W.R. – Mysteries of the Organism

Although it seemed like some kind of breakthrough at the time, Makavejev's film isn't improving with age. Its comedy rests flimsily on cross-cutting between two distinct sets of material: the American footage starts with the life and ideas of Wilhelm Reich, and goes on to explore some of the more bizarre fringes of 'permissive' America; the Yugoslav footage comprises a risible hymn to Stalin from the archives, plus a satirical account of an affair between a liberated Yugoslav woman and a repressed Russian skating star. The Reichian notion that everybody needs better orgasms has a certain credibility; but neither

Tuli Kupferberg

prowling New York as a 'hippie guerilla', nor the juxtaposition of Stalin with

Jim Buckley

's erect cock, says anything interesting about sex, power politics, or the relation between them.