Che?
Tags: absurd, psychedelic, comedy

Plot synopsis:
=== Part 1: The Argentine ===
In Havana 1964, Che Guevara is interviewed by Lisa Howard who asks him if reform throughout Latin America might not blunt the "message of the Cuban Revolution."
In 1955, at a gathering in Mexico City, Guevara first meets Fidel Castro. He listens to Castro’s plans and signs on as a member of the July 26th Movement.
There is a return to 1964 for Guevara’s address before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, where he makes an impassioned speech against American imperialism, and defends the executions his regime has committed, declaring "this is a battle to the death."
March 1957. Guevara deals with debilitating bouts of asthma as his group of revolutionaries meet up with Castro’s. Together, they attack an army barracks in the Sierra Maestra on May 28, 1957.
On October 15, 1958, the guerrillas approach the town of Las Villas. The Battle of Santa Clara is depicted with Guevara demonstrating his tactical skill as the guerrillas engage in street-to-street fighting and derail a train carrying Cuban soldiers and armaments. Near the film‘s end, they are victorious. With the Cuban Revolution now over, Guevara heads to Havana, remarking "we won the war, the revolution starts now."
=== Part 2: Guerrilla ===
The second part begins on November 3, 1966 with Guevara arriving in Bolivia disguised as a middle-aged representative of the Organization of American States hailing from Uruguay, who subsequently drives into the mountains to meet his men. The film is organized by the number of days that he was in the country. On Day 26, there is solidarity among Guevara's men despite his status as foreigner. By Day 67, Guevara has been set up for betrayal. He tries to recruit some peasants only to be mistaken for a cocaine smuggler. On Day 100, there is a shortage of food and Guevara exercises discipline to resolve conflicts between his Cuban and Bolivian followers.
By Day 113, some of the guerrillas have deserted and the Bolivian Army has discovered their base camp. Much to Che's disappointment Tamara "Tania" Bunke, Guevara's revolutionary contact, has botched elaborate preparations and given away their identity. On Day 141, the guerrillas capture Bolivian soldiers that refuse to join the revolution and are free to return to their villages. CIA advisers arrive to supervise anti-insurgent activity and training. On Day 169, Guevara's visiting friend, the French intellectual Régis Debray, is captured at Muyupampa by the Bolivian Army, which launches an aerial attack on Day 219.
Guevara grows sick and by Day 280 can barely breathe as a result of his acute asthma. On Day 302, the Bolivian Army kills Tania Bunke, Juan Acuña Ñunez, and several others in Che's forces in an ambush as they attempt to cross the Vado del Yeso after a local informant tells the Bolivian troops about the movements of the rebels. By Day 340, Guevara is trapped by the Bolivian Army in the Yuro Ravine near the village of La Higuera. Che is wounded and captured. The next day, a helicopter lands and a Cuban American CIA agent Félix Rodríguez emerges. The Bolivian high command are then phoned and give approval for Guevara's execution. He is shot on 9 October 1967, and his corpse lashed to a helicopter's landing skids and flown out.
In a final flashback scene, Guevara is aboard the Granma in 1956, looking out over the ocean. He sees the Castro brothers alone at the bow of the ship; Fidel is talking and Raúl is taking notes. Guevara hands a peeled orange to one of his comrades and returns his gaze to the lone brothers before the scene fades to black.

Review: It is a no holds barred comedy that breaks ground that "Happiness" will sweep in to master.Polanski combines his psychedelic absurdity of "The Magic Christian" with the stark strangeness that he would later delve into in "The Tenant."  It is a valiant attempt to create a surreal sexual comedy.
For most films, the lack of any depth to the characters will turn away even the most devoted viewer; but "What?" creates entertaining caricatures that bobble and bump into one another, with surprisingly charming results.
He plays Alex, a smarmy ex-pimp who lives in one of those terminally fabulous villas that only seem to exist in Italian movies.
He gets his other kicks by dressing up as Napoleon or crushing ping-pong balls with his feet.Among the villa's other denizens are an arthritic pianist, a clutch of sex maniacs, an American husband and wife who bicker endlessly about time zones, a stone-faced German nurse who reads Nietzsche, a pair of sun-bronzed lesbians and a dying millionaire who expires with a blissful smile on his face - after getting a glimpse of the heroine's private parts.
Sydne Rome plays a backpacking American hippie chick who escapes from an attempted gang rape on the Italian autostrada.
is one of those few movies to play on the obvious notion that 99% of all pornography is just plain silly - hence unwatchable to any viewer with even an elementary sense of the ridiculous.
Not only is it far and away Roman Polanski's funniest film.
It was in the spirit of those times that Polanski made "What?" "What?" could be defined as a surrealistic modern "Alice in Erotic Land".An innocent young and beautiful American woman, Nancy (Sydne Rome) - She is hitchhiking in Italy.
Among the characters there is a former pimp, Alex (Marcello Mastroianni), two french lesbians, a priest that watches everything with disapproving eyes, the paraplegic patriarch of the house with his serious-looking Nietzsche-reading German nurse, and even Polanski is present, as Mosquito, that has no love left for Alex, the pimp, with whom he's always arguing.Nancy, interpreted by the gorgeously beautiful Sydne Rome, will be the object of desire of every male (excepting maybe the priest) inhabiting the villa.
Even the growling dog falls under her charm, and the same happened to me.Sydne Rome, in an interview in the DVD (released in Italy), defined "What?" as an erotic dream.
This is exactly what I think.Alex, the pimp (Marcello Mastroianni), will persuade her to engage in kinky sexual games.
But don't you expect the sleaze displayed by other Italian films of the time - by these standards "What?" can be considered tamer than its Italian brothers.
Still in some scenes Sydne Rome is shown in the nude, and in many others she's wandering around the house semi-naked.
In the strange sexual games that happen between her and Alex, Sydne Rome has her clothes on.
The beautiful Sydne Rome, with her angel face and her large innocent eyes, and Marcello Mastroianni, wearing either a leopard skin or a Napoleon costume...
As Polanki has worked with a tight script and hasn't given much way to improvisation, "What?" seems sometimes more a theater play than a film.
"What?" is a surrealistic comedy which is based mainly on the actions and words of the characters, as it happens in any good theater play.
The characters are somewhat poorly developed, the film is a giallo that has psychoanalytical motives - a labyrinth, a killing, loss of memory, a white villa by the sea (yes!).
The same cannot be said for "What?".Polanski with "What?" wanted to make a sunny, dreamy and sexy film, and, in a way, he almost got there, but if he had let himself really go and had given the actors more freedom ....
The parallel between the story of "What?" and "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Caroll is very interesting, and maybe this film is the most precise adaptation of Caroll's crazy story, precisely because it really shows all the sexual content of Alice's dream trip.
The movie construction reminds the "passage" of Alice "behind the mirror": she escapes the cruel world (the rapists) when she goes down to the "loonies house".
Mastroianni's pimp character reminds of the Mad Hatter, because he keeps asking Sydne Rome if she wants to have tea with him around five o'clock.
Polanski's character can also be seen as the Mad Hatter sidekick in the book: he keeps fighting with Mastroianni all day long, as if it was some kind of game between them.
At the same time he was shooting "What?" in Italy, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey shot "Flesh for Dracula" nearby, and that explains Polanski's apparition with mustache in a scene of this film.
Of course, the "sexual innocence" of Sydne Rome put the film on the rank of "erotic fantasy".
The tribute to "Alice" is clear, but it seems that the film may have influenced a great Italian erotic illustrator, Milo Manara, whose sexy heroins really look like Sydne Rome, and are often place in similarly "unvolontary" sexual situations (oooh, the pooor girl lost her clothes, what a shame!).
Anyway, this is a crazy absurd funny and sexy film, that never takes itself seriously (at the end, Rome yells to Mastroianni: "Don't worry, this is only a film!")with a very colorful and "sunny" atmosphere..
But somebody with a rest of intellect, whose mind is not totally standardized to American mainstream taste, will realize that it actually is not about a soft porn or a comedy but about the visualisation of a dream.
This film truly is one of my all-time favourites.
For a Milo Manara fan, like myself, this film should do the trick.
With all it's weaknesses this film is a masterpiece in capturing some of the most hope-to-part-of -dream sequences I can come up with.Here Polanski is on a playful mood, which most certainly resonates with me.
Sydney Rome is an American traveling in Italy who flees to a private villa after being attacked by some really inept rapists.
Within the estate she meets a bunch of crazy people, including former pimp Marcello Mastroianni in what has to be the craziest, most outlandishly go-for-broke performance of his career.
Comparisons to Alice in Wonderland (always mentioned in conjunction with this film) are a huge stretch, I think.
At best it's like Lewis Carroll reinterpreted by a horny high schooler who still giggles when he hears the word "breast." Nevertheless, for the first half hour or so I thought this was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen.
Unfortunately it climaxed with Mastroianni crawling around in a tiger hide making meowing noises (whereupon Rome starts "taming" him with the whip).
After that the film never really recovers the energy it started out with and viewers are left with little to do but wonder how Rome will be humiliated next (first her shirt is ripped, then stolen, then she walks around wearing a napkin until she finds another shirt, but then her pants are stolen, finally she loses the shirt, etc).
I watch What?, Roman Polanski's movie about a woman who unintentionally enters into an Italian villa filled with folks that Luis Bunuel might have concocted after a few Martini's, and wonder, what's the point?
There's the pimp, played by Marcello Mastroianni, who loves the feel of crushing ping pong balls with his feet, dressing up as tigers and admirals for sexually sado-masochistic endeavors; there's the guy who plays piano beautifully and doesn't respond when someone talks to him during his incessant playing; there's Polanski himself playing a character named 'Mosquito', a fellow with a fake beard and a strange thing for Sydney Rome's character's jeans, which he steals in her sleep.
This doesn't even include random people like the woman walking around naked for no reason.There is no distinct plot, but rather it follows that illogical line of logic one could find in the Exterminating Angel (or Alice in Wonderland for that matter), or perhaps as just a parody of the creation of a 'sex diary' that Rome carries on her person everywhere.
There's even time for the villa's wise-old dying patriarch, with his bushy beard and eyebrows who nearly passes on on at a big dinner, only to recover and become with obsessed with Rome's shirt.This all said, it's not altogether excellent.
The good news is the bevy of Italian character players, people one's never seen before (or non-Italian ones like Hugh Griffith), hit their marks and can be hysterical on the whole.None, however, are quite as good as Mastroianni.
So that his sudden appearances qas he spies on Rome are funny on their own, but one he gets into 'uniforn' in those sex-role play scenes (particularly that tiger, good Lord), or fetishizes that ping pong ball, it's a kind of outrageous perfection.What?
Roman Polanski's bizarre, unfunny, yet beautifully-made film about a beautiful but naive American who becomes trapped in a decadent setting of horny Italians and indifferent foreigners is almost too embarrassing to be associated with the great director.
And yet, it kept my interest practically the whole way through.Roger Ebert has often noted that it takes a great director to make a truly awful film.
Polanski surely is talented but is this film a travesty?
The truth of the matter remains that it is surely one most Polanski fans either have not seen or are avoiding like the plague.
Maybe this is Polanski trying to relax and make a comedy, mixed inevitably with his trademark absurdity and sadness.
In the end, the traits which make Polanski unique remain visible despite the surface appearing much too seedy and unwholesome for the average film viewer.
It is beautifully dated as evidenced by the film quality and the attitudes towards sex.The main character is a young woman hitchhiking across Europe.
She is given a room and, within moments, begins undressing under the peeping eye of a perverted former pimp played by Marcelo Mastroianni, which causes the hippie girl to embark on a mysterious sexual journey.
One inhabitant constantly groans in his room; a mysterious voyeur watches the girl through a hole in her wall; two women wander through the terrace both wearing fancy hats but only one wearing clothes; and of course Mosquito played by the man himself, Roman Polanski.
A day after the girl stays in the house, she starts believing she is having déjà vu, each sexual fantasy after the next haunt her over and over again.I certainly don't consider this to be one of Polanski's best.
Due to the content, it is rather sad to see a great actor like Mastroianni in such a poorly developed film like this.
Polanski, a filmmaker that previously showed the world he could make great films then decides to make such a poor film as this.
Then again this is a hippie film, so for the times I guess it was ok.
Polanski is suitably quirky in a particularly quirky role and if the whole thing appears like some LSD inspired wonderland, it has been lovingly made with some style and is a joy to watch..
A direct quote from Polanski "My wish was to make a film without costumes first of all, preferably without clothes at all.
For the most part is a throwaway sex comedy, a film to pick up the spirits at the time depleted director - An absurd Italian Sex farce for which in Italy at least was a success.It's no more than a series of vignettes with no real beginning, middle or end.
Nancy (Sydne Rome) after escaping a trio of inept rapists stumbles into a rambling coastal estate wearing little more than an napkin throughout.Certainly a misstep in Polanski's oeuvre but it's not without its moments of genuine humour and flashes of his trademark shots.
It's sad to see Marcello Mastroianni wallowing in this mess.This is Polanski's worst film by a wide margin.
"What" is Polanski's absolute nadir .It's incredible that,helped by his excellent collaborator Gerard Brach ,he could produce nothing but this drivel:it's an insult to mention such names as Carroll (the elevator is the mirror ?) or Borges .The dialog is never funny,being mean,vulgar, pretentious,almost exclusively revolving around sex .Polanski himself appears as he did in "the fearless vampire killers" and later would in the highly superior "Chinatown" and "Le locataire" (the tenant).At a pinch ,you might find something "polanskiesque" in this turkey:the conspiracy against a lonesome hero ,like in his masterful "Rosemary's baby' or "the tenant" ;the claustrophobia which is present in almost all Polanski's canon,not only the two mentioned works ,but also "repulsion" "cul de sac" "knife in the water" "death and the maiden" ,all these stories which happen "in camera".The Carroll/Borges subject will be used again by Claude Chabrol in 1976 in his "Alice ou la dernière fugue" with much better results.For Polanski's diehards.Barely..
Basicly the film has a dream like quality, similar to Fellini, with repetition accentuating this, with reality revolving and entwinning.
Wow, while watching I could not quite believe that an insane movie like this does in fact exist.
Then eventually, this end on a meta-level where actors do actually make comments on the movie being a movie.Lucky me that Amazon Prime came along with the streaming proposal of an unknown film on my search for some Polanski movie.
I opted to go for it.That the movie does actually work despite its absurdity and its odd sex scenes must be accredited to a great deal to the flawless performances by its protagonists Sidney Rome and Marcello Mastrioianni next to the genius of its director.
At the same time, the movie is just way too bizarre to come anywhere near to such a poor evaluation.
What else would you call a woman's leg that is being painted blue midway for no real reason and stays like this for the rest of movie.It is quite a pity that uncompromising, experimental films like this are no longer produced nowadays.
A young American woman (Sydne Rome) traveling through Italy finds herself in a strange Mediterranean villa where nothing seems right.The film opens with a rape attempt -- very odd for any comedy, even more odd coming from Polanski, given his reputation now.
Sydne Rome spends a fair amount of this film topless, bottomless or both.
(The scene immediately called Monty Python's "Meaning of Life" to mind.)The dreaded Marlboro cigarettes show up that appear in so many of Polanski's films.
making the absurdity even more absurd.When producer Robert Evans was trying to coax Roman Polanski to direct Chinatown (1974), he found Polanski thoroughly absorbed with this film, to the extent that he had bought a 50% share in it.
Evans eventually lured Polanski by saying that whatever "What" made in its opening week, he would pay him as his salary for directing "Chinatown".
Polanski readily agreed to this, expecting "What" to do well as he considered it the best thing he had done up to that point.
But Roman Polanski is such a good filmmaker, even his worst efforts shine with talent, intelligence, and humor.Allegedly based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the movie opens with Nancy (Sydne Rome), a tourist traveling through Italian; as we meet her she's about to be gang raped by a trio of sleazy Italians who gave her a ride.
Then there's Roman Polanski playing Mosquito, who's called that way because of his big sting, although it's not what you're thinking about.
And finally there's the real star of the movie, Marcello Mastroianni, giving the movie's best performance as Alex, a sado-masochist ex-pimp who likes to be whipped while dressed as a tiger and doesn't mind abusing Nancy while dressed as a Navy admiral.What?
is indefinable: it has no plot, no logic, it flows like a dream and makes as much sense as one.
The characters' personality changes all the time, the absurd is always intruding, and poor Nancy is caught in the middle.
The movie is full of bawdy humor, unapologetic sexism, gratuitous nudity (as the movie progresses Rome finds herself with less and less clothes until she's naked), and silly violence.There are two types of strange in cinema: there's mainstream strange - Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, Charlie Kaufman: for some reason people find these filmmakers difficult, complex, confusing, when in fact they make a lot of sense by the end of the movie.
Roman Polanski's movie belongs in this group.It's not for everyone, which is a pity, for underneath the nonsense there is a movie with a great sense of humor and beautiful cinematography..
It almost seemed like a dream to me than a movie.
Sydne Rome was pretty much nude the entire movie, and she was stunningly beautiful back in 1972 so that was a definite plus in my book.
Marcello Mastroianni thoroughly convinced me during the movie.
The entire time I was lost and laughing so the movie did its job.
Because of this movie, I am compelled to watch more of Roman Polaski films.
Even though I knew this film was an early-ish Roman Polanski I still wasn't prepared for the overt stamp of perversion running through it.
It's a shame that we have his thoughts directed on celluloid as his thoughts are the worst thing about him - cue a very perverted film.I watched this in 2014 and it looked like it was made in the seventies, not sure if shortly after the US Government tried to deport him but they should have based on this film alone.
I think Mr Polanski had so many other things on his mind when making this film he forgot how to direct it.
In keeping with Bitter Moon which was also another turkey, avoid this film if you actually want some substance to your main character and some depth to the story..
If there really is a message, as the critics suggest, it's at least thoroughly hidden.Knowing that Polanski put quite some effort into this film, I can't help but think that probably he saw something else in it.