User reviews

In the sixties, the Swedish films were known to be the most sexually graphic, but this is the one that really rocked the world… It was shocking in its uninhibited portrayal of sex and in its fulminating piece of social democracy… It was a significant step forward in getting the adult film shown in the theaters…

The film comes in two editions, blue and yellow… The blue version focuses more on the political issues and the yellow concentrates on the emergence of sexual liberation…

The lead character is a young Swedish girl who attempts to hold fast to her philosophy of nonviolence, free love, and democratic socialism... But the realities of her life force her to adopt new and unrestrained ideologies…

Strangely enough, in Sweden, it was criticized more for its left-wing attitudes than for its audacious display of sex

In the 1960s Sweden underwent an enormous social upheaval, which brought it from a rather rigidly stratified and staid society, which cinephiles might have seen in Ingmar Bergman's earliest films, to a place where the old sexual taboos collapsed and angry class war broke out just like in some other Western European countries. The Swedish filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman decided to reflect those changing mores (and possibly spur some further more-changing himself) with his pseudo-documentary project I AM CURIOUS. He developed a script through a great deal of improvisation and then shot enough footage to release it as two films: "Yellow" in 1967, and "Blue" the following year (these titles refer to the colours of the Swedish flag). This review treats both of them.

The main actress of these films was 22 year-old Lena Nyman who plays... Lena Nyman, a 22 year-old drama student already well into sexual exploration and political commitment. From the home she shares with her alcoholic father, she runs what she calls the Nyman Institute, keeping an enormous collection of files and wandering around Sweden with a microphone to record the reactions of Swedes to provocative questions like "Does Sweden have a class system?" and (to holidaymakers returning from fascist Spain) "What do you think about Franco?". She has tumultuous relationships, mainly sexual, with suave yuppie Börje (Börje Ahlstedt) and idealistic bohemian Hasse (Hans Hellberg). The films have another layer, however, where we see Vilgot Sjöman coaching his actors and establishing a sexual relationship with his lead actress -- but even this layer is fictional. One really admires everyone, director and his actors alike, for being able to play fictional versions of themselves at two different levels.

The two films have a yin-yang relationship, covering roughly the same themes but in different proportions. Yellow is more about political engagement and non-violence in the context of the Cold War, and it attacks the hypocrisy of the Swedish left (which had become entrenched and no longer a force for social change) and the monarchy. That film is set mainly in Stockholm and deals with Lena's home life. Blue, on the other hand, explores the themes of religion and the prison system, and more of it is set in the countryside where we hear some of the attitudes of rural Sweden as opposed to the capital.

Upon their release, these films (especially Yellow) were attacked as pornography, and Sjöman as a letch (even though it was the real-life Nyman's idea that there be a subplot where the director seduces his lead actress). However, the sex and nudity here is not titillating at all, rather it is simply one of the many sociocultural themes that Sjöman wanted to present and as unsexy as any real documentary. Furthermore, Sjöman was really no letch at all - among countercultural artists, he may have been ahead of his time in confronting the possibility that the new permissiveness wasn't just female liberation, it was also men finding it easier to coerce women into sex by accusing them of being uptight if they didn't put out, something which didn't occur to many 1960s idealists until the next decade. Another way in which Sjöman critically examines the New Left is by charting how those who preach non-violence could be very cruel in their interpersonal relationships with friends and family.

I had seen only Yellow a few times and was prepared to consider this only a four-star deal, highly interesting as documentary material about 1960s Sweden, but missing something that truly moved me. However, getting a DVD set and finally seeing Blue provided that moving experience; it is quite impressive how Sjöman made the two films interlock with just enough overlap to make it a convincing whole. There's also some latent humour that becomes clear only on seeing both.

"I Am Curious (Yellow)" was the first "mainstream" movie in the United States to show sexual intercourse. Although the film was made in Sweden, the controversy that it ignited here reveals a lot about how we Americans think and act about sex.

The film itself is no masterpiece, but is mildly entertaining. The plot, as such is, centers around Lena, a young woman harboring bad feelings toward the men who have slept with her. She has a dream in which she ties her first 23 men, all of whom were using her only for their own orgasm, to a large tree and dynamites them. Gee, that sounds more like an American movie of today.

The other dimension of the plot is kind of a documentary about the Swedish policy of not waging overt war against any country who occupies them. Remember, this was during the cold war, and even though Sweden has been officially neutral for many years, there was a country nearby that was too big to ignore or trust. In the unlikely even of occupation, Swedish citizens were urged to wage "passive resistance" in the form of fraternization, work slowdown. and sabotage. The "Yellow" in the title comes from the Swedish flag, along with its sequel "I am Curious (Blue)."

It was very hip for young people to see this movie. Although it was banned in many locations, many baby boomers traveled someplace else to see the movie. Ah, the forbidden fruit! After reviewing "I am Curious (Yellow)" at least five times, a committee of local civic and religious leaders decided it had no redeeming social qualities and banned it in my native Pittsburgh. It just happened that I had a trip to L.A. that summer and a paid premium price to see this otherwise undistinguished film. And most college students, including myself, were not flush with extra cash.

Filmed in black and white in Swedish with English subtitles, it was just a bit hard to keep up with what was going on. But then again, you really couldn't think of this surrealistic story in a linear way.

The movie did offer some very entertaining diversions, including the opening scene where Lena and her wealthy sponsor attend a reading of "Babi Yar" by Yevtushenko. There was even a cameo of Dr. Martin Luther King. Lena and one boyfriend also had sex in public places -- it probably would have been meaningful if you knew Stockholm. To be very honest, most of the sex scenes were funny rather than erotic, whether or not that was intended.

This firm broke the taboo of showing sex in America, for better or worse. Many American movies in subsequent years have shown sex. Just as "The Dirty Dozen" broke the taboo against four-letter words in mainstream U.S. films. Now you hear language, in movies, even on TV and especially the radio, that would have offended "polite" people a generation ago. I guess the viewer must decide whether that is progress.

I suspect the makers of this film meant it to be surrealistic, not to be taken totally seriously, sort of like "Candy," another film of that era, or "Ally McBeal" in modern times.

It is not the bad art film I expected. In fact, it left me with the impression that lots of people could relate to it these days (the question of obesity is treated interestingly even if it is only in an impressionist way). The politics are not that bad either - but someone brought up in a conservative environment may think it's strange or dated. It is not also the `socialist' film I thought it would be also. It ends with a crew member singing `freedom is not easy'. I kept thinking that this is the main idea of the film: freedom is not anarchy. Freedom is a situation in which you can do what you want to do if the other with whom you are expressing it wants the same freedom. If not, then problems arise. As for the claims of being pornographic, I don't get it. If seeing people naked is bad - while killing people in wars is ok - then I really do not get it. At the individual level, the film is more about the struggles of a young woman discovering moral freedom. She tries to express it with free sex but finds herself enmeshed in jealousy at the same time. An interesting movie that merits, at least for me, its cult status.

I grew up at a time when we were all experiencing things for the first time. We had heard about this film for a while and thought it would be interesting to see it. We were a mixed group and we guys were a little concerned about how the girls would react. As it turns out, the movie was more intellectually challenging than we had anticipated. We had a nice discussion at a coffee house afterwards. We were a little bit of an artsy bunch anyway. The nudity and sex weren't what we talked about (although it was a bit of an elephant in the room). We were trying to get a handle on what this girl was hoping for in life; what did she want from the world. I'm hoping to see this again soon and perhaps I'll do a little specific revision on the film. It certainly was news in the day. I found it bleak and rather depressing.

Forget the hype about the nudity and censorship. Forget that it's at the least an experimental film with minimal impression. Focus instead on Ms. Nyman's performance. It's tour de force.

When she's interviewing by-standers documentary style, she shines. When she's knee deep in anger and destroying sets, she's believable. When she's literally exposing all of herself for the sex scenes, she never holds back. In short, she's the ONLY reason I watched this film to its completion.

I liked that this film is a film within a film. Otherwise, it serves no purpose. Sorry, folks; I calls 'em as I sees 'em.

You will find a list of faults in most other reviews but I want to stick with "I liked it." The acting was good sometimes and Lena becomes endearing, especially later in Blue when she interviews a character in a car. Throughout both Yellow and Blue, Lena actually devised all of her questions. The sex was mostly and genuinely comedic with just breasts and rears, saving some male nudity for later near the end. The political scenes were like flashbacks to history looking at attitudes about Vietnam, etc., including some anti-America concerns about Vietnam. The good was good, the bad was tolerable, resulting in an interesting movie.

This black-and-white film by Swedish director Vilgot Sjöman combines explicit nudity (the first mainstream film to feature a full frontal of a naked man), sex and male-female relationships with controversial political views. For that reason, it was often banned, in the case of Spain until 2005. Although it has a cult status, to me it was extremely boring.

3/10

Easily one of the worst movies of all time, this badly shot and edited pretentious bore did attract moviegoers in the late '60s on the strength of the then novelty of seeing a few fleeting nude scenes -- which,m just like the rest of this endless waste of motion picture film, were ineptly staged, lit, miked and photographed. The movie starts with a parade of brief man-on-the-street interviews of no interest to anyone and quickly goes downhill from there. All I can assume is that production company must have thought it would be fun to compile to feature-length a lot of embarrassingly amateurish garbage and throw in a few utterly unerotic sex scenes in order to see how much of the public could thus be enticed to waste their time and money. The gimmick worked -- at first -- until those so fooled began to warn their friends that they'd have a far better time undergoing root canal.

"Jag är nyfiken – Yellow" is a lot of fun. Like at least one other reviewer, I was, on numerous occasions, laughing out loud. Yellow is energetic, playful, self-aware, explorative. Don't expect Bergman here. This movie is about a youth in the early- to mid-60s in Sweden and about the issues, read *contradictions*, that the nation and the world were facing. At times Yellow appears to be an earnest social-political documentary, with Lena, the main character, and others interviewing both common people and politicians (e.g. Olaf Palme at home). At other times, Yellow seems to parody this kind of documentary. All the while, Yellow acts as a personal documentary exploring Lena's life - her home life, her loves, her political views, her view of herself. She is a complete person – complex, flawed, contradictory, happy, sad, curious. And placed over all of this is the wonderful additional dimension of the director, Sjöman, and his crew documenting themselves documenting Lena. It is this that, for me, really gives Yellow wings. Not only do they suddenly appear at some very funny times and in some funny ways, reminding the viewer that this is fiction and artifice, but their presence is itself another layer of the film; they are filming themselves filming themselves. I am reminded of a Bjork music video with this same quality – a music video about the making of a music video, ad infinitum, with each iteration getting weirder and more cartoonish. I think Sjöman may have had something similar in mind. While "Jag är nyfiken – Yellow" may not be everyone's cup of tea, it is certainly intelligent, witty, refreshing, ebullient, and authentic.

"You shall not spread VD, give birth to unwanted kids, or commit rape. Practice birth control - there are far too many babies being born. Otherwise, you may engage freely in sexual intercourse, masturbation, pornography, everything your animal nature might suggest to you."

What a ... curious film. If you've heard of its notoriety, I suggest going into it thinking of it as a film about 1960's sociopolitical concerns with a few unabashed scenes of nudity, rather than as a sex film that was so scandalous it was branded as pornographic and involved in legal cases that went to the Supreme Court. Expectations are so important. Don't watch this film looking for eroticism.

Quite a bit of I Am Curious (Yellow) is concerned with the issues of the day, as a liberal young woman (Lena Nyman) questions people in Stockholm about the class system, the unfairness in pay to women and rural workers, the nonviolence movement, conscientious objectors to the military, acts of civil disobedience such as sabotage or not paying taxes, and the obsolescence of the monarchy. It's all unscripted and organic, and I found it interesting to hear the rather moderate reactions that ranged from apathy to pragmatism, e.g. As to whether the class system should be abolished, several saying that no, some amount of income disparity should exist based on talent and effort in life, or young men defending why they wouldn't dodge the draft. Regardless of where you stand exactly on those things, to me there is incredible relevance to signs like "Message to humanity: Down with the privileged classes all over the world" and how they speak to the unfairness in the system all the way up to the present day.

We also hear Sartre's commentary about Vietnam, suggesting the tribunal apply the Nuremberg convictions to the war crimes in Vietnam, and demonstrations against America being in Vietnam. We see trips to Spain and Portugal boycotted because of Franco and Salazar's fascism, and to the film's credit, also picketing of the Chinese and Russian embassies with signs reading "Communism without death camps" and "Socialism without tyranny." There are also brief interviews with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And future Swedish Prime Minister (then Minister of Transportation) Olof Palme.

The film doesn't produce profound revelations about all these issues, but I admired its main character and who she represented for getting out there and getting involved to try to change things in the world. As she and others train in nonviolent responses to the scenario where Sweden has been invaded, they're criticized by a local reporter as looking like a "scout camp rather than real war," to which one of them calmly says that conventional military training may remind one of "playing cowboys and Indians." He might have added that if we don't try to adopt different outlooks and make progress, how can we hope to avoid the same historical patterns that have led to such suffering in the world? Anyway, to me the film as a whole represented a little time capsule of liberal/radical thought in the 60's, while still presenting enough of the shades of grey to be thought provoking.

About 80 minutes in to the film we get to the parts that had puritans all aflutter. Despite her liberal views, the young woman in the film has a conservative lover (Börje Ahlstedt), but instead of their differing outlooks causing problems between them, it's something much more conventional - he's got another woman. She leaves him for a retreat of sorts and tries to purify her soul. There is a string of topless moments as she mediates, drinks from a stream, eats just a few berries for lunch, lies on a bed of nails, reads a book on sex positions, and tries to do yoga. When her lover tracks her down, we briefly see the setup to cunnilingus, and then a cutaway to the aftermath of sex with her gently kissing his flaccid penis a couple of times. It's not erotic but daring, and it's interesting to think about why it was so daring, and why it should have been so shocking. Just the suggestion of oral sex, or of showing the male body was apparently enough.

The film's emphasis is on the naturalism of nudity and sex, for example, spending its time in an earlier scene on awkward undressing and the couple holding one another. There's something refreshing about this, particularly as compared to the kinds of glamorized sex scenes usually seen in cinema ranging from the conventional to porn. In one of the extended sequences of nudity later in the film, both male and female, we see them in a horrible argument, and in another, them being rather unceremoniously scrubbed down as part of a treatment against an STD they've developed. A part of the film seems to be showing the body and challenging those who would be offended by it and not by grisly scenes of violence in other films, and another part of the film seems to be showing that despite the sexual revolution, emotions are involved and diseases exist. Free love has its pitfalls.

What kept me from liking the film more was the meta presence of director Vilgot Sjöman and his crew, who are making the movie we're seeing. I'm not sure what the point of that was, as it didn't seem to add anything to what the film was trying to say, and was more self-indulgent and jarring than anything else. There were a couple of times he lamely attempts comedy, such as a news person coming onto a screen after a naked embrace and saying "The bad reception on your screen was due to erection failure," or after the woman saying she's had 23 lovers in her life, the film cutting away to a man counting his fingers and then the words "Did she say 23?" The latter undercut the message of sexual equality and was unfortunate. Last, Sjöman was also rather creepy while fondling his assistants who are a couple of decades younger, and it's not clear he was self-aware of this.

Overall though, an interesting window into the 1960's.

This film, once sensational for its forward-thinking politics and depictions of free love and sexual liberation, has been reduced by time to a mere curiosity. It seems absurd now that this mostly boring little film had been banned and seized by governments in many countries. Given how socialistic Sweden eventually became, the 'radicalism' of its politics, once controversial, appear naive and almost mainstream four decades later. And its sex scenes, at one time the subject of sensational obscenity trials, look pretty tame in a modern context. Nevertheless, the film and accompanying documentaries detailing its many controversies and influences remains marginally watchable as an early reliquary of 60's youth rebellion. One part of the film that still holds up: its self-consciousness with respect to the 'fourth wall'. Every once in a while, the filmmakers film themselves making the film. The satiric playfulness of this still elicits a chuckle.

This movie caused a great sensation in 1969 because it was considered pornographic. The movie was not allowed to be shown in America. Finally, after a highly publicized court battle, the courts allowed the movie to appear and everybody went to see the movie. The movie was banned in many countries, not only in America, because is showed a man and a woman having sexual intercourse, the first time ever in a movie. However, in the actual scene, they climb a tree in a public park and have intercourse fully clothed in the branches of the tree. It takes the reader's imagination to understand what they are really doing. The content is so mild by today's standards that the movie is largely forgotten. However, it was because of the court precedent set by "I Am Curious (Yellow)" that we are allowed to see almost everything today. Sam Sloan

If only to avoid making this type of film in the future. This film is interesting as an experiment but tells no cogent story.

One might feel virtuous for sitting thru it because it touches on so many IMPORTANT issues but it does so without any discernable motive. The viewer comes away with no new perspectives (unless one comes up with one while one's mind wanders, as it will invariably do during this pointless film).

One might better spend one's time staring out a window at a tree growing.

Fascinating I approached I Am Curious (Yellow) and it's companion piece with great trepidation. I'd read numerous reports on its widely touted controversy and explicit sex. What I got wasn't this, but a thoroughly thought provoking and engaging cinema experience unlike any other. I sincerely believe that the majority of the commenter who felt the film was `lame' or `boring' approached the film as if it were pornography. Perhaps this is pornography, assuming pornography is something intended to titillate the senses, but it is intentionally un-erotic. Lena, the protagonist, throws her all into her performance giving it a realistic and humanity that is simply convincing and enduring. Her breasts may be saggy, her nipples unusually large, her thighs fat, and her face, chubby. But by the end of the film, the audience comes to identify with her, and accept her faults as human. This touch gives her even more believability out necessity. Had the director cast a Briget Bardot bombshell the effect would have been nullified. I cannot more highly recommend this thought provoking piece. Be prepared to invest much thought in this deliberately paced film. The patient and unassuming viewer will be thoroughly rewarded in ways most other films could dream.

When this came out in the late 60's, it caused a REALLY BIG controversy because of the subject matter. In the late 60's I was 10 years old and I wound up seeing the movie when I was 21. At that time the sexual revolution crested and I found absolutely nothing shocking.

As I said, its worth a look if it comes on TCM or similar channel, or on YouTube.

5/10.

I would put this at the top of my list of films in the category of unwatchable trash! There are films that are bad, but the worst kind are the ones that are unwatchable but you are suppose to like them because they are supposed to be good for you! The sex sequences, so shocking in its day, couldn't even arouse a rabbit. The so called controversial politics is strictly high school sophomore amateur night Marxism. The film is self-consciously arty in the worst sense of the term. The photography is in a harsh grainy black and white. Some scenes are out of focus or taken from the wrong angle. Even the sound is bad! And some people call this art?

This is a great film - esp when compared with the sometimes wearisome earnestness of today's politically-minded filmmakers. A film that can so easily combine sex, gender relations, politics and art is a rarity these days. While the bouyant optimism of the 1960's can't be regained, I think we can at least learn a lesson from the film's breezy energy and charm. I don't know what those who label the film "boring" were watching - there's so much packed into it that it never remains the same film for more that 15 min at a time.

Back in 1967, "I am Curious Yellow" made quite the splash because it was the first mainstream film to show male frontal nudity. It also featured the main character talk about masturbation, engage in sex with multiple partners and it was very frank. However, like milk of episodes of "Laugh-in", the film has not aged well and is incredibly dull and pretentious. And, in a further example of how times have changed, it's available from Netflix--a service that doesn't show porn films at all.

The film is very modern 60s in its sensibilities. Much of the film is a pseudo-documentary where the lead asks folks about a wide variety of social issues, such as the draft, social class and non-violence. But none of this is really important as the film also is sure to let you know that it's all fake and it exits the fourth wall quite often--showing the filmmaker and crew several times. It also has lots of edits and pop-up commentary...all of which today seem less modern and hip and more amateurish. In fact, the story is dull and meanders all over the place.

What you have is a mainstream film that shocked people but really is a dull and confusing mess...a film with very, very limited appeal today...especially since much better and more hard-core porn is ubiquitous.

This is truly an excellent film with a revolutionary message (both in form and content) that should not be missed by any fan of French New Wave or Underground film. There are barely opening or closing credits--we are just dropped into the world of consumerist art, revolution, and youth. This film has little to do with documentary and is more interesting in playing with our ideas of advertising and its relationship to reality. Lines of real and not real are crossed in ways familiar with films discussing documentary, but this time we do it for the sake of consuming and marketing, not for describing the real.

Oh, brother...after hearing about this ridiculous film for umpteen years all I can think of is that old Peggy Lee song..

"Is that all there is??" ...I was just an early teen when this smoked fish hit the U.S. I was too young to get in the theater (although I did manage to sneak into "Goodbye Columbus"). Then a screening at a local film museum beckoned - Finally I could see this film, except now I was as old as my parents were when they schlepped to see it!!

The ONLY reason this film was not condemned to the anonymous sands of time was because of the obscenity case sparked by its U.S. release. MILLIONS of people flocked to this stinker, thinking they were going to see a sex film...Instead, they got lots of closeups of gnarly, repulsive Swedes, on-street interviews in bland shopping malls, asinie political pretension...and feeble who-cares simulated sex scenes with saggy, pale actors.

Cultural icon, holy grail, historic artifact..whatever this thing was, shred it, burn it, then stuff the ashes in a lead box!

Elite esthetes still scrape to find value in its boring pseudo revolutionary political spewings..But if it weren't for the censorship scandal, it would have been ignored, then forgotten.

Instead, the "I Am Blank, Blank" rhythymed title was repeated endlessly for years as a titilation for porno films (I am Curious, Lavender - for gay films, I Am Curious, Black - for blaxploitation films, etc..) and every ten years or so the thing rises from the dead, to be viewed by a new generation of suckers who want to see that "naughty sex film" that "revolutionized the film industry"...

Yeesh, avoid like the plague..Or if you MUST see it - rent the video and fast forward to the "dirty" parts, just to get it over with.