Cinematic Distractions...

[dulcedemon]

I Am Curious:Yellow(Jag är nyfiken - en film i gult - 1967):
Welcome to the Democratic Socialist titty movie!
Actually, there are two.
One is yellow. The other is blue.
See this one, then see the other.
Meet Lena. "Lena on the Road".
The movie within the movie that is two movies makes three.

All right. Enough of that.

I Am Curious: Yellow is a pseudo-documentary, socio-political commentary, and a softcore porn flick rolled into one. It's described as an erotic drama, and it is, but the documentary footage is real. With a few exceptions, the interviews with persons-on-the street, political figures, public officials, and other notable figures, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., are also real.
Lena Nyman(played by Lena Nyman) is a cherubic drama student in the process of making a movie with her drama professor, Vilgot Sjöman(played by Vilgot Sjöman). That movie is Lena on the Road.
Lena roves the streets, and various other places asking people their views on life, politics, and social policy in Sweden.
She asks questions such as:
Does Sweden have a class system?
Do women deserve to paid the same as men?
Is meritocracy fair?
Should Sweden have the bomb?
What do you think of non-violence as a tool for social change?
When asking these questions of politicians and other public officials, she asks the follow-up, "What are you going to do about it?"
She also runs the Nyman Institute, which serves as the hub of her journalist and activist work. At one point, it's the director's apartment. At another, it's her bedroom in her dad's apartment.
At the beginning of the movie, Lena and Vilgot are living together. The implication being that they are(or were) lovers.
Enter the erotic drama:
Lena wants at least one love scene in the movie, and she chooses Börje(played by Börje Ahlstedt), whose character is the antithesis of her own. She is a socialist. He is a conservative...etc.
There are many notable moments with him in this first movie. Several of which became very important in the U.S. obscenity trial. I'll mention just a few:
He lies about being single, when he is married with a kid, yet he balks when Lena tells him she has had twenty-three lovers. Lena is the last the know about the wife and kid. When she finds out, she leaves the city for a sort of communal woodland retreat. He eventually finds her. Initially, she tries to chase him off with a shotgun...There is angry sex. There is make-up sex. There is fuck you and goodbye forever or maybe just until next week sex.

In one of my favorite scenes, a very frustrated director and crew wait outside the cabin while Lena and Börje have a screaming match inside.
They end at a health clinic, which specializes in the treatment of STDs. Like the documentary footage, the DDT is real. As the end credit begin to roll, it tells us there are two movies. One yellow. One blue.
The director's commentary for this film explains the details of both the U.S. obscenity trial, and why he made his actors bathe in DDT.
The DVD extras also include a fascinating chat between publisher Barney Rosset, and attorney Edward de Grazia. Both men have quite a history in fighting censorship, and defending free speech. Barney Lee Rosset Jr. was the owner of the American publishing house Grove Press, which published Tropic of Cancer, and Lady Chatterly's Lover. The short version: He was often embroiled in legal battles, and Edward de Grazia was often his attorney. Eventually, Grove Press branched out into releasing foreign movies to American audiences. The films they chose were no less controversial than their books, and that is how they came to release I Am Curious: Yellow.
The details of the obscenity trial are explored in the video essay The Battle for "I Am Curious—Yellow". The main reason given for its being deemed obscene was the full frontal male nudity. Touting socialism didn't help its case much either.
I rented the Criterion DVD release, which contains all the extras I've mentioned.

I Am Curious: Blue(Jag är nyfiken - en film i blått - 1968):
I Am Curious: Blue is the companion and extension of I Am Curious: Yellow. The movie opens with a reminder that there are two films. One yellow. One blue. "Nice and ugly." "Big and small."
The director softly sings a little song about Sweden's ambition to become a model for democracy. It cuts to what I can only presume are ladies of high social standing, which is to say rich therefore important. Whether they are nobility, celebrity, or just shit-heeled socialites isn't made clear. As each of them are asked the same few questions, it's noted that they all graduated from the same school with the same degree in French. At the end of this sequence, the opening credits conclude with "BEWARE OF MERITOCRACY!" in large white letters on a black screen.
The next scene is a college professor having a frank sexual education discussion with the young women in her class about orgasms, and masturbation. It is briefly interrupted to show Lena and Vilgot in a screening room watching the footage, while they await Börje, who is running late. Vilgot chides Lena for eating too much as she snacks while they watch the footage. Lena ignores him. She continues eating while he complains about how she will look in the nude on camera. Börje finally arrives. From there, the movie goes much like the first.
The Lena on the Road questions focus on meritocracy, income disparity, the prison system, the separation(or lack thereof) of church and state, and women's equality particularly in regard to access to birth control, and the social stigma of single motherhood. Much of Blue is a rephrasing of Yellow. The result is a different and more detailed perspective. In Yellow, it isn't clearly explained how and why Lena and Börje end up seeking treatment at the STD clinic. By the time Blue is over, it's clear who gave what to whom and when.
Lena has a tape recorder on which she records her interviews. As she plays back the interviews, she is essentially playing a flashback to the first movie. The scene in which she does this reminded me of a similar one from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas(1998). Instead of Johnny Depp(with lizard tail) as Hunter S. Thompson(also with lizard tail) trying to make sense of his own drug-addled, barely coherent, tape recorded ranting, we have Lena as Lena evaluating and critiquing her own skill as an interviewer.
Another big white letters on a black screen moment: "FRATERNIZATION, SABOTAGE, NONCOOPERATION"
A few other points before I conclude with some fan mail sent to the Nyman Institute after Yellow was released...
--There is a really nice looking public phone in a scene that takes place inside a hotel.
--There is less nudity and sex than there is in the first movie. Also, the sex is not as sexy. One in particular has the actors still fully clothed for the most part, and Lena's partner experiences a performance issue. If all you want is tits and ass, see Yellow, and skip Blue.
--Sun/Eyeglasses fetish...Throughout both movies Lena wears a vast array of sunglasses and eyeglasses, including a pair of the oversized, super dark, insect eyes kind.

Fan Mail:
To Lena Nyman:
"SKUNKFITTA!"(SKUNK PUSSY!)
Skunk pussy is your name. Worse than a whore! You and Vilgot should be tortured in some sadistic way! I hope you and your likes meet a painful death! If I were alone, I'd sign this, but we all hope you go to hell!

To Vilgot:
Congratulations on finding such a young yet full-blown whore as Lena Nyman. You must get good use of her, both privately and for renting out. We're a bunch of fun-loving guys who want to hire the whore for some group therapy. She's well-trained for that. Reply in the Nov. 24 (issue) of 'Expressen'(a newspaper), stating the price and where we can pick up the whore.

Two Men in Manhattan(Deux hommes dans Manhattan - 1959):
I loved this jazzy, black and white, crawl through late night Manhattan.
The head of the French delegation to the U.N. goes missing. Rather than contact U.S. authorities and risk causing an instant media frenzy, and possible scandal, his minders contact the New York office of the Agence France-Presse. They assign Moreau, a journalist who is a night owl, and knows the city well. Moreau enlists the help of his photographer friend, Delmas, who works for the pop culture publication, France-Match. That preceding sentence was a polite description. More accurately stated, Delmas is an unscrupulous paparazzo who stalks celebrities and dignitaries on behalf of a weekly gossip rag.
France-Match is possibly a reference to Paris Match, which is an actual weekly news magazine. Delmas seems like a conflict of interest for a quiet investigation, and he is, but he has intimate knowledge of the missing delegate's leisure time habits and contacts. It's Delmas who provides Moreau with a list of women to interview.
Moreau first heads to the U.N. to question the delegate's secretary. After that, he and Delmas head off into the night to interview a stage actress, a jazz singer(in the style of Anita O'Day), a posh sex worker, and a burlesque dancer. The viewer is given quite a tour of the city along the way.
Written and directed by and also starring: Jean-Pierre Melville.
Several movie marquees appear in one of the scenes. I have managed to rent one of the titles shown. It will be in my next movie list.

Sanshiro Sugata(Sugata Sanshirô - 1943):
The first full-length movie ever directed by Akira Kurosawa opens with a message informing the audience that it was modified without consulting the director or production staff. Also, 1,845 feet of footage was cut in 1944 to comply with the government's wartime entertainment policies, and that footage was never recovered.
Its English title is Judo Saga. It's based upon a novel written by Tsuneo Tomita.
The titular character is a rough and tumble young man in search of jujitsu instruction. The first school he comes to is basically a bunch of egotistical thugs. They are always spoiling for a fight, and they fight mostly for clout. On the day Sugata(Susumu Fujita) arrives, they are planning to challenge the master of a local judo school. Their reasons seem to be a mix of dislike for him personally, and envy of his school's popularity.
Sugata soon finds out that what they really had planned was an ambush in the street. They get their arrogant thug asses handed to them. Sugata is so impressed he begs the judo master to take him on as a pupil.
He is a poor student at first. He is disobedient, stubborn, and always getting into fights out in the streets. His teacher, Shogoro Yano(Denjirô Ôkôchi), gives him a stern lecture from which I took this quote:
"Your judo and my judo are worlds apart. Do you know why? Because you don't understand humanity. Teaching judo to such a man is like giving a knife to a lunatic."
Sounds a little bit like The Karate Kid, doesn't it?
Sugata meets a beautiful young lady, and he falls in love. Unfortunately, she is the daughter of the head of the jujitsu school he left at the beginning of the movie. More unfortunate still, she is(albeit not exactly willingly) the girlfriend of her father's star pupil.
That star pupil is Gennosuke Higaki(Ryûnosuke Tsukigata). The antagonist is as ruthless as he is smooth, and he is pretty damn smooth. He is only courting Sayo(Yukiko Todoroki), because he knows if he marries her, he will take over the school someday. He wants more than just a match against Sugata.
It culminates in an intense showdown on a windswept, grassy hillside.

Duck Soup(1933):
Freedonia vs. Sylvania in a no holds barred contest. Most people I know who like the Marx Brothers like this one a lot more than I do.
Things I like about it:
--It has the line "I've got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it."
--Chico and Harpo's peanut cart bits
--Harpo takes a phone call.
--The three Grouchos
--Groucho in the "mirror"
--This Country Is Going To War(song)
--The skin tight, liquid silver gown worn by Vera(Raquel Torres)
--The skin tight, black satin gown worn by Gloria(Margaret Dumont) - Margaret wears some great outfits in general throughout this one.

Have Gun Will Travel:Season 05: Disc 01(1961):
The Vigil - Paladin agrees to escort a woman freshly graduated from nursing school to a small mining town in need of a doctor. They are waylaid when they stop to help two men who are burying a man along the trail. George Kennedy guest stars.
There is a good line in this one: "Where do you want Satan to take you?"
Context: Nurse Forsythe(Mary Fickett) went to school and got a degree to get out from under the thumb of her overbearing, ultra-religious brother. Her brother kept one of Paladin's business cards pinned to the wall in his study as an example of evil. Her brother also deemed nursing an immoral profession for a woman. By asking Paladin to escort to her first job, she might as well be asking satan himself for an escort straight to hell.

The Education of Sarah Jane - Begins with a weird dream-like sequence where Paladin dances with the charlady(Peggy Rea) in the lobby of the Hotel Carlton. Peggy Rea was also in charge of casting this episode.
Pop singer Duane Eddy stars in this episode which puts Paladin in the middle of a Hatfields vs. McCoys style blood feud. It's Darrows vs. Tylers in "You killed my Pa!" shot on location in Lone Pine, CA.

The Revenger - Buzzards, bandits, and bad dreams...Paladin is asked to choose a sacrificial victim from a rogues' gallery in order to satisfy a blood debt.

Odds For Big Red - A bullet intended for Paladin strikes a saloon hostess. Paladin presses her gambling addict ex-doctor ex-boyfriend into trying to save her. Big Red: "I can stand being dead, but I can't stand dying!"

A Proof of Love - Charles Bronson plays a mama's boy. George Kennedy plays the man who stole his mail-order bride. Chana Eden plays the wayward, song and dance loving, mail-order bride.
The best line is this quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson: "And he who shuts out love, in turn shall be shut out from love, and on her threshold lie howling in the outer darkness."

The Gospel Singer - A woman missionary brings her "Ploughshare Crusade" to the town of Bugbear, where she tries to coax the townsfolk into giving up their guns in the name of the Lord. It goes about as well as one might expect.

The Race - A high stakes horse race with commentary on racial genocide...A wealthy rancher and land baron tries to con a local Native American tribe out of their land by challenging their elderly chief to a less than fair horse race. Paladin rides to the rescue. Shot on location in Bend, Oregon.

True Legend(Su Qi-er - 2010):
It's an elaborate, big budget, big action version of the drunken master story. Very beautiful, but I found it a tad hollow. The evil is too evil, and the good is too good. For straight action, it's great. For elaborate sets and costumes, it's also great. Its lack of nuance makes the running time seem too long. David Carradine, and Michelle Yeoh play small roles.