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| Lena
Nyman, Borje Ahlstedt, Vilgot Sjöman |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Do we have a class system
in Sweden?
It depends on the people. Undress them, and they’re
all the same. Dress them, and you have a class system.
Duo of semi-documentaries in which a young actress
investigates Swedish society and politics as well as her own personal and sexual identity.
 Besides
offering a fine technical platform for the presentation of superb
sound and image for the home cinema screen, the possible supplements
on offer with superior special edition DVDs offer added value beyond
the quality of the film itself. In cases like the once-notorious
Swedish docudrama I Am Curous - Yellow (and its lesser-known
companion piece Blue), the stories behind the film's production
and release are far more interesting than the films in question. Seized by
US Customs for its alleged pornographic content, this cause célèbre
brought about so much publicity that it easily became the highest-grossing foreign
film released in the US, a record that remained unbeaten until the release of Il Postino
just a few years ago.
Its final victory in court gives the film the questionable honor of having opened up the doors
to all the excesses that soon followed, as crowds with a prurient interest in art films like this
were soon offered the alternative of bona fide softcore pornography in early sex films. The frank
sexual scenes in the films still have an honesty to them rare in today's cinema, but are otherwise
tame by most standards. The director's playfulness and inquisitive about politics, social relations
and filmmaking give the pictures a freshness that remains intact a good 35 years onward. But the
better parts are also all but swamped by the endless and well-intentioned but ultimately pointless
vox pops sequences about the state of the Swedish nation in the late 1960s.
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Available only as a Region 1
box set from the Criterion Collection with both movies packaged
in individual keep cases in a cardboard slip case.
The fullscreen
image is framed at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1. The
Swedish have always been very careful with their country's cinematic legacy,
preserving movies carefully for posterity. The prints for both pictures are
therefore in excellent condition, with hardly any visible damage, and some
fine film grain its only minor defect.
The film's original mono sound mix is rendered in a clear, uncluttered Dolby Digital
1.0 presentation. The variable quality of the source material, much of which was recorded
as location sound with limited fidelity.
The supplements
on the first disc begin with a five-minute Introduction
by director Vilgot Sjöman before the
first film, describing his intentions for the whole project.
The Director's Diary amounts to a selected-scenes audio
commentary,
in which Sjöman reads from his production diary and comments
on the action in twelve scenes in the first film
The 12-minute featurette 'Rosset/de
Grazia' features an interview with publisher Barney Rosset,
a famous champion of the free press who distributed the film
in America, and the attorney Edward de Grazia who defended
him
in court
as
a
result of
it. They
describe the seizure of the film by US Customs
and the ensuing court battle about its supposed pornographic
content. Another featurette, the 9-minute 'The Battle for
I Am Curious - Yellow' offers further historical context
on the controversy that led to the movie
becoming
the highest
grossing
foreign
film for decades.
The Trial Transcripts are text documents
of the court testimony presented in defense of the film by
celebrities such
as film critics Stanley Kaufman and John Simon, as well as
novelist Norman Mailer and others. A trailer that
was never used and features footage not in the movies themselves
is
presented here with a brief introduction by director Sjöman.
The second disc includes a second set of entries from the
Director's Diary for eleven more scenes.
Following the movie
are a deleted scene with an introduction
by Sjöman and an 18-minute excerpt from Swedish TV program
Self Portrait '92 that provides an overview of Sjöman's career.
To start, the two booklets contained in the packaging provide
an interesting essay (included with the Yellow disc) about
the two films and an interview with director Vilgot Sjoman
(included with the Blue disc). The menu screens are simply but elegantly designed, with
animated introductions based on the montages of words used in the film.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
2003
Click
here for IMDB info on I
Am Curious.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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