10. I Am Curious — Yellow: A Practical Education

DAVID S. LENFEST

VILGOT SJOMAN’s I Am Curious—Yellow, which was the focus of the late sixties’ most important censorship battle, brought consternation and public outcry from a range of people as ostensibly diverse as the U.S. Customs Service and Rex Reed, all of whom deplored it as the worst in pornography and bad taste. Some critics found the film simply dull, while others praised the honesty and candidness of the sexual sequences which, though simulated, were franker and more explicitly visualized than anything previously seen in a 35mm feature for general release.

When I Am Curious—Yellow was brought to trial at the U.S. District Court in New York on obscenity charges on May 20, 1968, among the witnesses on its behalf were Norman Mailer, Stanley Kauffmann, Hollis Alpert, John Simon, and the Swedish director. Discussing the ground-breaking aspects of the film, Simon stated, “ I feel that it makes a genuine artistic and moral contribution by being honest about sex, by showing the enjoyment to be derived from it as well as the problems it raises, by showing its relationship to other aspects of the human personality, and the social and even political situation of the world.”¹

The representatives of the government, however, seemed most upset by the film’s reunion scene when Börje Ahlstedt, the male protagonist, goes to the country to find Lena Nyman, the female lead. In the enthusiasm of their greeting they kiss each other’s genitals. Although Börje and Lena do not have oral intercourse, the mere suggestion seemed to bother the government more than any of the other sexual hijinks in the film—making love on the balcony of the palace, for instance, or in a tree. The central point of contention appeared to be the shock caused by oral contact with the sexual! organs. Hard-core 16mm pornography had shown real oral intercourse for some time, but as the director and many other witnesses testified, I Am Curious—Yellow is not pornographic in its intent nor in its execution. Nonetheless, Sjöman’s naturalistic approach to sex, especially in the reunion scene, was the major cause of the government’s ban on the film, just as it contributed to its controversial reputation.

After Grove Press won a landmark reversal decision at the U.S. Court of Appeals, I Am Curious—Yellow was successfully released in the theaters and seemed to be well liked by a wide spectrum of viewers. This success implies that much of the earlier critical scorn and legal condemnation of the film were off target, while its defenders at the trial were largely correct in their views. Although the trial occurred in 1968, the film did not premiere in New York until March 10, 1969. This time span enfolds the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, an event that is generally considered to be a watershed of political consciousness for young activists and college students. I would like to suggest that much of the appeal of I Am Curious—Yellow stems from its heroine’s being just the kind of person who came to Chicago to demonstrate and who learned that power politics is much more intransigent than he or she thought.

The form of the film was different from the usual American product as was much of its content. The primary thematic material revolves around Lena Nyman’s search for identity in the political sphere and in her emotional involvement with her latest lover Börje. These episodes are, however, interspersed with Lena seen as a young actress working with her director, Vilgot Sjöman. She is shown with him at the beginning of the film going to his apartment and later at a reading by Yevtushenko; periodically throughout the film, Sjöman interjects himself or a view of his camera crew into the action. The film ends with Sjöman at his Steenbeck editing table showing rushes to a new young actress and with Lena and Börje embracing in a descending elevator. The action of the plot is interrupted steadily by the director reminding the audience that they are watching a film. This examination will first consider the primary plot and content, Lena’s practical education, and then the film’s formal characteristics.

Lena Nyman explores her own political consciousness and that of her countrymen first by surveying a random group of people about their class consciousness. “Do you think that Swedish society has a class system?” She discovers that most people have virtually no class awareness and consequently no awareness that working class people are not treated fairly. After an interview with Olaf Palme, then minister of transport, shots from an interview with Martin Luther King introduce the concept of nonviolent resistance. Two primary radical social goals are thereby brought forward for consideration. These are followed by Lena opening her own institute, which serves as a forum where she may explore her social environment and her self. A direct confrontation with members of the upper middle class returning from holiday in Spain and with a physician establishes her commitment to this practical education.

The confrontation sequence is followed by an introduction to her father who works in a frame shop, and who, we later find out, fought briefly in Spain against Franco. Börje is brought home by her father and the primary romantic involvement of the film begins. It is important that Lena and Börje first make love in her “institute” because that physical location establishes the relationship between her love life and her other interests. The room contains a picture of Franco and a blackboard listing the number of days since her father “chickened out on the Spanish Civil War” which shows a typical disillusionment of the young with the actions of their elders. At the same time, her father’s participation in that war implicitly gives Lena a social focus and direction. The room contains pictures of concentration camps, and her file of lovers—twenty-three to be exact, although she says the first nineteen were “no fun.” She later tells us that she could not imagine herself beautiful with the first nineteen, and that she only achieved some measure of self-esteem after those encounters. Here, again, Lena is paradigmatic of what young women have learned of themselves since the women’s movement has taken hold, or what others have learned independently from time immemorial; that you must love yourself before you can love others. Her twenty-three lovers are a record of struggle with the self, while her social concerns represent her attempt to broaden her understanding of the social system she inhabits.

In a comic moment after their first love-making, Börje and Lena bicycle off at dawn and make love seated on a balustrade of the palace. Again, the themes of political and sexual exploration are joined. Lena then interviews the King, who is retiring, asking him what it feels like to be the last king. (Another touch of humor .is Börje’s close resemblance to the crown prince.) Börje’s middle class outlook ’begins to emerge more strongly than in his earlier conversation with Lena, and their different social views are shown to be further apart than they seemed at first. Throughout the “fictional" level of the film Lena’s socialist and lower class sympathies differ sharply from Börje’s middle class inclinations. He is found not to be honest with her about his other women; she rides a bicycle to the country to meditate, while he drives out in an MG from the shop where he works as a car salesman. They are a typical young couple, finding that their differing social positions cause personal clashes.

Lena pickets the American embassy and has an unsatisfactory interview with Yevtushenko, in whom she had placed much faith. In a talk with her father, she discovers that Börje has had a child with Marie. She decides to leave for the country, but first has another of her socialist fantasies: the country has gone over fully to a policy of nonviolent resistance, and the TV shows a training program for new recruits who practice lying down in front of a train. Following that, Börje starts a fight with Lena’s friend, Magnus, at her institute and in a typical parallel illustrating their social differences Lena is seen meditating before a picture of Martin Luther King and a broken shotgun. Later, she reads a manual of variant sexual positions, and then converses with some natives in a difficult dialect. All this emphasizes Lena’s social differences with Börje. At last, he drives up to find her.

They meet in joyous sexual reunion in the scene that earned the film its lurid reputation. (Some people in 1968 and 1969 seemed to see the scene as involving oral intercourse rather than the gentle fondling that actually is shown, but, by 1973 at least, Linda Lovelace had dramatically established the difference.) After their reunion they go sightseeing in the neighborhood and their dialogue points again to the divergence in their social views. Lena talks about the deserted village and the plight of the people, while Börje talks about commercial success as a car salesman. Their conflict continues while they wash Börje’s MG, and there is a comic and sexual resolution in the water. They return to the village of Rumskalla, where they were sightseeing, and climb into a tree reputed to be the largest in Europe. There they make love in full view (as we find out later) of a group of singing fundamentalist Christians, thus mocking a solemn group of their elders while they experiment sexually. As they did in the scene on the balustrade of the palace, they again demonstrate their independence.

The major emotional break between the two occurs when Lena opens the trunk of Börje’s car and discovers faded roses and a hair dryer intended for Madeleine (the third woman he is known to be involved with). They fight seriously, make love, and fall asleep; Lena awakens to the sound of Börje’s departing car. She is angry that he cannot be honest about his other affairs, and he is angry that she is always prying into his life. Lena then dreams of tying her twenty-three lovers to a tree, shooting Börje, and then castrating him. Again, she is a typical young person in her anger and frustration at the lack of success in her love relationship. This excursion into violent Freudian fantasy is balanced by a fantasy in which Martin Luther King becomes the voice of her conscience as she remonstrates with herself for losing her nonviolent resolution. That scene is followed by a TV spot announcing Sweden’s adoption of nonviolence as a national defense posture. She breaks down in tears at her inability to live up to her ideal. She goes home to destroy her “institute," gouging the eyes out of the portrait of Franco, as she does. Thus she is shown to have broken with her home and with the symbiotic relationship with her father. Her brief excursion into the politics of nonviolence and the life of the working class has evenly balanced her middle class background. The fictional core of the film ends when she and Börje go their own way after being treated for the crabs at a hospital. Thus we are to conclude that she is free of the infection of her promiscuous love making.

The story of Lena, the young woman seeking emotional and political integrity, occupies most of the film, but it is qualified throughout by the appearance of the director or of the camera crew (when Lena and Börje fight at her retreat). At the beginning of the film the audience is shown Lena, the young actress, collaborating with her director in shaping the film; at the end Sjöman has ended his relationship with her and is shown to be interested in another actress, while Lena and Börje, as actors and co-workers, descend in the elevator kissing each other. The interruptions of the fabric of the fiction seem to owe much less to the French cinéma vérité than they do to the ideological parent of the whole school, Brecht. Brecht has commented on the relationship of life to art:

Reality, however complete, has to be altered by being turned into art, so that it can be seen to be alterable and be treated as such.²

In theory, at least, this idea explains many of Sjöman’s interruptions in the film. For example, before Lena and Börje have their climactic fight at her retreat the image is strongly established of the couple naked and asleep on the floor of an otherwise empty house. The audience witnesses two people truly naked to each other: the barren surroundings emphasize the final emptiness of their affair. Sjöman cuts to the film crew, who are embarrassed by the fight going on inside the house. The audience is reminded that this is a film (art), but that it takes place within and influences reality. If the presence and reactions of the film crew can be said to represent life (as opposed to the art of the fictional story) then Sjöman demonstrates art affecting life. This particular interruption is the most effective in the film since it is placed at the emotional climax of the fictional relationship. The ending of the film—Börje and Lena descending and embracing in the elevator—cycles the viewer back to reality and argues for the truth of the drama just presented.

In a strictly linear argument it can be said against the film that the final interruption simply negates the concept of integrity that the main character was searching for. In its defense, it seems that the contrast between art and life, and their interrelation, can be defended again as Brecht did:

Freedom comes with the principle of contradiction, which is continually active and vocal in us all.³

When the audience is reminded continually that it is watching art, a dialectic is established within the film that leads to questioning its truth, its applicability to life as the viewer knows it.

Given its political concerns and its interest in the consciousness of young people in 1968-1969 it seems fair to think of the film in comparison with two of its contemporaries, Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool and Mike Grey’s American Revolution II. The first is a straight fiction film showing a young reporter’s reaction to the Democratic convention in 1968 and his involvement with a woman who lives in the slums with her son. The story centers on the political consciousness of its principals, but it remains a fiction. The second is a pure documentary treatment of the alignment of the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican group), and a group of poor, white, Southern, radicals living in Chicago, who called themselves The Young Patriots. It, too, deals with political consciousness as the various political groups react to the 1968 Democratic convention and to their own attempt to create a coherent political unit. Sjöman’s film is comparable on the issue of political consciousness, and it stands directly between the two, as it combines fictional elements with the documentary style of the intrusion of the making of the film. It would seem that the long-term appeal of the film owed more to its approach to these issues than to its reputation as pornography.

The sexuality of the film is finally far less important than the proposition that Lena is a young woman searching after her own integrity in political and romantic matters. Her own sexual experience is seen as part and parcel of her total development as a person, and in both the fictional and the “realistic” segments of the film she is seen to grow from her experiences. Two comments from Thomas Levin, a psychiatrist, at the trial emphasize the meaning of Lena’s experience in the film:

In both of these areas the young woman seeks through ritual ... to establish a fundamental truth: Who she is in relationship to other people, people close to her, and her society. . . .

That ritual . . . was, a reception over and over again in order to elicit a fundamental common response.

Dr. Levin’s perception that the film is ritual seems ultimately correct when Lena’s search and struggle are seen as a paradigm for initiation into contemporary society and when her experience is bracketed with those of other young people during and after the 1968 Democratic convention. It may indeed be the case that those who opposed the film on the grounds of its sexual content realized at some level its true significance and found that dimension to be much more threatening than the simple sexuality portrayed. In any case, when Lena’s actions and problems are perceived as ritual they can at the same time be perceived as a different and practical education.