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Carole Laure, Pierre Clémenti, Anna Prucnal, Sami Frey, Jane Mallet ... see more see more... , John Vernon , Louis Bessieres , Marpessa Dawn , Robin Gammell , Sabine Haudepin , Catherine Sola , Max Fischer , Roland Topor , Sonny Forbes , Denis Boucher , George Melly , Otto Muehl , Jane Mallett

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 bomba... read more read more...rding 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

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69% liked it

2,381 ratings

Critics

47% liked it

19 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 39 min.

Directed by: Dusan Makavejev

Release Date: May 1, 1974

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DVD Release Date: June 19, 2007

Stats: 264 reviews

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Criterion poster Miss Monde 1984 Hungarian poster German poster El Macho Pierre Clémenti and Anna Prucnal Miss Monde 1984 Sweet Movie Anna Planeta
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Flixster Reviews (264)

  • ajv2688
    January 1, 2011
    ajv2688
    Another very weird movie from the 70s, there are three different stories included and just when you think one story is strange, the next one is even more outrageous. I liked the one about the lady and her candy boat, that could have been it's own movie. Overall, it's okay.
  • matertenebraum
    December 31, 2008
    matertenebraum
    There are some films that are designed to shock, some designed to titillate, some that delight in disgusting the view. For Makavejev, shock, disgust and titillation are never the purpose, but a means to a form of psycho-liberation. Makavejev in Sweet Movie hurtles us head first i... read morento the confronting theses of Post-Freudian Wilhelm Reich. We are forced to confront our relationship to our primal beings. He literally smears our consciousness with faeces, vomit and carnality.

    We cannot watch orgiastic scenes of regressive acts, a sensual striptease played out inches from the faces of young boys, Carol Laure masturbating in a pool of molten chocolate without a visceral reaction. We are forced to confront our own repressed desires and shine a light in the dark recesses of our own psyche.

    Here is revolution at it's most personal, montaged together with lashings of wild humour. Allow your head to give up control and come along for the ride. Recommended to anyone who is willing to put their concept of themselves on the line a risk a flirtation with prurient madness.
  • harrycaul
    October 3, 2007
    harrycaul
    A thoroughly pretentious, incoherent, arty piece of nonsense from start to finish. There are a couple of good scenes (and they're not necessarily the more startling ones) but they're not really worth waiting for. The film was rejected by the BBFC in 1975 and would almost certainl... read morey fall foul of the same censor today on child protection grounds. The one star I am awarding is for the excellent use of music throughout; as others have said, the soundtrack is amazing.
  • fb1142797643
    February 21, 2012
    fb1142797643
    "Sweet Movie" has been described as one of the most disgusting films ever made, and while it does have some repellent scenes, they don't seem so dire when compared with any number of gory slasher flicks. Perhaps the description should be softened to "most disgusting, without usin... read moreg special effects"?

    Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev is said to be heavily influenced by psychologist Wilheim Reich, and I am not familiar enough with Reich's work to knowledgeably comment. The most relevant background which I gather from the Web is that Reich was an eccentric, semi-disgraced Freudian and Marxist with some extreme theories about the orgasm being key to releasing tension and regulating a healthy mind and body. So, I can see how "Sweet Movie" could serve to trigger primal urges as some sort of cathartic therapy, but I still don't know why Makavejev is so fixated on sexualizing food. Or if Reich shared this bent.

    This multi-language film opens like one of the era's druggy, subculture comedies such as "Kentucky Fried Movie" or "Tunnelvision." After a woman bellows a short, abrasive song which asks the timeless question "Is it cowshit or my beloved?", we see a bizarre TV game show which aims to crown "Miss World 1984." The winner must be a virgin, so the stage includes a rotating gynecological table where one "Dr. Littlefinger" can verify the contestants' purity. The prize is 50 billion dollars, plus a marriage to dairy magnate Mr. Dollars (John Vernon, three years before playing Dean Wormer in "Animal House").

    Once the good doctor peers into Miss Canada's vagina (which literally glows with virtue), there can be no doubt about the winner. The extravagant Dollars flies his new bride to his compound near Niagara Falls, and they embark on a life together. But not so fast -- the marriage is over within a day. Dollars swabs down his naked wife with rubbing alcohol and prepares to mount her but, oops, she discovers that he has a solid gold penis! She screams, flees and and her odyssey of self-discovery begins. (Vernon fans should realize that he only appears during the film's first 20 minutes, and that a stand-in presumably supplied the closeup of his golden organ.)

    Meanwhile, a second story emerges. An attractive blond woman triumphantly stands atop a barge sailing the canal of an unnamed city. (Or maybe it's the Seine in Paris?) Her ship is called "Survival" (this name turns ironic), and it has a huge representation of Karl Marx's head on the stern. Meanwhile, a cheery young man, dressed like an old-time Potemkin sailor, is madly trying to catch her attention from various waterside points. His courtship efforts seem cute and charming, until the ship comes across him merrily urinating at shore's edge, waving his penis at her. Kids today, I tell ya.

    From these modest beginnings, the story turns a bit peculiar. The runaway bride meets a leering black bodybuilder, who lives in an empty milk tower. After ravishing her, he packs her in a suitcase and flies her to Paris. There, she meets a famous Spanish actor/singer shooting a movie. At one point, she shows her lust for him by cracking two eggs over her head and smearing the yolk into her hair. Later, they have sex and somehow get glued together during coupling. This is where her string of lurid encounters started to remind me of the 1968 comedy "Candy."

    "Sweet Movie" is stuffed with depraved sights and dialogue, and continuing to detail them would be exhausting and counterproductive. There's a catchy song on the soundtrack, featuring lines such as "It's fun to have nothing/Do things in the nude/Oh, it's sweet to be hungry/it's finger-licking good." The blonde from the ship does a taboo striptease for three boys around 10 years old, with the suggestion that she has sex with them afterwards. A woman tenderly breastfeeds the heroine. There's a urine-based sponge bath. There is gruesome footage of a real-life mass burial. The blonde and sailor have sex in a large bin of white sugar, leading to a particularly shocking outcome.

    But all this pales next to the climactic set piece of obscenity (we're talking the last half hour!), where our Miss World ends up in a commune of people who were apparently known as Viennese Actionists. The group seems devoted to orgiastic, chaotic feasts of food and sex, and their antics turn truly grotesque. There is plenty of onscreen urination, self-induced vomiting and defecation, plus various folks enjoying the byproducts of those games. Food and body excretions become virtually indistinguishable from each other -- a large banquet table becomes a sloppy dumping ground for countless products both digested and undigested. Nothing is simulated. The notorious final scene finds the lead writhing nude in a vat of dark, gloppy chocolate for a commercial. It is not sexy.

    Something about the film's title, cartoonish poster graphics and candy theme made me flash on "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" beforehand. I imagined a splashy, sensual ambience with bright energy and high production values. I thought wrong. The look is gritty, low-budget and poorly lit, with lots of homely people doing distasteful things. There are no laughs beyond the opening game show, and no titillation which isn't tainted by more negative feelings. "Sweet Movie" is unique and perhaps braggable to have seen, but it's just not very good.
  • YBother
    March 13, 2012
    YBother
    As far as experimental films go, a little more accessible and maybe slightly less personal than something like Robert Downey Sr.'s Greaser's Palace & Putney Swope.
  • jsbond008
    June 20, 2009
    jsbond008
    on the sexual freedom and perversion. of the 1970's in Europe. a side-story goes shows the perspective of a communist/gypsy camp on the seas.

    Yes, it does strip the boundaries, well, tears the conventional boundaries apart for film making but in Yugoslavia in the 1974..I mean i... read moret was different time. probably too many 'WTF' moments for the average viewer, you have to be somewhat perverted to like this movie. However, it's a ride to be rode.

    ps all the criticism is a waste of time, you have to see it to gain an opinion.
  • ShaneWreck
    February 1, 2009
    ShaneWreck
    What the fuck? I mean, really, what the fuck? This has gotta be one of most obscene, perverse, shocking, and hilarious things I've ever seen. It makes almost no sense. It just seems to exist for the sole purpose of provocation. Definitely not for the faint of heart, or the w... read moreeak of stomach, but if truly offensive behavior is your cup of tea (as it is mine) then Sweet Movie should fully quench your thirst.
  • xmkatx
    December 4, 2008
    xmkatx
    I really couldn't focus on any symbolism on the movie because I was too busy being weirded out by it. It really doesn't get super weird until the last 40 minutes. I could deal with the pedophilia scenes and the vomiting (Jackass, anyone?). It was just totally weird.
  • theSwitchbladeSister
    June 12, 2008
    theSwitchbladeSister
    Why do I keep watching films that seem to defy rating systems?

    One of the many sexually laden films I've seen now that seem to be almost devoid of eroticism, it's a film that I can't begin to describe, but somehow can't deny that I did like it. Every now and then it seems as i... read moref the movie is throwing a big cheesecake of a wink in the audience's direction before plunging into some other endeavor to upset them, which I can't deny admiring. Pretty crazy stuff.
  • columbiatch
    December 7, 2007
    columbiatch
    WITHOUT A DOUBT, THE MOST DISGUSTING FILM EVER MADE. This makes Pink Flamingos look like a Sunday night family comedy. Murder, pedophilia, puking, public defecation, piss drinking, whatever debauchery you can name of this has it. Carole Laure is hot and looks very tasty drench... read moreed in chocolate.

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Critic Reviews

Variety Staff
November 6, 2007
Variety Staff, Variety

Neither hard nor softcore. Yugoslav filmmaker Dusan Makavejev's first pic in the West, is provocative but also arbitrary. Full Review

Vincent Canby
May 9, 2005
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. Full Review

Roger Ebert
October 23, 2004
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. Full Review

Dave Kehr
January 1, 2000
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. Full Review

Cole Smithey
May 26, 2012
Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com

[VIDEO ESSAY] To this day, "Sweet Movie" remains a powerfully defiant film deeply rooted in anti-authoritarian motives. Full Review

Fernando F. Croce
April 2, 2010
Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

Irrational and ineffably moving Full Review

Dennis Schwartz
June 23, 2009
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

An onslaught of images that are calculated to arouse the viewer to awaken from his slumber. Full Review

James Kendrick
July 21, 2007
James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk

This is not a film about which you can have mixed feelings. You either love it or loathe it; you are either on its wavelength or you feel assaulted by it. I stand in the latter category. Full Review

John Thomason
July 5, 2007
John Thomason, Orlando Weekly

I'm not convinced of this sometimes dull and inarguably self-indulgent piece of politicarotica's masterpiecitude. Full Review

Jeffrey M. Anderson
June 28, 2007
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

Only manages to turn the stomach. Full Review

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