Thursday, August 31, 2017
243 - Knife in the Water, 1962, Poland. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Come aboard.
Those are words of hospitality. Openness. Generosity. Friendship.
And a big mistake when Andrzej says them.
The last thing he and his wife Krystyna needed was to have the Young Man on the sailboat with them on their day at the lake.
It is Sunday. Andrzej is a seasoned sailor. He spent time in the service. He tells stories of his bosun and other seamen.
He is also a writer. He writes for The Sporting News.
Andrzej is mature, proud, and strong. He maintains the strict rules of his naval career. Never dip your hand in the water. Never whistle on board. He does this despite that fact that they are sailing recreationally and should be having a good time.
Krystyna is young and pretty. She is the kind of wife whose jealous husband should not be inviting strange Young Men aboard.
Sailing's for grownups. Andrzej says so.
Andrzej wants to school the Young Man. Show him a thing or two. Teach him a lesson. That is his mistake.
The Young Man is not a good student and did not come to be schooled. Plus, he carries a big knife in his pocket. A knife comes in handy, he says. Especially in the woods. I wonder if this is going to pose a problem later on.
Andrzej and Krystyna met the Young Man as they were driving to the docks. The Young Man was hitchhiking. But he stood not on the side of the road but in the middle of the road.
Andrzej yelled at him. The Young Man could have been killed. In fact, Andrzej seemed as though he nearly tried to do it. He drove fast and stopped short. But then he let him in the car. His first mistake.
Andrzej asks why he stands in the middle of the road. The Young Man says life can be boring. He needs some stimulation.
He is gong to get some.
Throughout their day trip there are moments of tension interspersed with moments of calm and beauty. The wind comes and goes. Sometimes they move and sometimes they are still. They man the helm. They stop and eat lunch. They swim. They play games. Over time they begin to get along.
Polanski's celebratory portrayal of the sport may lure you into taking up sailing.
It is his first feature film. And it is a showcase for his great talent. He is especially masterful at framing. And cutting.
There are shots with a subject extremely close in the foreground with another far back, in perspective, both in focus. There are classical and elegant angles. From above. From overhead. From the water. Through openings. Polanski has studied composition. He knows painting.
He also knows classical drama. The film observes Aristotle's three unities of time, place, and action.
It is especially impressive considering the small size of the boat. Where do they put the camera? How do they make it stay still?
Knife in the Water comes out just two years after our other adventure on the water, Michelangelo Antonioni's l'Avventura of 1960.
The film contains a bopping jazz score by Kzysztof Komeda, made more poignant by long moments of complete silence and other moments with just the sounds of the water. The waves. And the rain.
Unfortunately, the calm comes before the storm.
Andrzej should not have invited the Young Man to come aboard. Either his car or his boat.
The knife will come between them. The wife will come between them.
Andrzej and Krystyna will be left to pick up the pieces.
But we do not find out if they do.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
242 - Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, 1970, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Jaromil Jires.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
242 - Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, 1970, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Jaromil Jires.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a 1970 fantasy drama from the Czechoslovakian New Wave.
Either that, or it is a 1980s music video starring Elvira.
Or a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie of the week.
If you look closely, you may very well see the silhouettes of Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot watching the movie from the lower right-hand corner. Riffing.
The film features, among other things, vampires.
And the Props department seems to have gotten their plastic fangs from a box of Boo Berry or Count Chocula.
Don't be scurred.
You will not be. In fact, you might be enchanted. By this hybrid drive-in, fairy tale, camp horror daydream.
And being a dream, it jumps from plot to plot and place to place without requiring logical coherence.
This is not a movie you think through but rather ride. Like Ophelia. Supine in the tributary. Surrounded by crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples. As the willow grows slant.
Before The Runaways in 2010, before Carrie in 1976, Valerie in 1970 was a film begun with menarche.
So let us begin.
Valerie lies asleep in bed. Her room looks like a sunroom. Or a greenhouse.
A man climbs the glass wall and ceiling above her, carrying a torch.
He hangs down through the open hole in the glass ceiling, the flame of his torch burning.
He steals her earrings from off her ears.
Valerie awakens to watch him through the glass, absconding with his booty.
She springs to look for the looter.
But runs into the man with the mask.
The looter will turn out to be Eaglet. Or Orlik. At first a thief. Then her suitor. Then her lover. Then her brother. Then one of the actors. Then her lover again.
The man with the mask turns out to be the Constable. Then Orlik's uncle. Then Richard. Then Valerie's Grandmother's ex-lover. Then Valerie's father. Then a monster.
Valerie's earrings have magical powers. So does a mysterious pearl.
There is also a polecat involved, which is important.
Meanwhile, Valerie's Grandmother is a dour devotee, who wants Valerie to go to church and meet the missionaries. Then she turns into a woman who wants to be young. Then Richard's ex-lover Elsa. Who self-flagellates. For mortification? For Richard? Then she becomes a vampire. Then she bites another woman's neck to suck her blood to become young. Then she is Valerie's cousin. Then she herself steals the earrings. Then incarcerates Valerie. And tries to bite her for blood. Conjugates and immolates a man. Then goes after Orlik. Who steals back the earrings.
Are you keeping up?
The women of the Chorus wear nightgowns with no underwear.
The men of the chorus wear colored denim pants and boots with no shirts.
It is like Sirens meets Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Like Seven Sirens for Seven Brothers.
Bless your beautiful hide.
(By the way, that musical contains a song called "Lonesome Polecat.")
Here is one pitch for the film:
Valerie goes through the woods to Grandmother's house and encounters the Big Bad Werewolf.
If you watch this film through the eyes of an academic, you may find all manner of symbolism suggesting political subversion of a totalitarian regime.
If you watch it as a film buff, you may consider the surrealist origins of the source novel, and the lyrical, pastoral naturalism of the color palette, lighting, and score.
If you watch it as a moviegoing member of the general public, you may have that great cinematic insight that hits keen moviegoers:
"Was this director on LSD when he made this movie?"
242 - Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, 1970, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Jaromil Jires.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a 1970 fantasy drama from the Czechoslovakian New Wave.
Either that, or it is a 1980s music video starring Elvira.
Or a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie of the week.
If you look closely, you may very well see the silhouettes of Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot watching the movie from the lower right-hand corner. Riffing.
The film features, among other things, vampires.
And the Props department seems to have gotten their plastic fangs from a box of Boo Berry or Count Chocula.
Don't be scurred.
You will not be. In fact, you might be enchanted. By this hybrid drive-in, fairy tale, camp horror daydream.
And being a dream, it jumps from plot to plot and place to place without requiring logical coherence.
This is not a movie you think through but rather ride. Like Ophelia. Supine in the tributary. Surrounded by crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples. As the willow grows slant.
Before The Runaways in 2010, before Carrie in 1976, Valerie in 1970 was a film begun with menarche.
So let us begin.
Valerie lies asleep in bed. Her room looks like a sunroom. Or a greenhouse.
A man climbs the glass wall and ceiling above her, carrying a torch.
He hangs down through the open hole in the glass ceiling, the flame of his torch burning.
He steals her earrings from off her ears.
Valerie awakens to watch him through the glass, absconding with his booty.
She springs to look for the looter.
But runs into the man with the mask.
The looter will turn out to be Eaglet. Or Orlik. At first a thief. Then her suitor. Then her lover. Then her brother. Then one of the actors. Then her lover again.
The man with the mask turns out to be the Constable. Then Orlik's uncle. Then Richard. Then Valerie's Grandmother's ex-lover. Then Valerie's father. Then a monster.
Valerie's earrings have magical powers. So does a mysterious pearl.
There is also a polecat involved, which is important.
Meanwhile, Valerie's Grandmother is a dour devotee, who wants Valerie to go to church and meet the missionaries. Then she turns into a woman who wants to be young. Then Richard's ex-lover Elsa. Who self-flagellates. For mortification? For Richard? Then she becomes a vampire. Then she bites another woman's neck to suck her blood to become young. Then she is Valerie's cousin. Then she herself steals the earrings. Then incarcerates Valerie. And tries to bite her for blood. Conjugates and immolates a man. Then goes after Orlik. Who steals back the earrings.
Are you keeping up?
The women of the Chorus wear nightgowns with no underwear.
The men of the chorus wear colored denim pants and boots with no shirts.
It is like Sirens meets Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Like Seven Sirens for Seven Brothers.
Bless your beautiful hide.
(By the way, that musical contains a song called "Lonesome Polecat.")
Here is one pitch for the film:
Valerie goes through the woods to Grandmother's house and encounters the Big Bad Werewolf.
If you watch this film through the eyes of an academic, you may find all manner of symbolism suggesting political subversion of a totalitarian regime.
If you watch it as a film buff, you may consider the surrealist origins of the source novel, and the lyrical, pastoral naturalism of the color palette, lighting, and score.
If you watch it as a moviegoing member of the general public, you may have that great cinematic insight that hits keen moviegoers:
"Was this director on LSD when he made this movie?"
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
241 - Marketa Lazarova, 1967, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Frantisek Vlacil.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
241 - Marketa Lazarova, 1967, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Frantisek Vlacil.
A Rhapsody in Film.
Marketa Lazarova is a historical epic film that takes place during the Medieval period.
241 - Marketa Lazarova, 1967, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Frantisek Vlacil.
A Rhapsody in Film.
Marketa Lazarova is a historical epic film that takes place during the Medieval period.
Monday, August 28, 2017
240 - Closely Watched Trains, 1966, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Jiri Menzel.
Monday, August 28, 2017
240 - Closely Watched Trains, 1966, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Jiri Menzel.
What is a closely watched train?
During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia during World War II, German military trains had priority.
Local Czechoslovakian young men got jobs at the stations watching the trains and letting them pass.
The young and innocent Milos Hrma has gotten a job and he is proud. He is a trainee, and he wears a uniform. He expects that this will help him with women. He wants to be a man.
Milos looks up to his mentor Hubicka, who seems successful with women. He wants to be like him.
He flirts with a female train conductor who passes through.
The conductress, Masa, goes for him and so goes home with him.
But it is his first time.
And he is a bit premature. He finishes before he can begin. So he is unable to finish.
He grows depressed and tries to end it.
But the good doctor, Dr. Brabec, played by the director, Jiri Menzel, gives him some good advice.
First, he explains that prematurity is normal for young first-timers. Second, he advises Milos to think about something else.
Woody Allen famously thought about baseball.
Milos thinks about football, or as we say, soccer.
A circus woman comes to town. She is working for the Resistance during the war. She helps Milos solve his problem. This gives him confidence.
He takes a bomb, which she had brought to his supervisor Hubicka, and drops it from a railway signal platform onto the oncoming train. He is met with machine gun fire and falls to the ground.
The conductress Masa finds his cap.
He is a hero.
The Nazis look down upon the Czechs. But in doing so they discount their intelligence and bravery.
240 - Closely Watched Trains, 1966, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Jiri Menzel.
What is a closely watched train?
During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia during World War II, German military trains had priority.
Local Czechoslovakian young men got jobs at the stations watching the trains and letting them pass.
The young and innocent Milos Hrma has gotten a job and he is proud. He is a trainee, and he wears a uniform. He expects that this will help him with women. He wants to be a man.
Milos looks up to his mentor Hubicka, who seems successful with women. He wants to be like him.
He flirts with a female train conductor who passes through.
The conductress, Masa, goes for him and so goes home with him.
But it is his first time.
And he is a bit premature. He finishes before he can begin. So he is unable to finish.
He grows depressed and tries to end it.
But the good doctor, Dr. Brabec, played by the director, Jiri Menzel, gives him some good advice.
First, he explains that prematurity is normal for young first-timers. Second, he advises Milos to think about something else.
Woody Allen famously thought about baseball.
Milos thinks about football, or as we say, soccer.
A circus woman comes to town. She is working for the Resistance during the war. She helps Milos solve his problem. This gives him confidence.
He takes a bomb, which she had brought to his supervisor Hubicka, and drops it from a railway signal platform onto the oncoming train. He is met with machine gun fire and falls to the ground.
The conductress Masa finds his cap.
He is a hero.
The Nazis look down upon the Czechs. But in doing so they discount their intelligence and bravery.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
239 - The Fireman's Ball, 1967, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Milos Forman.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
239 - The Fireman's Ball, 1967, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Milos Forman.
Welcome to the Fireman's Ball.
A retirement party for the former chief.
Unfortunately, things do not always go as planned.
Like Loves of a Blonde, The Fireman's Ball is a slice of life with comical observances of human foibles.
It is also a subtle attack on the Communist regime.
It was the first film Forman made in color.
It was the last film Forman made in Czechoslovakia.
A committee holds a meeting. A member ends up hanging from the rafters. The banner ends up burning away in flames.
The raffle prizes mysteriously disappear from the table.
The firemen decide to host a beauty pageant. The elected queen will present the trophy to the chief at the ball. The women do not want to do it. Especially the pretty ones. The men do their best to recruit them. The women lock themselves in the bathroom.
During the ball a barn catches on fire and the firemen race to put it out.
It is Winter. There is snow on the ground. The trucks get stuck in the snow.
When they arrive the farmer is watching. He is cold. They move him closer to the fire to keep him warm.
Citizens give the man their raffle tickets to help compensate for his losses. But all of the prizes are now gone.
Everything is a disaster.
The authorities thought Forman was making fun of them. They withdrew their support of the film.
With the help of Francois Truffaut, it received international distribution anyway.
It helped Forman move to America where he has had a successful career.
239 - The Fireman's Ball, 1967, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Milos Forman.
Welcome to the Fireman's Ball.
A retirement party for the former chief.
Unfortunately, things do not always go as planned.
Like Loves of a Blonde, The Fireman's Ball is a slice of life with comical observances of human foibles.
It is also a subtle attack on the Communist regime.
It was the first film Forman made in color.
It was the last film Forman made in Czechoslovakia.
A committee holds a meeting. A member ends up hanging from the rafters. The banner ends up burning away in flames.
The raffle prizes mysteriously disappear from the table.
The firemen decide to host a beauty pageant. The elected queen will present the trophy to the chief at the ball. The women do not want to do it. Especially the pretty ones. The men do their best to recruit them. The women lock themselves in the bathroom.
During the ball a barn catches on fire and the firemen race to put it out.
It is Winter. There is snow on the ground. The trucks get stuck in the snow.
When they arrive the farmer is watching. He is cold. They move him closer to the fire to keep him warm.
Citizens give the man their raffle tickets to help compensate for his losses. But all of the prizes are now gone.
Everything is a disaster.
The authorities thought Forman was making fun of them. They withdrew their support of the film.
With the help of Francois Truffaut, it received international distribution anyway.
It helped Forman move to America where he has had a successful career.
238 - Loves of a Blonde, 1965, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Milos Forman.
Saturday, August 26, 2017
238 - Loves of a Blonde, 1965, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Milos Forman.
When you hear the name Milos Forman, you may think of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and its sweeping of the Oscars for the first time in thirty-one years--since 1934's It Happened One Night.
Cuckoo's Nest swept by winning the five categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay (Adapted). This would happen one more time with The Silence of the Lambs (1991). These films remain the only three to have won these five awards.
Cuckoo's Nest was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Brad Dourif), Best Cinematography (Haskell Wexler), Best Editing, and Best Original Musical Score.
When you think of Milos Forman, you may also think of Amadeus (1984), with its similar triumph of 8 Oscar wins. Amadeus won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, and Best Make-Up.
It was also nominated for Best Actor (Tom Hulce), Best Cinematography (Miroslav Ondricek), and Best Editing. Yes, it had two actors competing against one another for Best Actor--Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham--and none in the Best Supporting Actor category.
Forman also made the rock musical Hair (1979), a Dangerous Liaisons adaptation called Valmont (1989), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), and Man on the Moon (1999), the biography of Andy Kaufman as portrayed by Jim Carrey.
But before all of that--
Milos Forman was a leader of the Czech New Wave.
Like the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vaugue), the Czech New Wave ushered in a new generation of filmmakers who focused on the intended realistic portrayals of real life as they new it. They made use of improvisation and non-professional actors. They also had access to studios and a knack for narrative structure. The Czech New Wave had the additional burden of triumphing against Communism.
In 1965, Milos Forman came out with Loves of a Blonde.
In a Czechoslovakian town, the girls outnumber the boys 16 to 1! The local factory is composed mostly of girls, and the foreman observes that they could use a boost to morale. He speaks to an army officer. The officer arranges for some maneuvers to bring men in, and the factory hosts a dance. The majority of the men who attend, however, are older. And married.
A few of them try their luck anyway. One removes his wedding ring. As he tries to sneak it into his pocket, it falls and rolls across the floor and under the table of the girls he is watching. He foolishly follows it under the table, and the girls pour wine down his back.
The dance is largely unsuccessful. Two people, however, do hook up: Milda and Andula.
Milda is a young man who plays the piano in the band. Andula is the girl who is telling this story, with changes, as a flashback to her girlfriend.
Milda flirts with Andula at the dance. He reads her palm. He shows her how to fend off unwanted suitors. He takes her home. At first she resists him. Then she decides she trusts him.
He comically tries to close the window shade, but it keeps rolling back up on him.
Eventually, they make love and talk. The next morning he leaves. Offhandedly, he says, Come up to Prague and visit sometime. He does not mean it.
She does.
She arrives at his house and knocks on his door. His parents answer. They invite her in. The three of them have an uncomfortably awkward conversation. He returns home. He is surprised to see her.
The parents decide to host her on the couch and force their son to sleep in their bed to ensure that no shenanigans ensue.
She overhears them arguing through the door and realizes that she is unwanted. She leaves in tears.
She tells her friends of her successful adventure as she returns to work the next day.
The film is a slice of life with honest and comic portrayals of the yearnings for love.
Forman was influenced by his having met a real girl arriving in Prague with a suitcase, with a similar story.
He himself had grown up looking for his own mother, who had been taken away from him when he was 10. Both of his parents, as he knew them, died in concentration camps.
238 - Loves of a Blonde, 1965, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Milos Forman.
When you hear the name Milos Forman, you may think of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and its sweeping of the Oscars for the first time in thirty-one years--since 1934's It Happened One Night.
Cuckoo's Nest swept by winning the five categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay (Adapted). This would happen one more time with The Silence of the Lambs (1991). These films remain the only three to have won these five awards.
Cuckoo's Nest was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Brad Dourif), Best Cinematography (Haskell Wexler), Best Editing, and Best Original Musical Score.
When you think of Milos Forman, you may also think of Amadeus (1984), with its similar triumph of 8 Oscar wins. Amadeus won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, and Best Make-Up.
It was also nominated for Best Actor (Tom Hulce), Best Cinematography (Miroslav Ondricek), and Best Editing. Yes, it had two actors competing against one another for Best Actor--Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham--and none in the Best Supporting Actor category.
Forman also made the rock musical Hair (1979), a Dangerous Liaisons adaptation called Valmont (1989), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), and Man on the Moon (1999), the biography of Andy Kaufman as portrayed by Jim Carrey.
But before all of that--
Milos Forman was a leader of the Czech New Wave.
Like the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vaugue), the Czech New Wave ushered in a new generation of filmmakers who focused on the intended realistic portrayals of real life as they new it. They made use of improvisation and non-professional actors. They also had access to studios and a knack for narrative structure. The Czech New Wave had the additional burden of triumphing against Communism.
In 1965, Milos Forman came out with Loves of a Blonde.
In a Czechoslovakian town, the girls outnumber the boys 16 to 1! The local factory is composed mostly of girls, and the foreman observes that they could use a boost to morale. He speaks to an army officer. The officer arranges for some maneuvers to bring men in, and the factory hosts a dance. The majority of the men who attend, however, are older. And married.
A few of them try their luck anyway. One removes his wedding ring. As he tries to sneak it into his pocket, it falls and rolls across the floor and under the table of the girls he is watching. He foolishly follows it under the table, and the girls pour wine down his back.
The dance is largely unsuccessful. Two people, however, do hook up: Milda and Andula.
Milda is a young man who plays the piano in the band. Andula is the girl who is telling this story, with changes, as a flashback to her girlfriend.
Milda flirts with Andula at the dance. He reads her palm. He shows her how to fend off unwanted suitors. He takes her home. At first she resists him. Then she decides she trusts him.
He comically tries to close the window shade, but it keeps rolling back up on him.
Eventually, they make love and talk. The next morning he leaves. Offhandedly, he says, Come up to Prague and visit sometime. He does not mean it.
She does.
She arrives at his house and knocks on his door. His parents answer. They invite her in. The three of them have an uncomfortably awkward conversation. He returns home. He is surprised to see her.
The parents decide to host her on the couch and force their son to sleep in their bed to ensure that no shenanigans ensue.
She overhears them arguing through the door and realizes that she is unwanted. She leaves in tears.
She tells her friends of her successful adventure as she returns to work the next day.
The film is a slice of life with honest and comic portrayals of the yearnings for love.
Forman was influenced by his having met a real girl arriving in Prague with a suitcase, with a similar story.
He himself had grown up looking for his own mother, who had been taken away from him when he was 10. Both of his parents, as he knew them, died in concentration camps.
Friday, August 25, 2017
237 - Babette's Feast, 1987, Denmark. Dir. Gabriel Axel.
Friday, August 25, 2017
237 - Babette's Feast, 1987, Denmark. Dir. Gabriel Axel.
Mercy and truth have met together.
Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.
Man, in his foolishness and shortsightedness, believes he must make choices in this life.
He trembles at the risks he takes.
We all know . . . fear.
But no.
Our choice is of no importance.
The moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite.
We need only await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude.
Mercy and truth have met together.
Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.
So says cavalry officer Lorens Lowenheilm in his toast at Babette's feast, in the presence of Martine, almost 50 years after being rejected by her, one of the town's two most eligible sisters, both of whom turned down their respective suitors to live lives of devotion alongside and on behalf of their father, the local pastor.
Lorens still loves Martine.
And he always will.
The particular circumstances of their lives will never get in the way of that love. It transcends them.
Grace is infinite.
And in the end everything is going to be OK.
For those who receive it.
Lorens may never be with Martine physically. But he will love her until the day he dies.
This is not the only work of grace that takes place at Babette's feast.
Grace is at work for everyone seated around the table
And what a table it is.
It is a 10,000-franc meal prepared by Babette, who was the head chef at the Parisian Cafe Anglais.
She moved here 14 years ago to escape war, and has come to call it her home.
Someone has been buying her lottery tickets every year in Paris--most likely Achille Papin, the rejected suitor to the other sister--and now she has won. She uses her winnings to give back to her beloved community.
The devout, now elderly, members of this faithful parish, are treated by Babette to foods of which they have never dreamed. They agree not to discuss the food in order to stave off indulging in the flesh.
Lorens, however, does discuss it, because he is a cultured man, and he once had a meal this great.
At the Cafe Anglais in Paris, prepared by the female head chef.
He describes the foods in detail, as well as their flavors.
A good deal of screen time is devoted to the preparation and consumption of this one meal. And not one moment is wasted.
As grace is ministered in its infiniteness.
The meal, and that infinite grace that come through it, transform the lives of everyone there.
It is worth the cost.
After the meal, when the sisters discover what Babette has done, and what price she has paid, Martine's sister Philippa blesses her.
"In Paradise you will be the great artist God meant you to be."
Likewise, Lorens has the opportunity to speak to Martine alone.
He tells her, "I have been with you every day of my life."
And he continues, "I shall be with you every day that is left to me."
He means this whether he sees her physically or not. He loves her. He loves her in spirit. He will always love her.
And nothing can stop or diminish or defeat that love. Nothing.
He explains, "Tonight I have learned, my dear, that in this beautiful world of ours, all things are possible."
And with grace, all things are.
237 - Babette's Feast, 1987, Denmark. Dir. Gabriel Axel.
Mercy and truth have met together.
Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.
Man, in his foolishness and shortsightedness, believes he must make choices in this life.
He trembles at the risks he takes.
We all know . . . fear.
But no.
Our choice is of no importance.
The moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite.
We need only await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude.
Mercy and truth have met together.
Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.
So says cavalry officer Lorens Lowenheilm in his toast at Babette's feast, in the presence of Martine, almost 50 years after being rejected by her, one of the town's two most eligible sisters, both of whom turned down their respective suitors to live lives of devotion alongside and on behalf of their father, the local pastor.
Lorens still loves Martine.
And he always will.
The particular circumstances of their lives will never get in the way of that love. It transcends them.
Grace is infinite.
And in the end everything is going to be OK.
For those who receive it.
Lorens may never be with Martine physically. But he will love her until the day he dies.
This is not the only work of grace that takes place at Babette's feast.
Grace is at work for everyone seated around the table
And what a table it is.
It is a 10,000-franc meal prepared by Babette, who was the head chef at the Parisian Cafe Anglais.
She moved here 14 years ago to escape war, and has come to call it her home.
Someone has been buying her lottery tickets every year in Paris--most likely Achille Papin, the rejected suitor to the other sister--and now she has won. She uses her winnings to give back to her beloved community.
The devout, now elderly, members of this faithful parish, are treated by Babette to foods of which they have never dreamed. They agree not to discuss the food in order to stave off indulging in the flesh.
Lorens, however, does discuss it, because he is a cultured man, and he once had a meal this great.
At the Cafe Anglais in Paris, prepared by the female head chef.
He describes the foods in detail, as well as their flavors.
A good deal of screen time is devoted to the preparation and consumption of this one meal. And not one moment is wasted.
As grace is ministered in its infiniteness.
The meal, and that infinite grace that come through it, transform the lives of everyone there.
It is worth the cost.
After the meal, when the sisters discover what Babette has done, and what price she has paid, Martine's sister Philippa blesses her.
"In Paradise you will be the great artist God meant you to be."
He tells her, "I have been with you every day of my life."
And he continues, "I shall be with you every day that is left to me."
He means this whether he sees her physically or not. He loves her. He loves her in spirit. He will always love her.
And nothing can stop or diminish or defeat that love. Nothing.
He explains, "Tonight I have learned, my dear, that in this beautiful world of ours, all things are possible."
And with grace, all things are.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
236 - Antichrist, 2009, Denmark (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Germany). Dir. Lars von Trier.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
236 - Antichrist, 2009, Denmark (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Germany). Dir. Lars von Trier.
What's in a name?
This film is not about a rising new tyrannical world leader hailing from Asia Minor.
It is about a married couple grieving the loss of their son.
It is about the therapist husband's self-assured attempts to use therapy to help his wife cope.
It is about a woman overcome with grief and racked with feelings of guilt to the point of yielding to the conviction that she is evil.
It is about mysterious forces that enter into a marriage to destroy it.
It is about anxiety.
The name apparently applied to the original movie that von Trier intended to make. He rewrote it when an executive producer gave away the ending.
He also rewrote it when in a state of intense depression.
I do not believe the title applies very much to the finished film.
And I think the title led Roger Ebert to misinterpret the film. Ebert tries to identify the Antichrist, and since there is a man, a woman, and a child, Ebert settles on the man. The characters are He, She, and Nik. So Ebert says He is the Antichrist.
He is not the Antichrist. He makes mistakes, but he is not responsible for She's personal decisions. They are both grieving. They are both trying to deal with it in the way they best know how. They both go too far--He with his overly confident rationalizing, She with her succumbing to her irrational fears--but there are other forces at work as well. Mystical forces. Spiritual forces. Allegorical forces. And neither is equipped with the capacity to defend against them.
Ebert may as well have chosen from the deer, the fox, and the crow and come more closely to an accurate identification. But all of that is beside the point. It is reductive, and it is a faulty understanding of the title.
So let us move on.
The film opens in black-and-white, in extreme slow motion. von Trier tells us he shot it on a RED One at 1000 framers per second. He refers to the result as monumental style.
He (Willem Dafoe) looks at us, completely still, as beads of moisture descend. von Trier is the director of precipitation, and throughout this film and the films that have preceded it, we are constantly in the midst of falling rain, snow, shower water, bubbles, flakes, debris, and acorns. His style is intensely cinematic.
He and She make love. By the tumbling dryer. And in one of the great rack focuses, we shift from watching them in what we thought was the foreground to the baby monitor which is now the foreground, placing them in the background.
(It is great because we discover that we are looking from a greater distance through a series of objects. The focus does not merely shift from focus point A to focus point B with two discrete focus points, but rather, after zooming slowly out a bit, the focus moves fluidly through the plane, with multiple continuous focus points picking up objects, such as a glass of water, a bottle, and what may be a glass door, between focus points A and B. So there are really focus points A, B, C, D, and E, on to infinity. The pull also moves slowly so that images shift from being finely defined to increasingly distorted before finally going out of focus.
Watching this movement helps me to articulate why I so often detest the modern trend of rack focusing. It is often used clumsily and indiscriminately, like a nervous tick. It often takes power away from the viewer and gives it to the cinematographer when it is wrong to do so. It also draws attention to the cinematographer when it is not appropriate to do so. (It is not about you!) However, here, where we are in the hands of someone who knows what he is doing, it is done artfully and cinematically. And when one performs a rack focus this way, then it works. And it works the way it was supposed to work--by giving the viewer one piece of information and then another, with everything in between being just as beautiful as the two end points.)
And here is the important observation.
The baby monitor is muted!
That clue will open up the whole film for you.
Viewers may miss the twist at the end of this film--involving Nik's shoes and his feet--or choose to overlook it, because they do not wish for the film to go in the direction that it may be going. But it really may be going in that direction.
The film is made with technical mastery, cinematic beauty, and artistic integrity. It is also difficult to watch. von Trier allows his thoughts and ideas to end up on screen without censoring them.
So we go on the ride with him wherever his mind may go.
The last two filmmakers we have been watching represent two poles of how upbringing shapes artistic vision.
Ingmar Bergman is famously known for having been brought up in a strict religious environment where his thoughts and behaviors were rigorously scrutinized and where he was routinely and zealously punished.
Bergman spent much of his career working through his thoughts about authority and freedom and trying to make his own way.
Lars von Trier, however, was brought up by Communist nudist free-thinking parents who gave him no boundaries and allowed him complete freedom to do as he pleased.
von Trier has publicly stated for years that this was wrong, that it placed too much responsibility on the child, that it created great anxieties in him, as he had to make every single decision for himself--such as when to go to bed at night--without having the capacity or resources to make those decisions.
Both men seem to have longed for a loving home.
The one, for the love of grace. The other, for the love of discipline and guidance.
If you watch Antichrist with the commentary turned on, you will hear a very likeable filmmaker speaking openly and honestly with his interviewer companion Murray Smith.
von Trier freely shares with Smith whatever technical secrets Smith wants to know, from choices of camera and lenses to special effects to post-production computer work to animal wrangling to foley recording.
He also freely shares with Smith his thoughts about symbolism and meaning, and what he intended when he wrote or filmed a particular scene.
And he talks about his own anxiety and depression.
Lars von Trier is someone for whom it is easy to feel compassion. He is a brilliant man and a great artist who openly struggles with mental illness. He wishes he had more safe boundaries given to him when growing up, and he struggles with the results of that indiscriminate license.
I first discovered von Trier when I saw Breaking the Waves in 1997, the year after it first came out, at a film festival at the Directors Guild, on Sunset Blvd.
I felt a sense of honesty then too, and I appreciated his messy way of approaching questions of faith.
I became a fan of then newcomer Emily Watson, who was nominated for an Oscar in her first-ever film performance--and again a couple years later with Hilary and Jackie--and was already a fan of the solid Stellan Skarsgard, whom we just saw in Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia.
Relationships change your perspective.
If you watch this film by itself without any contextualizing information, you may very well have a visceral reaction to it. You may even reject it outright.
If you watch it with an affection for its creator, then you may appreciate more what he is trying to do. Even if you would rather not go there fully with him.
On another level, working on a film like this is an actor's dream.
von Trier provides the actor with the challenge to commit and go to those deepest of places. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsborough are most clearly up to the challenge. And who would ever assume otherwise?
She won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in the midst of whatever controversy the film may have engendered.
The controversy might not only have been for the graphic depictions of nudity and violence.
It might not only have been for the apparent misanthropic and misogynistic view of the world.
It might have also been for something else lurking beneath the surface.
In the end He may have liberated centuries of falsely accused and wrongfully killed women.
But in order to do so, there may have had to be a sacrifice.
Maybe not all are falsely accused. Maybe not all are wrongfully killed.
Maybe one of them is guilty.
What if the film really does identify an antagonist after all?
And what if it is not He?
236 - Antichrist, 2009, Denmark (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Germany). Dir. Lars von Trier.
What's in a name?
This film is not about a rising new tyrannical world leader hailing from Asia Minor.
It is about a married couple grieving the loss of their son.
It is about the therapist husband's self-assured attempts to use therapy to help his wife cope.
It is about a woman overcome with grief and racked with feelings of guilt to the point of yielding to the conviction that she is evil.
It is about mysterious forces that enter into a marriage to destroy it.
It is about anxiety.
The name apparently applied to the original movie that von Trier intended to make. He rewrote it when an executive producer gave away the ending.
He also rewrote it when in a state of intense depression.
I do not believe the title applies very much to the finished film.
And I think the title led Roger Ebert to misinterpret the film. Ebert tries to identify the Antichrist, and since there is a man, a woman, and a child, Ebert settles on the man. The characters are He, She, and Nik. So Ebert says He is the Antichrist.
Ebert may as well have chosen from the deer, the fox, and the crow and come more closely to an accurate identification. But all of that is beside the point. It is reductive, and it is a faulty understanding of the title.
So let us move on.
The film opens in black-and-white, in extreme slow motion. von Trier tells us he shot it on a RED One at 1000 framers per second. He refers to the result as monumental style.
He (Willem Dafoe) looks at us, completely still, as beads of moisture descend. von Trier is the director of precipitation, and throughout this film and the films that have preceded it, we are constantly in the midst of falling rain, snow, shower water, bubbles, flakes, debris, and acorns. His style is intensely cinematic.
He and She make love. By the tumbling dryer. And in one of the great rack focuses, we shift from watching them in what we thought was the foreground to the baby monitor which is now the foreground, placing them in the background.
(It is great because we discover that we are looking from a greater distance through a series of objects. The focus does not merely shift from focus point A to focus point B with two discrete focus points, but rather, after zooming slowly out a bit, the focus moves fluidly through the plane, with multiple continuous focus points picking up objects, such as a glass of water, a bottle, and what may be a glass door, between focus points A and B. So there are really focus points A, B, C, D, and E, on to infinity. The pull also moves slowly so that images shift from being finely defined to increasingly distorted before finally going out of focus.
Watching this movement helps me to articulate why I so often detest the modern trend of rack focusing. It is often used clumsily and indiscriminately, like a nervous tick. It often takes power away from the viewer and gives it to the cinematographer when it is wrong to do so. It also draws attention to the cinematographer when it is not appropriate to do so. (It is not about you!) However, here, where we are in the hands of someone who knows what he is doing, it is done artfully and cinematically. And when one performs a rack focus this way, then it works. And it works the way it was supposed to work--by giving the viewer one piece of information and then another, with everything in between being just as beautiful as the two end points.)
And here is the important observation.
The baby monitor is muted!
That clue will open up the whole film for you.
Viewers may miss the twist at the end of this film--involving Nik's shoes and his feet--or choose to overlook it, because they do not wish for the film to go in the direction that it may be going. But it really may be going in that direction.
The film is made with technical mastery, cinematic beauty, and artistic integrity. It is also difficult to watch. von Trier allows his thoughts and ideas to end up on screen without censoring them.
So we go on the ride with him wherever his mind may go.
The last two filmmakers we have been watching represent two poles of how upbringing shapes artistic vision.
Ingmar Bergman is famously known for having been brought up in a strict religious environment where his thoughts and behaviors were rigorously scrutinized and where he was routinely and zealously punished.
Bergman spent much of his career working through his thoughts about authority and freedom and trying to make his own way.
Lars von Trier, however, was brought up by Communist nudist free-thinking parents who gave him no boundaries and allowed him complete freedom to do as he pleased.
von Trier has publicly stated for years that this was wrong, that it placed too much responsibility on the child, that it created great anxieties in him, as he had to make every single decision for himself--such as when to go to bed at night--without having the capacity or resources to make those decisions.
Both men seem to have longed for a loving home.
The one, for the love of grace. The other, for the love of discipline and guidance.
If you watch Antichrist with the commentary turned on, you will hear a very likeable filmmaker speaking openly and honestly with his interviewer companion Murray Smith.
von Trier freely shares with Smith whatever technical secrets Smith wants to know, from choices of camera and lenses to special effects to post-production computer work to animal wrangling to foley recording.
He also freely shares with Smith his thoughts about symbolism and meaning, and what he intended when he wrote or filmed a particular scene.
And he talks about his own anxiety and depression.
Lars von Trier is someone for whom it is easy to feel compassion. He is a brilliant man and a great artist who openly struggles with mental illness. He wishes he had more safe boundaries given to him when growing up, and he struggles with the results of that indiscriminate license.
I first discovered von Trier when I saw Breaking the Waves in 1997, the year after it first came out, at a film festival at the Directors Guild, on Sunset Blvd.
I felt a sense of honesty then too, and I appreciated his messy way of approaching questions of faith.
I became a fan of then newcomer Emily Watson, who was nominated for an Oscar in her first-ever film performance--and again a couple years later with Hilary and Jackie--and was already a fan of the solid Stellan Skarsgard, whom we just saw in Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia.
Relationships change your perspective.
If you watch this film by itself without any contextualizing information, you may very well have a visceral reaction to it. You may even reject it outright.
If you watch it with an affection for its creator, then you may appreciate more what he is trying to do. Even if you would rather not go there fully with him.
On another level, working on a film like this is an actor's dream.
von Trier provides the actor with the challenge to commit and go to those deepest of places. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsborough are most clearly up to the challenge. And who would ever assume otherwise?
She won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in the midst of whatever controversy the film may have engendered.
The controversy might not only have been for the graphic depictions of nudity and violence.
It might not only have been for the apparent misanthropic and misogynistic view of the world.
It might have also been for something else lurking beneath the surface.
In the end He may have liberated centuries of falsely accused and wrongfully killed women.
But in order to do so, there may have had to be a sacrifice.
Maybe not all are falsely accused. Maybe not all are wrongfully killed.
Maybe one of them is guilty.
What if the film really does identify an antagonist after all?
And what if it is not He?
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
235 - Europa, 1991, Denmark. Dir. Lars von Trier.
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
235 - Europa, 1991, Denmark. Dir. Lars von Trier.
Leopold Kessler gets a job on the Zentropa Railroad.
His uncle Uncle Kessler helps him.
Or claims he does.
We cannot tell whether Leopold is being helped or knocked around.
Leopold is innocent. And he has come to Germany in the period after the War because someone needs to show Germany some kindness.
Leopold shows everyone kindness.
He is eager to please.
But he gets knocked around by a bureaucratic insistence on meaningless rules governing myriad minutiae.
He is reprimanded for not putting a chalk mark on the bottom of shoes to "guarantee" that they have been polished.
He insists that one can see that the shoes have been polished.
But sure enough a passenger complains, irately, that his shoes have been returned without a chalk mark. Therefore, they have not been polished.
The Hartmann family, who owns the railroad, takes him in.
Katharina, the daughter, reels him in.
She warns him that she is a werewolf. But that is no matter. He has fallen for her.
She seduces him next to a model train as the patriarch Max Hartmann cuts himself in the bathtub in the basement below.
And the blood seeps into the water as the water seeps into the floor.
As with The Element of Crime, we are watching in a state of hypnosis. Dreaming while awake. We, through Leopold, have been hypnotized at the beginning of the film by none other than Max von Sydow himself.
He talks us through the experience, which we watch visually as a special effects feast.
With color objects in a black-and-white world. Black-and-white objects in a color world. Rear projection. And many more.
The filmmaking is top notch. The cinematography is crisp and beautiful. The production design is high end. The story is confusing.
But no worries. We are in a state of hypnosis. And we are on a train.
We will sit back in our trance and allow the locomotive to carry us where it will.
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
235 - Europa, 1991, Denmark. Dir. Lars von Trier.
Leopold Kessler gets a job on the Zentropa Railroad.
His uncle Uncle Kessler helps him.
Or claims he does.
We cannot tell whether Leopold is being helped or knocked around.
Leopold is innocent. And he has come to Germany in the period after the War because someone needs to show Germany some kindness.
Leopold shows everyone kindness.
He is eager to please.
But he gets knocked around by a bureaucratic insistence on meaningless rules governing myriad minutiae.
He is reprimanded for not putting a chalk mark on the bottom of shoes to "guarantee" that they have been polished.
He insists that one can see that the shoes have been polished.
But sure enough a passenger complains, irately, that his shoes have been returned without a chalk mark. Therefore, they have not been polished.
The Hartmann family, who owns the railroad, takes him in.
Katharina, the daughter, reels him in.
She warns him that she is a werewolf. But that is no matter. He has fallen for her.
She seduces him next to a model train as the patriarch Max Hartmann cuts himself in the bathtub in the basement below.
And the blood seeps into the water as the water seeps into the floor.
As with The Element of Crime, we are watching in a state of hypnosis. Dreaming while awake. We, through Leopold, have been hypnotized at the beginning of the film by none other than Max von Sydow himself.
He talks us through the experience, which we watch visually as a special effects feast.
With color objects in a black-and-white world. Black-and-white objects in a color world. Rear projection. And many more.
The filmmaking is top notch. The cinematography is crisp and beautiful. The production design is high end. The story is confusing.
But no worries. We are in a state of hypnosis. And we are on a train.
We will sit back in our trance and allow the locomotive to carry us where it will.
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
234 - The Element of Crime, 1984, Denmark. Dir. Lars von Trier.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
234 - The Element of Crime, 1984, Denmark. Dir. Lars von Trier.
You know this might not be the Savoy but we do try to keep the rooms clean.
So says that bald-pated hotel clerk to Fisher when Fisher checks in.
No, he is not Alan Cuming in Eyes Wide Shut. He is not Tim Roth in 4 Rooms. He is not Screamin' Jay Hawkins in Mystery Train. He is not Ellen Corby in Vertigo.
He is Lars von Trier himself. Lean. Young looking. Transforming his appearance with the shift of his body. From sexually ambiguous to aryan-like.
He looks nothing like he does today. Nothing like he did in the film after this one. He is a chameleon. A shape-shifter. And did you even know he was an actor? There was a time he acted in all his films. And then a time when he stopped.
The Element of Crime is a post-apocalyptic crime drama. Among other things.
It stars Michael Elphick as Fisher. And Fisher reminds us of Rick Deckard. Maybe because the film reminds us of Blade Runner (1982).
But Fisher is not Deckard.
And Harry Grey is not Harry Lime. Nor is he David Gray. David Gray was the character in Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr, which we have recently watched, and Harry Lime was the man in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), whom Joseph Cotten's Holly Martins was seeking. He was played by Orson Welles.
Fisher is looking for Harry Grey the way Martins was looking for Harry Lime, and you can feel it throughout The Element of Crime even as you are reminded of Blade Runner as you watch it.
This film is not a dream but a hypnotic trance. Our protagonist detective is not talking to us in voice-over narration but to his hypnotist, the Cairo therapist played by Ahmed El Shenawi, who had played in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that same year.
Fisher is in Cairo. In Egypt. And he has been called back to Europe. It has been thirteen years since he has been there. He goes to the therapist for help. His therapist hypnotizes him. He tells him his story.
The Lotto Murders.
Someone is killing the ticket sellers.
So they stick together.
But that does not help
The killer leaves talismans at the sites of the crimes.
Fisher has come to solve the crime.
He is using the techniques advanced by his mentor years before. Osborne is his mentor. He wrote a book called The Element of Crime. Now he considers it dangerous. People criticize him as being a man of theory.
It is dangerous in that it advises the young detective to get into the mind of the killer in order to track him down.
And when he gets into his mind . . . well, you can imagine.
The atmosphere is dark. And raining. And broken down dirty. And hearts are cold.
The film is filmed with high-pressure sodium lamps. It is not sepia, though some have mistaken it. But it is enough.
A donkey struggles to stand up.
Sheep bleat'.
Lemur in the drain grate.
Water, Water, everywhere,
But not a drop to drink.
Kramer is The Chief of Police. He himself says that Fisher had more promise than him, but now he has the world by the balls, the short and curlies.
Yes, but.
Who is Harry Grey?
Where is Harry Grey?
It sometimes helps to study the geography of a crime.
And a three-year old tailing report.
Four murders happened here.
The murder is for the sake of a pattern.
The geography will turn out to coincide with the letter H.
Fisher finds the missing tailing report.
They found the body behind Frau Gerda's whorehouse.
The site of the Lotto Murders.
Halberstadt
the Hotel Schatz
Harry Grey's locker
Crime today is like a chemical reaction. It can only happen in the right environment.
* * * * *
Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier
A provocation's purpose is to get people to think.
If you subject people to a provocation you allow them the possibility of their own interpretation.
He is a playful rascal.
Absolute opponent to all kinds of intellectual authority.
I have a "troll shard" in my eye.
The Snow Queen by Hans Anderson
My own life is a provocation.
Life is a circus.
At age 12 he played the lead role in a Danish/Swedish TV series.
I had a very free upbringing. And according to me, it was too free, as it is such a cause of anxieties.
The child has to be its own authority. When there's no one to say, Do this or Do that, go to the dentist, go to bed, they have to be their own authority, and the difficulties that arise from simply going to bed were incredibly traumatic for me.
It's a lot for a little kid to decide for himself. I missed the love an authority that defines parameters can bring.
Dante, The Divine Comedy
234 - The Element of Crime, 1984, Denmark. Dir. Lars von Trier.
You know this might not be the Savoy but we do try to keep the rooms clean.
So says that bald-pated hotel clerk to Fisher when Fisher checks in.
No, he is not Alan Cuming in Eyes Wide Shut. He is not Tim Roth in 4 Rooms. He is not Screamin' Jay Hawkins in Mystery Train. He is not Ellen Corby in Vertigo.
He is Lars von Trier himself. Lean. Young looking. Transforming his appearance with the shift of his body. From sexually ambiguous to aryan-like.
He looks nothing like he does today. Nothing like he did in the film after this one. He is a chameleon. A shape-shifter. And did you even know he was an actor? There was a time he acted in all his films. And then a time when he stopped.
The Element of Crime is a post-apocalyptic crime drama. Among other things.
It stars Michael Elphick as Fisher. And Fisher reminds us of Rick Deckard. Maybe because the film reminds us of Blade Runner (1982).
But Fisher is not Deckard.
And Harry Grey is not Harry Lime. Nor is he David Gray. David Gray was the character in Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr, which we have recently watched, and Harry Lime was the man in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), whom Joseph Cotten's Holly Martins was seeking. He was played by Orson Welles.
Fisher is looking for Harry Grey the way Martins was looking for Harry Lime, and you can feel it throughout The Element of Crime even as you are reminded of Blade Runner as you watch it.
This film is not a dream but a hypnotic trance. Our protagonist detective is not talking to us in voice-over narration but to his hypnotist, the Cairo therapist played by Ahmed El Shenawi, who had played in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that same year.
Fisher is in Cairo. In Egypt. And he has been called back to Europe. It has been thirteen years since he has been there. He goes to the therapist for help. His therapist hypnotizes him. He tells him his story.
The Lotto Murders.
Someone is killing the ticket sellers.
So they stick together.
But that does not help
The killer leaves talismans at the sites of the crimes.
Fisher has come to solve the crime.
He is using the techniques advanced by his mentor years before. Osborne is his mentor. He wrote a book called The Element of Crime. Now he considers it dangerous. People criticize him as being a man of theory.
It is dangerous in that it advises the young detective to get into the mind of the killer in order to track him down.
And when he gets into his mind . . . well, you can imagine.
The atmosphere is dark. And raining. And broken down dirty. And hearts are cold.
The film is filmed with high-pressure sodium lamps. It is not sepia, though some have mistaken it. But it is enough.
A donkey struggles to stand up.
Sheep bleat'.
Lemur in the drain grate.
Water, Water, everywhere,
But not a drop to drink.
Kramer is The Chief of Police. He himself says that Fisher had more promise than him, but now he has the world by the balls, the short and curlies.
Yes, but.
Who is Harry Grey?
Where is Harry Grey?
It sometimes helps to study the geography of a crime.
And a three-year old tailing report.
Four murders happened here.
The murder is for the sake of a pattern.
The geography will turn out to coincide with the letter H.
Fisher finds the missing tailing report.
They found the body behind Frau Gerda's whorehouse.
The site of the Lotto Murders.
Halberstadt
the Hotel Schatz
Harry Grey's locker
* * * * *
Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier
A provocation's purpose is to get people to think.
If you subject people to a provocation you allow them the possibility of their own interpretation.
He is a playful rascal.
Absolute opponent to all kinds of intellectual authority.
I have a "troll shard" in my eye.
The Snow Queen by Hans Anderson
My own life is a provocation.
Life is a circus.
At age 12 he played the lead role in a Danish/Swedish TV series.
I had a very free upbringing. And according to me, it was too free, as it is such a cause of anxieties.
The child has to be its own authority. When there's no one to say, Do this or Do that, go to the dentist, go to bed, they have to be their own authority, and the difficulties that arise from simply going to bed were incredibly traumatic for me.
It's a lot for a little kid to decide for himself. I missed the love an authority that defines parameters can bring.
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Sunday, August 20, 2017
233 - The Vanishing, 1988, Netherlands, France. Dir. George Sluizer.
Monday, August 21, 2017
233 - The Vanishing, 1988, Netherlands, France. Dir. George Sluizer.
Spoorloos. Trackless. Railless. Without a trace.
Rex and Saskia have driven from the Netherlands to France to go on vacation.
They are driving the highways. She asks if they can exit the highway and take the backroads for local color.
She offers to drive if they do.
They do.
But he is still driving so far.
They pass a gas station. She asks if they should stop. He says No. Later they run out of gas.
In a long, dark tunnel.
He admits he was wrong, and he takes the jerrycan and walks back the way they came.
When he returns with the gas she is not there.
He starts driving.
He finds her ahead standing outside the tunnel.
He tells her, When we were apart I loved you more than ever.
She tells him, I hated you.
Then she laughs. And he laughs.
She makes him promise he will never leave her again.
He promises.
Later they stop again, and they are clearly in love.
She enters a convenience store to use the restroom and comes out with a Frisbee.
They bury two coins next to a tree.
She goes back inside to buy him a beer and herself a Coke.
She will now be driving.
Except . . .
She does not exit.
He waits. He enters. He searches. He asks everyone.
Finally, he realizes.
She is gone.
When Alfred Hitchcock spoke to Francois Truffaut about his methods for the book Hitchcock / Truffaut, he distinguished between suspense and surprise.
Surprise is when you withhold from the audience. Hitchcock was not as big a fan of surprise. Surprise includes whodunits, which for Hitch were mere problem-solving exercises.
Suspense is when you reveal to the audience but withhold from the character. Hitchcock preferred suspense.
He often openly told the audience everything, and in the dramatic irony of our knowing what the character did not know, we waited on the edges of our seats to see how it would affect him.
Hitchcock did use surprise, such as withholding from the audience the identity of Norman Bates's mother until the end, but more often he used suspense.
Suspense brought the emotional drama that was so important to him.
George Sluizer is generous like Hitchcock. He gives us mostly suspense. He tells us almost everything. Almost.
After Saskia vanishes Sluizer goes back in time and shows us step-by-step how we got to this point--who did it, how he prepared to do it, how he did it, and why.
His name is Raymond Lemorne, and he becomes the main character in the story. We watch him plot and plan for years building up to this point. And we follow him until we arrive at this point.
And after this point, we follow Rex, Rex Hofman, and his obsessive search for Saskia. Rex does not know what we know, and it is that lack of knowing that drives Rex on his quest. And keeps us engaged in wanting to help him.
Until it all comes to a head.
Sluizer does leave us with one surprise--what happened to Saskia.
We will not find out that piece of information until the very end.
The film was successful in Europe.
It was remade in America.
Starring Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis, and Sandra Bullock.
With a different ending.
The remake was directed by George Sluizer.
Again.
233 - The Vanishing, 1988, Netherlands, France. Dir. George Sluizer.
Spoorloos. Trackless. Railless. Without a trace.
Rex and Saskia have driven from the Netherlands to France to go on vacation.
They are driving the highways. She asks if they can exit the highway and take the backroads for local color.
She offers to drive if they do.
They do.
But he is still driving so far.
They pass a gas station. She asks if they should stop. He says No. Later they run out of gas.
In a long, dark tunnel.
He admits he was wrong, and he takes the jerrycan and walks back the way they came.
When he returns with the gas she is not there.
He starts driving.
He finds her ahead standing outside the tunnel.
He tells her, When we were apart I loved you more than ever.
She tells him, I hated you.
Then she laughs. And he laughs.
She makes him promise he will never leave her again.
He promises.
Later they stop again, and they are clearly in love.
She enters a convenience store to use the restroom and comes out with a Frisbee.
They bury two coins next to a tree.
She goes back inside to buy him a beer and herself a Coke.
She will now be driving.
Except . . .
She does not exit.
He waits. He enters. He searches. He asks everyone.
Finally, he realizes.
She is gone.
When Alfred Hitchcock spoke to Francois Truffaut about his methods for the book Hitchcock / Truffaut, he distinguished between suspense and surprise.
Surprise is when you withhold from the audience. Hitchcock was not as big a fan of surprise. Surprise includes whodunits, which for Hitch were mere problem-solving exercises.
Suspense is when you reveal to the audience but withhold from the character. Hitchcock preferred suspense.
He often openly told the audience everything, and in the dramatic irony of our knowing what the character did not know, we waited on the edges of our seats to see how it would affect him.
Hitchcock did use surprise, such as withholding from the audience the identity of Norman Bates's mother until the end, but more often he used suspense.
Suspense brought the emotional drama that was so important to him.
George Sluizer is generous like Hitchcock. He gives us mostly suspense. He tells us almost everything. Almost.
After Saskia vanishes Sluizer goes back in time and shows us step-by-step how we got to this point--who did it, how he prepared to do it, how he did it, and why.
His name is Raymond Lemorne, and he becomes the main character in the story. We watch him plot and plan for years building up to this point. And we follow him until we arrive at this point.
And after this point, we follow Rex, Rex Hofman, and his obsessive search for Saskia. Rex does not know what we know, and it is that lack of knowing that drives Rex on his quest. And keeps us engaged in wanting to help him.
Until it all comes to a head.
Sluizer does leave us with one surprise--what happened to Saskia.
We will not find out that piece of information until the very end.
The film was successful in Europe.
It was remade in America.
Starring Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis, and Sandra Bullock.
With a different ending.
The remake was directed by George Sluizer.
Again.
232 - Insomnia, 1997, Norway. Dir. Erik Skjoldbjaerg.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
232 - Insomnia, 1997, Norway. Dir. Erik Skjoldbjaerg.
You have heard of film noir.
How about film blanc.
Or film noir turned inside out, as it were.
Film Noir is about darkness. The lighting is dark. The stories are dark. The hearts are dark.
This film is about light. Lots of light. It takes place in northern Norway, north of the Arctic Circle, in the Land of the Midnight Sun.
Swedish Detective Jonas Engstrom has insomnia--because the sun never sets, and because no matter how hard he tries to seal the window in his hotel room, the light just keeps coming in.
In this film it is Engstrom who tries to keep the secrets, but no matter what he does everything keeps coming to light.
A woman has been murdered. And her body dumped in a garbage dump. And our Swedish detective has been called in to assist.
He carries a gun. But in Norway the police do not carry guns. So he hides it. To keep his Norwegian colleagues from knowing he has it.
That would be fine if it were not for the chase that takes place in the fog.
The villain has a gun. And he uses it. He shoots one of Engstrom's partners in the leg. Engstrom shoots back. And discovers that in the fog he has shot his own partner.
And killed him.
Now he is in a jam.
In his report he states that the perpetrator shot his partner.
Why not tell the truth? Because he was not supposed to have a gun in the first place. Why not? Maybe they think they are in Mayberry.
But never mind that. This film is about the hole that Engstrom keeps digging.
And the situation he creates for himself that keeps getting darker and darker.
He just cannot seem to get away from all that light.
* * * * *
The Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, who plays Engstrom in Insomnia, became successful while still a teenager and has for years moved fluidly back and forth between Scandinavian and American films.
His Hollywood movies include The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Amistad (1997), Good Will Hunting (1997), Ronin (1998), The Glass House (2001), Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) (2001), King Arthur (2004), Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), Mamma Mia! (2008), Angels & Demons (2009), Cinderella (2015), the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and the Avengers franchise.
In Scandanavia he has had a long relationship with Danish director Lars von Trier (The Kingdom, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac), Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, Swedish director Hans Alfredson, and Icelandic/Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson, among many others.
* * * * *
Christopher Nolan remade this film in 2002. It starred Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, and Robin Williams.
232 - Insomnia, 1997, Norway. Dir. Erik Skjoldbjaerg.
You have heard of film noir.
How about film blanc.
Or film noir turned inside out, as it were.
Film Noir is about darkness. The lighting is dark. The stories are dark. The hearts are dark.
This film is about light. Lots of light. It takes place in northern Norway, north of the Arctic Circle, in the Land of the Midnight Sun.
Swedish Detective Jonas Engstrom has insomnia--because the sun never sets, and because no matter how hard he tries to seal the window in his hotel room, the light just keeps coming in.
In this film it is Engstrom who tries to keep the secrets, but no matter what he does everything keeps coming to light.
A woman has been murdered. And her body dumped in a garbage dump. And our Swedish detective has been called in to assist.
He carries a gun. But in Norway the police do not carry guns. So he hides it. To keep his Norwegian colleagues from knowing he has it.
That would be fine if it were not for the chase that takes place in the fog.
The villain has a gun. And he uses it. He shoots one of Engstrom's partners in the leg. Engstrom shoots back. And discovers that in the fog he has shot his own partner.
And killed him.
Now he is in a jam.
In his report he states that the perpetrator shot his partner.
Why not tell the truth? Because he was not supposed to have a gun in the first place. Why not? Maybe they think they are in Mayberry.
But never mind that. This film is about the hole that Engstrom keeps digging.
And the situation he creates for himself that keeps getting darker and darker.
He just cannot seem to get away from all that light.
* * * * *
The Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, who plays Engstrom in Insomnia, became successful while still a teenager and has for years moved fluidly back and forth between Scandinavian and American films.
His Hollywood movies include The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Amistad (1997), Good Will Hunting (1997), Ronin (1998), The Glass House (2001), Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) (2001), King Arthur (2004), Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), Mamma Mia! (2008), Angels & Demons (2009), Cinderella (2015), the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and the Avengers franchise.
In Scandanavia he has had a long relationship with Danish director Lars von Trier (The Kingdom, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac), Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, Swedish director Hans Alfredson, and Icelandic/Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson, among many others.
* * * * *
Christopher Nolan remade this film in 2002. It starred Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, and Robin Williams.
Saturday, August 19, 2017
231 - Liv and Ingmar, 2012, Sweden. Dir. Dheeraj Akolkar.
Saturday, August 19, 2017
231 - Liv and Ingmar, 2012, Sweden. Dir. Dheeraj Akolkar.
"The first Summer was pure happiness. We were making Persona on the island. It was hot.
No Summer since has ever been like that.
Not like that."
So says Liv Ullmann in a remarkable documentary love letter to her great friend of fifty years.
Liv Ullmann met Ingmar Bergman when she was 25 and he was 46. They fell in love. They lived together. They had a daughter. They separated. They made twelve movies together. They stayed dear friends for the rest of their lives.
The film is shot on the island of Faro, where Bergman lived for upwards of 40 years, where he and Liv lived together when they did, and where he, and they, made so many movies. Together.
The cinematography of this film is appropriate for a film about Bergman, showcasing the island's seductive elements in brilliant and colorful natural light.
The film is also edited masterfully, moving fluidly among interviews with Ullmann, her reading from her 1976 autobiography Changing, Bergman's letters read by Samuel Froler, clips from films, and clips from newsreels and other sources.
Liv Ullmann comes across as a wise and transparently beautiful soul. Everything she says feels fresh and deeply heartfelt. She makes her own words written 37 years before seem spontaneously spoken.
She is a fantastic writer.
She is also a fantastic actress, and one imagines from watching this film, a fantastic human being.
The viewer will be easily caught up in sharing with her story.
These are the chapters of the film.
Love
Loneliness
Rage
Pain
Longing
Friendship
In these chapters Ullmann is unflinchingly honest about their relationship and its low moments as well as its high ones.
Liv reveals that Bergman was filled with jealousy and possessiveness. He built walls around the property to make it a compound and in which she felt imprisoned.
He had a single-minded commitment to his work and a need for his loved ones to fit into his duties and his schedule.
They fought.
She says, "I was confronted with his jealousy, violent and without bounds."
She describes how her feelings of love for him deepened through the years, as they grew older and she saw his vulnerabilities.
She moved to America for a time. He flew to Broadway to see her. He championed her Hollywood films. He called her.
She moved home and continued working with him.
There are many sobering moments and many touching moments. This is a story of two lives fully and remarkably lived.
In the end he said to her, "You are my Stradivarius."
She tells us that it is the best compliment she has ever received.
When I heard it I jumped. I thought through the comparison eight years ago and have been using it in my teaching since--to inspire actors. I only learned this morning that Bergman used the phrase.
It is an appropriate analogy.
The priceless violin. The world's greatest instrument. The master says to his muse, You are it.
231 - Liv and Ingmar, 2012, Sweden. Dir. Dheeraj Akolkar.
"The first Summer was pure happiness. We were making Persona on the island. It was hot.
No Summer since has ever been like that.
Not like that."
So says Liv Ullmann in a remarkable documentary love letter to her great friend of fifty years.
Liv Ullmann met Ingmar Bergman when she was 25 and he was 46. They fell in love. They lived together. They had a daughter. They separated. They made twelve movies together. They stayed dear friends for the rest of their lives.
The film is shot on the island of Faro, where Bergman lived for upwards of 40 years, where he and Liv lived together when they did, and where he, and they, made so many movies. Together.
The cinematography of this film is appropriate for a film about Bergman, showcasing the island's seductive elements in brilliant and colorful natural light.
The film is also edited masterfully, moving fluidly among interviews with Ullmann, her reading from her 1976 autobiography Changing, Bergman's letters read by Samuel Froler, clips from films, and clips from newsreels and other sources.
Liv Ullmann comes across as a wise and transparently beautiful soul. Everything she says feels fresh and deeply heartfelt. She makes her own words written 37 years before seem spontaneously spoken.
She is a fantastic writer.
She is also a fantastic actress, and one imagines from watching this film, a fantastic human being.
The viewer will be easily caught up in sharing with her story.
These are the chapters of the film.
Love
Loneliness
Rage
Pain
Longing
Friendship
In these chapters Ullmann is unflinchingly honest about their relationship and its low moments as well as its high ones.
Liv reveals that Bergman was filled with jealousy and possessiveness. He built walls around the property to make it a compound and in which she felt imprisoned.
He had a single-minded commitment to his work and a need for his loved ones to fit into his duties and his schedule.
They fought.
She says, "I was confronted with his jealousy, violent and without bounds."
He too was honest. He put it in his films.
The documentary strives to give him his voice.
In his letters he writes, "I can reach my hands towards you and say, Don't be afraid, Liv. I will not do you any harm. I love you. The demons have left me for now, but it was terrible while it lasted."
She describes how her feelings of love for him deepened through the years, as they grew older and she saw his vulnerabilities.
She moved to America for a time. He flew to Broadway to see her. He championed her Hollywood films. He called her.
She moved home and continued working with him.
There are many sobering moments and many touching moments. This is a story of two lives fully and remarkably lived.
In the end he said to her, "You are my Stradivarius."
She tells us that it is the best compliment she has ever received.
When I heard it I jumped. I thought through the comparison eight years ago and have been using it in my teaching since--to inspire actors. I only learned this morning that Bergman used the phrase.
It is an appropriate analogy.
The priceless violin. The world's greatest instrument. The master says to his muse, You are it.
Friday, August 18, 2017
230 - Bergman Island, 2004, Faro Island, Sweden. Dir. Marie Nyrerod.
Friday, August 18, 2017
230 - Bergman Island, 2004, Faro Island, Sweden. Dir. Marie Nyrerod.
In 2003 journalist Marie Nyrerod spent several days with Ingmar Bergman on Faro Island.
She had first interviewed him 20 years previously, in 1983, and had continued to interview him over the years.
She had been asking him for years to do this documentary, and he had repeatedly turned her down.
He was not yet ready to look back at his life. He was still moving forward.
Then he made Saraband, a 2003 made-for-TV movie that functions as a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage (1974), following the lives of Johan and Marianne thirty years after their divorce.
Bergman decided then that he was ready to meet with Nyrerod and look back at his life and career.
She found him to be open and willing to answer any question she posed him. He did not want to be filmed swimming or cycling, but otherwise he was game for anything.
They spoke on camera for several hours a day and continued speaking for several hours after the cameras were turned off.
He would continue to call her for the remainder of his life, speaking to her as a friend.
The documentary was originally made in three parts for Swedish television: "Bergman and the Cinema," "Bergman and the Theatre," and "Bergman and Faro Island."
It was later edited together for form one documentary feature.
In the documentary Bergman states that his work in the theatre was more important to him than his work in film--although his work in film was what changed his life and gave him his freedom.
But his work in theatre was where he spent his daily life. He had been the theatrical manager of the Heisenberg City Theatre, the director of the Malmo City Theatre, the director of the Gothenberg Theatre, the director of the Residenz Theatre in Munich, Germany, and finally the director and manager of the Royal Dramatic Theatre.
He describes his time in Munich and discusses how he loved the actors there but did not know him the way he did the Swedish actors. He also discusses the challenges of directing works in another language. He says he speaks fluent German; however, the language itself does not always carry over the precise meaning of particular, and important, phrases--especially those originally written in Swedish.
Bergman loves Stringberg, for example, and he provides a sentence in the original Swedish and then translates it into German and shows how the shades of meaning are different. Then we watch footage of the German actors performing it on the Munich stage.
Bergman and Nyrerod watch footage of a press conference he gave at the time of his arrest on (false) tax evasion charges, and he discusses the effect it had on him.
He and his wife Ingrid were in Los Angeles when he decided to spend the Summer in Faro and then move to Germany.
The exact numbers are not easy to come by, but in all Bergman directed about three times as many plays as he directed films.
During the interviews Bergman talks openly about his fears.
He describes his inspiration for The Seventh Seal.
When he was growing up, Bergman would visit churches with his clergyman father. At one church in Uppland, he would stare at the nave vault ceiling. There was one painting by the ecclesiastical painter Albertus Pictor featuring Death playing chess with a knight. Bergman held on to that image and used it in his feature film.
Here are some of the things Bergman says about The Seventh Seal:
"The core of that film is an insane fear of death. I was in a state of . . . it was the most appalling suffering. Well, suffering . . . it was a torment for me. I was terribly afraid of death. Anything to do with death was horrifying. Out of that horror and the business of the atom bomb and that sort of thing, this story arose about the plague and the journey back."
"There was the whole question posed by religion. The Seventh Seal has no answer to that question."
Later in the conversations he lists his demons. He came prepared for the question and had them already written down on note paper! Some of his demons include--
The Demon of Fear. He then lists examples, and it seems extensive. He practically admits to being afraid of everything.
The Demon of Rage. He states that he gets this from his parents and seems to regret it. It is noteworthy that he spent his life reacting against the rage of his father only to continue the rage towards his own family and others.
The Demon of Nothingness. This is his fear of running out of imagination and creativity. He then says fortunately, however, this demon has never been successful. Bergman has never run out of ideas.
He is also honest about his lack of presence as a husband and father. He describes himself as being "family lazy" and states openly that he never had time for his children.
He recounts that the scene from Scenes from a Marriage in which Johan tells Marianne that he is leaving her came from Bergman's own life experience, when he left Ellen Lundstrom and their four children for Gun Grut.
He acknowledges that what he did was cruel and painful, and as he is speaking one can see in him the effects of the years of guilt. However, he has chosen to stop feeling bad about it, because he has decided that feeling bad accomplishes nothing and can never compensate for the damage he did. He refers to bad feeling as a vanity.
At the same time, they discuss the love he had for the women in his life and the way in which he was able to maintain it with many of them, continuing to work together and be good friends for years.
As Bergman and Nyrerod walk the island, one can feel the inspirational power of nature and the sea.
The locals protect him, providing false directions to tourists, and he seems to be content and at peace when he is in the elements. He goes on daily walks, and he says that the demons cannot get to him in the fresh air.
He shows Nyrerod spots where various scenes were filmed as well as spots that inspired various scenes to be written. He takes her to his screening room in the converted barn, and they screen things and discuss them. He also shows her the Cinematograph he got as an 8-year-old boy--which was given to his older brother for Christmas and for which he traded 150 tin soldiers to obtain himself.
Ingmar Bergman eventually settled down. He stayed with his last wife Ingrid for 24 years until her death in 1995.
He seems to have loved her deeply, and he misses her.
And for a man who has tried his whole life to be an agnostic, his love for her seems to get in the way of that defensive intellectual stance.
We can discover through sources outside this documentary that he started going back to church in the end of his life.
And in the interview with Nyrerod he expresses a hope.
In an honest and vulnerable moment, he states that he hopes to see his wife again one day.
230 - Bergman Island, 2004, Faro Island, Sweden. Dir. Marie Nyrerod.
In 2003 journalist Marie Nyrerod spent several days with Ingmar Bergman on Faro Island.
She had first interviewed him 20 years previously, in 1983, and had continued to interview him over the years.
She had been asking him for years to do this documentary, and he had repeatedly turned her down.
He was not yet ready to look back at his life. He was still moving forward.
Then he made Saraband, a 2003 made-for-TV movie that functions as a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage (1974), following the lives of Johan and Marianne thirty years after their divorce.
Bergman decided then that he was ready to meet with Nyrerod and look back at his life and career.
She found him to be open and willing to answer any question she posed him. He did not want to be filmed swimming or cycling, but otherwise he was game for anything.
They spoke on camera for several hours a day and continued speaking for several hours after the cameras were turned off.
He would continue to call her for the remainder of his life, speaking to her as a friend.
The documentary was originally made in three parts for Swedish television: "Bergman and the Cinema," "Bergman and the Theatre," and "Bergman and Faro Island."
It was later edited together for form one documentary feature.
In the documentary Bergman states that his work in the theatre was more important to him than his work in film--although his work in film was what changed his life and gave him his freedom.
But his work in theatre was where he spent his daily life. He had been the theatrical manager of the Heisenberg City Theatre, the director of the Malmo City Theatre, the director of the Gothenberg Theatre, the director of the Residenz Theatre in Munich, Germany, and finally the director and manager of the Royal Dramatic Theatre.
He describes his time in Munich and discusses how he loved the actors there but did not know him the way he did the Swedish actors. He also discusses the challenges of directing works in another language. He says he speaks fluent German; however, the language itself does not always carry over the precise meaning of particular, and important, phrases--especially those originally written in Swedish.
Bergman loves Stringberg, for example, and he provides a sentence in the original Swedish and then translates it into German and shows how the shades of meaning are different. Then we watch footage of the German actors performing it on the Munich stage.
Bergman and Nyrerod watch footage of a press conference he gave at the time of his arrest on (false) tax evasion charges, and he discusses the effect it had on him.
He and his wife Ingrid were in Los Angeles when he decided to spend the Summer in Faro and then move to Germany.
The exact numbers are not easy to come by, but in all Bergman directed about three times as many plays as he directed films.
During the interviews Bergman talks openly about his fears.
He describes his inspiration for The Seventh Seal.
When he was growing up, Bergman would visit churches with his clergyman father. At one church in Uppland, he would stare at the nave vault ceiling. There was one painting by the ecclesiastical painter Albertus Pictor featuring Death playing chess with a knight. Bergman held on to that image and used it in his feature film.
Here are some of the things Bergman says about The Seventh Seal:
"The core of that film is an insane fear of death. I was in a state of . . . it was the most appalling suffering. Well, suffering . . . it was a torment for me. I was terribly afraid of death. Anything to do with death was horrifying. Out of that horror and the business of the atom bomb and that sort of thing, this story arose about the plague and the journey back."
"There was the whole question posed by religion. The Seventh Seal has no answer to that question."
Later in the conversations he lists his demons. He came prepared for the question and had them already written down on note paper! Some of his demons include--
The Demon of Fear. He then lists examples, and it seems extensive. He practically admits to being afraid of everything.
The Demon of Rage. He states that he gets this from his parents and seems to regret it. It is noteworthy that he spent his life reacting against the rage of his father only to continue the rage towards his own family and others.
The Demon of Nothingness. This is his fear of running out of imagination and creativity. He then says fortunately, however, this demon has never been successful. Bergman has never run out of ideas.
He is also honest about his lack of presence as a husband and father. He describes himself as being "family lazy" and states openly that he never had time for his children.
He recounts that the scene from Scenes from a Marriage in which Johan tells Marianne that he is leaving her came from Bergman's own life experience, when he left Ellen Lundstrom and their four children for Gun Grut.
He acknowledges that what he did was cruel and painful, and as he is speaking one can see in him the effects of the years of guilt. However, he has chosen to stop feeling bad about it, because he has decided that feeling bad accomplishes nothing and can never compensate for the damage he did. He refers to bad feeling as a vanity.
At the same time, they discuss the love he had for the women in his life and the way in which he was able to maintain it with many of them, continuing to work together and be good friends for years.
As Bergman and Nyrerod walk the island, one can feel the inspirational power of nature and the sea.
The locals protect him, providing false directions to tourists, and he seems to be content and at peace when he is in the elements. He goes on daily walks, and he says that the demons cannot get to him in the fresh air.
He shows Nyrerod spots where various scenes were filmed as well as spots that inspired various scenes to be written. He takes her to his screening room in the converted barn, and they screen things and discuss them. He also shows her the Cinematograph he got as an 8-year-old boy--which was given to his older brother for Christmas and for which he traded 150 tin soldiers to obtain himself.
Ingmar Bergman eventually settled down. He stayed with his last wife Ingrid for 24 years until her death in 1995.
He seems to have loved her deeply, and he misses her.
And for a man who has tried his whole life to be an agnostic, his love for her seems to get in the way of that defensive intellectual stance.
We can discover through sources outside this documentary that he started going back to church in the end of his life.
And in the interview with Nyrerod he expresses a hope.
In an honest and vulnerable moment, he states that he hopes to see his wife again one day.
Thursday, August 17, 2017
229 - Fanny and Alexander, 1982, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Thursday, August 17, 2017
229 - Fanny and Alexander, 1982, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
NOT FOR PLEASURE ALONE
Schumann Piano Quintet in E flat Major
The cardboard curtain rises.
Alexander looks into his puppet theatre. Little flames form the footlights. He places the cardboard cut-out of an actress onto the stage. He looks at his creation.
He leans over. He lies down on his arm. He smiles. He lives in his imagination.
Alexander gets up and walks through the great apartment. A palace in the city.
He calls for his sister. "Fanny!" He calls for his mother. "Mother." He calls for Siri. "Siri!'
No one answers.
Alexander walks through the open rooms. He turns the key and opens the door.
He passes the drapes, the rugs, the furniture, the clocks, the statues, the chandeliers, the lamps, the candelabra, the paintings, the tapestries, the mirrors, the piano, the plants, and the flowers.
He hides in his someone else's bed.
He looks out the window.
Outside the cut flowers flash against the white snow.
A horsedrawn flatwagon passes.
Alexander hides beneath a table.
A statue in the corner moves.
Alexander is afraid.
"It was a kind of secret terror that I recognized again in Cocteau's Blood of a Poet," recalls Bergman.
One of the women enters and sees him. She offers to play cards before dinner.
Outside the river rushes past the snowbanks.
The lamplighters light the gaslights with wicks on long poles, like secular accensors attending to tapers, lighting the votive candles.
And so begins our epic film about a little boy in an increasingly small family.
It is Christmastime.
The many family members are converging to celebrate.
A party proceeds by horsedrawn sleigh.
In telling Helena, Ester the maid tells us: "This is the 43rd Christmas we're celebrating together."
Everything is being prepared. Everything is grand.
The servants are trimming the tree.
The cooks have been trimming the trimmings.
Helena checks on the preparations and give notes to the servants. Yet she betrays a worried look in her eyes. What does she feel inside her?
Before the guests arrive, we see them at their various places. Her sons at the theater. Her dear old friend at his shop.
At 1:00 pm on Christmas Eve the curtain rises in the local Theater.
The townsfolk come to see the Christmas play.
Inside snow falls.
Worthy Joseph, do not fear.
Thy angel is thee ever near.
I come in haste to bring thee word
From thy creator and thy God.
Mary and the child now wake
And quickly into safety take.
Herod with his murdering hand
Threatens every man-child in this land.
All this I have noted well
And shall do as you foretell.
Praised be God upon his throne,
Who thus protects my only son.
Thus, good people, ends our play.
It all ends well this holy day.
The son of God, saved from the sword
Is our savior, Christ the Lord.
Alexander's father Oscar plays Joseph.
Oscar runs the theater. And like him, Alexander has his puppet theatre at home. And like Christmas celebrations, the family measures its theater life in decades.
After the play, the food is carted on to the stage. Or shall we say the feast. The cast and crew of the theater are going to celebrate in style.
Oscar's youngest brother Gustav Adolf gives a speech. He expects everyone present to share in the joy of the occasion and to engage with one another in openness and warmth. He carries the flaming punch bowl in a procession to the table--as they descend into the basement--and begins the festivities. Gustav Adolf is "beaming with goodwill and high blood pressure."
Meanwhile, the middle brother Carl is upstairs with his classmates from college, wearing their graduation caps (not mortarboards as in the United States, but something akin to round white sailor caps), drinking, getting drunk, and singing lustily. His sourpuss wife Lydia comes in and practically drags him out by the earlobe, complaining of his adolescent behavior and threatening that they must arrive at his mother's house on time.
Oscar now gives his speech. He has given this speech as theater manager for 22 years and claims to have no talent for speechmaking. He compares himself to his own father, whom he says was brilliant at giving speeches.
"My only talent, if you can call it that, is that I love this little world inside the thick walls of this playhouse. And I'm fond of the people who work in this little world."
We can feel Ingmar Bergman expressing himself. He gave his life to the theatre. In Sweden he is known more as a theatre director than as a filmmaker.
Isak Jacobi runs a shop around the corner. But what he does there is a mystery. The screenplay states, "Nobody has ever seen Isak Jacobi selling or buying anything in his shop."
He is the grandmother Helena's old lover and close friend. He arrives early and gives her a present, a brooch. She looks to see if no one is looking. She kisses him.
The family arrives.
Helena greets each of her sons and his family, as well as the relatives and other guests. The children look under the tree at the presents.
We see the feasting and the celebrations and the secret dalliances.
"There is an abundant choice. Countless varieties of pickled herring, sausages, head cheese, pâtés, galantines, aux bretons, meatballs, steaks, and cutlets."
They dance. Helena leads the line. The servants dance with the family, intermixed in the line.
Gustav Adolf takes the maid Maj behind a screen and sets up a tryst for later in the evening. His wife says, "I think it's sweet."
Oscar leaves the line and collapses, an omen of what is to come.
Carl invites the children to a fireworks show. Fireworks made by him. He takes the children out to the stairs where he indulges in three explosions of flatulence, the last one blowing out a candle.
Oscar reads from the Bible. Luke 2. Everyone sits and listens, again, the servants (in their black and white dresses and aprons) with the family (with their red dresses).
The children have a pillow fight. Down flies up. Down floats down.
Alma addresses Maj. She slaps her, presumably for allowing the fight, but below the surface to let her know she is watching her and what she might do with her husband.
The children say their prayers.
Maj tucks in the children. The children go to sleep.
Not Alexander. Alexander goes to his Magic Lantern.
The feasting will continue secretly into the night--the children with the Magic Lanter, Helena with Isak, Gustav Adolf with Maj, Carl with Lydia, Gustav Adolf with Alma.
Breakfast.
It has been a wonderful time.
Alexander lives a great life.
His is a loving family.
His is a happy home.
Then comes Hamlet.
Everything is about to change.
They go to rehearsals. Alexander watches his father upon the stage.
Oscar has a stroke. What am I doing here? Suddenly, he cannot remember things.
He will die.
Alexander will watch him die. Just as he is embracing him in bed.
And his mother will remarry.
And the second half of the movie will contrast with the first.
Her new husband is strict and cold and cruel.
Their lives grow small and lonely and sad.
Alexander retreats within his imagination. He makes up stories. He is heavily punished.
Emelie gets pregnant. Grows afraid. And reaches a breaking point.
She finds a way to escape.
And seek for help for her children.
Her mother-in-law's former lover and friend. The shop owner. Isak Jacobi.
Maybe he can help.
Maybe he can.
The film turns into intrigue. Adventure. Escape.
And a new life.
With new magic.
New imagination.
And new hope.
This was Bergman's magnum opus. His last and largest film. More than five hours for television. Cut down to more than three hours for the cinema. He wanted the longer version for the cinema. Sometimes one can find it.
It took 130 days of shooting.
He used a great number of his usual players (minus Liv Ullman, Max Von Sydow, and Bibi Andersson), and a great number of Sweden's top actors.
Everything was meticulously planned.
He kept the sound stage set to 64 degrees.
He used long lenses and made long takes. He cut only when necessary. His camera was fluid and steady. Sven Nykvist won his second Oscar for cinematography.
The look of the film is rich and lush and lavish.
And we can feel his whole career contained herein.
And he says so.
"Fanny and Alexander is like a summing up of my entire life as a filmmaker."
Yes.
We can see.
229 - Fanny and Alexander, 1982, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
NOT FOR PLEASURE ALONE
Schumann Piano Quintet in E flat Major
The cardboard curtain rises.
Alexander looks into his puppet theatre. Little flames form the footlights. He places the cardboard cut-out of an actress onto the stage. He looks at his creation.
He leans over. He lies down on his arm. He smiles. He lives in his imagination.
Alexander gets up and walks through the great apartment. A palace in the city.
He calls for his sister. "Fanny!" He calls for his mother. "Mother." He calls for Siri. "Siri!'
No one answers.
Alexander walks through the open rooms. He turns the key and opens the door.
He passes the drapes, the rugs, the furniture, the clocks, the statues, the chandeliers, the lamps, the candelabra, the paintings, the tapestries, the mirrors, the piano, the plants, and the flowers.
He hides in his someone else's bed.
He looks out the window.
Outside the cut flowers flash against the white snow.
A horsedrawn flatwagon passes.
Alexander hides beneath a table.
A statue in the corner moves.
Alexander is afraid.
"It was a kind of secret terror that I recognized again in Cocteau's Blood of a Poet," recalls Bergman.
One of the women enters and sees him. She offers to play cards before dinner.
Outside the river rushes past the snowbanks.
The lamplighters light the gaslights with wicks on long poles, like secular accensors attending to tapers, lighting the votive candles.
And so begins our epic film about a little boy in an increasingly small family.
It is Christmastime.
The many family members are converging to celebrate.
A party proceeds by horsedrawn sleigh.
In telling Helena, Ester the maid tells us: "This is the 43rd Christmas we're celebrating together."
Everything is being prepared. Everything is grand.
The servants are trimming the tree.
The cooks have been trimming the trimmings.
Helena checks on the preparations and give notes to the servants. Yet she betrays a worried look in her eyes. What does she feel inside her?
Before the guests arrive, we see them at their various places. Her sons at the theater. Her dear old friend at his shop.
At 1:00 pm on Christmas Eve the curtain rises in the local Theater.
The townsfolk come to see the Christmas play.
Inside snow falls.
Worthy Joseph, do not fear.
Thy angel is thee ever near.
I come in haste to bring thee word
From thy creator and thy God.
Mary and the child now wake
And quickly into safety take.
Herod with his murdering hand
Threatens every man-child in this land.
All this I have noted well
And shall do as you foretell.
Praised be God upon his throne,
Who thus protects my only son.
Thus, good people, ends our play.
It all ends well this holy day.
The son of God, saved from the sword
Is our savior, Christ the Lord.
Alexander's father Oscar plays Joseph.
Oscar runs the theater. And like him, Alexander has his puppet theatre at home. And like Christmas celebrations, the family measures its theater life in decades.
After the play, the food is carted on to the stage. Or shall we say the feast. The cast and crew of the theater are going to celebrate in style.
Oscar's youngest brother Gustav Adolf gives a speech. He expects everyone present to share in the joy of the occasion and to engage with one another in openness and warmth. He carries the flaming punch bowl in a procession to the table--as they descend into the basement--and begins the festivities. Gustav Adolf is "beaming with goodwill and high blood pressure."
Meanwhile, the middle brother Carl is upstairs with his classmates from college, wearing their graduation caps (not mortarboards as in the United States, but something akin to round white sailor caps), drinking, getting drunk, and singing lustily. His sourpuss wife Lydia comes in and practically drags him out by the earlobe, complaining of his adolescent behavior and threatening that they must arrive at his mother's house on time.
Oscar now gives his speech. He has given this speech as theater manager for 22 years and claims to have no talent for speechmaking. He compares himself to his own father, whom he says was brilliant at giving speeches.
"My only talent, if you can call it that, is that I love this little world inside the thick walls of this playhouse. And I'm fond of the people who work in this little world."
We can feel Ingmar Bergman expressing himself. He gave his life to the theatre. In Sweden he is known more as a theatre director than as a filmmaker.
Isak Jacobi runs a shop around the corner. But what he does there is a mystery. The screenplay states, "Nobody has ever seen Isak Jacobi selling or buying anything in his shop."
He is the grandmother Helena's old lover and close friend. He arrives early and gives her a present, a brooch. She looks to see if no one is looking. She kisses him.
The family arrives.
Helena greets each of her sons and his family, as well as the relatives and other guests. The children look under the tree at the presents.
We see the feasting and the celebrations and the secret dalliances.
"There is an abundant choice. Countless varieties of pickled herring, sausages, head cheese, pâtés, galantines, aux bretons, meatballs, steaks, and cutlets."
They dance. Helena leads the line. The servants dance with the family, intermixed in the line.
Gustav Adolf takes the maid Maj behind a screen and sets up a tryst for later in the evening. His wife says, "I think it's sweet."
Oscar leaves the line and collapses, an omen of what is to come.
Carl invites the children to a fireworks show. Fireworks made by him. He takes the children out to the stairs where he indulges in three explosions of flatulence, the last one blowing out a candle.
Oscar reads from the Bible. Luke 2. Everyone sits and listens, again, the servants (in their black and white dresses and aprons) with the family (with their red dresses).
The children have a pillow fight. Down flies up. Down floats down.
Alma addresses Maj. She slaps her, presumably for allowing the fight, but below the surface to let her know she is watching her and what she might do with her husband.
The children say their prayers.
Maj tucks in the children. The children go to sleep.
Not Alexander. Alexander goes to his Magic Lantern.
The feasting will continue secretly into the night--the children with the Magic Lanter, Helena with Isak, Gustav Adolf with Maj, Carl with Lydia, Gustav Adolf with Alma.
Breakfast.
It has been a wonderful time.
Alexander lives a great life.
His is a loving family.
His is a happy home.
Then comes Hamlet.
Everything is about to change.
They go to rehearsals. Alexander watches his father upon the stage.
Oscar has a stroke. What am I doing here? Suddenly, he cannot remember things.
He will die.
Alexander will watch him die. Just as he is embracing him in bed.
And his mother will remarry.
And the second half of the movie will contrast with the first.
Her new husband is strict and cold and cruel.
Their lives grow small and lonely and sad.
Alexander retreats within his imagination. He makes up stories. He is heavily punished.
Emelie gets pregnant. Grows afraid. And reaches a breaking point.
She finds a way to escape.
And seek for help for her children.
Her mother-in-law's former lover and friend. The shop owner. Isak Jacobi.
Maybe he can help.
Maybe he can.
The film turns into intrigue. Adventure. Escape.
And a new life.
With new magic.
New imagination.
And new hope.
This was Bergman's magnum opus. His last and largest film. More than five hours for television. Cut down to more than three hours for the cinema. He wanted the longer version for the cinema. Sometimes one can find it.
It took 130 days of shooting.
He used a great number of his usual players (minus Liv Ullman, Max Von Sydow, and Bibi Andersson), and a great number of Sweden's top actors.
Everything was meticulously planned.
He kept the sound stage set to 64 degrees.
He used long lenses and made long takes. He cut only when necessary. His camera was fluid and steady. Sven Nykvist won his second Oscar for cinematography.
The look of the film is rich and lush and lavish.
And we can feel his whole career contained herein.
And he says so.
"Fanny and Alexander is like a summing up of my entire life as a filmmaker."
Yes.
We can see.
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
228 - The Making of Autumn Sonata, 1978, Sweden. Dir. Arne Carlsson.
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
228 - The Making of Autumn Sonata, 1978, Sweden. Dir. Arne Carlsson.
Here we have a true behind-the-scenes documentary.
Not a made-for-TV fluff piece.
No narrator. No interviews for our camera. No excessive cutting.
Just a camera sitting in the background observing the process without interrupting and without trying to make it interesting to us.
Arne Carlsson knows how to stay out of the way. And he allows things to unfold naturally and organically.
Thank you, Arne.
Arne Carlsson was the AD on Cries & Whispers and the Still Photographer on Autumn Sonata. Well, clearly he was also the BTS (Behind-the-Scenes) Director on Autumn Sonata, but he was credited for his work as the Still Photographer. He performed the same two jobs on Bergman's next project, Fanny and Alexander, and he shot Marie Nyrod's 2004 documentary of Bergman, Bergman Island.
The film observes the first meeting of the actors, their table read, a couple of rehearsals, the piano lesson, make-up and costume tests, the dress rehearsal, working on the set, Day One, two press conferences, several days of shooting, and some of their down time.
During the set-ups we see Bergman discussing the set with his Production Designer Anna Asp, detailing the layout of the room, including windows, chairs, rugs, and bookshelves. We also see members of the Art Department constructing walls, installing a troublesome shower head, and painting the floors.
We see members of the G&E (Grip and Electric) departments carrying equipment and setting up lights.
We see filming on Days 9, 16, 18, 23, 28, 29, 35, 42, 43, 49, and 50.
And what stands out for us is relationships.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with Ingrid Bergman. They are unrelated. His wife at the time is also named Ingrid Bergman, but this is the actress. She enters fully prepared, which is great, but she has her own vision that will have to conform to the Director's. She questions him. He defends his choices. She adjusts.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with Liv Ullmann. This is something. He is now married to Ingrid, but he and Liv were together for awhile. They have made many movies together. They have a daughter, Linn. She is acting in this movie, and she is here. And they continue to work together in harmony and good will.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with Sven Nykvist. This is great to watch. If you work in the film industry, you love to see this, and you may experience it. Bergman tells Nykvist where he wants a light set up, and we see Nykvist already halfway there. It happens more than once. They even comment that they read each other's minds.
What is also fascinating is how they discuss the lighting scheme ahead of time. They have worked so much together that they can dial up a lighting scheme from a previous movie.
Here is a conversation they have at the table read with Liv in there with them.
An hour has passed. . . . Now it's dawn. Not just any dawn.
An Hour of the Wolf dawn?
More of a Cries and Whispers dawn.
We've made so many films together; this is number 19.
We only need to name the film and everyone knows what kind of dawn.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with his daughter Linn Ullmann. He shows her the blocking. He discusses the scene. He directs her emotions. He is tender and gentle with her. Autumn Sonata is a film about a great artist who neglected her children, and Bergman has expressed that feeling of guilt in several of his films. But here in this moment he seems close to Linn. They are working together, and he is sweet to her. He brings her back to make sure she does not mash her finger in the door jam, which he has done previously. He wants to ensure she does not get hurt.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with the press. During the press conferences and interviews he seems open and amenable. He wants to get closer to them. When they are on stage he moves his group's chairs forward. Then he invites the members of the press on the floor to move their chairs all the way up to the edge of the stage. He wishes he could sit on the floor with them. He answers their questions with humor and ease. Later, when another group of reporters are interviewing him and Liv out in a field, he relaxes and answers their questions openly and freely as well.
We do get a few moments where we get to see some of the artistry of Sven Nykvist's lighting set-ups. We wish we could see more of those. There is a shot of Ingrid Bergman sitting on the couch, and light is blasting into the room from behind her and to her left. It makes its way past three 4'x4' white bounce boards--what would be the equivalent of bead board used today--before it lands softly on her face. We want to know more of these secrets!
This documentary invites us to appreciate Bergman's greatness even more. We see him always relaxed, always in command, and always communicating with his team. Even in the potentially tense moments--when the newly arrived Ingrid questions the choices in his script (something seldom done by his actors), when he asks Anna Asp why there are two windows there and why those chairs, when the shower head refuses to cooperate--in all these moments he responds with grace and with a smile.
And that smile is one of the big takeaways.
For a filmmaker known for his seriousness, for his philosophical wrestling, for his questioning of God, for his treatment of betrayal and heartache, for his willingness to plumb the depths of human suffering and despair--
When he is making a movie, he sure does seem to be having a great time.
228 - The Making of Autumn Sonata, 1978, Sweden. Dir. Arne Carlsson.
Here we have a true behind-the-scenes documentary.
Not a made-for-TV fluff piece.
No narrator. No interviews for our camera. No excessive cutting.
Just a camera sitting in the background observing the process without interrupting and without trying to make it interesting to us.
Arne Carlsson knows how to stay out of the way. And he allows things to unfold naturally and organically.
Thank you, Arne.
Arne Carlsson was the AD on Cries & Whispers and the Still Photographer on Autumn Sonata. Well, clearly he was also the BTS (Behind-the-Scenes) Director on Autumn Sonata, but he was credited for his work as the Still Photographer. He performed the same two jobs on Bergman's next project, Fanny and Alexander, and he shot Marie Nyrod's 2004 documentary of Bergman, Bergman Island.
The film observes the first meeting of the actors, their table read, a couple of rehearsals, the piano lesson, make-up and costume tests, the dress rehearsal, working on the set, Day One, two press conferences, several days of shooting, and some of their down time.
During the set-ups we see Bergman discussing the set with his Production Designer Anna Asp, detailing the layout of the room, including windows, chairs, rugs, and bookshelves. We also see members of the Art Department constructing walls, installing a troublesome shower head, and painting the floors.
We see members of the G&E (Grip and Electric) departments carrying equipment and setting up lights.
We see filming on Days 9, 16, 18, 23, 28, 29, 35, 42, 43, 49, and 50.
And what stands out for us is relationships.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with Ingrid Bergman. They are unrelated. His wife at the time is also named Ingrid Bergman, but this is the actress. She enters fully prepared, which is great, but she has her own vision that will have to conform to the Director's. She questions him. He defends his choices. She adjusts.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with Liv Ullmann. This is something. He is now married to Ingrid, but he and Liv were together for awhile. They have made many movies together. They have a daughter, Linn. She is acting in this movie, and she is here. And they continue to work together in harmony and good will.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with Sven Nykvist. This is great to watch. If you work in the film industry, you love to see this, and you may experience it. Bergman tells Nykvist where he wants a light set up, and we see Nykvist already halfway there. It happens more than once. They even comment that they read each other's minds.
What is also fascinating is how they discuss the lighting scheme ahead of time. They have worked so much together that they can dial up a lighting scheme from a previous movie.
Here is a conversation they have at the table read with Liv in there with them.
An hour has passed. . . . Now it's dawn. Not just any dawn.
An Hour of the Wolf dawn?
More of a Cries and Whispers dawn.
We've made so many films together; this is number 19.
We only need to name the film and everyone knows what kind of dawn.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with his daughter Linn Ullmann. He shows her the blocking. He discusses the scene. He directs her emotions. He is tender and gentle with her. Autumn Sonata is a film about a great artist who neglected her children, and Bergman has expressed that feeling of guilt in several of his films. But here in this moment he seems close to Linn. They are working together, and he is sweet to her. He brings her back to make sure she does not mash her finger in the door jam, which he has done previously. He wants to ensure she does not get hurt.
Ingmar Bergman's relationship with the press. During the press conferences and interviews he seems open and amenable. He wants to get closer to them. When they are on stage he moves his group's chairs forward. Then he invites the members of the press on the floor to move their chairs all the way up to the edge of the stage. He wishes he could sit on the floor with them. He answers their questions with humor and ease. Later, when another group of reporters are interviewing him and Liv out in a field, he relaxes and answers their questions openly and freely as well.
We do get a few moments where we get to see some of the artistry of Sven Nykvist's lighting set-ups. We wish we could see more of those. There is a shot of Ingrid Bergman sitting on the couch, and light is blasting into the room from behind her and to her left. It makes its way past three 4'x4' white bounce boards--what would be the equivalent of bead board used today--before it lands softly on her face. We want to know more of these secrets!
This documentary invites us to appreciate Bergman's greatness even more. We see him always relaxed, always in command, and always communicating with his team. Even in the potentially tense moments--when the newly arrived Ingrid questions the choices in his script (something seldom done by his actors), when he asks Anna Asp why there are two windows there and why those chairs, when the shower head refuses to cooperate--in all these moments he responds with grace and with a smile.
And that smile is one of the big takeaways.
For a filmmaker known for his seriousness, for his philosophical wrestling, for his questioning of God, for his treatment of betrayal and heartache, for his willingness to plumb the depths of human suffering and despair--
When he is making a movie, he sure does seem to be having a great time.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
227 - Autumn Sonata, 1978, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
227 - Autumn Sonata, 1978, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Mother is coming to visit.
We have not seen her in seven years.
Why?
She is a concert pianist. She has a busy schedule. It is hard for her to take time away.
Or . . .
Maybe something else is going on.
Maybe there are walls between Eva and her mother Charlotte.
Walls built from past disappointments.
And pain.
This time it will be different.
It will be new.
We will get along well.
I will stay forever.
No.
It will not go well.
It will go poorly.
Very poorly.
We are inside a house. A beautifully designed house. With a frame within a frame within a frame. A window in a dining room past a living room past a hallway.
Designed by Anna Asp.
Lit by Sven Nykvist.
Charlotte plays Chopin. Prelude No. 2 in A Minor.
Her daughter Eva can play it too.
Sort of.
Charlotte tries to compliment her.
But then schools her.
Nothing has changed.
Eva is played by Liv Ullmann. Of course. And she is brilliant and delicious as always.
Her mother Charlotte is played by . . . wait . . . who is this? Ingrid Bergman!
Really?
Yes.
Ah! You mean Ilsa from Casablanca?
The woman who looked into Humphrey Bogart's eyes and called him "Rick."
The woman who turned to Sam the pianist and made the forbidden request: "Play it once, Sam. For old time's sake. Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'"
The woman who pleaded with Rick, "Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time."
Or Paula Anton being driven mad by her thieving husband Gregory, played by Charles Boyer in Gaslight.
"I hear noises and footsteps. I imagine things. There are people over the house. I'm frightened, and of myself too."
But no. This is not Ilsa Lund from Casablanca. This is not Paula Anton from Gaslight. This is not Alicia Huberman from Notorious.
You may not even recognize her. It is thirty years later, and she is speaking in her native Swedish tongue.
She came to prominence in 1939 with her American remake of the Swedish film Intermezzo.
Then she hit that golden period where she made eight great films in five years.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Casablanca (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Gaslight (1944), The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Spellbound (1945), Saratoga Trunk (1945), Notorious (1946).
And so many more.
Including the Italian films made with Roberto Rossellini, which we have covered.
She was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three.
Her work on this film, Autumn Sonata, was one of the seven.
Now she comes in like a whirlwind. The mother who does not understand her daughters. Who gave her life to her art. And was frequently gone.
The film is beautifully shot and bravely acted.
Both the mother and the daughter have chosen not to forgive each other for their respective perceived grievances.
And they wallow in their consequential misery.
A little dose of forgiveness might go a long way.
And the choice to love one another.
But, alas . . .
They do not forgive.
In fact, the daughter delivers a three-page monologue accusing the mother of her faults.
Until maybe as Charlotte leaves on the train.
Eva writes her one last letter.
Of apology.
In search of forgiveness.
* * * * *
There is only one truth and one lie. There can be no forgiveness.
So Lena's illness was my fault?
Yes, I think so.
You mean that her illness--
Yes.
You don't seriously mean--
When Lena was a year old, you deserted her. Then you kept deserting both of us all the time. When Lena got seriously ill, you sent her to a home.
It can't be true.
What can't be true? Can you prove otherwise? Look at me, Mama. Look at Helena. There are no excuses. There is only one truth and one lie. There can be no forgiveness.
You can't blame me entirely.
You expect an exception to be made for you. You've set up a sort of discount system with life, but one day you'll see that your agreement is one-sided. You'll discover you're carrying guilt, just like everyone else.
What guilt?'
Eva, darling. Won't you forgive me for all the wrong I've done? I'll try to mend my ways. You've got to teach me. We'll talk to each other. But help me. I can't go on. Your hatred is so terrible. I never realized. I've been selfish and childish. Can't you put your arms around me? Touch me, at least. Help me.
Mama! Come!
Help me.
Mama! Come!
Variety trade paper.
I feel so shut out. I'm always homesick. But when I get home, I find it's something else I long for.
I want to ask your forgiveness.
She speaks it to the camera.
like Marta in Winter Light
There is a kind of mercy after all. I mean the enormous opportunity of getting to take care of each other, to help each other, to show affection. I will never let you vanish out of my life again. I'm going to be persistent. I won't give up, even if it is too late. I don't think it is too late. It can't be too late.
227 - Autumn Sonata, 1978, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Mother is coming to visit.
We have not seen her in seven years.
Why?
She is a concert pianist. She has a busy schedule. It is hard for her to take time away.
Or . . .
Maybe something else is going on.
Maybe there are walls between Eva and her mother Charlotte.
Walls built from past disappointments.
And pain.
This time it will be different.
It will be new.
We will get along well.
I will stay forever.
No.
It will not go well.
It will go poorly.
Very poorly.
We are inside a house. A beautifully designed house. With a frame within a frame within a frame. A window in a dining room past a living room past a hallway.
Designed by Anna Asp.
Lit by Sven Nykvist.
Charlotte plays Chopin. Prelude No. 2 in A Minor.
Her daughter Eva can play it too.
Sort of.
Charlotte tries to compliment her.
But then schools her.
Nothing has changed.
Eva is played by Liv Ullmann. Of course. And she is brilliant and delicious as always.
Her mother Charlotte is played by . . . wait . . . who is this? Ingrid Bergman!
Really?
Yes.
Ah! You mean Ilsa from Casablanca?
The woman who looked into Humphrey Bogart's eyes and called him "Rick."
The woman who turned to Sam the pianist and made the forbidden request: "Play it once, Sam. For old time's sake. Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'"
The woman who pleaded with Rick, "Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time."
Or Paula Anton being driven mad by her thieving husband Gregory, played by Charles Boyer in Gaslight.
"I hear noises and footsteps. I imagine things. There are people over the house. I'm frightened, and of myself too."
But no. This is not Ilsa Lund from Casablanca. This is not Paula Anton from Gaslight. This is not Alicia Huberman from Notorious.
You may not even recognize her. It is thirty years later, and she is speaking in her native Swedish tongue.
She came to prominence in 1939 with her American remake of the Swedish film Intermezzo.
Then she hit that golden period where she made eight great films in five years.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Casablanca (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Gaslight (1944), The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Spellbound (1945), Saratoga Trunk (1945), Notorious (1946).
And so many more.
Including the Italian films made with Roberto Rossellini, which we have covered.
She was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three.
Her work on this film, Autumn Sonata, was one of the seven.
Now she comes in like a whirlwind. The mother who does not understand her daughters. Who gave her life to her art. And was frequently gone.
The film is beautifully shot and bravely acted.
Both the mother and the daughter have chosen not to forgive each other for their respective perceived grievances.
And they wallow in their consequential misery.
A little dose of forgiveness might go a long way.
And the choice to love one another.
But, alas . . .
They do not forgive.
In fact, the daughter delivers a three-page monologue accusing the mother of her faults.
Until maybe as Charlotte leaves on the train.
Eva writes her one last letter.
Of apology.
In search of forgiveness.
* * * * *
There is only one truth and one lie. There can be no forgiveness.
So Lena's illness was my fault?
Yes, I think so.
You mean that her illness--
Yes.
You don't seriously mean--
When Lena was a year old, you deserted her. Then you kept deserting both of us all the time. When Lena got seriously ill, you sent her to a home.
It can't be true.
What can't be true? Can you prove otherwise? Look at me, Mama. Look at Helena. There are no excuses. There is only one truth and one lie. There can be no forgiveness.
You can't blame me entirely.
You expect an exception to be made for you. You've set up a sort of discount system with life, but one day you'll see that your agreement is one-sided. You'll discover you're carrying guilt, just like everyone else.
What guilt?'
Eva, darling. Won't you forgive me for all the wrong I've done? I'll try to mend my ways. You've got to teach me. We'll talk to each other. But help me. I can't go on. Your hatred is so terrible. I never realized. I've been selfish and childish. Can't you put your arms around me? Touch me, at least. Help me.
Mama! Come!
Help me.
Mama! Come!
Variety trade paper.
I feel so shut out. I'm always homesick. But when I get home, I find it's something else I long for.
I want to ask your forgiveness.
She speaks it to the camera.
like Marta in Winter Light
There is a kind of mercy after all. I mean the enormous opportunity of getting to take care of each other, to help each other, to show affection. I will never let you vanish out of my life again. I'm going to be persistent. I won't give up, even if it is too late. I don't think it is too late. It can't be too late.
Monday, August 14, 2017
226 - The Magic Flute, 1975, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Monday, August 14, 2017
226 - The Magic Flute, 1975, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Tamino and Pamina.
Papageno and Papagena.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart premiered his opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) in 1791 in Vienna.
Ingmar Bergman first saw Mozart's opera in 1930, when he was 12. He tried to recreate it with puppets at home.
Throughout his career as a movie director he was working simultaneously as a theatre director. He had stated on radio as early as the 1960s that he wanted to film The Magic Flute for television.
Now Bergman stages The Magic Flute for television.
To film the opera, he had a complete copy of the Drottningholm Palace Theatre stage built on a soundstage at the Swedish Film Institute.
Bergman used a Swedish libretto, which had been prepared a few years earlier.
With his usual focus on faces, Bergman opens the opera by having cinematographer Sven Nykvist sit on a close-up of a girl in the audience, and then other audience members, as the Overture plays.
Act I.
The curtain opens.
Tamino, the prince, is chased by a dragon. He asks the gods to save him. He faints. Three ladies appear and rescue him. They fight over him. They leave.
Papageno enters playing the pan flute. Tamino awakens and thinks he killed the dragon. He takes credit. The ladies enter and padlock his mouth to stop him from lying.
They show him a picture of Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night. He falls in love.
Bergman inserts filmed footage of her in the brooch so that she magically looks up at him from the picture as he sings to her.
The opera will follow the story but with some changes--made by Bergman.
It is energetic and lively.
And when we cut back to the girl in the audience, her face is filled with joy.
226 - The Magic Flute, 1975, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Tamino and Pamina.
Papageno and Papagena.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart premiered his opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) in 1791 in Vienna.
Ingmar Bergman first saw Mozart's opera in 1930, when he was 12. He tried to recreate it with puppets at home.
Throughout his career as a movie director he was working simultaneously as a theatre director. He had stated on radio as early as the 1960s that he wanted to film The Magic Flute for television.
Now Bergman stages The Magic Flute for television.
To film the opera, he had a complete copy of the Drottningholm Palace Theatre stage built on a soundstage at the Swedish Film Institute.
Bergman used a Swedish libretto, which had been prepared a few years earlier.
With his usual focus on faces, Bergman opens the opera by having cinematographer Sven Nykvist sit on a close-up of a girl in the audience, and then other audience members, as the Overture plays.
Act I.
The curtain opens.
Tamino, the prince, is chased by a dragon. He asks the gods to save him. He faints. Three ladies appear and rescue him. They fight over him. They leave.
Papageno enters playing the pan flute. Tamino awakens and thinks he killed the dragon. He takes credit. The ladies enter and padlock his mouth to stop him from lying.
They show him a picture of Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night. He falls in love.
Bergman inserts filmed footage of her in the brooch so that she magically looks up at him from the picture as he sings to her.
The opera will follow the story but with some changes--made by Bergman.
It is energetic and lively.
And when we cut back to the girl in the audience, her face is filled with joy.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
225 - Scenes from a Marriage, 1974, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
225 - Scenes from a Marriage, 1974, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
BREAKING NEWS: INGMAR BERGMAN DOES TELEVISION!
Do you remember earlier this year when we were watching the German wunderkind Werner Rainer Fassbinder (5/31/1945-6/10/1982)? Have you started to feel some similarities in productivity? While Fassbinder lived to be 37, Bergman lived to be 89, so they are different in that sense. But oh how we love prolific output. The artist who makes art. Just keep working.
Since this is a Film Blog, we will look not at the nearly 6-hour television mini-series but instead the shorter theatrical release version of the same show.
Shorter means only nearly three hours!
Yet let us say this up front. While watching Scenes of a Marriage as a film, one does desire to see more.
So it is nice to have the longer mini-series sitting there awaiting your attention.
If Bergman was anything, he was honest about his own flaws.
This film is searingly, unflinchingly honest about the choices, thoughts, feelings, desires, and consequences that adults may face in a lifetime relationship.
Since Bergman stepped outside of the faith of his father, he looks at it through the eyes of contemporary psychology.
Johan and Marianne engage in self-analysis. She is initially content in the marriage, but he contemplates every aspect of it and rationalizes it away.
He tries other options and they have devastating consequences. And the couple keeps working through things as the years roll by.
The faith of Bergman's father could just as well explain what is going on. It is the human condition. The problem of original sin. The consequences of sin. And the need for forgiveness and grace.
That love is not about feelings but about covenant. And keeping covenant. No matter what.
Johan and Marianne do not see it that way. For them--well, at least for him initially--love is about feelings. If my feelings change, them I am going to leave. If my feelings return, then I am going to come back. So he starts them on a roller-coaster ride of pain and suffering interspersed with moments of reconciliation and concession.
Johan and Marianne are played brilliantly by Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. One cannot say enough about the fine quality of acting and writing in this story. The master is firing on all cylinders. The two leads are shockingly authentic--grounded and nuanced and wide ranging. And Bibi Andersson and Jan Malmsjo as their friends Peter and Katarina are amazing as well.
This is a masterpiece.
Johan and Marianne finally declare themselves to be emotional illiterates. Which is a humble admission for a well-educated, professional couple born into privilege. For all they know, they do not know how to do this.
Yet they keep at it.
And somehow in the end there is something good.
225 - Scenes from a Marriage, 1974, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
BREAKING NEWS: INGMAR BERGMAN DOES TELEVISION!
Do you remember earlier this year when we were watching the German wunderkind Werner Rainer Fassbinder (5/31/1945-6/10/1982)? Have you started to feel some similarities in productivity? While Fassbinder lived to be 37, Bergman lived to be 89, so they are different in that sense. But oh how we love prolific output. The artist who makes art. Just keep working.
Since this is a Film Blog, we will look not at the nearly 6-hour television mini-series but instead the shorter theatrical release version of the same show.
Shorter means only nearly three hours!
Yet let us say this up front. While watching Scenes of a Marriage as a film, one does desire to see more.
So it is nice to have the longer mini-series sitting there awaiting your attention.
If Bergman was anything, he was honest about his own flaws.
This film is searingly, unflinchingly honest about the choices, thoughts, feelings, desires, and consequences that adults may face in a lifetime relationship.
Since Bergman stepped outside of the faith of his father, he looks at it through the eyes of contemporary psychology.
Johan and Marianne engage in self-analysis. She is initially content in the marriage, but he contemplates every aspect of it and rationalizes it away.
He tries other options and they have devastating consequences. And the couple keeps working through things as the years roll by.
The faith of Bergman's father could just as well explain what is going on. It is the human condition. The problem of original sin. The consequences of sin. And the need for forgiveness and grace.
That love is not about feelings but about covenant. And keeping covenant. No matter what.
Johan and Marianne do not see it that way. For them--well, at least for him initially--love is about feelings. If my feelings change, them I am going to leave. If my feelings return, then I am going to come back. So he starts them on a roller-coaster ride of pain and suffering interspersed with moments of reconciliation and concession.
Johan and Marianne are played brilliantly by Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. One cannot say enough about the fine quality of acting and writing in this story. The master is firing on all cylinders. The two leads are shockingly authentic--grounded and nuanced and wide ranging. And Bibi Andersson and Jan Malmsjo as their friends Peter and Katarina are amazing as well.
This is a masterpiece.
Johan and Marianne finally declare themselves to be emotional illiterates. Which is a humble admission for a well-educated, professional couple born into privilege. For all they know, they do not know how to do this.
Yet they keep at it.
And somehow in the end there is something good.
Saturday, August 12, 2017
224 - Cries and Whispers, 1972, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Saturday, August 12, 2017
224 - Cries and Whispers, 1972, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Whispers and Shouts.
So far every Bergman film we have seen has been filmed in Black and White.
Now we see one filmed in Black and White--and Red.
Crimson Red.
Crimson walls. Crimson carpets. Crimson curtains. Crimson cushions. Crimson upholstery. Crimson lace. Crimson wine. Crimson title cards. Crimson dissolves.
This is the first Bergman color film we have seen. He made one before, All These Women, in 1964, but Criterion does not offer it.
Sven Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for this film. Shockingly, it was the first time he was nominated.
He would win again a decade later for Fanny & Alexander (1982), which we will see.
This is Bergman's Three Sisters.
Three sisters that do not love one another--or two who do not and one who longs for it--and their maid.
The visual layout is essential. The architecture of the country manor. The rich formality of the high-ceilinged, open rooms. The walls and the carpets and the drapes. The furniture. The beds. The dressers. The tables. The chairs. The piano.
Maybe it is a piano. This is the kind of house where it may actually be a spinet.
Agnes is dying.
Agnes is played by Harriet Andersson, the girl who burst on the screen 19 years ago in Summer With Monika, who had romped bare-rumped on the rocks, who had turned slowly and stared at us, directly into the camera, for 29 long, cinema-history-making seconds.
She no longer looks like Monika.
Not only due to the age of the actress but also due to her internal and external work on the character. She is only 40 in real life, but the character looks old and tired and sick and sad. The very act of awakening is an effort for her. When she opens her lips for her morning yawn--indeed, her morning gasp at breath--they are off-centered and stuck together and peel apart from their covering film.
She is a committed actress.
She has now done half a dozen films with Bergman and is a member of this great company he has gathered.
Agnes lives here. And the maid, Anna, played by Kari Sylwan, a perfectly cast non-company-member. The other two sisters have come to stay with her in her final moments.
Agnes wears white. All of them wear white some of the time.
Karin is the sister who wears black when she does not wear white. She is cold and hard and frigid. She resists her husband to the point of cutting herself where he cannot get to her. And smearing the blood on her face. And taunting him with it.
Karin is played by Ingrid Thulin. She has also done half a dozen films with Bergman. We especially remember her as the agnostic Marta who loves and is rejected by the pastor in Winter Light (1963) and the cerebral sister Ester in The Silence (1963).
The third sister is Maria. She wears red when she does not wear white. Namely, a red negligee which she uses to seduce the good doctor in a flashback. And she has long, thick, brilliantly ginger red hair.
Maria is played by Liv Ullmann, Bergman's new edition to the company and maybe the one with whom he is most associated. She joined us yesterday in Persona (1966) and is now already on her fifth film with Bergman. Criterion currently skips Hour of the Wolf (1968), Shame (1968), and The Passion of Anna (1969). Ullmann also plays her own mother in the flashbacks.
Where Karin is cold, Maria is warm. Where Karin rejects her husband, Maria embraces other men, the one we know being the doctor, David, played by Erland Josephson. He has not only acted in half a dozen Bergman films by now, but he has also cowritten with Bergman. He was a successful screenwriter as well as actor.
The film feels somewhat epic in its presentation, even though it is only 90 minutes long, because of its grand setting, its steady pacing, its fluid movement back and forth across time, the impression it gives that we are dealing with generations. Yet it is actually quite small: One location. One action (the death of Agnes, not counting the memories). One small group of people. Three sisters and a maid. No grandparents or parents other than one mother in a flashback. No children. No families, other than two husbands in flashbacks.
And in the end, the love for which Agnes longs remains rejected by her sisters. Anna the maid is a woman of faith and love. She reveres God in the loss of her daughter and nurses Agnes like a mother, though she may be younger. (There is a famous image compared to the Pieta.) Agnes, too, has faith, as witnessed by the minister's eulogy. In fact, she has so much that she comes back to the sisters after her death in order to appeal to them again.
But, no.
Karin and Maria will send Anna on her way, with no more than a small token for her years of service.
As they themselves go their separate ways, Maria rejecting Karin one more time, not remembering that she had reached out to her the day before.
But Anna will take Agnes's diary with her. And read the entry about the day years ago when they were all together.
Outside.
In their white dresses. In the green grass. Under the blue sky.
And they sat in the swing. And swung. And Agnes was happy. And grateful. For her life. And said so.
Come what may, this is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few minutes, I can experience perfection. And I feel profoundly grateful for my life . . . which gives me so much.
FADE TO RED.
224 - Cries and Whispers, 1972, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Whispers and Shouts.
So far every Bergman film we have seen has been filmed in Black and White.
Now we see one filmed in Black and White--and Red.
Crimson Red.
Crimson walls. Crimson carpets. Crimson curtains. Crimson cushions. Crimson upholstery. Crimson lace. Crimson wine. Crimson title cards. Crimson dissolves.
This is the first Bergman color film we have seen. He made one before, All These Women, in 1964, but Criterion does not offer it.
Sven Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for this film. Shockingly, it was the first time he was nominated.
He would win again a decade later for Fanny & Alexander (1982), which we will see.
This is Bergman's Three Sisters.
Three sisters that do not love one another--or two who do not and one who longs for it--and their maid.
The visual layout is essential. The architecture of the country manor. The rich formality of the high-ceilinged, open rooms. The walls and the carpets and the drapes. The furniture. The beds. The dressers. The tables. The chairs. The piano.
Maybe it is a piano. This is the kind of house where it may actually be a spinet.
Agnes is dying.
Agnes is played by Harriet Andersson, the girl who burst on the screen 19 years ago in Summer With Monika, who had romped bare-rumped on the rocks, who had turned slowly and stared at us, directly into the camera, for 29 long, cinema-history-making seconds.
She no longer looks like Monika.
Not only due to the age of the actress but also due to her internal and external work on the character. She is only 40 in real life, but the character looks old and tired and sick and sad. The very act of awakening is an effort for her. When she opens her lips for her morning yawn--indeed, her morning gasp at breath--they are off-centered and stuck together and peel apart from their covering film.
She is a committed actress.
She has now done half a dozen films with Bergman and is a member of this great company he has gathered.
Agnes lives here. And the maid, Anna, played by Kari Sylwan, a perfectly cast non-company-member. The other two sisters have come to stay with her in her final moments.
Agnes wears white. All of them wear white some of the time.
Karin is the sister who wears black when she does not wear white. She is cold and hard and frigid. She resists her husband to the point of cutting herself where he cannot get to her. And smearing the blood on her face. And taunting him with it.
Karin is played by Ingrid Thulin. She has also done half a dozen films with Bergman. We especially remember her as the agnostic Marta who loves and is rejected by the pastor in Winter Light (1963) and the cerebral sister Ester in The Silence (1963).
The third sister is Maria. She wears red when she does not wear white. Namely, a red negligee which she uses to seduce the good doctor in a flashback. And she has long, thick, brilliantly ginger red hair.
Maria is played by Liv Ullmann, Bergman's new edition to the company and maybe the one with whom he is most associated. She joined us yesterday in Persona (1966) and is now already on her fifth film with Bergman. Criterion currently skips Hour of the Wolf (1968), Shame (1968), and The Passion of Anna (1969). Ullmann also plays her own mother in the flashbacks.
Where Karin is cold, Maria is warm. Where Karin rejects her husband, Maria embraces other men, the one we know being the doctor, David, played by Erland Josephson. He has not only acted in half a dozen Bergman films by now, but he has also cowritten with Bergman. He was a successful screenwriter as well as actor.
The film feels somewhat epic in its presentation, even though it is only 90 minutes long, because of its grand setting, its steady pacing, its fluid movement back and forth across time, the impression it gives that we are dealing with generations. Yet it is actually quite small: One location. One action (the death of Agnes, not counting the memories). One small group of people. Three sisters and a maid. No grandparents or parents other than one mother in a flashback. No children. No families, other than two husbands in flashbacks.
And in the end, the love for which Agnes longs remains rejected by her sisters. Anna the maid is a woman of faith and love. She reveres God in the loss of her daughter and nurses Agnes like a mother, though she may be younger. (There is a famous image compared to the Pieta.) Agnes, too, has faith, as witnessed by the minister's eulogy. In fact, she has so much that she comes back to the sisters after her death in order to appeal to them again.
But, no.
Karin and Maria will send Anna on her way, with no more than a small token for her years of service.
As they themselves go their separate ways, Maria rejecting Karin one more time, not remembering that she had reached out to her the day before.
But Anna will take Agnes's diary with her. And read the entry about the day years ago when they were all together.
Outside.
In their white dresses. In the green grass. Under the blue sky.
And they sat in the swing. And swung. And Agnes was happy. And grateful. For her life. And said so.
Come what may, this is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few minutes, I can experience perfection. And I feel profoundly grateful for my life . . . which gives me so much.
FADE TO RED.
Friday, August 11, 2017
223 - Persona, 1966, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Friday, August 11, 2017
223 - Persona, 1966, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
The birth of cinema.
Let us start over.
Let there be light.
Carbon arc lamps.
The projector turns on.
Reel. Film. Celluloid.
The film spools through the sprockets.
The light passes through the film.
Aperture.
The projector projects.
Countdown.
Images flash.
A raised phallus.
Cartoon. An animated woman. Upside down. Dips her hands in the water, Splashes them up to her face. Splashes them up to her breasts.
Real hands washing.
Light.
A skeleton suit. Slapstick in the bed.
Arachnid. Tarantula. Remember: Through a Glass Darkly. God as spider.
Sheep. Slaughter. Eyeball. Entrails.
Pounding nails through the palm of a hand. Another hand.
Brick. Wall. Trees. Snow. Winter.
The brick texture becomes the tree texture.
Bars. Railing. Upsteps.
Dirty snow.
Dead woman.
Dead boy.
Dead man.
Morgue.
Hands hanging. Feet hanging.
Telephone. Ring!
Open eyes woman.
Open eyes boy.
The boy moves.
Drip. Drop.
A book.
The boy reads.
Var Tids Hjalte. Mikhail Lermontov. A Hero of Our Time. The Byronic hero. The antihero.
Johan, played by Jorgen Lindstrom, read the book in The Silence.
This boy, also played by Jorgen Lindstrom, reads the book here.
Clue: two women and a boy. In The Silence, he was the son of Anna, played by Gunnel Lindblom, and the nephew of Ester. In Persona, he will be the son of Elisabet, played by Liv Ullmann. And. Maybe. The spiritual son. Of the doppelganger. Alma. Played by Bibi Andersson.
The boy stands inside the morgue inside the womb.
The place of birth is the place of death.
He places his hand, his right hand, on the walls of the womb. A screen.
He looks at the wall of the womb. The screen. And sees.
His mother. The face of Elisabet. The face of Alma. The face of Elisabet. The face of Alma.
He moves his silhouetted hand over the contours of the face. Touches the face. Caresses the face.
Longs for the mother of the face.
Will he have a mother?
Will he be born?
Will he die?
Opening credits.
Flashing images.
Boy.
Burning Monk.
Boy.
Vertical lips.
Boy.
Water.
Elisabet.
Tree through tree.
Boy.
Alma.
Boy.
Sunken seagrass.
Boy.
Elisabet.
Boy.
Rocks in the water.
Boy.
Alma.
Boy.
Keystone slapstick chase.
Door.
Alma the nurse comes in.
The Doctor, played by Margaretha Krook, assigns her.
Elisabet the actress has stopped speaking. One mourning during Electra she simply stopped. She looked around as if in surprise. Later she apologized, saying she had gotten the urge to laugh. The next morning she stayed in bed and missed rehearsals. She was awake but did not speak or move. This condition has lasted for three months. She is mentally and physically healthy. She just no longer speaks.
Any questions, Sister Alma?
You may go to Mrs. Vogler now.
Sister Alma goes.
And we begin a fascinating journey through a wonder world of mysterious identity.
Of broken-down storytelling.
A fantastic voyage through a woman's brain.
Wait.
Fantastic Voyage came out the same year. In 1966. Of course they have nothing in common.
And in one pass we feel the immediate influence on the following films:
Mulholland Drive by David Lynch. Stardust Memories by Woody Allen. The Double Life of Veronique by Krzyszlof Kieslowski. Sliding Doors by Peter Howitt. Femme Fatale by Brian De Palma. Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock. Adaptation by Spike Jonze.
And more.
When Ingmar Bergman stopped wrestling about God his films became more interesting. Which is quite an accomplishment considering how amazing they were already.
The film is bifurcated by a broken film reel. Which burns the film as it stops before the light.
The first half narrative. The second half stream of consciousness. Or dream. Or something.
This is the kind of movie you do not have to intellectualize. Just watch it. And get swept up in its poetic undulations.
Yet it is fun to wonder.
She is literally her nurse. She is figuratively her sister. She is morally her conscience. She is psychologically her guilt.
OR
She is literally her patient. She is figuratively her desire. She is psychologically her projection. She is emotionally her regret.
The actress creates a persona. And it talks back to her.
The nurse creates a dream. And she becomes it.
In the end there is one woman.
Mr. Vogler knows.
And what an amazing opportunity for these two actresses.
One spends the entire movie talking. Telling stories, revealing secrets, asking questions to which she will not receive answers.
The other spends the film in silence. Listening. Focused. Processing. Responding in thought and face and feeling.
Both roles are deliciously challenging.
Potentially roles of a lifetime.
Persona is richly layered.
It will continue to unfold with repeated viewings.
223 - Persona, 1966, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
The birth of cinema.
Let us start over.
Let there be light.
Carbon arc lamps.
The projector turns on.
Reel. Film. Celluloid.
The film spools through the sprockets.
The light passes through the film.
Aperture.
The projector projects.
Countdown.
Images flash.
A raised phallus.
Cartoon. An animated woman. Upside down. Dips her hands in the water, Splashes them up to her face. Splashes them up to her breasts.
Real hands washing.
Light.
A skeleton suit. Slapstick in the bed.
Arachnid. Tarantula. Remember: Through a Glass Darkly. God as spider.
Sheep. Slaughter. Eyeball. Entrails.
Pounding nails through the palm of a hand. Another hand.
Brick. Wall. Trees. Snow. Winter.
The brick texture becomes the tree texture.
Bars. Railing. Upsteps.
Dirty snow.
Dead woman.
Dead boy.
Dead man.
Morgue.
Hands hanging. Feet hanging.
Telephone. Ring!
Open eyes woman.
Open eyes boy.
The boy moves.
Drip. Drop.
A book.
The boy reads.
Var Tids Hjalte. Mikhail Lermontov. A Hero of Our Time. The Byronic hero. The antihero.
Johan, played by Jorgen Lindstrom, read the book in The Silence.
This boy, also played by Jorgen Lindstrom, reads the book here.
Clue: two women and a boy. In The Silence, he was the son of Anna, played by Gunnel Lindblom, and the nephew of Ester. In Persona, he will be the son of Elisabet, played by Liv Ullmann. And. Maybe. The spiritual son. Of the doppelganger. Alma. Played by Bibi Andersson.
The boy stands inside the morgue inside the womb.
The place of birth is the place of death.
He places his hand, his right hand, on the walls of the womb. A screen.
He looks at the wall of the womb. The screen. And sees.
His mother. The face of Elisabet. The face of Alma. The face of Elisabet. The face of Alma.
He moves his silhouetted hand over the contours of the face. Touches the face. Caresses the face.
Longs for the mother of the face.
Will he have a mother?
Will he be born?
Will he die?
Opening credits.
Flashing images.
Boy.
Burning Monk.
Boy.
Vertical lips.
Boy.
Water.
Elisabet.
Tree through tree.
Boy.
Alma.
Boy.
Sunken seagrass.
Boy.
Elisabet.
Boy.
Rocks in the water.
Boy.
Alma.
Boy.
Keystone slapstick chase.
Door.
Alma the nurse comes in.
The Doctor, played by Margaretha Krook, assigns her.
Elisabet the actress has stopped speaking. One mourning during Electra she simply stopped. She looked around as if in surprise. Later she apologized, saying she had gotten the urge to laugh. The next morning she stayed in bed and missed rehearsals. She was awake but did not speak or move. This condition has lasted for three months. She is mentally and physically healthy. She just no longer speaks.
Any questions, Sister Alma?
You may go to Mrs. Vogler now.
Sister Alma goes.
And we begin a fascinating journey through a wonder world of mysterious identity.
Of broken-down storytelling.
A fantastic voyage through a woman's brain.
Wait.
Fantastic Voyage came out the same year. In 1966. Of course they have nothing in common.
And in one pass we feel the immediate influence on the following films:
Mulholland Drive by David Lynch. Stardust Memories by Woody Allen. The Double Life of Veronique by Krzyszlof Kieslowski. Sliding Doors by Peter Howitt. Femme Fatale by Brian De Palma. Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock. Adaptation by Spike Jonze.
And more.
When Ingmar Bergman stopped wrestling about God his films became more interesting. Which is quite an accomplishment considering how amazing they were already.
The film is bifurcated by a broken film reel. Which burns the film as it stops before the light.
The first half narrative. The second half stream of consciousness. Or dream. Or something.
This is the kind of movie you do not have to intellectualize. Just watch it. And get swept up in its poetic undulations.
Yet it is fun to wonder.
She is literally her nurse. She is figuratively her sister. She is morally her conscience. She is psychologically her guilt.
OR
She is literally her patient. She is figuratively her desire. She is psychologically her projection. She is emotionally her regret.
The actress creates a persona. And it talks back to her.
The nurse creates a dream. And she becomes it.
In the end there is one woman.
Mr. Vogler knows.
And what an amazing opportunity for these two actresses.
One spends the entire movie talking. Telling stories, revealing secrets, asking questions to which she will not receive answers.
The other spends the film in silence. Listening. Focused. Processing. Responding in thought and face and feeling.
Both roles are deliciously challenging.
Potentially roles of a lifetime.
Persona is richly layered.
It will continue to unfold with repeated viewings.
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