I Am Curious (Yellow)
Dir: Vilgot Sjöman
1967
****
Vilgot Sjöman's first part of his infamous 2 part I Am Curious experiment (I Am Curious (Yellow)) has been remembered for all the wrong reasons. Actually, it hasn't, its overall message has been lost in the fuss and controversy it kicked up due to its graphic sex scenes. Legend proceeds truth though, the sex scenes really aren't that graphic. Why the scene whereby a photograph of General Franco is defaced caused so many problems is beyond me too, but it's clear to see that Vilgot Sjöman wanted to provoke society somewhat. Why his message of political understanding and sociological liberation is lost is a more interesting question though. Did he do a bad job as director or was (is) society now so blind and numb that they can't see the expression of thought anymore? I don't think the 1960's was a decade of cynicism, I think the older generations just wouldn't except it and the majority of youth celebrated the wrong aspects of it. This only really applies in Western Europe, had the film had a bigger release then who knows where it would now sit in cinema's history?