Prison. An odd, only partially successful mixture of the sociopsychological melodrama Bergman was doing in the early years and an attempt at an “art film” that points in some way to his later work (heavy stylization, metafilmic elements and dream/hallucinatory sequences, metaphysical obsessions). Not all that engaging, but there’s a dramatically powerful moment when Birgitta breaks down from her being used by a fellow human being in the worst way. The film is notable for the inclusion of the death-and-the-devil short slasstick silent film that shows up again in
Persona and
Fanny and Alexander; it obviously has strong significance for Bergman and has been the subject of frequent analysis as one of the potential “keys” to his thematic concerns.
A Passion (
The Passion of Anna). (The accurate translation is
A Passion – and the exploitative American title
The Passion of Anna doesn’t even make sense, as this is really about Andreas more than any other single character.) I really like this one, even if it feels a little thrown together without perhaps the same level of accomplishment as the previous films in the Fârö quadrilogy.
Certainly this is Bergman at his most despairing – there’s literally no glimmer of hope here. (In a 1971 article about Bunuel, Truffaut situated Bunuel between Renoir and Bergman of the previous 10 years on the optimism/pessimism scale – i.e. Bunuel finds that people are imbeciles but life is nevertheless amusing – and memorably remarked that Bergman “doesn’t help us live”. That's definitely true of this film.)
The seemingly arbitrary abuse of animals presents the world as uncaring and even cruel in its metaphysical essence (yes there’s someone slaughtering and torturing the animals – but there’s also that scene of a bird hitting the window and Andreas killing it). And Andreas is really like one of those tortured creatures – he’s so completely isolated and psychologically vulnerable. As he reveals to Anna in the end, he’s completely “humiliated” - he literally has no self-esteem or positive sense of self. From the beginning he’s desperate to latch on to anyone, with predictably disastrous results. I noticed for the first time that when at the end he grabs the wheel of the car that Anna’s driving and causes a near accident, one of the quick cuts is to a mirror ornament, a teddy bear twisting and being “strangled” by the string around its neck, that links to the earlier twisting and strangled dog in the film (which, painfully, to me anyway, Andreas eventually gives away to Eva - that dog that gives him all that free affection - in the desperate hope that somehow this will win him some female favor).
But despite being so dire, there’s something about the atmosphere of this film, the desolate and wintry environment in which it’s filmed, as well as how touching Andreas is, that I find really appealing. I don’t know what to make of the actor interviews, they’re part of Bergman’s meta experiments in the latter half of that decade, but they’re few enough to not distract from the film’s power.
Summer Interlude. Definitely Top 3 for me. I’ve always been completely enchanted by the sections invoking that past youthful romance – delightfully written and played and absolutely charmingly photographed. Some truly magical images. It’s enough to make me overlook other aspects of the film that are a little more ordinary, though never weak – although Bergman is continuing to evolve in his psychological and philosophical themes in terms of people building walls to protect themselves and the seeming absence of a caring God. Nilsson manages within the same film, quite amazingly, to portray and look like both a young girl and a woman, with one of those great female faces that Bergman takes full advantage of in shooting.
Torment. Some good scenes, especially those that take place in school, but the stuff with the troubled girl (Bergman really seems to have a thing for them in his early films) and the heavy melodramatic storyline involving the sadist professor and his role in the narrative developments is a bit much.
From the Life of the Marionettes. Domino referred to this one as one of the worst – I’m not being actually perverse when I say I kind of like it to some degree (though my feelings watching it throughout vary and are at best ambivalent), even though it feels like Bergman is back to some ultra-depressing near-nihilism. Yes it’s only partially successful and like other films in the canon, several of them late, such as
Face to Face, there’s something ultimately missing in how all the puzzle pieces fit together, despite the qualities of several dimensions of those pieces. The twist here is the murder element, although it only serves to highlight the horror of the psychological trauma.
(The psychiatrist’s analysis at the end and the closing shots on the institutionalized killer seem to deliberately echo Psycho).
I think the quality of the photography and the general look of the thing has a lot to do with the (not inordinate) appeal that it has for me, because the writing is a little uneven.
I was struck by a few but seemingly key references to the characters feeling like they’re literally soul-less behavioral machines (though the causes behind this – psychological, sociocultural, metaphysical? - aren’t really explained). I feel this could have been worked out a bit better or made clearer
but at one (suicidal) point Peter expresses that he needs absolute control of himself in order to feel safe and yet yearns to break out (or destroy himself) and it’s not quite touching but I did sense some power in that last scene where we see him in his cell, forsaking anything that would take him out of a complete robot-like order/routine, yet at the same time clutching that teddy bear.
. Like many of the 70s masterworks, I was initially blown away by it and with repeated viewings my appreciation has lessened. I appreciate Bergman’s ambitious quest here, and his craft, and the tremendous feat of acting as well as the significance of the film: Marianne’s struggle towards self-awareness, self-definition and affirmation is located in the historical moment of the women’s liberation movement, while at the same time furthering Bergman’s continued exploration of human beings facing and becoming real to their existential condition, to themselves and to others. On the other hand, on repeated viewings I get a little tired of the obsessive self- and other- verbal analysis – there is almost literally not a single moment of silence in this film, save for a few seconds when we (somewhat rarely) see a character drive a car somewhere or cross the street. That feels especially so in the second half, in all the micro-shifts of Marianne and Johan’s back and forth towards and away from each other. I feel this way not just because it’s 5 hours of such constant analysis, but also because, at the same time, as much as Bergman goes “deep”, some of the notes struck in the way characters change reactions mid-way feel odd or awkward, and those points it starts feeling a little indulgent.
Though it’s filmed with care, as usual, this is Bergman more exclusively focusing on the psychological and human relationships, less so on other filmic dimensions, and this is when I find him a little less interesting as a director.
By the way, I don’t know if this means anything, but in the
Through the Glass Darkly thread, I observed that the title comes from 1 Corinthians, which also mentions the words “face to face”, but in the early part of this film, when asked about her definition of love by the reporter at the beginning of the film, Marianne refers to Paul’s definition of love in Corinthians. I checked and that is also in 1 Corinthians, and in the same chapter (13).
