{"id":8233,"date":"2012-12-06T22:37:03","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T03:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=8233"},"modified":"2012-12-05T23:39:29","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T04:39:29","slug":"i-am-curious-1967-68-vilgot-sjoman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/8233","title":{"rendered":"I Am Curious (1967-68, Vilgot Sj\u00f6man)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ah, the mid-to-late 1960’s, when sex was freer and racism was lessening and students protested things and art was weird and you could have nudity in movies. Sjoman made a long movie (broken up into yellow and blue halves) combining fiction and documentary elements (including much behind-the-scenes footage of the film’s own making) featuring sex and protest and weirdness and nudity, successfully challenging censorship laws.<\/p>\n

Vilgot and Lena:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

I think Yellow<\/em> is considered the classic important film and Blue<\/em> its less-important little sister, but I enjoyed Blue<\/em> more, maybe because I was used to the movie’s tricks and could pay more attention to the content. In both movies, Lena Nyman roams Sweden, escaping a cheating boyfriend, visits different national institutions, interviews passers-by about current social issues, hangs with friends and worries about her family but never seems comfortable anywhere, finally returns home and tells her cheating boyfriend that she has scabies.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yellow<\/em> has more of Vilgot, who is sleeping with Actor Lena (not Character Lena – though presumably neither is the Real Lena). Actor Lena starts dating the actor playing her boyfriend, which pisses off Vilgot, who latches onto a different young female film student at the end. A highlight is Lena’s imaginary discussions with Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Vilgot:<\/p>\n

I was trying to introduce a Utopian idea about nonviolence: Sweden changing its military defense into one of nonviolence… Then I started to embellish that theme, and suddenly discovered that the girl was surrounded with symbols of aggression. She had knives in her closet, and a rifle. This is really a strange adherent of nonviolence!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Vilgot predicts his own death, quite incorrectly:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Blue<\/em> opens behind-the-scenes with some public reaction to Yellow<\/em> in the form of hate-mail to the studio. Lena will escape into the fictional film then Vilgot will break in and discuss character motivation. She hitchhikes to a prison, then stays with (and spies on) lesbian friends Sonja and Elin, and hangs with violent Hans and his apologetic girl Bim.<\/p>\n

The crew sings a song about prisons:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

G. Giddins:<\/p>\n

When the crowds actually saw the picture, however, they felt cheated; pubic hair was in short supply, the sex was unerotic, and the running time mostly given over to a droll, Brechtian-Pirandellian, mock-v\u00e9rit\u00e9 exploration of the chasm between the political and the personal.
\n…
\nWithin a year or two, suburban theaters routinely programmed nudity-filled potboilers about nurses and stewardesses, soon to be followed by Deep Throat<\/em>. Never again would audiences have to put up with socially redeeming values in the pursuit of pornography. Yellow<\/em> triggered the sea-change that resulted, ironically, in the subsequent indifference towards Blue<\/em>. It altered the American moviegoing experience, pointing the way to a post-code cinema.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lena, curious:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, the mid-to-late 1960’s, when sex was freer and racism was lessening and students protested things and art was weird and you could have nudity in movies. Sjoman made a long movie (broken up into yellow and blue halves) combining fiction and documentary elements (including much behind-the-scenes footage of the film’s own making) featuring sex […]<\/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":[410,182,685],"class_list":["post-8233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1960s","tag-sex","tag-sweden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8233","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=8233"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8295,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8233\/revisions\/8295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}