** New 2K restoration! **

Essayist, novelist, critic, cinephile, and all-around intellectual dynamo Sontag made her directorial debut with this definition-defying, dryly funny psychological serio-comedy, the result of a Swedish studio’s invitation to her to make a film in Stockholm. The result, revolving around the quadrangular relationship between an arrogant ex-revolutionist German intellectual exile, his elegant wife, their Swedish student secretary, and the earnest secretary’s bride-to-be, is a roundelay of partner-swapping that gradually drifts towards uncharted territory, gamesmanship that broaches the surreal and violent. Defying literal-minded interpretation, Duet for Cannibals is both an illustrative companion to Sontag’s criticism, and introduction of a startlingly original filmmaker.

Description and images on this page courtesy of Metrograph Pictures.

Contemporary praise for Duet for Cannibals:

“A work of art… Duet for Cannibals is a witty, bone-dry, serio-comedy that fascinates and disturbs in turn.” – Frederic Tuten, Vogue Magazine
“Fascinatingly compelling, visually inventive…very funny, indeed.” – Richard Roud, Sight and Sound

Review quotes from the film’s 1969 release:

“Cannibals is as explicitly sexual as even the new moral codes allow, sexier than I Am Curious. It is also a thinking person’s enigma. Frankly, I didn’t understand it all, but I was intrigued.” – Liz Smith, Cosmopolitan

“The situations themselves are original and surprising, funny and even revolting, but they are never shocking or disturbing. … Miss Sontag is faithful to the principle she has admired in Bresson — preserving the integrity of human mystery. Miss Sontag’s style is her own — deliberate, direct, dispassionate, a vehicle for the measured orchestration of her ideas…” – Molly Haskell, The Village Voice