We’ve lost two art film goddesses this week. First Maria Schneider and now Lena Nyman.

Nyman starred in the controversial I Am Curious (Yellow) and it’s sequel I Am Curious (Blue). These were iconic films for anyone growing up in the 1960s. As curious teenagers we all tried to sneak into theaters screening these Swedish soft-core films that combined free love with a radical political viewpoint.

When the film arrived in the United States, it was seized by customs as pornographic material, which, if allowed into the country would lead to more race riots and political assassinations, not to mention another Vietnam War elsewhere in Asia or perhaps Africa.

Following an anti-censorship battle in US courts, I Am Curious (Yellow) was finally allowed to be shown on American screens in 1969. Thanks to all the free publicity provided by various branches of the US government, it became the biggest foreign-language box-office hit ever in the United States, grossing $20.23m (or about $113.3m today). If inflation is taken into account, I Am Curious (Yellow) remains the record holder among non-English-language releases in the US.

More importantly, I Am Curious (Yellow) set a legal precedent that changed the meaning of the word “obscene,” thus allowing other sexually provocative motion pictures to enter the United States, among them Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron (1971) and Tales of Canterbury (1973), and the aforementioned Last Tango in Paris.”

Lena Nyman starred in over 50 films in her lifetime, including Bergman’s Autumn Sonata. She died after suffering from a longterm illness. She was 66.

Here’s a scene that was cut from the final version of I am Curious (Blue).