Film Comment: I Am Curious(Yellow)/I Am Curious (Blue)

     The Swedish films I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) and I Am Curious (Blue) (1968) were originally intended to be a single 3 1/2 hour long film.  The colors in the title refer to the Swedish flag.  If you are familiar with European films you know there will be lots of talking and that is what these films seem to be: a series of questions asked of numerous people by a very inquisitive character named Lena Nyman portrayed by an actress named Lena Nyman.

     These really are masterfully constructed pieces of cinematic art which feature techniques seen in many later films and television programs: audience aware characters, everyone using their real names, intermingling of the twin plots of the actors making the film and the characters being filmed, amateur non-actors, and cameras and sound equipment often being visible within a scene. 

     This may sound strange and it is.  Very little is familiar.  The film may seem plotless, but it's not. The film may seem disjointed, but it's not.  In the end, everything really does tie together and make sense, but not until the very end of Blue.

     The film(s) are always referred to as "our film" and, at their release, were condemned as pornographic for their casual acceptance of nudity and one scene of a sexual nature.  This missed the entire point of the two(one) film(s).  The films are a Marxist assault on almost everything you might recognize: religion, traditional sexuality, capitalism, marriage, the prison system, college education, meritocracy, traditional film making, etc.  The director and actors seem to have basically disappeared after the film(s) were released.

     The film(s) are a window into the Marxist world view.