I Am Curious -- Yellow (Jag är nyfiken - en film i gult) (Sweden, 1967) a film review by James Kendrick
director: Vilgot Sjöman writer: Vilgot Sjöman stars: Lena Nyman (Lena), Vilgot Sjöman (Vilgot Sjöman), Börje Ahlstedt (Börje, Lena's boyfriend), Peter Lindgren (Lena's Father), Chris Wahlström (Rune's Woman), Marie Göranzon (Marie, Börje's mistress), Magnus Nilsson (Magnus, Lena's school friend), Ulla Lyttkens (Ulla, Lena's friend) MPAA rating: Not rated
"I Am Curious -- Yellow" would mostly likely be a forgotten movie -- left somewhere in the ranks of slightly artistic avant garde films that mix sex and politics -- if the U.S. Customs Office hadn't seized the first copy being imported into the United States in 1968.
In its misguided attempt to protect decent American citizens from Swedish obscenity, the government touched off a firestorm, and "I Am Curious -- Yellow" became one the final straws that helped pull American cinema out from under years of prior restraint by the Hays Code and other forms of censorship. Several court cases later, "I Am Curious -- Yellow" was allowed to play in U.S. theaters, and despite picketing, it did $20 million worthy of business from moviegoers dying to see on the silver screen what their counterparts in Europe had been seeing for years: bare skin and simulated copulation, all in the name of art.
I'm sure that back in the late sixties, when moviegoers flocked to the few theaters that were brave enough to show such a film, their minds were running away with dirty notions of what they might see. And some of them may have been duly shocked at what they saw . . . forty minutes into the film.
Despite its raunchy reputation as the movie that paved the way "Last Tango in Paris" and "Showgirls," "I Am Curious -- Yellow" is a surprisingly dull affair. In fact, it often borders on trite silliness when it isn't being overbearingly pretentious. It's more political than sexual, and the majority of the film is given over to endless ranting, meandering storylines, and journalistic-style interviews about the political climate in Sweden in the late sixties. It almost gives the impression that there was no finished script in use while the film was shot.
The 22-year-old heroine of the story is Lena (Lena Nyman), a sociologist-wannabe trying to get herself situated in a constantly changing world. She is insatiably curious about everything, and she collects information in huge boxes organized alphabetically. The first forty minutes of the movie deal primarily with her interviewing people on the streets about their opinions on whether or not Sweden has a class structure, if women have the same job opportunities as men, and so on and so forth. It's vaguely interesting for the first ten minutes, but one can only watch so many man-on-the-street interviews involving the same questions before its gets tiresome.
However, that repetition makes the film's politics stick with you, even more than the sexual imagery. A scene showing a man trying to explain why a doctor should make more money than a dishwasher, a group of Swedish youth in the streets protesting America's involvement in Vietnam, footage of Martin Luther King explaining the tenets of non-violence -- in the end, these are the things we remember from the film.
The director, Vilgot Sjöman, started off in Swedish theater and moved on to cinema in the early sixties. He directed "I Am Curious -- Yellow" as a sort of cinema verite mock documentary, casting himself as the director of the movie-within-a-movie and having all the actors use their real names (he actually shot much more footage, which was released a year later as a second film, "I Am Curious -- Blue," yellow and blue being the colors of the Swedish flag).
Sjöman used grainy black and white photography with mostly handheld cameras, and the inept editing and sound is most likely done on purpose. But that doesn't stop it from being terribly distracting, because there seems to be little reason why this particular story should be shot as a documentary. Oftentimes the action will stop in the middle of scene, and Sjöman will walk on-camera and begin coaching the actors about their lines.
While "I Am Curious -- Yellow" certainly represents an important moment in world cinema, it has mellowed with age and is now merely a curiosity piece, rather than a controversial exploration of politics and sex. I have no doubt that the MPAA would slap it with an NC-17 rating if it were ever re-released into U.S. theater (there's far too much male frontal nudity), but despite its intrinsically biting nature, it still feels droll and creaky when seen today.
©1998 James Kendrick
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