Man Is Not a Bird (Dusan Makavejev, 1965)

Janez Vrhovec and Milena Dravic in Man Is Not a Bird

Rajka: Milena Dravic
Jan Rudinski: Janez Vrhovec
Barbulovic: Stolan Arandjelovic
Barvulovic's Wife: Eva Ras
Bosko, the Truck Driver: Boris Dvornik
Roko the Hypnotist: Roko Cirkovic
Zeleznicar: Dusan Antonijevic

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Screenplay: Dusan Makavejev, Rasa Popov
Cinematography: Aleksandar Petkovic
Production design: Dragoljub Ivkov
Film editing: Ljubica Nesic, Ivanka Vukasovic
Music: Petar Bergamo

At first glance, Dusan Makavejev's first feature, Man Is Not a Bird, isn't much like his savage, surreal WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) and Sweet Movie (1974). Its focus on the working class reminded me of some of the other films that came out of Eastern Europe in the 1960s and '70s, such as Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde (1965), Jiri Menzel's Closely Watched Trains (1966), and Krzysztof Kieslowski's Camera Buff (1979) -- humorous but filled with a strong irony, especially where the heavy-handed communist regime was concerned. The events are set in a place of bleak documentary realism, in this case a gray, sooty mining town -- Makavejev began by shooting a documentary in the mining town of Bor in what's now Serbia, but getting to know the people and their stories led to what we might call meta-documentary, a fictionalized Bor and inhabitants. Somehow, they eke out their lives in a dreary place where the only amusements seem to be a con-man hypnotist and a very shabby circus. The mine and adjacent processing plants are visions out of hell: At one point, musicians arrive for the performance of the "Ode to Joy" choral section of Beethoven's Ninth, and a few of them lose their way to the hall where they're performing and find themselves in the smelting area where a shower of sparks ignites one woman's long dress. But Makavejev never makes the depressing setting and the bleak and sometimes brutal lives of his characters oppressive. There is just enough distancing from these characters that we can see them ironically and find even the brutish, abusive Barbulovic a satiric figure rather than a realistic one. The pomposity of the bosses in awarding the engineer Jan Rudinski a medal and a concert instead of a bonus for finishing his installation of new turbines ahead of schedule is a keen glance as the communist bureaucracy. It's not a particularly likable film, and it clearly has moments where it avoids treading on the censors' sensibilities, but I prefer it to Makavejev's later, more unfettered work.

Sweet Movie (Dusan Makavejev, 1974)

Anna Prucnal in Sweet Movie

Miss Monde 1984/Miss Canada: Carole Laure
Potemkin Sailor: Pierre Clémenti
Capt. Anna Planeta: Anna Prucnal
El Macho: Sami Frey
Mrs. Abplanalpe: Jane Mallett
Jeremiah Muscle: Roy Callender
Mr. Kapital: John Vernon
Mama Communa: Marpessa Dawn

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Screenplay: France Gallagher, Dusan Makavejev, Martin Malina
Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme
Production design: Jocelyn Joly
Film editing: Yann Dedet
Music: Manos Hatzidakis

In the 1933 decision that lifted the ban in the United States on James Joyce's Ulysses, Judge John M. Woolsey dismissed the charges of obscenity, though he found that "in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic." I've never found anything to be "emetic" in Ulysses, certainly not on the level of some of the more queasy moments in Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie, which exploits every orifice known to be possessed by human beings, especially in the orgiastic scenes featuring Otto Muehl's commune. As for obscenity, that lies in the eye of the beholder. To my mind, Sweet Movie dallies on the brink of it in the scene in which Anna Prucnal's Captain Anna, scantily clad to say the least, makes what appear to be sexual come-ons to a group of boys aboard her boat called Survival. At moments like this I snap out of the trance of make-believe into which art lures us, and into a realization that the boys in the scene are pre-pubescent actors. There's a layer of child sexual abuse in staging such a scene that I can't quite rise above. Beyond that, however, Sweet Movie does precisely what Makavejev wants it to: It surprises, startles, shocks, overturning most of our expectations of what a movie can and/or should show us. It's valuable for that reason alone. Whether it illuminates or provokes thought in its even-handed assault on both capitalism and communism is another question. It has begun to feel dated, as many avant-garde satires tend to do. But it's also done with a great deal of verve and chutzpah, which never really grow old.     

WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971)

Milena Dravic in WR: Mysteries of the Organism

Milena: Milena Dravic
Vladimir Ilyich: Ivica Vidovic
Jagoda: Jagoda Kaloper
Soldier: Tuli Kupferberg
Radmilovic: Zoran Radmilovic
With Jim Buckley, Jackie Curtis, Betty Dodson, Nancy Godfrey as themselves

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Screenplay: Dusan Makavejev
Cinematography: Aleksandar Petkovic, Predrag Popovic
Music: Bojana Marijan
Film editing: Ivanka Vukasovic

WR: Mysteries of the Organism is an evocative movie for anyone who lived through the strange and eventually futile revolutionary ferment of the late 1960s and early '70s. It seemed then as if everything about sex and politics -- and sexual politics -- was being overhauled. It didn't turn out that way in the long run, but Dusan Makavejev's film is more than just a nostalgia piece or an outdated propaganda film. It does indeed explore mysteries, even if it sees them through a warped lens.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel

Innocence Unprotected (Dusan Makavejev, 1968)

Ana Milosavljevic in Innocence Unprotected

Oh, where to start? Perhaps by figuring out exactly what Dusan Makavejev's Innocence Unprotected is. A good movie about a bad movie? A profile of a man you've probably never heard of but who had an ego that rivals Donald Trump's? A documentary about life in a country that was at the epicenter of some of the most terrible passages in 20th-century history, from the origin of World War I through the "ethnic cleansing" of the 1990s? But all of that makes Makavejev's film sound like no fun. Granted, some of it is horrifying, particularly the use of documentary footage of Serbia during wartime, but the tone of Innocence Unprotected is more amused than appalled. That's because its central figure is the astonishing Dragoljub Aleksic, who in 1942 made the first talking picture ever filmed in Serbia. It, too, was called Innocence Unprotected, and we see what appears to be most of that movie within Makavejev's film. Aleksic was a bodybuilder, an escape artist, an acrobat, and maybe something of a con man. He is, of course, the hero of his movie, playing himself as he rescues a young woman named Nada (Ana Milosavljevic) from the clutches of her evil stepmother (Vera Jovanovic), who wants her to marry a rich and hideous older man played by Bratoljub Gligorijevic. Mostly we get to see Aleksic flex his biceps, preen for the camera, and perform death-defying stunts. He even sings (badly) two love songs to Nada. It's a godawful mess of a melodrama, which Makavejev can't resist tarting up a little with some touches of hand-coloring -- viz., Milosavljevic's lipsticked mouth in the still above. But Makavejev also interpolates interviews with the surviving cast and crew members, who recall with pride their participation in the film, even though it was suppressed by the occupying Nazi forces and went unexhibited until well after the war, when Aleksic literally dug it up from where he had hidden it. Even then, the postwar communist authorities were suspicious that Aleksic had made it without Nazi supervision and grilled him thoroughly before allowing him to show it. What holds Makavejev's film together is Aleksic's magnificently irrepressible ego along with Makavejev's own amusement and skill at putting together this improbable film. There are touches of Buñuel, of Godard, of Fellini in Makavejev's choice of images and in his montages, but the end product is startlingly vivid and original.