I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) - #180

I know the value of art. The picture should be more important than the frame.

I was about 9 or 10 years old, I figure, when I first learned about I Am Curious (Yellow), a Swedish film that at the time was notoriously controversial even to the point that the scandal surrounding it in 1970-71 (when I was the aforementioned age) was sufficiently hot and bothersome enough to enter into my pre-adolescent consciousness. The exact details are pretty fuzzy in my memory by now, of course, but I think the first tip was a one-off panel gag in an issue of Mad Magazine. The image was of a theater marquee advertising that it was now showing "I Am Lecherous (Purple)". The odd music of this incongruous string of words sparked my curiosity. What does "lecherous" mean? And what does "purple" have to do with anything? By some unfolding of happenstance, I discovered that it was a play on the title of I Am Curious (Yellow), a dirty movie that showed naked people touching each other in naughty ways, even to the point where it was illegal to show it for awhile, and then the rules were changed by some judges to allow grown-ups to see it. Of course I was now really intrigued to learn more of what that was all about. A movie so upsetting to certain adults that people would get arrested and go to jail for either showing it or even just watching it? What could be so bizarre, so weird, so shocking to stir up that kind of trouble? Needless to say, my schoolboy's imagination ran wild. I was, indeed, quite curious.

This was also around the time that my buddies at school and I were starting to dig into our dads' stacks of Playboys (or cheaper, cruder, nastier stag mags that some of the fellows had access too - I didn't ask too many questions as to where or how.) We'd surreptitiously tear out pages of issues that seemed likely to be ignored, toward the bottom of the pile, that we would fold up into small squares and hide deep in our pockets so that we could share our latest contraband with each other out on the playground, if we were really daring, or on walks home after school, when the supervisory heat of prying adult eyes had cooled off considerably.

At the time, I was actually more interested in the Little Annie Fanny cartoons found in the back pages of select issues of Playboy than the straightforward pinup pics - it wasn't until a few years later that I discovered that the strip's writer Harvey Kurtzman and illustrator Will Elder were among of the original artists for Mad, back in its comic book incarnation of the 1950s. So my exploratory process went full circle, in a way, from unregulated comic books to salacious pornography in just a matter of months. It was a classic textbook case of The Seduction of the Innocent, as Dr. Wertham had warned American parents about in the decade before I was born.

But of course, my opportunities to actually see the movie that had provoked a series of legal challenges that (as it turned out) forever changed the cinematic landscape, were practically nonexistent, for quite a few years. Decades, really. Though I had heard of the film, it never showed at any theater that I knew about, and within a very short time after all the commotion erupted around the film's initial screenings had died down, blisteringly negative reviews like this one from Roger Ebert had convinced quite a few people that I Am Curious (Yellow) was an over-hyped bore, completely unworthy of the attention (and money) lavished upon it.

So even after I had purchased the handsomely slip-cased box set several years ago en route to achieving The Criterion Completion, there the disc sat, gathering dust, unwatched and neglected, mostly due to its reputed mediocrity. Though I remained genuinely, if not ardently or impatiently, curious about the film's contents, the bad press and an abundant selection of other worthwhile movies for me to watch always provided an adequate reason to just keep putting it off.

Until I finally had a compelling reason to break it open and give it a watch: this blog. I'm now at the point in my timeline where I'm compelled to pop in the next disc in the queue. And what do you know... I really enjoyed this movie!

The sexy parts are pretty much as unstimulating as I had been led to think they would be, undoubtedly disappointing to those poor saps who poured into art house theaters of the late 1960s, hungry for a taste of forbidden fruit. In fact, this scene, basis for one of the film's iconic images, plays more like slapstick comedy than anything aiming to arouse its viewers:

Such moments do communicate something meaningful about the sexual revolution that was going on at the time, and there are exchanges of genuine sweetness and erotic affection in some of the first encounters between Lena, the female protagonist whose curiosity propels the film's thin narrative, and her lover Börje. But lots of movies back then had no shortage of that kind of thing. The real rip-off here, in the eyes of many, was that there wasn't anything to be seen in over two hours of footage that even began to stir up the libido. The substance of the film, especially in its early sections, was dedicated to conversations about social issues then in vogue, debates that are, not so surprisingly to me at least, still somewhat resonant today: issues like international human rights, police use of force, gender equality, the ethics of militarism, nonviolent resistance (Martin Luther King Jr. even makes an appearance!), separation of church and state, the pros and cons of "free love" and all the challenges to conventional traditional morality that were erupting across the globe in that revolutionary era. As Lena's investigations (conducted in the form of "man in the street" style interviews that capture some amusing responses from respectable bourgeois Swedes, as well as the footnotes and collages she assembles from numerous media sources) couple with some unpleasant emotional fallout from various relational disappointments, she dabbles in the kind of exploratory search for solutions common to her era, which still draw in new adherents to this day. Meditation, vegetarianism, yoga, devotion to a charismatic spiritual authority figure, and finally just unleashed venting of her frustrations are all tried and found wanting, to a greater or lesser extent.

Interpolated between all of Lena's daze and Börje's confusion are some rather droll insert shots of director Vilgot Sjöman as himself, the director of the movie that we're immediately in the process of watching, and his crew. They pop up at the most unexpected moments, just when the emotional intensity of the fractious couple reaches a dramatic boiling point, catching us off guard a bit. Are Lena and Börje fighting because that's what the script calls for, or is their hostility genuine, to the point where its disrupting the film project itself? And what about the zig-zag of flirtation and feistiness that simmers between Lena and Vilgot during their various encounters throughout the course of the story? Is he documenting her curiosity, or is her curiosity just a role that's been carved out for her by the man behind the camera, a leering fellow nearly twice her age who's concocted a clever means to get her naked in front of the camera, supposedly in the service of artistic cinema?

Sjöman's motives are never entirely made clear, but that's really as it should be. He is sporting enough to offer a video introduction (shot by Criterion in 2002) to the first half of what would turn out to be a largely redundant double feature, I Am Curious (Blue), that I will cover here when I reach the films of 1968.

The DVD supplement (embedded above) informs us that he made a bold proposition for a big chunk of film stock and complete artistic freedom to make the movie just as he wanted to. I have to figure that those responsible for granting his wish must have had a bad rash of second-guessing to work through before the film went on to create domestic and international sensations far beyond what any of them could have ever imagined. In Sweden, the problems were based more on the subtle but umistakable mockery that Sjöman heaped upon the monarchy, its military establishment and notable government figures, who were given adequate opportunity to speak for themselves, but whose messages were framed with such indolence that nobody should be surprised by the disapproving response of those in authority.

And of course, there are the nudie bits, which I can only assume Sjöman worked with quite strategically, with a brazen, raw recklessness that went well beyond anything his mentor and documentary subject Ingmar Bergman had dared to put on the screen prior to 1967. And of course, Bergman knew how to toy with prudish sensibilities and tastefully relieve some of his audience's repression in films like Summer with Monika, Smiles of a Summer Night, and The Silence, among others. Though I think it's reasonable to credit Sjöman for the insight that he was taking a provocative step, it's nearly impossible to draw the conclusion that he had anything like the legal skirmish in mind that took his film to the United States Supreme Court, where, on appeal, it was deemed to be not obscene in the eyes of the law.

For me, the main appeal and the lasting value of this half of the film (at least) rests on my admiration of Sjöman's creative editing and self-reflexive imagination. Viewers who find it boring, indulgent, meaningless or otherwise disappointing seem to me to be missing out on a fascinating compilation of ideas, inside jokes, vintage documentary moments from a pivotal historical period and just plain mischievous fun. I consider I Am Curious (Yellow) to be a cheerfully memorable and highly amusing counterculture classic of the times - veering between naive fascination with the power of admittedly simplistic questions it was asking and over-confidence in its ability to just toss random ingredients together, trusting the juxtaposition to lend profundity to some of its mundane observations. That's the kind of fault that is easy to find in so much of the revolutionary media of this period, but I dig the zeal. My curiosity has been satisfied.

Next: Peppermint Frappé