I didn't intend for the past post to be a two-parter, but since posting, I found out that Vilgot Sjöman, director of the hugely controversial I Am Curious (Yellow) died the other day. I Am Curious (Yellow) is one of those boring black-and-white foreign-language films that shocked your grandparents (especially after Jackie Kennedy was seen leaving a theatre screening the film!! Oh, heavens.) On the Criterion disc for the film, there's a documentary entitled The Battle for 'I Am Curious (Yellow)', which better depicts the uproar the film caused back in the late-60s than I can. Basically, the film came out, had a bunch of naked people in it (it's rumored to have been the first mainstream film to show a penis; another fellow Swede, Ingmar Bergman, had to cut a quick shot of an erect penis out of Persona just a year prior), and became the subject of a number of US court cases, only to become the highest grossing foreign-language film in the United States, until the heyday of Miramax feel-gooders in the mid-90s (Il Postino beat the record). Essentially, I Am Curious (Yellow) is far more important than it is good; it's Godard-meta, before Godard even was... and to an equal level of tedium. Basically the question I posed in my previous blog resurfaces, but the answer here is far more clear. As I don't have an extensive knowledge of the realms of exploitation cinema, the question of desensitation versus the quality of the films discussed could very easily be answered by someone with a better knowledge of the subject matter. Here, we have a film that the US deemed pornographic, yet couldn't even quality for an NC-17 rating these days (I may take back that statement, as tame shit like Young Adam and Where the Truth Lies were both given that rating). But, really, I Am Curious (Yellow)'s frank sexuality is hardly as racy as an episode of HBO's Real Sex. I don't wish to insult I Am Curious (Yellow), though I wouldn't say I like the film. It will always remain a landmark of cinema, pushing the US further away from censorship (especially in the case of something as non-threatening as sexuality).
11 April 2006
Time Changes, Part II: Still Curious?
I didn't intend for the past post to be a two-parter, but since posting, I found out that Vilgot Sjöman, director of the hugely controversial I Am Curious (Yellow) died the other day. I Am Curious (Yellow) is one of those boring black-and-white foreign-language films that shocked your grandparents (especially after Jackie Kennedy was seen leaving a theatre screening the film!! Oh, heavens.) On the Criterion disc for the film, there's a documentary entitled The Battle for 'I Am Curious (Yellow)', which better depicts the uproar the film caused back in the late-60s than I can. Basically, the film came out, had a bunch of naked people in it (it's rumored to have been the first mainstream film to show a penis; another fellow Swede, Ingmar Bergman, had to cut a quick shot of an erect penis out of Persona just a year prior), and became the subject of a number of US court cases, only to become the highest grossing foreign-language film in the United States, until the heyday of Miramax feel-gooders in the mid-90s (Il Postino beat the record). Essentially, I Am Curious (Yellow) is far more important than it is good; it's Godard-meta, before Godard even was... and to an equal level of tedium. Basically the question I posed in my previous blog resurfaces, but the answer here is far more clear. As I don't have an extensive knowledge of the realms of exploitation cinema, the question of desensitation versus the quality of the films discussed could very easily be answered by someone with a better knowledge of the subject matter. Here, we have a film that the US deemed pornographic, yet couldn't even quality for an NC-17 rating these days (I may take back that statement, as tame shit like Young Adam and Where the Truth Lies were both given that rating). But, really, I Am Curious (Yellow)'s frank sexuality is hardly as racy as an episode of HBO's Real Sex. I don't wish to insult I Am Curious (Yellow), though I wouldn't say I like the film. It will always remain a landmark of cinema, pushing the US further away from censorship (especially in the case of something as non-threatening as sexuality).
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2 comments:
I've been curious to check these out as well, but after your take on it, my guess is I'll just be watching it in fast-forward. I guess HBO's Real Sex has moved the bar in terms of shock value... the same is very true of the Makavejev.
This film captured my attention because of the title "Soy curiosa" because imagine that beautiful girl in the cover of the movie being curious, that's what I wanna watch.m10m
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