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Sweet Movie
Sweet Movie
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Dušan Makavejev
Written by	Dušan Makavejev
Produced by	Richard Hellman; Vincent Malle;
Starring	Carole Laure; John Vernon; Anna Prucnal; Pierre Clémenti; Jane Mallett; Roy Callender;
Cinematography	Pierre Lhomme
Edited by	Yann Dedet
Music by	Manos Hadjidakis
Production; companies	V. M. Productions; Mojack Film; Maran Film GmbH & Co. KG;
Distributed by	AMLF (France)
Release dates	May 1974 (Cannes); 12 June 1974 (France); 21 March 1975 (Canada); 3 October 1975 (West Germany);
Running time	98 minutes
Countries	France; Canada; West Germany;
Languages	English; French; Italian; Polish; Spanish;
Budget	CAD$700,000

Sweet Movie is a 1974 surrealist comedy-drama film written and directed by Yugoslav filmmaker Dušan Makavejev.^[3]^[4]

An international co-production of companies from France, Canada, and West Germany, the film follows two women: a Canadian beauty queen, who represents a modern commodity culture, and a captain aboard a ship laden with candy and sugar, who is a failed communist revolutionary.

Plot

The first narrative follows Miss Monde 1984/Miss Canada, who wins a contest of the "most virgin"; her prize is the marriage to a milk industry tycoon. However, following his degrading puritanical introduction to intercourse,^{[clarification needed]} she vents her intention to leave to her mother-in-law who, at that point, nearly has her killed. The family bodyguard takes her away, further humiliates her, and finally packs her in a trunk bound for Paris. She finds herself on the Eiffel Tower, where she absently meets and has intercourse with a Latin singer, El Macho. The sexual act is interrupted by touring nuns who frighten the lovers into penis captivus. In her post-coital shocked state, she is adopted into an artist community led by Otto Muehl, where she finds affectionate care. The commune practices some liberating sessions, where a member, with the assistance of the others, goes through a (re)birth experience, cries, urinates and defecates like a baby, while the others are cleaning and pampering him. Later she is seen acting for a television advertisement, in which she is naked, covered in liquid chocolate, striking seductive poses and finally drowned in the chocolate.

The second narrative involves a woman, Anna Planeta, piloting a candy-filled boat in the canals of Amsterdam with a large papier-mâché head of Karl Marx on the prow. She picks up the hitchhiking sailor Potemkin (a reference to the 1925 Soviet film Battleship Potemkin), though she warns him that if he falls in love, she will kill him. He ignores her warnings for him to leave and their relationship evolves. In the state of love making, she stabs him to death in their nidus made of sugar. She then seduces children into her world of sweets and revolution, eventually getting arrested by the Dutch police who lay down plastic sacks containing the children's bodies on the side of the canal—implying they too have been murdered by Planeta. The film ends with the children, unseen by the others, being reborn from their plastic cocoons.

Cast

Carole Laure as Miss Monde 1984/Miss Canada
Anna Prucnal as Captain Anna Planeta
Pierre Clémenti as Potemkin Sailor
John Vernon as Aristote/ M. Kapital
Jane Mallett as Mrs. Alplanalpe/ Aristote's mother
Roy Callender as Jeremiah Muscle/ Mrs. Alplanalpe's bodyguard
Sami Frey as El Macho
Otto Muehl as Member of Therapie-Komune
Marpessa Dawn as Mama Communa
Renate Steiger as herself
Don Arioli as Dr. Mittlefinger
Roland Topor
George Melly
Catherine Sola
Sabine Haudepin
Robin Gammell
Vivian Vachon

Production

The film was originally intended to focus solely on the experiences of Miss Canada. However, the actress portraying the character, Carole Laure, left the production after becoming increasingly disgusted over the actions required for her performance; she decided to quit after shooting a scene in which she fondled a man's penis on-screen. After Laure's departure, Makavejev rewrote the script to include the second narrative, starring Anna Prucnal.

Reception

The film created a storm of controversy upon its release, with scenes of coprophilia, emetophilia, implied child molestation, and footage of real-life remains of the Polish Katyn Massacre victims. The 5 April 1976 issue of Time mentioned Sweet Movie as an example of the "porno plague" allegedly spreading in the United States.^[5] The film was banned in many countries, including the United Kingdom,^[6] or severely cut. Polish authorities banned Anna Prucnal, a Warsaw-born Polish citizen, from using her passport over her involvement in the film, which prevented the actress from entering her native country for several years.

Makavejev said: "After Sweet Movie it was as if I had burned all my bridges. I just lost the chance to talk to producers."^[7]

Critical response

Sweet Movie received mixed reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 50% approval rating based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10.^[8]

American philosopher Steven Shaviro commented that, in Sweet Movie, Makavejev went where no filmmaker had gone^[9] but the film is "too intellectual to be ecstatic [and] too visceral to be theorizable", and that "certain questions [Sweet Movie] asks simply can't be answered", such as whether the practices seen in Otto Muehl's commune were genuinely liberating or forced by the commune's groupthink.^[10]

Sweet Movie: Poems, a winner of the 2022 National Poetry Series by poet Alisha Dietzman, is an ekphrasis of the film. The book mirrors "the uncertain, unstable tenor of Dušan Makavejev’s controversial avant-garde film Sweet Movie."^[11]^[12]

Home media

The film was nearly impossible to find since its initial release in 1974, until The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD in a region 1 DVD in 2007.^{[citation needed]}

References

^ "Sweet Movie". Film Portal. Archived from the original on 29 November 2016. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
^ Sweet Movie (1974) - IMDb, retrieved 1 November 2023
^ Southern, Nathan. "Sweet Movie (1974)". Allmovie. Archived from the original on 20 May 2013. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
^ "Sweet Movie". The Criterion Collection. Archived from the original on 26 December 2013. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
^ Mortimer, Lorraine (2009). "The World Tasted". Terror and Joy: The Films of Dušan Makavejev. University of Minnesota Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-0-8166-4886-3 – via Google Books.
^ "Sweet Movie (N/A)". British Board of Film Classification. 1 April 1975. Archived from the original on 29 November 2016. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
^ Oumano, Ellen (Spring 1995). "Film Forum: Thirty-five Top Filmmakers Discuss Their Craft: Dusan Makavejev". In O'Grady, Gerald (ed.). Makavejev Fictionary: The Films of Dusan Makavejev (PDF). Harvard Film Archive. p. 38. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
^ "Sweet Movie". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on 17 September 2022. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
^ Shaviro, Steven (2018). "WR: Mysteries of the Organism & Sweet Movie". In Erent, Vadim; Rhoads, Bonita (eds.). Dušan Makavejev: Eros, Ideology, Montage. Litteraria Pragensia. Prague: Univerzita Karlova. p. 31. ISBN 978-80-7308-564-3.
^ Shaviro, Steven (2018). "WR: Mysteries of the Organism & Sweet Movie". In Erent, Vadim; Rhoads, Bonita (eds.). Dušan Makavejev: Eros, Ideology, Montage. Litteraria Pragensia. Prague: Univerzita Karlova. p. 32. ISBN 978-80-7308-564-3.
^ Foundation, Poetry (29 December 2023). "Review: Sweet Movie". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
^ "Sweet Movie by Alisha Dietzman: 9780807013281 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 30 December 2023.