WR - MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM (WR - MISTERIJE ORGANIZMA) (Dusan Makavejev, Yugoslavia, 1971) (F) Hilarious, highly erotic political comedy from Yugoslavia advances sex as an ideological imperative for liberation; an outrageous, exuberant work of a new breed of interna-tional revolutionists, spawned by anarchist-communist ideas, anti-Stalinism, Consciousness III in America, and Wilhelm Reich's sexual and political radicalism. The total portrayal of sex is a "first" for the East. SC ______________________________________________
Banned in Yugoslavia, hailed at international film festivals, this is unquestionably one of the most important subversive masterpieces of the 1970s: a hilarious, highly erotic political comedy which quite seriously proposes sex as the ideological imperative for revolution and advances a plea for Erotic Socialism. Only the revolutionary Cubist Makavejev -- clearly one of the most significant new directors now working in world cinema -- could have pulled together this hallucinatory melange of Wilhelm Reich, excerpts from a monstrous Soviet film, The Vow (1946), starring Stalin; a transvestite of the Warhol factory; A.S. Neill of Summerhill; several beautiful young Yugoslavs fucking merrily throughout;the editor of America's sex magazine Screw having his most important private part lovingly plaster-cast in erection; not to speak of a Soviet figure-skating champion, Honored Artist of the People (named Vladimir Ilyich!), who cuts off his girlfriend's head with one of his skates after a particularly bountiful ejaculation, to save his Communist virginity from Revisionist Yugoslav Contamination. It is an outrageous, exuberant, marvelous work of a new breed of international revolu-tionary, strangely spawned by cross- fertilization between the original radical ideologies of the East, Consciousness III in America, and the sexual-politics radicalism of the early Wilhelm Reich, who equated sexual with political liberation and denied the possibility of one without the other. In one of the climactic scenes of the film, the ravishing young Yugoslav girl star pronounces herself in favor of masturbation and all sexual positions, and admonishes the assembled Yugoslav workers and peasants "to fuck merrily and without fear! Let the sweet current run up your spin, sway your hips! Even the smallest child will tell you that the sweetest place is between the legs! Children and youth must be given the right of genital happiness! Intertwined lovers radiate a bluish light, the same light as was seen by the astronauts in outer space! FREE LOVE WAS WHERE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION FAILED!" SC
WR - MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM (WR - MISTERIJE ORGANIZMA) (Dusan Makavejev, Yugoslavia, 1971) (F) The ravishing sex reformer and radical in a provocative pose; composing sex and politics, it also reveals Makavejev's "aestheticism"; the unexpected rabbit, the strong, two-colored vertical stripes and particularly the inexplicable empty frame. SC ______________________________________________
Beneath the film's lighthearted frivolity and marvelous humor lurks a more serious ideological intent: opposition to all opressive social systems, East or West, the removal of prurience from sex and a final squaring of accounts by the new radicals with the now reactionary Russian regime. In a poignant sequence that will live in film history, the girl, Milena Dravic (in love with the Russian skater, and rejected by him because of his fear of sex and ascetic devotion to a lifeless myth of revolution), starts beating him blindly, repeatedly, while delivering some of the sad-dest, most disillusioned indictments yet offered against Stalinism in any film, and denounces his revolution as "a puny lie disguised as a great historic truth". Thus Makavejev is quite accurate in describing his film as "a black comedy, a political circus, a fantasy on the fascism and communism of human bodies, the political life of human genitals, a proclamation of the pornographic essence of any system of authority and power over others."
The film is also a tribute to the ultimate power of ideas over institutions; the production of such a work in Yugoslavia contributes to the regime's evolution. Its eventual showing there -- impossible at the time of writing -- would testify to the regime's self-confidence and its realization of the film's unquestionably revolutionary stand. SC
WR - MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM (WR - MISTERIJE ORGANIZMA) (Dusan Makavejev, Yugoslavia, 1971) (F) An ominous, heinous still, taken from the famous Stalinist film, The Vow, and incorporated by Makavejev in his strongly anti-Stalinist work. In the film Stalin is seen first, speaking; then, a banner with Lenin's face is slowly unfurled in the background until it fills the screen, hovering over Stalin in (to Makavejev) not necessarily a benign manner.
ORDINARY COURAGE (Evald Schorm, Czechoslavakia, 1964) (F) Possibly the most influential and accomplished work of the Czech renaissance, this story of a disillusioned young Com-munist increasingly at odds with his environment touched on themes of alienation, opportunism, the exhaustion of ideology, and charted the progress of a secular crucifixion.
MERRY WORKING CLASS (VESELA KLASA) (Bojana Marija, Yugoslavia, 196?) A clandestine political argument, pre-sented in the form of satirical songs and vulgar couplets about nutrition and sex, foreign policy, and the belief in the future. Instead of complaints, there are lyrics, music, and wine. The director is Makavejev's wife.
THE ROLE OF MY FAMILY IN THE WORLD REVOLUTION (Bata Cengic, Yugoslavia, 1971) In its given historical context, one of the most subversive stills in this book. Only in Yugoslavia -- and only for a limited period -- could it have been possible to show (and then to eat) a Stalin-cake with a candle growing out of his head. From a bizarre political film farce that expressed the ideological disillusionment of a new generation.
THE ROUND-UP (aka THE HOPELESS ONES) (SZEGENYLEGENYEK) (Miklos Jancso, Hungary, 1965) (F) Imprisonment, shown visually in mysterious, hooded figures, moving across the frame in an ellipse against the vertical, forbidding bars in the back. A poisonous, anti-romantic lyricism -- reflective of 20th century realities -- permeates the unique visual style of this great artist.
-- Michael Pugliese