WR: Misteriste organizma
Yugoslavia / West Germany,
1971, 80 min
Shown in 1971 / 1998
CREDITS
- dir
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Dusan Makavejev
- scr
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Dusan Makavejev
- cam
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Pega Popovic, Aleksander Perkovic
- editor
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Ivanka Vukasovic
- cast
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Milena Dravic, Jagoda Kaloper, Ivica Vidovic, Zoran Radmilovic, Miodrag Andric, Tuli Kupferberg, Jackie Curtis, Jim Buckley
-
COMMENTS
Dusan Makavejev in person 1971. Selected for the Indelible Images series by Wayne Wang in 1998; Dusan Makavejev in person in 1998.
A fantasy on the Fascism and Communism of human bodies, a summary of information about the political life of human genitals and a proclamation of the pornographic essence of any system of authority and power over others, Makavejev’s fourth feature, WR: The Mysteries of the Organism, was the most comic explosion on film during the Society of Directors’ screenings at Cannes in 1971. The “WR” of the title refers to Wilhelm Reich, the sex theorist who was a center of controversy in the postwar years and whose experiments in socio-psychology and sexual responses led to his persecution in America. His writings were banned for many years, and Makavejev’s interest in Reich and the quest for sexual enlightenment were the impetus for this film. Sexual liberation is equated with political freedom, and the plot—alternating between documentary footage and the story of a young Yugoslav beautician’s love for a handsome Soviet figure-skating champion—becomes a plea for free love under any (or all) circumstances. The film looks at American life with a mischievous truthfulness, intermingling excerpts from a 1940s Soviet epic about Stalin, a lively bout of coital abandonment by some young Yugoslavs and a demonstration of the mode of concupiscent sculpture practiced upon the editor of Screw. Makavejev has said that “if you don’t leave the cinema after five minutes of this film, you become the film’s accomplice.”
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #219
Daniel Talbot, editor of Film: An Anthology , was the first recipient of the Mel Novikoff Award in 1988. Later he cofounded New Yorker Films, a distribution company that introduced many foreign language films to North American audiences. The Mel Novikoff Award, named after the pioneering San Francisco exhibitor, is given to an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public’s knowledge and appreciation of world cinema.
