WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) on Netflix
NR19711h 24mComedyDramaFantasy
Milena, a Yugoslav woman of proletarian convictions, pursues Vladimir Ilyich, a visiting Soviet celebrity ice skater. Documentary passages trace the life and ideas of Wilhelm Reich.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.6/105,855 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes87%
Trailer
Plot summary
Documentary footage, borrowed clips and an invented narrative are cut together. One thread follows Wilhelm Reich, the psychoanalyst who argued that free love belonged at the heart of a classless communist society and whose ideas the courts repressed; it visits his last home and laboratory near Rangeley, Maine, and the incinerator in New York where his books were burned, and it gives his daughter Eva room to speak about his work. The other thread belongs to Milena, a Yugoslav woman of proletarian convictions who refuses a worker's advances and sets her sights on Vladimir Ilyich, a visiting Soviet celebrity ice skater. Interviews and street scenes sit between them, among them an artist discussing female sexual response and a magazine editor among nude models.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism was banned in Yugoslavia for 16 years, and its director Dušan Makavejev was indicted there on criminal charges of "derision" towards the state after he criticised the ban in a West German newspaper. His exile from his home country lasted until the end of the regime.
- Yugoslavia's censorship board approved the public screening of the film in 1971, and the Republic Film Review Commission of SR Serbia issued a formal decision on 10 May 1971. The Serbian public prosecutor's office then suspended that decision, which banned the film's public screening.
- A scene in which New York artist Nancy Godfrey makes a plaster cast of Screw editor Jim Buckley's erect penis troubled censors: on UK video prints his penis was covered with psychedelic colours added in editing, while British cinemas unusually approved the film fully uncut.
