Had U.S. Customs officials not seized I Am Curious Yellow (Jag är nyfiken - en film i gult) at its border in 1968 and declared it an illegal pornographic import, Vilgot Sjöman's film would have lain in complete obscurity as a failed avant-garde project. The largely cinema verité mix of truth and fiction about sex and politics had attracted 1,300,000 out of 8 million native Swedes to the theater but been banned in neighboring Norway and Finland, but the fun was just beginning. U.S. customs had picked on the wrong client if they expected Grove Press owner Barney Rosset to walk away quietly into the night.

Having paid $100,000 for the rights to distribute I Am Curious Yellow and a veteran of other censorship legal battles (including Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, William Burrough's Naked Lunch, and D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover), Rosset took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, historically freeing American cinema to show practically anything on the screen. The unprecedented publicity generated by the obscenity trials propelled Sjöman's film to new box office records for a foreign language film—generating $20,000,000 in receipts, a record that stood until Il Postino broke the mark in the mid 1990's.

As a college student in the late 1960's, count me among the curious that was destined to head to the theater when the film finally arrived in town in either 1969 or 1970. Not even the lone arthouse in Champaign, Illinois was bold enough to screen the controversial film, so it screened at the local porn theater, attracting a brand new clientele. Undoubtedly the loyal patrons of that old theater must have felt ripped off, but the arthouse crowd and inquisitive college students could at last head to the run down theater without disguising ourselves in sunglasses.

With all the publicity I was expecting something akin to a cinematic sexual orgy, but the one contentious scene took over an hour before appearing—full frontal nude shots where Lena (Lena Nyman) fondles and appears to kiss boyfriend Börje Ahlstedt's penis. Daring X-rated stuff in the 1960's but would never get a rise in today's R-rated universe. More word of mouth has since circulated about Sjöman's film, and most will agree with Chief Judge J. Edward Lombard of the 2nd Court of Appeals: "Except for the sexual scenes in I Am Curious Yellow, the film was a continuous and unrelieved boredom." Back then publicists didn't make those judicial comments as widespread as they did more positive remarks by critics and writers like Norman Mailer, who raved about its virtues and how moved he was by the young girl's quest for freedom. In hindsight, Mailer's praise remains overblown, but the film deserves a high place for its monumental fight for freedom from censorship.

Discontent to make "conventional" films, Sjöman decided to work with a small crew and asked producer Göran Lindgren to give him100,000 meters of black and white film and the freedom to make a movie without a script. Sjöman ended up requiring more footage that ended up as two versions of the same basic film—an additional Blue variation with both colors representing the Swedish flag. Despite artistic shortcomings, no one can argue with the commercial and historical aspects of the noble experiment that single-handedly etches Sjöman's name alongside Igmar Bergman's as the most well known Swedish directors to ever pass through Stockholm's Filmstaden.

Working with only a broad outline, simple-minded Lena improvises amateurish street interviews mostly asking, "Do we have a class system in Sweden?" The raw footage reveals variations on non-commitment, disinterest, and complete apathy. Lena can handle these responses fine, as her blank stares don't give away how there's not a whole lot happening upstairs. Only professional politicians are willing to talk at length on such issues, so to stop that boring banter Lena has a second salvo backup to shut them up: "What are you going to do about it?" Slightly better, but with much of the film revolving around talking heads about disconnected political issues, Sjöman's pretentiously pallid project meanders aimlessly.

It doesn't take a lot of brains to carry out protests, and Lena's own commitment to social causes is very superficial—her true earthier interests lie in sexual matters, and these obvious disturb the director (who actually fancies her as his own girlfriend). Lena keeps extensive files on various causes in her room—from women's rights, to class warfare, to Franco's Spain—but she trashes them after learning about her latest boyfriend's infidelity before heading off to a pseudo-hippie training camp. Another time she circles a room of military recruits, but in reality is far more interested in examining the young men in their briefs. Spoofing protest movements, the filmmaker juxtaposes Lena's on the street interview question about Franco with her three-person picket proclaiming "Boycott trips to Spain." Similarly, he shows the same three-person crew picket the U.S. embassy with "Get out of Vietnam" posters, the Chinese embassy with "Communism without Slave Camps" signs, and the Russian embassy with a "Socialism without Tyranny" slogan.

Sjöman advantageously uses his filmmaker gig to interview prominent figures like Martin Luther King, who arrived in Stockholm for a speech on non-violence, and Minister of Transport, Olof Palme, Sweden's best known Social Democrat who was very outspoken against the Vietnam War and was a fanatic about equal rights. Of course, he uses these interviews as pseudo-documentary material inserted within a fictional framework—the King interview especially appears false and disjointed when inserting Lena into the scene since she wasn't even present during the actual interview.

Perhaps Swedes of the 1960's responded to the various political messages and to the apathetic light reflected on their highly regarded brand of Socialism, but this content fell flat with Americans back then, and seems even more dated today when audiences will not flock to it for its sexual content. Despite a few clever "film within a film" moments and a few emotionally raw scenes, the overall film continues more as an event to endure, given its historical importance. Without the legal breakthrough that X-rated I Am Curious achieved through the U.S. judicial system, more profound and daring arthouse films like Last Tango in Paris would have languished in total oblivion.

Despite the film's banality, the Criterion Collection breathes life into its creaky celluloid with the definitive preservation and a cornucopia of historical background material that includes a historical perspective of the censorship battles, a candid conversation between attorney Edward De Grazia and publisher Rosset, an introductory clip from the director, and excerpts from court transcripts. Although I'm awarding only two stars to the film itself, the Criterion package doubles its value, making it a "must buy" for fanatics concerned with film censorship, film historians, and completists. The curious with merely prurient interests and cinema lovers seeking artistry should look elsewhere, as they will find this as disappointing as a premature orgasm or a canned political stump speech.