Sweet Movie (1974)
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47% of critics liked it
(19 reviews) -
68% of users liked it
(2,453 ratings)
Like his WR: Mysteries of the Organism, Dusan Makavejev's controversial 1974 feature Sweet Movie is firmly rooted in the principles of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. In cinematic terms, this means bombarding the audience with an onset of imagery so visceral, disgusting and repellent that it… More Like his WR: Mysteries of the Organism, Dusan Makavejev's controversial 1974 feature Sweet Movie is firmly rooted in the principles of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. In cinematic terms, this means bombarding the audience with an onset of imagery so visceral, disgusting and repellent that it "awakens" the viewer in a Brechtian manner by "short-circuiting" the audience's reactions. Sweet Movie interweaves two narratives. One begins with a trip to the "Miss World Virginity Contest," whose winner, Miss Monde 1984 (Carole Laure) is auctioned off to Mr. Kapital (Animal House's John Vernon), a Texas oil billionaire with an odd perversion. Instead of deflowering her on her wedding night, he sterilizes the terrified girl's body with rubbing alcohol and showers her in urine with his massive gold-plated penis, while an audience watches bemusedly through his bedroom window. She later escapes from her bridegroom, in a suitcase, and winds up at a wild Viennese commune whose participants indulge in public defecation and a food orgy that wraps with a massive display of gurgling, yakking, and vomiting. At the tale's conclusion, Miss Monde shoots a television commercial that involves writhing nude in a giant vat of chocolate, with which she is completely drenched from head to toe, as the cameras roll. The second story involves a woman, Anna Planeta (Anna Prucnal) piloting a candy-filled boat down a river, with a massive papier-mache head of Lenin on the prow and a lover in-tow who is a refugee from the Battleship Potemkin. She eventually does a seductive striptease and seduces a pack of children, then makes love to her paramour in a vat of sugar and stabs him through the heart. Throughout the film, Makavejev includes shock cuts to Nazi autopsy footage and medical experimentation footage, some of which involves physical abuse of infants under the guise of "baby gymnastics." Although it has its admirers, Sweet Movie is something of an acquired taste. And that's putting it kindly. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Directed By
- Dusan Makavejev
- Written By
- Dusan Makavejev
- Genres
- Drama, Art House & International, Classics, Comedy, Special Interest
- In Theaters
- May 1, 1974 Wide
- Studio
- Criterion Collection
Critic Reviews
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Variety Staff, Variety
Neither hard nor softcore. Yugoslav filmmaker Dusan Makavejev's first pic in the West, is provocative but also arbitrary.
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, Time Out
Potentially one of the most scandalous films ever made -- except that it has been little seen outside France and has not aged well.
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Vincent Canby, New York Times
The over-all work remains a courageous example of a personal kind of film making that, to me, leads nowhere.
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Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
I didn't hate it, although it affected me in bewildering and sometimes unpleasant ways. I didn't find it a success, but I found it an audacious attempt, and it's filled with images impossible to forget.
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Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Though much of the content is scandalous, the title is ultimately an accurate one -- the sensibility behind the images is innocent, enthusiastic, and childlike.
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Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)
Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)
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Cast
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Carole Laure
as Miss Monde 1984
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Pierre Clémenti
as Potemkin Sailor
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Anna Prucnal
as Anna Planeta
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Sami Frey
as El Macho
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Jane Mallet
as PDG
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John Vernon
as Mr. Kapital
- Louis Bessieres
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Marpessa Dawn
as Mama Communa
- Robin Gammell
- Sabine Haudepin
- Catherine Sola
- Max Fischer
- Roland Topor
- Sonny Forbes
- Denis Boucher
- George Melly
- Otto Muehl
- Jane Mallett