•
Rating: William Klein - "EVVIVA LA LIBERTA'!" (Mister Freedom) (1969)
Another B movie, my friend, one that has left its mark... Ladies and gentlemen, this is a great film, where cinema and pop art merge: its frames flow like little frescoes on my color TV, now that I've managed to get hold of a yellowed VHS copy from a cinephile friend of mine; frescoes damaged, yellowed, because everything oxidizes and ages, especially celluloid, and the subsequent digital remastering in Italian of this film will never happen.
The leprosy of time often gives an aureate quality to certain old films, like home videos or old family super8 films, with the confirmation, the wedding, etc... This did not therefore take away the immense art-house satisfaction of watching it again, this non-musical, post-1968 sci-fi comic, whose cliffhanger rotated in a loop on private TV channels for decades. Many will remember it, many will de-base it, but the director of Mister Freedom is a futurist: he saw the American decline during the flower power era, the musicals Hair and Oh Calcutta!, the strong petrodollar, and the cold war. "Mr. Freedom" precedes Rambo and Robocop by centuries, he is the champion of the party of freedoms, and seems to have emerged from a cross between a Texan sheriff, the selfish giant, Superman/Captain America, and a vitaminized football player: all caught up as he is by American values to be exported to the world, he is appointed by the supreme leader of a super multinational to go solve the problems of France, dealing with the 68, the Euro-communists of Mugick Man and even the pro-Maoists of super Mao-Mao. If France falls, Europe is lost, states Mr. Freedom. Among the actors, we even have Philippe Noiret, Donald Pleasance, Delphine Seyrig, and John Abbey.
Tragically prophetic – does the party of freedoms ring a bell? – the myth of the self-made man, the working-class president, the boss of the iron mills and TV stations, is just as Mr. Freedom describes himself in his rallies, while broadcasting Koyaanisqatsi documentaries at frantic speed about American prosperity. "Freedom" is hailed like a messiah, like a rock star making his triumphant entry into the auditorium: we are a big family he states, plastic as a cyborg, with the mantra of war-mongering anti-communism. In this mass media showcase, the finale is also prophetic with "Mr. Freedom" among the ruins dropping the atomic bomb and even hitting his comrades, eerily foreshadowing the images of the attack in CIA-worldwide satellite (?) - on the twin towers. And what if one day it is discovered that Berlusconi is a biological humanoid in the service of some Old Master?
I conclude with the words of Mr. Freedom himself: "America, babe, is quite something else, believe me. And now I'll explain it to you. What we have, we keep, God gave it to us, and woe to anyone who tries to touch it, but if we let Those ones, they’ll strip our underwear and starve us like in Biafra. And then No! Better to drop the atomic bomb, scorched earth. Here we burn wheat when there’s too much of it... Everything. We burn everything that can't be sold... This is the law, my friend... No money? Get lost! This is politics... Once things were different, we were a young nation... America was American... All for one, one for all..."
Loading comments slowly
