Ten Days of Terror!: The Virgin Spring

Film: The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on Kid #1’s TV.

For those who are movie snobs, certain genres lie at the shallow end of the swimming pool. Comedies, especially rom-coms, are a good example of this. Another is horror. Horror movies don’t get a lot of respect from the clove cigarette crowd, with a few exceptions. Show them a classic American low-budget grindhouse film like The Last House on the Left and they are likely to turn up their nose. However, if you present essentially the same story in black-and-white and have it directed by Ingmar Bergman, and we’re talking about a Criterion Collection mainstay, The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan).

This is not a film that goes long on plot, but it doesn’t have to. It’s about the drama and terrible nature of the events that happen in its 90-minute running time. Young Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) is sent by her parents Märeta (Birgitta Valberg) and Töre (Max von Sydow) to take candles to the local church. Karin is pampered, in contrast to her half-sister Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom).

Mothers and Daughters

Film: Autumn Sonata (Hostsonaten)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatcreen.

When I first started this blog, I had never seen a film by Ingmar Bergman, which was certainly a massive hole in my viewing history. Now, while I’m not close to being a completist, I’ve at least seen a lot of them so I know what more to expect when it comes to putting a Bergman film in the spinner. Autumn Sonata covers territory that I’ve seen from Ingmar before. We’re dealing with family drama and family trauma here, and the pain that people inflict on each other both intentionally and accidentally.

Primarily, we are going to be dealing with the relationship between Charlotte Andergast (Ingrid Bergman, in what would be her last theatrical film) and her daughter Eva (long-time Bergman muse Liv Ullmann). The relationships are perhaps a bit more involved; Eva is married to Viktor (Halvar Bjork) and takes care of her severely disabled sister Helena (Lena Nyman). Eva’s relationship with her mother has always been strained, but when the film begins, she has reached out to Charlotte because of the death of Leonardo, Charlotte’s latest partner.

Here's Bergman's 19th Nervous Breakdown

Film: Face to Face (Ansikte mot Ansikte)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Geek out enough on movies, and eventually you’ll wind up watching Ingmar Bergman. Whether or not you’re watching his actual movies or just the legion of films and directors who were inspired by him, you can’t escape the massive shadow he has cast on the film world. There’s a reason, though, that Face to Face (or Ansikte mot Ansikte as it is called in Swedish) isn’t listed in the same breath as films like The Seventh Seal or Persona (or about a dozen others). This isn’t a bad film, but it’s one that more or less hinges entirely on the performance of Liv Ullmann. It’s similar in a lot of ways to Persona, but not nearly the same film. It’s telling, in fact, that while it was nominated for both Best Director and Best Actress for Bergman and Ullmann respectively, it wasn’t even nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

Essentially, this is the story of a woman’s mental and emotional breakdown. The interesting level of meta that is superimposed on this is that the woman in question, Dr. Jenny Isaksson (Ullmann), is a psychiatrist. It is, more or less, the same ground that Bergman trod with Through a Glass Darkly and Persona both with this added wrinkle of the sufferer being more acutely and professionally aware of her own neuroses. It’s also longer than both of those films, which makes it a much harder sit.

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

Film: Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

Before I started watching The List, I didn’t know much about the films of Ingmar Bergman. I’ve seen a number of them now because a big part of The List is its specific fawning over certain directors. For instance, nearly 20 Hitchcock films have shown up at one time or another (with 16 currently ensconced). There’s a lot of Kubrick, Howard Hawks, Bunuel, Johns both Ford and Huston. Bergman ties for third with Kubrick with 10 films. Sure, that’s a small part of his nearly 70 films, but I think cases could be made for a few others. Anyway, I can’t say I was shocked when another of Ingmar’s works appeared. If I had to guess, I’d have gone with The Virgin Spring, but instead, it’s Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika).

The story here is almost painfully simple. Harry (Lars Ekborg) is stuck in a dead-end job he’s not very good at or with which he is very happy. One day he meets the eponymous Monika (Harriet Andersson) who is similarly underemployed and unhappy. At work she is frequently sexually harassed by coworkers and at home, her drunken father sometimes hits her. The two fall hard and instantly for each other, and begin spending a great deal of time together. When Monika, tired of the abuse, runs off from home and comes to Harry for help, he takes her to live on his father’s boat.

Death in Sweden

Film: Det Sjunde Inseglet (The Seventh Seal); Viskingar och Rop (Cries and Whispers)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.

The idea of death as a chess player probably first appeared about twenty minutes after the rules of chess were solidified and codified. The most enduring image of death as a chess player comes from Ingmar Bergman’s Det Sjunde Inseglet (The Seventh Seal). I’d seen bits and pieces of this in the past, but I’m not sure I’d seen the whole thing until today. Of all Bergman’s films, this is the most well known, and the one people seem to know. At the very least, people know the image of Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot playing chess near the sea (as in the picture above).

As I say, I’d seen bits of this, and it would appear that the bits I had seen were those of the chess game. I expected Det Sjunde Inseglet to be a sort of My Dinner with Andre where the two play chess and have deep existential discussions about the meanings of life and death. I’m not sure why I thought that, and I’m pleased to have been wrong. I’m not sure that this would have become the classic it is had it just been a literal chess game instead of the much more figurative chess game it is.

Spring is Coming

Film: Nattvardsgasterna (Winter Light)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

I find the films of Ingmar Bergman interesting for a number of reasons. The primary one, I think, is that so much of Bergman is infused with religion and religious imagery while so frequently being about people struggling with living in a world they envision without a god. Bergman liked the pain of existentialism, the search for meaning and purpose in an uncaring and indifferent universe, and particularly that key moment of struggle when the people in question discover their own lack of faith in what may or may not be in the world beyond this one. Nowhere is this clearer than in Nattvardsgasterna (Winter Light) where even those who have dedicated themselves to a life of faith find that their faith is unable to withstand the burdens of the world.

Tomas (Gunnar Bjornstrand) presides over a very small rural flock in his church. The film opens with a service attended by a small crowd of people. This crowd includes local fisherman Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow) and his wife Karin (Gunnel Lindblom). When the service ends, Jonas speaks with Tomas about his own worries and fears. In particular, Jonas is upset that the Chinese are working on an atomic weapon, a reality that fills him with abject terror. Tomas is also confronted by Marta (Ingrid Thulin), a former lover who also happens to be his antithesis, as she is an atheist. Tomas is only able to give her part attention, since he is concerned about his ability to minister to Jonas Persson—just as Jonas has lost faith, Tomas finds himself without hope or solace.

Tsk-Tsk!

Film: Skammen (Shame); Shame
Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive on laptop (Skammen); DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player (Shame)

Ingmar Bergman’s Skammen (Shame) is a very odd film in an important respect. The film depicts a couple caught up in the middle of a war, essentially as victims rather than as people on one side or the other, but I have no idea what war it’s supposed to be. From what I can determine, the war here is an allegorical one that exists mostly because Bergman wants to make a particular point about war. It makes this film an odd mixture of something like fact and something very much fiction.

Jan (Max von Sydow) and Eva (Liv Ullmann) Rosenberg live on an island away from most of the madding crowd. Both are former instrumentalists an a symphony, but have since retreated to this island house to get away from an unspecified civil war. While it’s a real enough war in the film itself, I have no idea what war it is representative of, since Sweden doesn’t get involved in wars that often, which is precisely why I suggest that this is a real story that takes place in an allegorical war. Regardless, the war finally comes to the island, first as threats and then as reality.

Oh, Ingmar!

Film: Sasom i en Spegel (Through a Glass Darkly)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

As I think I have mentioned before when discussing Bergman, there is a perception of the man’s films. The stereotype of Bergman is that it will be black-and-white, featuring Max von Sydow, and deal with bucketloads of existential angst and heady philosophical topics. And thus we have Sasom i en Spegel (Through a Glass Darkly). In terms of what people tend to expect from Bergman, this one hits on all cylinders.

The events of the film take place over a single 24-hour period, a single day in the life of a very disturbed family. Central to this narrative is Karin (Harriet Andersson). There is something distinctively off about her, and we learn early that she has recently been released from an institution. Karin is a schizophrenic, and indications are that she will never really be cured of her delusions. At least this is what her husband Martin (von Sydow) has been led to believe. He tells this to Karin’s father, David (Gunnar Bjornstrand).

While Karin’s insanity is the true prime mover of the film, It is his relationships with the other characters through the film, it is his reaction to them as well that drives the narrative throughout. Naturally the characters have a relationship with each other, but they are in many ways defined by their relationship with David. Karin, for instance, sees him in many ways as a protector initially, but discovers in his diary that he knows she will not be cured of her delusions, and that there is a part of him that wishes to watch and record this process. David’s relationship with his son Minus (Lars Passgard) is also critical. Minus is in his late teens and filled with the sort of insanity of all teens. He is energetic and wishes to please his father, but has no idea how to do so. He’s also sexually frustrated, which becomes an object of fun for Karin.

David’s desire to watch Karin deteriorate comes between him and Martin, and does so rather firmly. Martin believes that this attitude is cruel and callous, which it really is. But it is in many ways David’s inability to truly express himself. He confesses that Martin is right in many ways, but also that he considered suicide, but could not actually kill himself; now that he has passed through that particular trial, what sustains him is his love for his family—a love that seems to be unable to be expressed.

Of course, we’re going to spend a lot of time dealing with Karin’s insanity. During the night, for instance, she wakes up and heads to the attic. While there, she believes that there are voices coming to her from underneath the wallpaper. There’s also some indication that at one point in the film, with her splintering sanity starting to crack again, that she seduces her frustrated younger brother, which is really damn creepy.

Bergman, of course, is all about the pain and fear of our own existence. A lot of this also seems to come from what seems like the stereotypical Scandinavian inability to express emotion. Certainly, while Karin has no problem expressing her feelings or bizarre impulses, and Martin is fairly easy to understand, David is emotionally closed off to the point that Minus believes it is impossible for him to have a meaningful conversation with him. This only serves to further exacerbate the problem. In a sense, David’s inability to communicate with his son becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He cannot communicate with Minus, so he simply does not communicate with Minus. Minus says at much at one point, wondering if every person is trapped inside his or her own private cage.

Of course it’s depressing, even if it genuinely attempts to end on an up note. After all, it is a Bergman film. Why? Because it seems very much that at least for some of the people, Minus is correct. Karin in particular is in her own little world of schizophrenia, knowing that there's no way for her to be cured of the disease. The others certainly try to reach her, but she is unreachable. There's an attempt at resolution, and we even get a little at the end. However, ultimately, each one of us is alone. Cheery thought!

Why to watch Sasom i en Spegel: It’s what you think of when you think of Bergman.
Why not to watch: It’s also as weird as you expect it to be.

You Can't Choose Your Family

Film: Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass DVD player.

Family is one of those words that’s difficult to define. Who you consider a part of your family differs from person to person. Generally speaking, we don’t get to choose the members of our family. We’re stuck with them, like it or not. Everyone has those people in their families who they wish they didn’t need to claim, but that’s not the way it works. Family is family, regardless of how you classify it.

Bergman’s Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander) is a film about family and all that that word entails. It’s also a film by Ingmar Bergman, which means you can expect existential pain and suffering a lot of it expressed oddly in Bergman’s style. Lots of austerity. Lots of self-inflicted emotional trauma. Oh, Ingmar.

The film concerns the Ekdahl family, particularly the two eponymous children, Fanny (Pernilla Alwin) and Alexander (Bertil Guve). They live in a large, loving family happily ensconced in the upper middle class of turn-of-the-century Sweden. Their parents Oscar (Allan Edwall) and Emilie (Ewa Froling) run a playhouse and enjoy a sort of magical existence. They have kooky uncles, a nursemaid devoted to them, and a grandmother who adores them.

And then, tragically, their father dies. Seeking comfort, Emilie relies on the local bishop (Jan Malmsjo) for spiritual guidance and comfort. At least at first. Eventually, the bishop asks Emilie to marry him and she agrees. One of his conditions of the marriage is that she will leave her entire life behind—and so will the children. No clothing, books, trinkets, jewelry from their old life. And no contact with their old family. Essentially, the children are to be plucked out of their old lives and dropped wholesale into the world of the austere and harsh religious man. That they see visions of their dead father is not surprising. That others see him as well is perhaps a bit more.

The bishop seems to spend most of his punishments and his harshest behavior for Alexander, who is as defiant as most young children. His greatest sin is the telling of lies, each of which comes with a punishment—generally a bare-assed whipping witnessed by the rest of the household and evidently enjoyed by the bishop’s mother. Emilie sees what she has wrought with her children, that in selecting her family, she has perhaps chosen too quickly, too much in earnest, and thus poorly. Pregnant but not caring, she asks him for a divorce and he refuses, telling her that should she leave, he will take her children and raise them as his own, depriving her of them. Such a nice, upstanding, holy man, that bishop.

All of this takes us to the third act, and Emilie’s decisions regarding the welfare of Fanny and Alexander. It’s not something to spoil, so I won’t.

For all of the pain and misery that Bergman gives us in this film, it is very much a meditation on the power and value of family. The Ekdahl clan is one that, for lack of a better way to put it, is what a true family should be. They get angry with each other, frustrated with each other, and are constantly dealing with the foibles of one family member or another. And yet, at every turn and every problem, there is always the sort of unconditional love that creates a true family.

Bergman, of course, made his career creating the kind of movies that made Woody Allen concerned about his position in an uncaring universe. For all of the pain and suffering, all of the existential crises, and all of the people doomed by their own decisions he filmed in his career, he ended his career in the cinema with a movie that is, ultimately, incredibly uplifting.

(Yes, I’m well aware that Bergman made other films after Fanny och Alexander. However, this film is the final full-length feature of his career that was released in theaters. While not particularly his swan song, it was his last go-around with the venue that had been his mistress for so long. So no complaints.)

Fanny och Alexander is, like life, filled with both joy and pain, happiness and sadness, triumph and tragedy. I’ve not gone too far in Bergman’s filmography, but it would not surprise me if no other film of his felt as genuinely human, accessible, and natural as this one.

Why to watch Fanny och Alexander: A meditation on family, both good and bad.
Why not to watch: It’s long and pretty Bergman-y, even if it’s not quite as depressing as you might think.

Ghost of Sweden Past

Films Smultronstallet (Wild Strawberries)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

As we get older, our memories get longer. That’s simple fact, and one that I’m reminded of, since my birthday is around the corner. Every day, we have more memories, and every day because of that, there are new possibilities in the world around us to bring up old memories and return them to the fronts of our brains. Smultronstallet (Wild Strawberries) explores this idea in depth in the guise of a drive taken by an elderly gentlemen, his daughter-in-law, and some hitchhikers.

Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom, who directed the interesting Korkarlen) is about to be honored by his university for 50 years of service. It’s a big moment in Borg’s life, but he’s having trouble finding someone to share the moment with. His wife is dead as are all his siblings, and his mother, while still alive, is ancient. His housekeeper Agda (Jullan Kindahl) would like to accompany him, but does not want to drive all the way to the ceremony, and is thus crabby.

However, he won’t take the drive alone. His daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) who is visiting him, and experiencing some level of trouble at home, has decided to accompany him to his ceremony and to return at least temporarily to her husband. And so the two set off. It’s evident to Isak that Marianne is not too fond of him in part because his son, her husband, and he are far too much alike.

The pair stop at a place where Isak lived when he was much younger, and he slips into a reverie in which he essentially floats back to an important day in his past. While everyone in his memory is has he remembers them, he is still the old man of his present day. It is here that he discovers his first love, Sara (Bibi Andersson) was truly in love with his brother Sigfrid (Per Sjostrand), and that she will eventually run off with this younger brother. Returned to the present, Isak discovers a trio of travelers headed to Italy, and he offers them a lift for as far as they are going. As a reminder of his past, the girl in the group is named Sara (and is also played by Bibi Andersson).

Such reveries happen multiple times. We meet a quarreling couple who remind Isak of his own failed marriage and his wife’s infidelity. We also discover the truth behind what is going on with Marianne; she is pregnant and going to leave her husband because he does not want the child. Through all of this, Isak attempts to make sense of his current life, his loneliness, and the events of his past.

In a way, the film is sort of like a Swedish version of A Christmas Carol, or at least the parts featuring the ghosts of Christmas past and present. Isak learns of his own past crimes, of his guilt that he carries through life as well as the effects his own life has had on the people around him. In part, the reason his son’s marriage is breaking up is because his son does not want his life to mimic that of his parents. In one of the more interesting sequences, Isak’s subconscious puts himself on trial in which he is accused of guilt. The results of the trial never really come out, because he is awakened.

Bergman’s work often skirts into territory normally reserved for horror. While there are no slashers or bugaboos or things jumping out of cupboards, there is a sense of despair in his work, of the intense and constant pressure of existence in the world. Bergman’s films, at least in my experience, plunge the characters into places of despair and deep existential pain. Isak Borg is no different from these characters going through a crisis of the soul—in this late stage in his life, he is reaching the same point. Essentially, Borg has not yet come to terms with either his life as he has lived it or with his eventual death.

It’s a strange film, and one worth exploring. I’m not sure I groked the whole thing, and I probably need to watch it again after I’ve had some time to let it settle. Right now, I don’t think I can call it a film I’ve either loved or hated. I appreciate it, and for the moment, that’s going to have to do. I think I like it, but I’m not sure if I actually like it or if I simply feel obligated to like a film that has such an impeccable pedigree.

Why to watch Smultronstallet: Well, it’s normally considered one of Bergman’s great films.
Why not to watch: It’s hard to tell whether it’s actually enjoyable or not.

Psychosis

Film: Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

As I looked through the list of films still to watch, it occurred to me that there are a number of directors I have either ignored or virtually ignored. Ingmar Bergman is one of those directors. He’s got 10 films on the list, one of the very small list of directors in the double digits, and yet I’ve watched only two. Tonight was time to remedy that by sitting through Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf). I don’t really know why I decided on Bergman specifically, except that I’ve just sort of avoided him so far. Of course, the same is true of Robert Altman, whose six films remain unwatched. However, in the case of Altman, it’s because he often seems to confuse me or put me to sleep.

Thought by many to be Bergman’s descent into the horror genre (or for those of us who are horror fans, Bergman’s rise into horror), this film is also very much a companion piece to Persona, as it touches on some of the same general themes. And it is a horror piece, even if it’s not what you might expect from something called a horror movie. This is an existential horror movie, one that works on the psychological instead of the jump scare. The horror doesn’t come from monsters or machete-wielding guys jumping out of the shadows, but the fear of the past, the fear of memory, and the fear of guilt.

The film begins with a voiceover from Bergman telling us that the film is based on the diary of an artist named Johan Borg, who disappeared without a trace. His wife speaks to us well, telling us that she doesn’t know what has happened, and that she will soon give birth. It is she who gave the journal to Bergman. In some ways, at least obliquely, this film is the parent of The Blair Witch Project.

Johan Borg (Bergman mainstay and muse Max von Sydow) is an artist who is troubled by his past. His wife, Alma (Bergman’s other muse Liv Ullman), attempts to be sympathetic to him and be there for him. It becomes evident early on that Johan has some things going on mentally. He’s started to see people in the area around him and his wife as something akin to demons. An old woman with an enormous hat, for instance, removes her face along with her hat according to Johan. He’s given nicknames to the people who appear to be plaguing him—Carnivore, Bird-Man, Schoolmaster, etc. The hardest time of the day for him is the time between midnight and dawn, the eponymous hour of the wolf when, according to Johan, most people die and are born.

During these nighttime hours, Johan talks to Alma, telling her about his past and things that he remains guilt-stricken over. Slowly, both Alma and the audience realize that the demons that Johan is seeing are shades of these past guilts and terrors—he is being plagued by his own past, although that doesn’t mean that the demons aren’t real. Since Borg is a well-known painter, he and his wife are invited to the castle of the man who owns the island they are on for a dinner. What proceeds is a surreal dinner filled with the same sort of demons and temptations that have attacked Borg since, evidently, before the beginning of the film.

Ullman and von Sydow constantly look out of place in this film, nowhere more than at the horrific dinner at the castle. This is naturally intentional—the fact that they are constantly uncomfortable makes us uncomfortable as well. The film attempts (and succeeds) in putting the audience off balance and keeping the audience off balance for as much as possible. So, as much as it is the natural parent of Blair Witch, it is similarly at least a paternal uncle of a film like Jacob’s Ladder. Ullman in particular looks as if she is constantly on the verge of running away. The fact that she looks like she’s about 12 does nothing but enhance this effect.

Vargtimmen is exactly the sort of horror film that I favor. Oh, I don’t mind a bit of gore now and then when it makes sense in the film, but I’m not a big fan of splatter for the sake of splatter. Vargtimmen doesn’t go anywhere near that sort of gratuitous violence, but tries (and succeeds) is creating a world that is just skewed enough from the normal to be become terribly disturbing and frightening because of its surface normalcy and subcutaneous evil and weirdness. It’s damn weird, but it hits every twisted, strange, horrible note perfectly. We don’t even get a title card until the movie is more than half over—almost as if the first half of the film is nothing but set up for the true horror and psychological evil that comes at the end.

I don’t want this to sound like there aren’t moments of true shock in the film, because there are. There are some moments that are truly awful and horrific, and yet filmed with a disturbing clarity and beauty. It’s truly masterful when a director can make something so terrible to witness something riveting to watch at the same time. I see pieces of other films here--Blair Witch in the sense that it plays like a found story, Jacob’s Ladder in how it plays as a mental drama, Eyes Wide Shut for its blatant voyeuristic sexuality, Repulsion for its slow descent into madness. The fact that it predates all of these except Repulsion only indicates that even Kubrick borrowed from Bergman. That this reminds me of later films only indicates that I saw those first.

So far, it’s my favorite Bergman. I realize that doesn’t say a whole lot, but this is a film I plan on watching again, because I can only imagine that it gets better with additional viewings. It’s not really nightmare fuel, but it certainly has the ability to haunt one’s thoughts for some time after viewing, which may be the most complimentary thing I can say about any film.

Why to watch Vargtimmen: Bergman + horror.
Why not to watch: Blair Witch plus Jacob’s Ladder plus Repulsion plus Eyes Wide Shut equals a big ol’ WTF.

All That Wacky F***in'

Film: Sommarnattens Leende (Smiles of a Summer Night)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

What’s the first thing you think of when someone mentions Ingmar Bergman? If you are like most people, the first thing you think of is a guy dressed in black playing chess against Death. The last thing you’d probably think of is a jaunty comedy featuring more than half a dozen sex-starved lovers swapping partners with each other. And yet this is what we discover in Sommarnattens Leende (Smiles of a Summer Night). It’s not the usual Bergman, I’ll admit, and yet it is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Sommarnattens Leende is as much of a sex comedy as one could get away with in 1955 and still be seen in polite company. Our main character is Fredrik Egerman (Gunnar Bjornstrand), a successful lawyer and something of a ladies’ man. Fredrik is married to the much younger and extremely nubile Anne (Ulla Jacobsson). The marriage, while two years old, has not yet been consummated because Anne isn’t ready. This is compounded by the presence of Henrik (Bjorn Bjelfvenstam), Fredrik’s son from his first marriage. Henrik is actually a little older than Anne and is a theology student.

However, he’s also in his early 20s, and is painfully attracted to Anne. Worse, the feeling is mutual. Anne sublimates these feelings into treating her husband like a father while Henrik starts doing the boom-boom with Petra (Harriet Andersson), the family maid. Petra is a flirt and a tease (she does things like unbuttoning her uniform in front of Henrik) and would certainly satisfy the libido of any man, but Henrik doesn’t really want her. Oh, he’s not turning down the sex too often, but he’d rather be with Anne.

Fredrik goes to consult with Desiree Armfeldt (Eva Dahlbeck), an actress and former mistress of his. They squabble a bit, and when Fredrik steps into a gigantic puddle, she takes him in and puts him in nightclothes while his own clothing dries. Enter her current beau, Count Carl Magnus Malcolm (Jarl Kulle), a military man who is famously jealous as well as completely open about his affairs. He threatens Fredrik and, once Fredrik leaves, splits with Desiree. In retaliation for what he assumes is Desiree’s infidelity with him, he tells his wife what has happened—yes, his wife knows all about his affairs. As it turns out, Charlotte Malcolm (Margit Carlqvist) is an old friend of Anne Egerman. Charlotte also desperately loves her husband and wants him back.

And so, to sort out all these threads, Desiree convinces her mother (Naima Wifstrand) to host a party. They invite the Egermans and the Malcolms, and of course Petra comes, too. Now we have four lusty women (Anne, Desiree, Petra, and Charlotte) and three guys (Fredrik, Carl Magnus, and Henrik). Add a fourth guy and the math all works out and everyone goes away with the right person and finally gratified. Of course, there will be plenty of misunderstandings, bed hopping, and all the rest before we get the happy-happy. And you know we will here. It may be Bergman, but it’s also a Shakespearean comedy of errors, and is less a love triangle than a love octagon. It simply has to work out eventually.

Bergman, of course, was Swedish. So too were the members of ABBA. The music of ABBA was used as the basis for the film Mama Mia!, which was all about a woman trying to figure out which of three guys is the father of her child. My 12-year-old daughter watched it with my wife and said it should have been called Who My Baby Daddy? When I heard what the plot was, I started calling it All That Wacky Fuckin’. Sommarnattens Leende is the black-and-white equivalent.

Of course, the women are in charge the entire time here, which is exactly as it should be. In general, men are idiots when it comes to romance, and the men here are no different. Carl Magnus is a posturing buffon, Fredrik is too clever for his own good, and Henrik is a stick in the mud (he’s also the closest thing to what one thinks of as a Bergman character). Meanwhile, the women all know what they want and move to get it.

There’s a lot of implied sexuality going on here. Anne tends to burn with a lot of unbidden passion whenever Henrik is around, and Desiree can’t go thirty seconds without flirting, even when the only other person in the room is her mother. Charlotte is almost disturbingly exotic. And Petra…oh, Petra, you saucy wench.

For all of this, my favorite character in the film is Desiree’s mother. She’s a complete riot throughout. She’s funny, blunt, and matter-of-fact, and her age gives her the license to say the things that many of us would like to say. In conversation with her daughter, for instance, she comments that she doesn’t bother really listening to anyone anymore because she generally doesn’t like people that much and caring is bad for her health. She’s an absolute treasure, sort of the Bergman version of 80% of Betty White’s characters.

Such a funny little movie, a charming little film. It certainly hints at future Bergman themes (what with Henrik threatening suicide), but for all its theme of marital infidelity, betrayal, and playing fast and loose with a couple of the deadly sins, it’s fun. There are times when it looks like it won’t be, but everything here is ultimately played for comedy.

Why to watch Sommarnattens Leende: Bergman doing comedy and doing it well.
Why not to watch: There’s a time for gratuitous nudity, and this film was it...but it didn’t deliver.

This Blog Post is Not Self-Referential

Films: Persona, The Purple Rose of Cairo
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television (Persona), DVD from Rockford Public Library on middlin’-sized living room television (Purple Rose).


Were I a smarter man, I would not have chosen Ingmar Bergman’s surreal black and white thought experiment Persona as the first Bergman film for this blog. I would have gone with something simpler, or at least easier to track. It is a film like this that makes Bergman easy to spoof, and probably has influenced a few hundred thousand film students in making their own film projects with meaningless juxtapositions and shots of bleak landscapes.

Ostensibly, Persona is the story of Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann), an actress who freezes on stage one night. From that moment, she slides into a sort of willful catatonia, refusing to speak or really interact much with the outside world. She is, we are told, physically and mentally sound (although I’m not so sure about the second part of that). After a long stay in a hospital, she is sent off to a beach house with her nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson).

But wait. That’s not how things start. We start with a series of unconnected images. The film opens with what looks like problems with the projector. We see a lamb evidently being slaughtered, a man having a spike pounded through his hand, a spider, and then what looks to be bodies in a morgue. It looks that way until one of the bodies opens its eyes, and another one shifts around and looks at us. And then we get into the story of Elisabet and Alma.

Alma talks; Elisabet listens. Lather, rinse, repeat. Alma talks about everything, and much of it is trivial initially. Eventually, after drinking more than she should, Alma talks about the one time she was unfaithful to her fiancé, a casual fling on a beach during a day spent sunbathing nude. She also talks about the subsequent abortion. It’s clear that Alma is harboring a great deal of guilt for these events, but it is unclear as to the exact reason. It’s possible, and likely in her mind, that the guilt comes from having done something she regrets. The implication, though, is that the guilt stems from the fact that it appears this impromptu beach orgy is the only satisfying sexual event of her life.

The next day, Alma drives to the nearby down to send off some letters. One letter, written by Elisabet, is unsealed, and Alma reads it. She discovers that Elisabet is actually studying her, and revealing all of her confessed sins in the letter. Now furious and betrayed, Alma returns to the beach house and breaks a glass on the patio outside. She refuses to clean this up, and watches as Elisabet steps on a piece of broken glass, cutting her foot.

And then the film breaks. It tears vertically, freezes, and burns and the screen goes white. We’re treated again to some of the images from the opening of the film, and watch as one of the two women walks around in the house while the camera is out of focus. Suddenly it snaps back into focus, and we’re back to the story. Alma tears into Elisabet and threatens her with a pot of boiling water, which forces Elisabet to finally speak. She storms off and Alma chases her, begging for forgiveness.

Suffice it to say that at this point, it becomes evident that the two women are merging into a single personality—Elisabet’s will is dominating that of Alma, and Alma is essentially becoming Elisabet. This is shown in several different ways, initially by a visit from Elisabet’s husband (Gunnar Bjornstrand) in which he mistakes Alma for Elisabet, and then by a merging of the two women’s faces in what is certainly the most shocking scene of the film. We see Alma’s face screen left, Elisabet’s screen right, and the two women look almost identical. There are differences in the nose and around the mouth, but the eyes are the same. Alma welcomes this initially—she accepts Elisabet’s husband as her own and agrees that she is truly Elisabet.

So, what the holy living hell is going on here? It seems to me that Elisabet is attempting to force Alma to become her. The pain of her own existence is so acute, so intense, that the only way out for her is to force someone else to become her so that she can live in seclusion without the pain of putting on the mask of real life. That’s got to be at least part of it based on the name—it isn’t called “People” or “Women”, but Persona, which calls to mind such words as “identity,” “public identity,” “character,” and even “façade.”

Despite this, Bergman never lets his audience forget that it is watching a film. The introductory sequence, the broken film and out of focus camera work in the middle, and the actual filming of the crew filming a scene at the end serve as reminders that this is not real. We are an audience watching a story take place on a screen. We’ve been watching what we have always been trained to believe, both willfully and by trickery, is life instead of a film. But really, we’ve just been watching personae adopted by the actors, who then go on with their lives once the filming is over.

The film is shot in stark black and white. Most of the scenery—the hospital, the beach house, the beach itself—is bright white while the women wear black outfits and little or no makeup. The camera moves very little if at all in most scenes and there is almost no set decoration, which forces the audience to pay attention to the women. Bergman frequently places his camera in such a way that one face appears in the foreground and the other behind, partially obscured. Even before we get the blending of faces near the end, the two women are already becoming one, since they are often shown in this way, one partially obscuring the other.

The genius here is that not only is the story about this idea of persona, the public façade that everyone has, but that Bergman constantly reminds us that these are actors playing a role. In discussing these personae, they are themselves adopting personae.

Is it Bergman’s greatest work? I don’t know. I haven’t watched nearly enough Bergman to know. It is justifiably considered one of the greatest films ever made, and its influence on films that followed it is understandable and justified.


Anyone who has ever seen both a Bergman movie and a Woody Allen movie knows that the first is a huge influence on the second. There’s something about Woody Allen’s style that screams existentialism, either when he’s being serious (which he does well) or when he’s going for comedy (which he does very well, especially early in his career). Allen, for all the strangeness of his personal life, is a consummate filmmaker. He rarely makes a good film—his stinkers are complete misfires, but his better films are truly great, and he’s made a lot of great films. It’s also evident from watching his work that he dearly loves movies. He undoubtedly loves to talk about movies and spends a lot of time thinking about movies. It comes as no surprise, then, that he’d make a movie about movies.

Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo contains a different sort of self reference. It’s less of a meta film then it is a film within a film. Even more than that, it’s a love song to movies in the same way that Allen’s Radio Days was a love song to the days before television. In this film, Cecilia (Mia Farrow) is a not-so-good waitress in New Jersey during The Great Depression. She’s married to Monk (Danny Aiello), who is a shiftless, out-of-work, philandering gambler. Cecilia loses herself in the movies, going to a show every week. She also attempts to leave Monk time and time again, but can never quite get there.

The latest film is The Purple Rose of Cairo, and she loves the film tremendously. In the film, an explorer is dragged away from an archaeological dig in Cairo and brought back to New York where he falls for a singer at the Copacabana. But everything changes when on a repeat viewing of the film, the character walks out of the screen into the real world and approaches Cecilia on the day she loses her job.

This is one of the great scenes of Allen’s career, or really anyone’s career. The character Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) steps off the screen and the other characters immediately react as if they are characters on a stage. A minister shows up in the scene even though he’s not supposed to be there until reel six, and the maid comes out and complains that someone is playing a vicious joke on her since Tom has left the film. What makes this scene work, however, is the reaction of the audience. While Tom and Cecilia run out of the theater and the manager has a minor nervous breakdown, the bulk of the theater patrons sit, smiles on their faces, happily eating their popcorn as if this is precisely what is supposed to happen. The characters have a minor existential crisis when the manager threatens to turn off the projector.

Tom is a completely engaging character, a true movie character of the 1930s. He’s a sort of perfect man in his pith helmet and wide smile. He’s an odd mix of things, and while vaguely three-dimensional, he really isn’t. For instance, he talks about his father, but then claims to have never met him because the film’s story occurs at some point after his father has died. He is, after all, a character, and knows only those things that are written into him. Cecilia takes him to an amusement park that is currently abandoned as a place to hide, and he is excited because he understands amusement parks—they are written into his character. Popcorn, he doesn’t understand, having never eaten it, but has seen it eaten by the endless waves of theater patrons.

The movie company, of course, panics now that one of the main characters has left the film, and they bring the actor who played Tom Baxter, a man named Gil Shepherd (obviously, also played by Jeff Daniels). What follows is, I think, completely unique in film stories. Cecilia is wooed by both men, forgetting her bum of a husband. Both the fictional Tom and the very real Gil romance her, forcing her to make a choice. Her choice is best left to spoilers.

*** A STEP INTO REALITY ***

Cecilia has the opportunity to step into the film world with Tom and forever be a character on the screen. She opts not to, essentially forcing Tom back into his screen romance forever. Instead, Cecilia decides that it would be better to live a real life with Gil. Naturally, Gil leaves her, and she is without a job, without a home, and without a husband, and both of her romances have left her. The film ends with Cecilia again sitting in the movie theater, this time watching Top Hat and again finding solace in film.

*** BACK TO THE FILM WORLD ***

So what does it all mean? It means that movies are movies. They are flights of fancy and a way to take us somewhere else than the mundane real world that most of us live in, but that they’ll never be more than that, and they shouldn’t be. The idea that they are imagination and nothing more than that may be sad, but it’s also ultimately true. Movies are there for us to love, and for us to fall in love with, but they aren’t and cannot be reality.

Allen’s film is, of course, self-referential, as any film about film must be. That it’s a different sort of self-reference than Bergman’s means nothing. This film is, as I’ve said, a love song, and like any great love song, it ends too soon.

Why to watch Persona: Bergman’s existential masterpiece.
Why not to watch: Seriously, WTF?

Why to watch The Purple Rose of Cairo: If you love movies, it’s what you dream about.
Why not to watch: The ending is a wrist-slitter.