Liza
> From: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 22:04:26 -0700
> To: leftist_trainspotters <leftist_trainspotters at yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] WR: Mysteries of the Organism
> Resent-From: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net>
> Resent-To: lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Resent-Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 22:07:31 -0700
>
> http://www.musicman.com/00pic/MYSTERIE.JPG
> Yugoslav film based on Wilhelm Reich, late 60's. Great film. Been 20 yrs.
> since I've seen it, but, look at the poster. Is that a still from the scene
> where JVS goes to the Opera?
> http://www.subcin.com/easteurope2.html
> http://www.subcin.com/subart134.JPG
> http://www.subcin.com/subart136.JPG
> http://www.subcin.com/subart135.JPG
>
> 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
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
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