Sweet Movie

Released Jun 12, 1974

1h 39m

Comedy

Drama

List

50%

22 Reviews

Tomatometer

63%

2,500+ Ratings

Audience Score

The winner (Carole Laure) of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.

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Murphy F

b*tch, this ain't the Lion King

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

08/03/23

Full Review

Chuck S

Weird films are the best

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

10/19/22

Full Review

Ogino S

This creepy film by Makavejev is arguably more eccentric and perverse than any film I have ever seen. But while it's easy to just make a cult film, "Sweet Movie" will captivate most of its audience with plenty of eye-boggling directorial gimmicks not found even in most cult films. And, best of all, it is an unprecedented experimental musical film, not exactly good for one's mental health, but brilliant as an artistic experience. But it is probably the highest level of film that the average parent would not want their children to see. There are numerous scenes that would be banned today, and many that offend. And the occasional inserts of brief, abominable footage from the old days almost have a narcotic effect on the film, transforming it from a Bizarro bad movie into a high-artistic drama.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

10/04/22

Full Review

Audience Member

In The 50 Worst Films of All Time–and How They Got That Way by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss, this movie is destroyed. And yet it also ruined lives, with actress Anna Prucnal -- just for being in this movie -- finding herself exiled from her native Poland for seven years even being denied a visa to see her dying mother. Her role was added to the movie after the original protagonist Miss Canada (Carole Laure, Strange Shadows in an Empty Room) quit the film, saying "I admire Dusan very much but after he signed me to the movie, he asked me to do things no human being could do. I had to refuse. I could not do these things as a person, let alone an actress. I don't mean sex scenes, to them I have no objection if the script is right. I mean much worse things than that." Director Dušan Makavejev was a member of the Black Wave of filmmaking creating some of the most interesting films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, which is all about Wilhelm Reich, who was interested in the energy of the orgasm. Miss Canada has won the award of being "most virgin" and given to a milk industry tycoon (John Vernon, how did he end up in this!?!) who treats her brutally, so she tried to leave and is taken away by the family bodyguard, who uses her for his own needs, then packs her in a suitcase for Paris, where she falls in love with singer El Macho, until nuns frighten them into sexual paralysis. She finally ends up in a commune where members are literally reborn, puking, urinating and defecating around one another before she ends up in a chocolate commercial that feels way too close to the roman, yellow and brown showers that we've just watched. I mean, if you watched it. I wouldn't blame you if you looked away. At the same time, Anna Planeta (Prucnal) and her candy-filled, Karl Marx decorated boat floats through Amsterdam, as the sailor Potemkin gets on board and falls for her. She keeps telling him that she will kill him, but love makes you blind, so in the midst of making love, she follows through. She may have also murdered and definitely abused numerous children -- whose bodies line the canal which plays alongside footage of the remains of the Polish Katyn Massacre victims -- and is arrested just as the children come back to life. Francis Ford Coppola liked Makavejev's directing so much that he wanted him to be the one to create Apocalypse Now. He picked this movie instead, a brutal punch to the stomach of anyone expecting the title of this movie to be lived up to. In case you're wondering what you're getting into, Pier Paolo Pasolini dubbed the Italian dialogue.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

Full Review

Audience Member

what is this film, it is strange and disturbing.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

01/26/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Eu não sei o que pensar sobre esse filme. Mas eu acho que não gostei.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

02/18/23

Full Review

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Dusan Makavejev

Director

Carole Laure

Miss Monde 1984

Pierre Clémenti

Potemkin Sailor

Anna Prucnal

Anna Planeta

Sami Frey

El Macho

Jane Mallett

PDG

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67%

91%

Claudine

88%

72%

Mistress

90%

85%

Female Trouble

82%

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Minnie and Moskowitz

96%

85%

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Variety Staff

Variety

Neither hard nor softcore. Yugoslav filmmaker Dusan Makavejev's first pic in the West, is provocative but also arbitrary.

Nov 6, 2007

Full Review

Time Out

Potentially one of the most scandalous films ever made -- except that it has been little seen outside France and has not aged well.

Jun 24, 2006

Full Review

Vincent Canby

New York Times

The over-all work remains a courageous example of a personal kind of film making that, to me, leads nowhere.

Rated: 2/5

May 9, 2005

Full Review

Jas Keimig

The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

For all its depravity, the movie can be gorgeous...

Dec 9, 2021

Full Review

Danielle Spencer

Los Angeles Free Press

Sweet Movie acts as a catalyst for the mining of sensation usually stimulated only by what can be found in the dark recesses of one's own imagination.

Oct 29, 2019

Full Review

Fernando Trueba

El Pais (Spain)

The use of symbols is at times indecipherable and at others excessive... The scenes are disconnected and incoherent, trying to be provocative. [Full Review in Spanish]

Jul 31, 2019

Full Review

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Synopsis

The winner (Carole Laure) of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Producer: Helene Vager
Screenwriter: Dusan Makavejev
Distributor: Facets
Production Co: Maran Film, V.M. Productions, Mojack Film Ltée
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Jun 12, 1974, Original
Release Date (DVD): Jun 19, 2007
Runtime: 1h 39m
Sound Mix: Mono