Sweet Movie (1974) – A film by Dusan Makavejev

Now that memory lane is open, and thanks to the slow boat ride to Vienna, I bring back to my personal space the masterpiece of Dusan Makavejef, Sweet Movie.

To begin, I quote from “criterion” the story of the movie,(not that it matters a lot):

“Sweet Movie starts its story with a contest—the Miss World competition of 1984, where top honors go to the prettiest virgin. The winner is Miss Canada, and her prize is marriage to Mr. Dollars, the world’s wealthiest man. Her new husband turns out to be quite a weirdo, though, with a gold-plated penis and a morbid fear of sex-related disease. Angered by her rejection of him on their wedding night, he has her kidnapped, stuffed into a suitcase, and shipped off to Paris, where she makes love with a Spanish crooner. Next she joins a subversive commune, living amid the extravagant shenanigans of its wildly uninhibited members.

Meanwhile, steaming down an Amsterdam canal is a most unusual boat, named Survival and bearing an enormous image of Karl Marx on its bow. The passengers are mostly children, the cargo is candy and sugar. Captain Anna Planeta is hailed by a bike-riding sailor with “Potemkin” written on his cap, whom she picks up and takes as her lover, treating him to steamy sex in her on-board sugar vat. Later she stabs him there, but he responds with laughter. Evidently, even death isn’t very fearsome on the good ship Survival.”

I remember the communal boat “survival” with Karl Marx’s head on its prow,

the chocolate infused orgasm,

and the murder in the sugar vat, but most of all, the movie brings back to me this unique sense of subversive, ruthless fun.

Avanti o popolo, alla riscossa, Bandiera rossa, Bandiera rossa!

And the sailor wears the Potemkin hat! Brilliant!


And, of course, the glorious score of Manos Hadjidakis!

Music & lyrics : Manos Hadjidakis,
except 4 & 8 : lyrics by Makavejev & Ann Lonnberg

1.Ta paidia kato ston kampo (2:42)
2.Oi paragkes kai oi anthropoi (1:30)
3.Serenata gia thn sexoualikh apousia (3:16)
4.Is there life on the earth? (2:35) with Anne Lonnberg

5.H sexoualikh polyrrythmia (2:07)
6.Oi paragkes kai h kefalh toy karl marx (2:56)
7.Nyxterino (3:24)
8.Is there life on the earth? (1:04)
9.Ta paidia kato ston kampo (3:37)
10.strip tease gia tria paidia (4:47)
11.nyxterino gia dyo fones (2:22)
12.o xoros ths sokolatas (2:39)
13.ta paidia kato ston kampo (2:31)
14.h sexoualikh polyrrythmia kai ta tria paidia (3:01)

Additional music : Les Chants Révolutionnaires du Monde – Les Flûtes Roumaines

(those of us who are old enough, may remember Anne Lonnberg as the young blonde girl who played with Yannis Voglis in “Koritsia ston ilio”)