A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971)

Milena Dravic in WR: Mysteries of the Organism
Milena: Milena Dravic
Vladimir Ilyich: Ivica Vidovic
Jagoda: Jagoda Kaloper
Soldier: Tuli Kupferberg
Radmilovic: Zoran Radmilovic
With Jim Buckley, Jackie Curtis, Betty Dodson, Nancy Godfrey as themselves

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Screenplay: Dusan Makavejev
Cinematography: Aleksandar Petkovic, Predrag Popovic
Music: Bojana Marijan
Film editing: Ivanka Vukasovic

WR: Mysteries of the Organism is an evocative movie for anyone who lived through the strange and eventually futile revolutionary ferment of the late 1960s and early '70s. It seemed then as if everything about sex and politics -- and sexual politics -- was being overhauled. It didn't turn out that way in the long run, but Dusan Makavejev's film is more than just a nostalgia piece or an outdated propaganda film. It does indeed explore mysteries, even if it sees them through a warped lens.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel
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