images of hands mixing and kneading strudel pastry, all set to Verdi.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Film Quarterly: <\/p>\n

We soon become aware of his fascination with the mythology of society, a mythology expressed through media and technology. Makavejev uses the images of mass culture as background for a straightforward story about two luckless people. The film illustrates McLuhan’s idea that man becomes the reproductive organ of the technological world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

N. Power:<\/p>\n

[Isabella] smilingly telling him to come through to the bedroom because \u201cthere’s a good program on television.\u201d It turns out to be Vertov’s 1931 Enthusiasm<\/a><\/em>, specifically the scenes of churches being toppled by the crowds which are themselves taken from Esther Shub’s The Fall of the Romanovs<\/em>. Thus we have a fictional couple watching a documentary within a documentary as a form of seduction: the cinematically informed viewer is thus seduced three times over. \u201cIt’s more intimate\u201d this way, Isabella suggests, resting her head on Ahmed’s shoulder as they watch Vertov.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opens with a sexologist talking to us from his office, then flashes of sex-oriented drawings amidst the credits, finally easing us into the story of the switchboard operator. She’s stalked at work by an annoying messenger, starts dating a sanitation worker. But we know how this will end, because documentary-style scenes keep cutting in, of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[410,1177],"class_list":["post-8142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1960s","tag-dusan-makavejev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8142"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8190,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8142\/revisions\/8190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}