Youth rebellion in three acts: courtship, ecstacy, consequences. One or two hokey moments at first, but in retrospect I think this is to mirror the characters’ innocence? Maybe? But to think this was made in 1953! Terrific stuff. Ann enjoyed it, too, but was right to point out the one or two contradictions in the storytelling. Still – visually stunning, heartbreaking, glorious, sexy and even funny.
Incidentally, this is the one that famously and inadvertently turned Woody Allen into a Bergman fan when the young Woodman heard there was nudity in the film.
When does a DVD featurette become a full length picture? When it is two-and-a-half hours long and is directed by the dude who made I Am Curious – Yellow. If you find Bergman funny, then you’ll like hearing him babble about God. So I was amused. Also: the scenes of him hitting rewind and fast-forward on his flatbed editing system (and kinda being obnoxious to his female editor) made me nostalgic. For cutting on film, not of sexism. Like most behind-the-scenes stuff, it is cool for a while, but ultimately you are left wishing you were watching the thing itself – in this case Winter Light.
Bergman’s Dune. Because it isn’t at all like his other projects and was a for-hire job under Dino De Laurentiis. (In Bergman’s case, while exiled from his homeland on odd tax evasion charges.) David Carradine puts it all out on the line in an Eric Roberts-esque manner; hats off to him. The story wants to be an evocative pre-war Berlin tale mixing Carbaret with Kafka but it comes off more like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. Not awful, but not too good either. If you didn’t know it was Bergman you’d never guess it.
Not an uplifting film. This was among the first Bergman films I’d ever seen and it is still a remarkable piece of work. Two sisters and a faithful maid slowly watch a third sister die, then think about some of the troubling moments from their lives. Then… oh, who am I kidding… I can’t synopsize this film. Any attempt to do it makes it sound like nothing happens or the movie is just crazy. I will say this, though, whether or not the movie takes place in old time Sweeden or on another planet is a perfectly valid discussion. The surreal atmosphere and otherwordly tone (and look) is a good percentage of what makes this movie so effective.
Let’s talk about the look. The above photo does no justice. The Critereon’s print is marvelous. As a young turk I used to only get jazzed about cinematography when the movie was a filled with fiesty tracking shots, or action set pieces or natural locations. While this still speaks to me I’ve lately been taking pleasure in elegent interior lighting setups. This is one of Sven Nykvist’s masterworks – certainly his best work in color. The White Stripes owe everything to this movie.
The Passion of Anna has the fortune/misfortune of being so splendidly shot that there were times when I just couldn’t pay attention to the story. I was just blown away by the framing, the lighting, the color pallette — my god, the color EXPLODES in this film, tearing a new a-hole to pretty much everything save The Wizard of Oz.
The story — taken almost directly from Bergman’s life at the time — Max von Sydow is the brooding man engaged in bad love with Liv Ullman on a remote island. Add to this the Blow-Up-esque phographer (played by Erland Josephson) and the gabby dame played by Bibi Andersson. All the actors get a moment to break the 4th wall and address the camera to say what they feel about the character they’re playing. All except the dude who may or may not be running around killing animals for some symbolic reason I don’t have the energy to think about. Truthfully, I am much more interested in the way these shots are set up, the editing, the long close-up/wide-angle takes and the slow zooms into heavy grain.
Bold statement: this might be one of the most exciting visual films I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Story-wise, yeah, bunch a Swedes yelling at each other in a cabin, but holy cow it looks marvelous.
This may be the first time I’ve seen a Bergman film and just… didn’t care. I get what this movie is doing (I guess) I just don’t see the point. Distant artist hallucinates? Is that really all this is? I tried watching with the commentary track but the “expert” they had was a real putz who would just summarize what was happening in each shot. “Now we see them walking along the rocks.” I love the other Bergman films of this era like Shame and Persona, but this just escaped me. I’ll try again in a few years.
I’ve made no reference at all to the passing of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. I’ve read a lot of good obits and remembrances out there in the usual places. I did, however, write something the day the news about Ingmar broke for UGO.com.
In a strange way I am very proud of the idiotic piece I wrote. You can look at it here. If I do say so myself, I think it manages to walk a nice line between intelligent respect and moronic lowbrow nonsense.
If you find this sort of thing entertaining, you should be popping over there once in a while. I’m writing at least one column every two days — and peppering much of the other movies content with jokes. If you really search hard, you can find video of me there, too. And that’s the last plug they’ll get out of me for a while.
More Bergman.
One could, if one were so inclined, spend time, thought and energy into decoding the symbols and clues of “Swimming Pool.” But that would be a hollow excersize. While the first half has a nice Eric Rohmer quality (if you like that sort of thing) the shift midway makes me think M. Ozon thought he was making Persona. But it is not “Persona.” It is, in fact, a piece of pretentious shit. And despite that there’s a naked busty French chick in nearly every scene, I don’t recommend this movie to anyone.
“Autumn Sonata” was something of an inside baseball joke at my house growing up. We were among the first on the block to get a VCR. Something of a rarity, as my family was (and still isn’t) a very techno-advanced group. But we had a VCR, a huge hulking silver machine, before your family ever heard of one. (And lucky for us the coin my parents flipped turned up heads and we went with VHS instead of Beta.) So. . .there we are. . .a family with two young children (I was, what, six?) and my father is putzing around with wires in the back of the TV. Finally (after much grunting and swearing) the machine blinks on. It works! We got the jiffy-pop going and . . .”Autumn Sonata????” What kind of crack was my mother smoking?!? I wanted to watch Herbie The Love Bug, instead I get a chamber piece about generational misunderstanding and sublimated anger!
So now it is twenty-five years later and I am an official Bergman enthusiast, but I’d never gone back and revisited this first film that, technically, I’d already seen — although all I did was fidget on the couch and whine that we weren’t watching something with a talking car. (For the record, my Father was on the same side as my sister and me.) “Autumn Sonata” is one of Bergman’s more literal films. A chamber piece — not a “filmed play” as one might mistakenly surmise. Extensive use of close-ups, elliptical memory flashes and subtle changes of light make this a definitive work of the cinema. But it is, I grant you, mostly two women (Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman) staying up late one night and having it out with each other over a bottle of wine. The conflicts on display are pure soap opera, but the presentation is like the Chopin prelude that each woman performs — bursting with restrained emotion.
If you don’t like Bergman you won’t like this movie. But I drank the Kool-Aid when I first saw “Wild Strawberries” in college, so there’s little hope for me.
Liv Ullman is superhuman. I’ve written before about just how great she can be and in this movie she does something I’ve never seen her do before: act cute. “An-Magritt” is kinda like a “Little House on the Prairie” meets “Norma Rae” — there are a lot of freezing Norwegian rock collectors riding their oxen in the snow. Holy cow is it cold! Anyway, a new wheelwright comes to town bringing progress and problems, then some bad news, then bad weather, then it is up to An-Magritt, the little bastard child with spunk, to save the day. Go An-Magritt! Ride that Ox to Freedom!!!!!
When the lights came up there was an audible snicker, the friends I was with all kinda shrugged and the old woman in the hat said, “the story was shit!” but I’m gonna stand my ground. Many of Bergman’s films leave themselves open to cries of The Emperor’s New Clothes, but none so much as this one. Heck, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton’s characters nearly came to blows over it in the movie Manhattan.
Ambiguous and frustrating, yes, but (and this is key) never boring. At 93 minutes and gorgeously shot in shimmering black and white (take that, Inland Empire) this nearly dialogue-free quasi-narrative wavers from surrealism to precise mundanity. The story that is there is, indeed, worth puzzling over and the proof is in the spellbinding quality of the formalism surrounding it. The sound design, the camera moves, the glimpses from multiple perspectives. Are they sisters or lovers? Is the world at war? Is she really dying? Why so naked around the kid? Those sunglasses are awesome, where can I get a pair? Is that a Hershey bar?
There are no shortage of hallways, mirrors, broken (and repaired) illumination sources and language barriers to keep those who want to argue psychological symbolic imagery busy all night long (hopefully in a turtleneck sweater at the coed dorm with Schoenberg or maybe Brubeck playing, Franz Kline print next to the window as snow slowly falls. . . . )
Not a happy bunch. The priest who has lost his faith, the spurned lover who only lives to please him, the parishioner who needs any reason not to kill himself (but can’t get a word in edgewise) and a lot of cold, cold, cold. Wear a blanket when you watch this one. No one does bleak despair like Ingmar. Fascinating in how not-un-watchable this is.
When I first saw Persona last year I wrote that it was the high watermark of mid-60s modernism. Seeing it this second time, I think it may just be the most effective “art film” (a phrase hard to define, yes) of all time. I came away this second time loving the film even more, although, oddly, I think I “understood” it on a linear level even less. But the images and sounds washed over me, putting me in a complete trance. Had the subtitles not been working, and I heard just the Swedish dialogue, it would have been fine. Also, that scenario would allow you more time to wonder with yourself who is more beautiful: Bibi Andersson or Liv Ullman. (Ullman, but it’s close.)
Something of a sequel to the unmatched Scenes From A Marriage, Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson are back and still playing emotional games with each other. Painful at times, also cathartic. This time there’re some other generations involved (the film is a four-hander) but the acting is superb all the way round. At 87, Ingmar can hang it up on a high note.
Before Ingmar Bergman decided to make experimental films or unbearably depressing films or tinker with the mechanics of death he made this light sex comedy. Well. . .light by Swedish standards, I suppose. There are laughs, but there are also line deliveries to the stars on the order of “we are all cold and frightened.” Anyway, there are some beautiful scenes, a dude with a monocle and all the women are ridiculously attractive. Quite good.
If Liv Ullman were a rock album she’d be Exile on Main St; she’s perfect. Liv Ullman has the ability to express an essay’s worth of emotion with one twitch of her lip. Her performance here is just about the greatest film performance I have ever seen. Full stop. To answer a question — yes, I did watch the full 5 hour version. No, I did not do it in one go (it was intended to be seen in six episodes, six scenes if you will) over a period of time. Plus, it would’ve been too painful to do it all in one go. This is a microscopic epic. Basically a two person play on a bland set, it is remarkable that not once does this get dull. During the 2004 election, some wonks kept repeating that John Kerry “understood nuance.” This is all about nuance. No one is all good, no one is all bad. Throughout much of the story (glimpses over years of a troubled relationship) your allegiance is with Ms. Ullman. . .but then she’ll go and do something so exasperating you just throw up your arms. I recommend this movie to anyone secure in their own relationship; it is said to have been responsible for a tremendous rise in divorce all through Scandinavia.
Quite nerve-wracking poem about modern war and its effects on average citizens. Taking place in an alternate universe (or does it?) where nothing quite makes sense and scenes connect with the logic of a dream. . .or in this case a nightmare. Anyway, there are some really gripping images, but also the same old scenes of Swedes weeping and droning on and on about their inability to love. I’d like to see one Bergman film that leaves that on the cutting room floor. What’s best is the implication that to survive war one has to be a prick. This is the central theme of Sophie’s Choice and what ultimately leads her to what she considers the strong and righteous decision: suicide. In Shame, in order to keep his family alive, Max von Sydow must become a murderer, even killing at random for information and a new pair of boots. Is he a villan or a hero? He’s a survivor, and we’ve all been taught that survivors are ipso facto good people — but maybe the more rightous thing to do is to roll over and die as Liv Ullman wants to. Lastly, has Max von Sydow ever not been old??
You ever seen an interview with a newlywed Christian couple who talk about how glad they are that they “waited” until their wedding night? That’s me and waiting to see Persona in a movie house. I attempted to see this at the NYU film library freshman year (perhaps it was former film librarian John Schmit who queued it up for me?) but the VHS copy was so washed that I hap to stopp after 10 minutes — I couldn’t read the white-on-white subtitles. Perusing reviews of Persona online it is remarkable how many people compare its experience to one of a novel. I don’t diagree that its visceral, empathetic effect is similar to kind usually reserved for literature, but what’s neat is how the technique used to achieve this is 100% cinema. Persona is the high watermark of mid–60s modernism, in its psychology, its fashion, its music, its editing, its hairstyles, its title design, you name it. Yet, strangely, it doesn’t look dated (So long as Calvin Klein advertises, that is.) Some moments in the film may make you wince with a knowing “WTF?” but those (few) moments only seem indulgent because an innovator like Bergman used them spariningly in 1966 only to be copied again and again throughout the rest of cinema’s history. Anyway, if Film Forum was showing Persona again this week, I’d be going.
