I Am Curious

I Am Curious (Yellow)
Directed by	Vilgot Sjöman
Produced by	Göran Lindgren
Written by	Vilgot Sjöman
Starring	Vilgot Sjöman Peter Lindgren Lena Nyman Börje Ahlstedt Chris Wahlström Marie Göranzon
Music by	Bengt Ernryd
Cinematography	Peter Wester
Editing by	Wic Kjellin
Distributed by	Grove Press
Release date(s)	Sweden: 9 October 1967 United States: 10 March 1969
Running time	121 min
Language	Swedish

I Am Curious (Yellow) (original Swedish title: Jag är nyfiken - gul) is a 1967 Swedish film directed by Vilgot Sjöman and starring Lena Nyman as a character named after her. It is a companion film to 1968's I Am Curious (Blue); the two were initially intended to be one 3½ hour film.^[1] The films are named after the colours of the Swedish flag.

Style

Yellow was a landmark film that helped define the emergent change in Swedish film of the 1960s. Like a French New Wave film, the movie uses jump cuts and its story is not structured in a conventional Hollywood way. It also contains documentary elements; for example, it features a brief appearance by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who is interviewed by Sjöman about his views on civil disobedience. This interview was filmed in March 1966, when Dr. King and Harry Belafonte were in Stockholm to start a new initiative for Swedish support of African Americans.^[2]

Censorship

A notorious scene in which Lena kisses her lover's flaccid penis.

The film includes numerous and frank scenes of nudity and staged sexual intercourse. In one particularly controversial scene, Lena kissed her lover's flaccid penis. In 1969, the film was banned in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for being pornographic. However, after proceedings in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Karalexis v. Byrne, 306 F. Supp. 1363 (D. Mass. 1969)), the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States (Byrne v. Karalexis, 396 U.S. 976 (1969) and 401 U.S. 216 (1971)), the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found the movie not to be obscene.^[3]

Influence

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (November 2009)

Olof Palme (who played himself in an uncredited role in the movie) and Lena Nyman, taken at the Guldbagge Award ceremony. Nyman won the 1967 award for Best Actress in a leading role.

The film's title was the inspiration for:

• Curious Yellow, a virtual world in Jeff Noon's novel Vurt
• The title of the Simpsons episode "I Am Furious Yellow"
• The Get Smart episode "I Am Curiously Yellow"
• The That Girl episode "I Am Curious Lemon"
• The Fall’s 1988 album I Am Kurious Oranj (which in turn inspired Lee and Herring's popular comedy character "The Curious Orange", portrayed by Paul Putner)
• A fluorescent chartreuse color named "curious yellow", which Chrysler Corporation offered as an optional-at-extra-cost "High Impact Paint (HIP)" color on its 1971 Plymouth cars.
• The Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane issue "I Am Curious (Black)" wherein Lois Lane becomes a Black woman for a day
• The Melrose Place episode "I Am Curious Melrose"
• The Moonlighting episode "I Am Curious... Maddie"
• The Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "I Am Curious Ed"
• Curious Yellow is the name of a network worm in Glasshouse by Charles Stross, based on the name of the worm described in this paper by Brandon Wiley: Curious Yellow: The First Coordinated Worm Design.
• In her book You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, producer Julia Phillips mentions a film script entitled I Am Furious (Yellow). The script was a comedy about a woman who becomes enraged whenever she sees the colour yellow. Phillips mentions that she was considering the project as a starring vehicle for Madonna. It was never made.
• In an episode of The Lucy Show, Jack Benny (who was once a spokesman for Jell-O) tells Lucy that he's working on a film entitled I Am Curious, Jell-O.
• In an issue of Mad Magazine, a movie theater advertises a film called "I Am Lecherous (Purple)"

Reception

Initial reception to the films were hostile with Vincent Canby of The New York Times stating that, "I'm not very fond of this sort of moviemaking, which tries to disarm conventional criticism by exploiting formlessness as meaningful itself."^[4]

References

1. ^ Vilgot Sjöman, I Was Curious: Diary of the Making of a Film (Grove Press, 1968)
2. ^ Sjöman, published screenplay (Grove Press, 1968)
3. ^ I Am Curious / Jag är nyfiken | Film International
4. ^ The New York Times’ review of Blue

External links

• I Am Curious (Yellow) at the Internet Movie Database
• I Am Curious (Yellow) at Allmovie
• Criterion Collection essay by Gary Giddins
• Byrne v. Karalexis