Monday, July 31, 2017
212 - Summer with Monika, 1953, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Seaside.
Shipping ships.
Cobbled streets.
The city.
Time for beer, boys.
Harry fixes his coffee. Milk. Sugar.
A girl asks for a match. He agrees. He strikes a few before one catches fire.
She begins a conversation.
He works at Forsberg's. In the stockroom. It is dull.
She works . . . somewhere cold. We will find out later it is a grocer's.
Let's go away and never come back. We'll see the whole wide world. You game?
Sure, let's go.
Have you seen Song of Love? It's showing at the Garbio.
Would you like to--?
See it with you? That would be terrific.
She takes his hand and grins. They plan to meet at the theater around 7:00.
It is 1953. She has picked him up.
The old man watching tells his friend that it is Spring. The friend curses.
Back at the porcelain factory Harry is yelled at.
That night at the theater he and Monika hold hands.
They talk about the movie afterwards.
They sit on a bench.
You have to hold me or I'll freeze.
You may kiss me now, Harry.
I guess we kind of like each other. I'm crazy about you.
She has reeled him in.
Hold me once before we go.
He has fallen for her.
He brings her home. They stop making out before his father catches them.
His father is sick. He goes to the hospital.
Her father is drunk. He beats her.
She runs away. She goes to Harry's.
They go to his father's boat. They spend the night.
He goes to work the next day. He quits. She brings her luggage.
They set off.
Out on the islands they spend the Summer.
Idyllic and ideal. 18 and 19. Young love.
She gets pregnant.
They tire of scrounging for food. They miss the city. They have not been to the theater since Dream Girl. Perhaps the 1948 Mitchell Liesen film starring Betty Hutton.
They return.
His aunt helps them marry.
She has the baby.
He looks through the glass window.
He starts studying for a better job. He wants to take care of them.
She still wants to have fun.
She goes out while he studies. She brings Lelle home while Harry works.
Lelle lights her cigarette with a match. She lights Lelle's with her cigarette.
She turns and stares at us as the background recedes into darkness. For 29 seconds.
They fight.
Harry turns and stares at us too.
He remembers the Summer.
We see it again.
Monika walking down the rocks. Naked. Turning back at him. Harry watching her.
Monika lying supine on the front of the boat. Harry driving it across the waves.
They look different now.
Older.
Unhappy.
No longer free.
It was a good Summer.
But Summer is gone.
Monday, July 31, 2017
Sunday, July 30, 2017
211 - Summer Interlude, 1951, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
211 - Summer Interlude, 1951, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
In Summer Interlude, I suddenly felt that I knew my profession.
Ingmar Bergman himself made that statement.
This was his 10th film to direct, his 12th film to write, his 7th year to be a filmmaker. He had also spent three years as the theatrical manager of the Helsingborg City Theatre and another three years as the director of the Gothenberg City Theatre.
And this is where he felt he came into his own.
It is time for the dress rehearsal of Swan Lake, the ballet.
Marie is getting ready. A man stops by with a package. He delivers it to the theater manager at the office. Another man stops by, a journalist. He asks to see Marie backstage. He saw the man deliver the package and offers to take it to her. He says she is expecting him and that it is a personal visit and not a professional one.
The manager throws him out.
But he has his assistant deliver the package to Marie. The assistant smells something strange in the air.
Marie opens the package. She is seized with emotion. It is the diary of her first love. Her only love.
Rehearsal begins late. They are waiting for Marie. When it does begin a fuse blows and the light goes out. Something strange is in the air. Rehearsal is cancelled for the day.
Marie takes a boat to visit the spot where she first fell in love. With Henrik.
And we go with her to her memories of thirteen years before. When she was so young. And so innocent. And so full of life and hope and feeling.
How does it feel?
What?
You said you were in love with me.
You feel it in your chest and stomach. Your knees feel like they're full of applesauce, and your toes curl up.
I think it's in my skin. It's in my shoulders and elbows, and in the palms of my hands. It tickles all over.
They spend Summer days on the rocky shore. They swim in the sea. They kiss in the house.
"Days like pearls, round and lustrous, threaded on a golden string. Days filled with fun and caresses. Nights of waking dreams."
"A new room opened up in our minds."
"We had no time for sleep."
They spend all their time together. But they do not consummate their love.
Marie wants engagement first. Henrik says yes, but as it is Sunday, they will have to wait for the goldsmith to open tomorrow. She offers grass rings and 24-carat kisses. He consents. They are engaged.
They walk around the property and she hears the ominous sound of an eagle owl.
She is scared.
She asks him to hold her so that she will not break into pieces.
He holds her.
They are in love.
They are overjoyed.
They return to the water.
He dives off the cliff. . . .
He life is changed in an instant.
And she turns bitter. Angry with God.
Her cynical "uncle" stands at the ready to take her on a tour of Europe to get her mind off her troubles. To help her hide inside herself. To build a wall around her heart. To grow hard.
She will regret his influence later.
Back in the present she feels old. She looks in the mirror and sees her age. The theatre director sits with her. He is dressed like a jester. She, a ballerina. They make a humorously pitiful pair.
Marie has spent the past thirteen years throwing herself into her work. As a way of protecting herself. As influenced by her "uncle." She has hardened her heart and spent her life working.
And now she is tired.
Her theatre director sits with her and talks about how life is.
And she gets up and goes to rehearsal. The journalist is there. She hugs him. She stands on her toes to hug him. She stand en pointe.
She joins the rehearsal. She goes to work.
Bergman explores many of the themes that will recur often in his work.
Notice the season in the title. Notice the psychology of the protagonist. Young love. Lost love. Lost faith. Artistic excellence. Artistic work. Fear. Death.
Bergman does not have the answers. But he knows how to ask the questions.
* * * * *
But if you'd consider engagement, I promise you won't be disappointed.
Then we have to wait. The goldsmith has taken Sunday off and is lazing the day away.
My dear Sir, this kind of engagement is sealed with rings of grass and 24-carat kisses.
Swear you'll never ever look at another girl.
I swear.
Because if you do, the Devil will get you! And your teeth and nose and fingers will turn black and fall off. As for me, I'll be faithful for as long as I feel like it. And since I always feel like it, I'll be faithful till doomsday.
Now we're engaged. You go in and undress.
What an ominous sound.
Don't you know the eagle owl?
It's like a toothache in my soul.
Hold me, Henrik. Hold me so I don't break into pieces.
Is there any meaning anywhere?
No, my child. Nothing means anything in the long run.
I don't believe God exists. And if he does, I hate him. And I'll never stop. If he were standing in front of me, I'd spit in his face. I'll hate him as long as I live. And I'll never forget. I'll hate him till the day I die.
There's only one thing you can do. Protect yourself. Build a wall around yourself, so the misery can't get to you. I'll help you. I'll help you build your wall.
Women! Who can understand them?
I never have.
There you were in your black leotard.
She's stood there like that for 20 years, morning, noon, and night. Twenty years. She has eight years left, and then she's finished. Out. Toodle-oo.
I'm the ballet master. Don't forget that. I create. I grow older and more esteemed, no burden to anyone. But you'll be given your pension and sent packing, poor girl.
211 - Summer Interlude, 1951, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
In Summer Interlude, I suddenly felt that I knew my profession.
Ingmar Bergman himself made that statement.
This was his 10th film to direct, his 12th film to write, his 7th year to be a filmmaker. He had also spent three years as the theatrical manager of the Helsingborg City Theatre and another three years as the director of the Gothenberg City Theatre.
And this is where he felt he came into his own.
It is time for the dress rehearsal of Swan Lake, the ballet.
Marie is getting ready. A man stops by with a package. He delivers it to the theater manager at the office. Another man stops by, a journalist. He asks to see Marie backstage. He saw the man deliver the package and offers to take it to her. He says she is expecting him and that it is a personal visit and not a professional one.
The manager throws him out.
But he has his assistant deliver the package to Marie. The assistant smells something strange in the air.
Marie opens the package. She is seized with emotion. It is the diary of her first love. Her only love.
Rehearsal begins late. They are waiting for Marie. When it does begin a fuse blows and the light goes out. Something strange is in the air. Rehearsal is cancelled for the day.
Marie takes a boat to visit the spot where she first fell in love. With Henrik.
And we go with her to her memories of thirteen years before. When she was so young. And so innocent. And so full of life and hope and feeling.
How does it feel?
What?
You said you were in love with me.
You feel it in your chest and stomach. Your knees feel like they're full of applesauce, and your toes curl up.
I think it's in my skin. It's in my shoulders and elbows, and in the palms of my hands. It tickles all over.
They spend Summer days on the rocky shore. They swim in the sea. They kiss in the house.
"Days like pearls, round and lustrous, threaded on a golden string. Days filled with fun and caresses. Nights of waking dreams."
"A new room opened up in our minds."
"We had no time for sleep."
They spend all their time together. But they do not consummate their love.
Marie wants engagement first. Henrik says yes, but as it is Sunday, they will have to wait for the goldsmith to open tomorrow. She offers grass rings and 24-carat kisses. He consents. They are engaged.
They walk around the property and she hears the ominous sound of an eagle owl.
She is scared.
She asks him to hold her so that she will not break into pieces.
He holds her.
They are in love.
They are overjoyed.
They return to the water.
He dives off the cliff. . . .
He life is changed in an instant.
And she turns bitter. Angry with God.
Her cynical "uncle" stands at the ready to take her on a tour of Europe to get her mind off her troubles. To help her hide inside herself. To build a wall around her heart. To grow hard.
She will regret his influence later.
Back in the present she feels old. She looks in the mirror and sees her age. The theatre director sits with her. He is dressed like a jester. She, a ballerina. They make a humorously pitiful pair.
Marie has spent the past thirteen years throwing herself into her work. As a way of protecting herself. As influenced by her "uncle." She has hardened her heart and spent her life working.
And now she is tired.
Her theatre director sits with her and talks about how life is.
And she gets up and goes to rehearsal. The journalist is there. She hugs him. She stands on her toes to hug him. She stand en pointe.
She joins the rehearsal. She goes to work.
Bergman explores many of the themes that will recur often in his work.
Notice the season in the title. Notice the psychology of the protagonist. Young love. Lost love. Lost faith. Artistic excellence. Artistic work. Fear. Death.
Bergman does not have the answers. But he knows how to ask the questions.
* * * * *
But if you'd consider engagement, I promise you won't be disappointed.
Then we have to wait. The goldsmith has taken Sunday off and is lazing the day away.
My dear Sir, this kind of engagement is sealed with rings of grass and 24-carat kisses.
Swear you'll never ever look at another girl.
I swear.
Because if you do, the Devil will get you! And your teeth and nose and fingers will turn black and fall off. As for me, I'll be faithful for as long as I feel like it. And since I always feel like it, I'll be faithful till doomsday.
Now we're engaged. You go in and undress.
What an ominous sound.
Don't you know the eagle owl?
It's like a toothache in my soul.
Hold me, Henrik. Hold me so I don't break into pieces.
Is there any meaning anywhere?
No, my child. Nothing means anything in the long run.
I don't believe God exists. And if he does, I hate him. And I'll never stop. If he were standing in front of me, I'd spit in his face. I'll hate him as long as I live. And I'll never forget. I'll hate him till the day I die.
There's only one thing you can do. Protect yourself. Build a wall around yourself, so the misery can't get to you. I'll help you. I'll help you build your wall.
Women! Who can understand them?
I never have.
There you were in your black leotard.
She's stood there like that for 20 years, morning, noon, and night. Twenty years. She has eight years left, and then she's finished. Out. Toodle-oo.
I'm the ballet master. Don't forget that. I create. I grow older and more esteemed, no burden to anyone. But you'll be given your pension and sent packing, poor girl.
Saturday, July 29, 2017
210 - To Joy, 1949, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Saturday, July 29, 2017
210 - To Joy, 1949, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
When you see that the film is entitled To Joy, your first thought might be to wonder if Beethoven's 9th Symphony is involved.
The answer is Yes, and beautifully so.
Ingmar Bergman was an artist, and he knew music as well as the other arts.
He had led the Helsingborg City Theatre earlier in his career, before he became a filmmaker. Later, he went back to Helsingborg and saw their orchestra. They were playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for their season finale.
The conductor, Sten Frykberg, loaned Bergman the score so that he could follow the performance note for note as he was listening. This demonstrates Bergman's knowledge of music as well as his status.
Bergman was touched by the evening. The symphony was composed of unpaid amateurs, yet they played with passion and heart. Bergman thought of himself when he directed his first feature film, Crisis in 1946--a novice making mistakes but performing with passion and heart, yet filled with doubts.
He was also going through a break-up in his marriage. More doubts.
So he combined these ideas and made a film.
He had already started writing it, about a group of theatre performers. He changed it to be about orchestra musicians.
Stig and Marta play violin. They are new members of this symphony. They will fall in love and marry.
Marta loves Stig. She believes in him. She encourages him and supports him.
But he is full of doubts.
He will play solo for Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, and Bergman himself says he plays violin "with about the same lackluster skill as I exhibited in Crisis."
This was very personal for Bergman.
Stig's lack of confidence affects both his career and his marriage. For Bergman, the marriage would die too, but the career would go on to new heights.
Also important, and personal to Bergman, is that he cast Victor Sjostrom in the role of the orchestra conductor.
Twenty-eight years earlier Sjostrom had made the silent film which we saw recently, The Phantom Carriage (1921) (198, July 17), and it had inspired Bergman to become a filmmaker.
Bergman got the idea for The Grim Reaper, which he used to international acclaim in The Seventh Seal (1957) from The Phantom Carriage.
And he honored Sjostrom as his mentor in the film he made that same year, Wild Strawberries (1957). We will be seeing both of those films soon.
But he first honored his mentor here, as the conductor of the orchestra in To Joy.
The love story may end in sorrow, but the music does play with joy. And we watch the real orchestra play to the real music.
Twenty-six years later Bergman will film his adaptation of Mozart's The Magic Flute (1975), and we will see that film as well.
In the mean time sit back and listen to Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Smetana.
We begin with the ending, with a tragic explosion, and then we move seven years back in time.
In the Autumn. When Stig and Marta met at the symphony.
And we get a glimpse of how important seasons are to Bergman. Time of year matters to him. The calendar matters. And the light.
To joy.
* * * * *
Note On a Word
I performed my first musical in the 8th grade, when I was a member of FDR's cabinet in Annie. During the play, Miss Hannigan's brother Rooster enters the orphanage with his girlfriend Lily, and they try to hustle Miss Hannigan for money.
He asks her if he can borrow ten dollars. "So's all I need is a ten to tide me over." She does not budge. So he negotiates down. "A fiver, Aggie?"
A fiver, Aggie.
It was then that I learned that the word fiver meant a five-dollar bill. And lines doing as lines do, that line has stuck with me for life. "A fiver, Aggie?"
And I have used it here and there when it fit the situation.
So as we are watching this film, To Joy, something jumps out. When Stig and Marta meet and talk after orchestra rehearsal, he asks her, "Can you lend me a tenner?" And there it is.
A tenner is a ten-dollar bill--or in Sweden, a ten-krona note--just as a fiver is a five-dollar bill. Stig is asking Marta if he may borrow a ten-krona note from her.
So perhaps this slang was in its currency (ha ha) when Ingmar Bergman wrote To Joy in 1949.
And Thomas Meehan would have been of a generation who knew the slang when he wrote Annie in 1977.
And Ken Ludwig would have also known it when he wrote Lend Me a Tenor in 1986.
So Lend Me a Tenor is a play-on-words on the phrase "Lend me a tenner."
Good to know.
210 - To Joy, 1949, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
When you see that the film is entitled To Joy, your first thought might be to wonder if Beethoven's 9th Symphony is involved.
The answer is Yes, and beautifully so.
Ingmar Bergman was an artist, and he knew music as well as the other arts.
He had led the Helsingborg City Theatre earlier in his career, before he became a filmmaker. Later, he went back to Helsingborg and saw their orchestra. They were playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for their season finale.
The conductor, Sten Frykberg, loaned Bergman the score so that he could follow the performance note for note as he was listening. This demonstrates Bergman's knowledge of music as well as his status.
Bergman was touched by the evening. The symphony was composed of unpaid amateurs, yet they played with passion and heart. Bergman thought of himself when he directed his first feature film, Crisis in 1946--a novice making mistakes but performing with passion and heart, yet filled with doubts.
He was also going through a break-up in his marriage. More doubts.
So he combined these ideas and made a film.
He had already started writing it, about a group of theatre performers. He changed it to be about orchestra musicians.
Stig and Marta play violin. They are new members of this symphony. They will fall in love and marry.
Marta loves Stig. She believes in him. She encourages him and supports him.
But he is full of doubts.
He will play solo for Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, and Bergman himself says he plays violin "with about the same lackluster skill as I exhibited in Crisis."
This was very personal for Bergman.
Stig's lack of confidence affects both his career and his marriage. For Bergman, the marriage would die too, but the career would go on to new heights.
Also important, and personal to Bergman, is that he cast Victor Sjostrom in the role of the orchestra conductor.
Twenty-eight years earlier Sjostrom had made the silent film which we saw recently, The Phantom Carriage (1921) (198, July 17), and it had inspired Bergman to become a filmmaker.
Bergman got the idea for The Grim Reaper, which he used to international acclaim in The Seventh Seal (1957) from The Phantom Carriage.
And he honored Sjostrom as his mentor in the film he made that same year, Wild Strawberries (1957). We will be seeing both of those films soon.
But he first honored his mentor here, as the conductor of the orchestra in To Joy.
The love story may end in sorrow, but the music does play with joy. And we watch the real orchestra play to the real music.
Twenty-six years later Bergman will film his adaptation of Mozart's The Magic Flute (1975), and we will see that film as well.
In the mean time sit back and listen to Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Smetana.
We begin with the ending, with a tragic explosion, and then we move seven years back in time.
In the Autumn. When Stig and Marta met at the symphony.
And we get a glimpse of how important seasons are to Bergman. Time of year matters to him. The calendar matters. And the light.
To joy.
* * * * *
Note On a Word
I performed my first musical in the 8th grade, when I was a member of FDR's cabinet in Annie. During the play, Miss Hannigan's brother Rooster enters the orphanage with his girlfriend Lily, and they try to hustle Miss Hannigan for money.
He asks her if he can borrow ten dollars. "So's all I need is a ten to tide me over." She does not budge. So he negotiates down. "A fiver, Aggie?"
A fiver, Aggie.
It was then that I learned that the word fiver meant a five-dollar bill. And lines doing as lines do, that line has stuck with me for life. "A fiver, Aggie?"
And I have used it here and there when it fit the situation.
So as we are watching this film, To Joy, something jumps out. When Stig and Marta meet and talk after orchestra rehearsal, he asks her, "Can you lend me a tenner?" And there it is.
A tenner is a ten-dollar bill--or in Sweden, a ten-krona note--just as a fiver is a five-dollar bill. Stig is asking Marta if he may borrow a ten-krona note from her.
So perhaps this slang was in its currency (ha ha) when Ingmar Bergman wrote To Joy in 1949.
And Thomas Meehan would have been of a generation who knew the slang when he wrote Annie in 1977.
And Ken Ludwig would have also known it when he wrote Lend Me a Tenor in 1986.
So Lend Me a Tenor is a play-on-words on the phrase "Lend me a tenner."
Good to know.
Friday, July 28, 2017
209 - Thirst, 1949, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Friday, July 28, 2017
209 - Thirst, 1949, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Criterion has a sub-series of movies called Eclipse. Eclipse movies are those movies that Criterion deems to be also of interest. They may be the lesser known films of an important director or films that are not considered a part of the cinema cannon.
It is a euphemism to explain why they place some films in the public without bothering to add supplements.
It is also the result of some filmmakers being so prolific that some of their films take attention away from others that otherwise would have been considered classics.
Thirst is a mature work. If Bergman did not have so many masterpieces to keep it hiding in the shadows, it might be considered one of his great works.
It focuses on the lives of a couple who are vacationing in Europe, who love each other and hate each other and who have made their lives so complicated by past transgressions that it is hard for them to escape.
The couple are Ruth and Bertil.
Ruth once had an affair with a married man named Raoul. Bertil once had an affair with a woman named Viola. Ruth and Viola were once classmates at a dance school. Viola is now a widow and has since had another classmate named Valbourg come on to her.
Raoul got Ruth pregnant and she had an abortion. The abortion has made her infertile and unable to dance any more. She is bitter about it. Viola was under the care of a psychiatrist who enjoyed mentally torturing her for sport, as a means of control. Valbourg's attempted seduction came shortly after Viola escaped from the psychiatrist's clutches.
Bergman takes a moment to get in a cheap shot at a couple of clergymen who have just come back from a couples' retreat where they have worked on communicating better with their spouses. They have committed to speaking openly about their own struggles in their marriages, and one wants to write a book about how to communicate more effectively with your spouse. Bergman uses this moment as a juxtaposition with Ruth and Bertil, who are hopelessly lost in their relationship, as if to say the clergymen have no clue what real marital struggle is all about. Never mind that their hard work at fidelity and selflessness might be the reason their marriages are more successful and the very thing that Ruth and Bertil need.
Ruth and Bertil stick together because they each decide that being alone is worse than "the hell we have together."
This quick plot summary may read like a soap opera, but this is a good film. It looks at the struggles of relationships and consequences of various choices, and it holds up a mirror to nature. It is modern and frank in its treatment of love, relationships, abortion, women's roles in society, and the struggle of men and women to communicate with one another.
It also prefigures Bergman's classic Summer with Monika with a sequence involving Raoul and Ruth out on the water.
* * * * *
Ruth (Eva Henning)
Bertil (Birger Malmsten)
Raoul (Bengt Eklund)
Verona, Bologna, Florence, Venice, the Lido, Capri, Messina, and Syracuse.
* * *
I could spend all summer here with you.
* * *
Any healthy man has to have two women. There are sly devils with more, and that's just indecent. No, two's the right number, and you hold on to them for dear life.
* * *
A woman nowadays can do so many other things besides having babies.
Your profession is so full of variety, where you're both celebrated and envied.
I don't want to be sterile!
Let's let in some fresh air.
* * *
You shouldn't smoke so much. Think of your heart.
What use is a heart to a dancer who can't use her legs?
It wouldn't even do as an arch support.
* * *
Always looking at your watch. It's your god.
* * *
I don't want to be your appendix, like Viola.
Just toss me away.
* * *
Notice anything?
Of course.
Doesn't it excite you?
Not really. There's too much nudity in this marriage.
* * *
The two sexes can never be united. They're separated by a sea of tears and misunderstandings.
* * *
Find me a cigarette, will you? I haven't smoked in 15 minutes.
* * *
Come away and break up a marriage. Do something worthwhile.
Help yet another sleepwalking couple wake up from their illusions. I'd like to shatter your illusions.
You never loved your husband, not until after his death. You've spun a coat of armor around your marriage.
Admit that your whole life has been one long mistake.
Of course, you could stop seeing me. "Patient jumps up from operating table, intestines hanging out."
Must be a problem with the anesthetic. I feel awfully awake.
* * *
I replace kindness with imagination.
You have no imagination. You've never lived! You know nothing about life or suffering. You think!
* * *
You smoke too much.
My last lover nagged me too. "Think of your heart," he said and married a dancer. That's how much he thought of my heart.
* * *
I'll plow your virgin soil.
You will not plow my soil!
* * *
You belong with the incurables. Your breakdown is imminent.
* * *
Now I know how ruins feel. Sterile and empty-eyed amid lush nature. That's me in a nutshell.
* * *
You're always jumping on children. And you're oversensitive.
Easy for you to say. They threw my child in the trash and mutilated me!
I've seen buckets of my own blood. Butchers with sharp knives! "Everything will be fine."
Ruth, you have to get over it.
I can't. They killed something inside me.
Is it that painful?
It's hell.
* * *
I should get myself tested, but I never have the time.
* * *
You've ruined people too.
Not to my knowledge.
* * *
There isn't a man who hasn't brought ruin to a woman, one way or another.
I wouldn't mind a bite to eat now.
* * *
They're so busy surviving that they never have time for a spiritual life.
* * *
Did any one bother to make me real? How often do men make human beings of women?
In your case it would be a full-time job for a millionaire.
* * *
I'd like to sleep.
That can be arranged.
* * *
Raoul was brutal. You took away my lust for life. You cheated on me, with Viola, and maybe others.
You're no saint either.
I told you everything. But you forgot to tell me. You made me believe you were the noblest man on earth.
It's my cursed fate to always meet hysterical women.
It's my cursed fate to play the nurse, and I've had enough.
You want a divorce!
Stop shouting. People can hear.
I'll never leave you. We're joined together, like on a chain gang.
* * *
Are you afraid of me?
Why should I be?
You're beautiful standing there with your flushed cheeks.
* * *
Quite pleasant, don't you think?
Yes. It's blissful to go numb.
Everyone seems to have exclusive rights to hell.
I'm so lonely, Valbourg.
Lonely and dependent on a man. I know that one.
* * *
You understand me.
Don't be too sure. Let's not get autobiographical. It only ends in sentimentality.
Men are a closed chapter to me.
* * *
I don't want to be alone and independent. That's much worse.
Worse than what?
Than the hell we have. At least we have each other.
209 - Thirst, 1949, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Criterion has a sub-series of movies called Eclipse. Eclipse movies are those movies that Criterion deems to be also of interest. They may be the lesser known films of an important director or films that are not considered a part of the cinema cannon.
It is a euphemism to explain why they place some films in the public without bothering to add supplements.
It is also the result of some filmmakers being so prolific that some of their films take attention away from others that otherwise would have been considered classics.
Thirst is a mature work. If Bergman did not have so many masterpieces to keep it hiding in the shadows, it might be considered one of his great works.
It focuses on the lives of a couple who are vacationing in Europe, who love each other and hate each other and who have made their lives so complicated by past transgressions that it is hard for them to escape.
The couple are Ruth and Bertil.
Ruth once had an affair with a married man named Raoul. Bertil once had an affair with a woman named Viola. Ruth and Viola were once classmates at a dance school. Viola is now a widow and has since had another classmate named Valbourg come on to her.
Raoul got Ruth pregnant and she had an abortion. The abortion has made her infertile and unable to dance any more. She is bitter about it. Viola was under the care of a psychiatrist who enjoyed mentally torturing her for sport, as a means of control. Valbourg's attempted seduction came shortly after Viola escaped from the psychiatrist's clutches.
Bergman takes a moment to get in a cheap shot at a couple of clergymen who have just come back from a couples' retreat where they have worked on communicating better with their spouses. They have committed to speaking openly about their own struggles in their marriages, and one wants to write a book about how to communicate more effectively with your spouse. Bergman uses this moment as a juxtaposition with Ruth and Bertil, who are hopelessly lost in their relationship, as if to say the clergymen have no clue what real marital struggle is all about. Never mind that their hard work at fidelity and selflessness might be the reason their marriages are more successful and the very thing that Ruth and Bertil need.
Ruth and Bertil stick together because they each decide that being alone is worse than "the hell we have together."
This quick plot summary may read like a soap opera, but this is a good film. It looks at the struggles of relationships and consequences of various choices, and it holds up a mirror to nature. It is modern and frank in its treatment of love, relationships, abortion, women's roles in society, and the struggle of men and women to communicate with one another.
It also prefigures Bergman's classic Summer with Monika with a sequence involving Raoul and Ruth out on the water.
* * * * *
Ruth (Eva Henning)
Bertil (Birger Malmsten)
Raoul (Bengt Eklund)
Verona, Bologna, Florence, Venice, the Lido, Capri, Messina, and Syracuse.
* * *
I could spend all summer here with you.
* * *
Any healthy man has to have two women. There are sly devils with more, and that's just indecent. No, two's the right number, and you hold on to them for dear life.
* * *
A woman nowadays can do so many other things besides having babies.
Your profession is so full of variety, where you're both celebrated and envied.
I don't want to be sterile!
Let's let in some fresh air.
* * *
You shouldn't smoke so much. Think of your heart.
What use is a heart to a dancer who can't use her legs?
It wouldn't even do as an arch support.
* * *
Always looking at your watch. It's your god.
* * *
I don't want to be your appendix, like Viola.
Just toss me away.
* * *
Notice anything?
Of course.
Doesn't it excite you?
Not really. There's too much nudity in this marriage.
* * *
The two sexes can never be united. They're separated by a sea of tears and misunderstandings.
* * *
Find me a cigarette, will you? I haven't smoked in 15 minutes.
* * *
Come away and break up a marriage. Do something worthwhile.
Help yet another sleepwalking couple wake up from their illusions. I'd like to shatter your illusions.
You never loved your husband, not until after his death. You've spun a coat of armor around your marriage.
Admit that your whole life has been one long mistake.
Of course, you could stop seeing me. "Patient jumps up from operating table, intestines hanging out."
Must be a problem with the anesthetic. I feel awfully awake.
* * *
I replace kindness with imagination.
You have no imagination. You've never lived! You know nothing about life or suffering. You think!
* * *
You smoke too much.
My last lover nagged me too. "Think of your heart," he said and married a dancer. That's how much he thought of my heart.
* * *
I'll plow your virgin soil.
You will not plow my soil!
* * *
You belong with the incurables. Your breakdown is imminent.
* * *
Now I know how ruins feel. Sterile and empty-eyed amid lush nature. That's me in a nutshell.
* * *
You're always jumping on children. And you're oversensitive.
Easy for you to say. They threw my child in the trash and mutilated me!
I've seen buckets of my own blood. Butchers with sharp knives! "Everything will be fine."
Ruth, you have to get over it.
I can't. They killed something inside me.
Is it that painful?
It's hell.
* * *
I should get myself tested, but I never have the time.
* * *
You've ruined people too.
Not to my knowledge.
* * *
There isn't a man who hasn't brought ruin to a woman, one way or another.
I wouldn't mind a bite to eat now.
* * *
They're so busy surviving that they never have time for a spiritual life.
* * *
Did any one bother to make me real? How often do men make human beings of women?
In your case it would be a full-time job for a millionaire.
* * *
I'd like to sleep.
That can be arranged.
* * *
Raoul was brutal. You took away my lust for life. You cheated on me, with Viola, and maybe others.
You're no saint either.
I told you everything. But you forgot to tell me. You made me believe you were the noblest man on earth.
It's my cursed fate to always meet hysterical women.
It's my cursed fate to play the nurse, and I've had enough.
You want a divorce!
Stop shouting. People can hear.
I'll never leave you. We're joined together, like on a chain gang.
* * *
Are you afraid of me?
Why should I be?
You're beautiful standing there with your flushed cheeks.
* * *
Quite pleasant, don't you think?
Yes. It's blissful to go numb.
Everyone seems to have exclusive rights to hell.
I'm so lonely, Valbourg.
Lonely and dependent on a man. I know that one.
* * *
You understand me.
Don't be too sure. Let's not get autobiographical. It only ends in sentimentality.
Men are a closed chapter to me.
* * *
I don't want to be alone and independent. That's much worse.
Worse than what?
Than the hell we have. At least we have each other.
Thursday, July 27, 2017
208 - Port of Call, 1948, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Thursday, July 27. 2017
208 - Port of Call, 1948, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
How old does one need to be to be free to live as an adult?
The actress Nine-Christine Jonsson was around 22 when she starred in Port of Call, but the age of her character Berit is not clear.
She is out of school. She is old enough to have a full-time job at a factory. And she has had several lovers. However, she lives with her mother, who dominates her, and she is still supervised by a social worker who threatens to send her back to Reformatory for the slightest behavioral infraction.
And she seems to have no way of freeing herself of this situation.
Berit walks to the warf. She approaches the edge. She jumps in.
Gosta jumps in after her. He swims her out. He saves her life.
Gosta is a sailor who has just recently docked at that very wharf.
The medics take her and he returns to his work.
Later at a dance he dances with her and takes her home, apparently unaware that it is the same girl whose life he saved.
And this begins a relationship that we will explore through the movie.
Gosta and Berit come together in the messy and uncertain kind of way that people do in real life. And this makes the story more compelling. In the early stages, they are not even sure if they will see one another again after each encounter.
And when she begins to tell him about her past life, he has to make adjustments to process and accept the new information.
She has a friend from Reformatory, Gertrud, who is struggling more than she is, and her story comes into play.
Their respective workmates also affect their relationship, both at work and in the evenings.
Berit tells Gosta her story in flashbacks. And in one we see the girls at Reformatory sitting around miserably at Christmastime.
The Swedish version of "O Holy Night" is playing:
When holy Jesus to mankind was born
There to redeem / The sins of the world
For our sake did he die on the cross.
But the girls are unhappy.
Gertrud is the one who sneaked out and slept with the gardener in exchange for cigarettes, perfume, lipstick, and decent underwear.
One gets the sense that reputation matters in this world, and that Berit has been branded as not having a good one. But since we see the world through her eyes, we sympathize with her and see her as someone with good and decent desires. She wants to be loved.
And Gosta is there to love her.
He acknowledges that life is full of "all kinds of bother and trouble." She says, "It all gets to be too much." He replies, "But we have each other. We didn't have that before." She demurs, "I'm not much to have."
And he answers her. "To me you are."
To me you are.
Things must be all right then.
We won't give up.
No. They will not give up.
208 - Port of Call, 1948, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
How old does one need to be to be free to live as an adult?
The actress Nine-Christine Jonsson was around 22 when she starred in Port of Call, but the age of her character Berit is not clear.
She is out of school. She is old enough to have a full-time job at a factory. And she has had several lovers. However, she lives with her mother, who dominates her, and she is still supervised by a social worker who threatens to send her back to Reformatory for the slightest behavioral infraction.
And she seems to have no way of freeing herself of this situation.
Berit walks to the warf. She approaches the edge. She jumps in.
Gosta jumps in after her. He swims her out. He saves her life.
Gosta is a sailor who has just recently docked at that very wharf.
The medics take her and he returns to his work.
Later at a dance he dances with her and takes her home, apparently unaware that it is the same girl whose life he saved.
And this begins a relationship that we will explore through the movie.
Gosta and Berit come together in the messy and uncertain kind of way that people do in real life. And this makes the story more compelling. In the early stages, they are not even sure if they will see one another again after each encounter.
And when she begins to tell him about her past life, he has to make adjustments to process and accept the new information.
She has a friend from Reformatory, Gertrud, who is struggling more than she is, and her story comes into play.
Their respective workmates also affect their relationship, both at work and in the evenings.
Berit tells Gosta her story in flashbacks. And in one we see the girls at Reformatory sitting around miserably at Christmastime.
The Swedish version of "O Holy Night" is playing:
When holy Jesus to mankind was born
There to redeem / The sins of the world
For our sake did he die on the cross.
But the girls are unhappy.
Gertrud is the one who sneaked out and slept with the gardener in exchange for cigarettes, perfume, lipstick, and decent underwear.
One gets the sense that reputation matters in this world, and that Berit has been branded as not having a good one. But since we see the world through her eyes, we sympathize with her and see her as someone with good and decent desires. She wants to be loved.
And Gosta is there to love her.
He acknowledges that life is full of "all kinds of bother and trouble." She says, "It all gets to be too much." He replies, "But we have each other. We didn't have that before." She demurs, "I'm not much to have."
And he answers her. "To me you are."
To me you are.
Things must be all right then.
We won't give up.
No. They will not give up.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
207 - Crisis, 1946, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
207 - Crisis, 1946, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
The stillness of this Saturday evening places its gentle hands over this little town.
This is such a small town.
With its feet in the river, it slumbers softly in the greenery.
There is no railway station to mar the reflective calm of this idyll.
Neither industry nor shipping hasten the steady pace of the day or the still peace of the night.
The event of the day is the arrival of the bus.
It brings newspapers, mail, and unfamiliar faces, in which one can discern a trace of a dangerous, bustling life.
Today, a wholly unfamiliar lady steps off the bus.
So says the narrator. Gustaf Molander.
Reading the words written by Ingmar Bergman. In his first film to direct.
This is a film about love triangles.
Triangle 1--
Ingeborg and Jenny are fighting over Nelly, each one wanting her to choose one of them as her mother. Jenny is Nelly's mother, insofar as she gave birth to her. But Ingeborg is Nelly's mother, in that she has raised her and loved her, and Nelly knows her as her mother. Nelly thinks Jenny is her aunt. Jenny abandoned Nelly after giving birth to her, and she has returned to the small hamlet to reclaim her. Jenny has lived a wild life in the big city, and she stands out in town when she gets off the bus.
Triangle 2--
Ulf and Jack are fighting over Nelly, each one wanting her to choose him as her lover. Ulf has grown up in the small town with Nelly, and he has taken a room in Ingeborg's house so that he can be near her all the time. Ingeborg lets out rooms as a means of income, and she gives piano lessons. Ulf is a good and decent man, and he has visions of his and Nelly's happiness together. Meanwhile, Jack has come from the big city, come chasing Jenny, and he seems to be a bit wild himself. And maybe up to no good.
Triangle 3--
Nelly and her mother Jenny are fighting over Jack, each one wanting him to choose her as his lover. Well, now, Jack really is a player. He has been in the big city with Jenny, "sometimes" as he puts it. He lives with someone else part of the time too. Yet when he comes to town and crashes the dance it is not too hard for him to sweep Nelly off her feet. He represents an excitement that the provincial Ulf just cannot give her. So he gets both mother and daughter vying for his affections.
There are two key sequences that add cinematic drama to this filmed adaptation of a stage play.
One is the dance, the pitting of youth culture against the mature establishment. A woman is singing, a proper-a opera, standing stately on the stage, The mayor is present. The town dignitaries. The kids move into the next room, and begin playing a jazzy number on the piano and snare drum. And they begin to dance. And Nelly plays the trumpet. Nelly, who has never played before. Jack has led the charge, and Nelly has gone along. They have created a combustion. A scandal.
Nelly leaves with Jack and they go to the lakeside, where he begins to kiss her. She warns him that Ulf will come to defend her, but she prefers Jack anyway. She has already told Ulf that she adores him the way she does the piano and the old chest of drawers--just what a man wants to hear from the girl he loves. But she goes ahead and kisses Jack by lake. He is more exciting. And sure enough, Ulf arrives and gives Jack a good belting. And then throws him off the dock, twice, the second time with a life preserver, dragging Nelly home.
The other sequence occurs towards the end, when Nelly now lives in the big city with her mother. On the night of the dance she came home upset and Ingeborg was there for her. Nelly had told Ingeborg that she loved her and never wanted them to be apart. Just what Ingeborg wanted to hear, as she was growing ill and could not bear to lose the daughter she raised to the woman who had abandoned her.
But the town itself had other designs. Nelly had caused a scandal--in front of the mayor no less!--and she would have to leave.
But now, later, Nelly lives with Jenny and their lives are a might bit messy. Jack after all comes and goes as he pleases, and he puts the moves on both of them in addition to the woman with whom he lives. When the showdown comes, he even accuses Jenny of having brought Nelly there on purpose to lure Jack to stay, as Jenny fears of getting old and losing him. Oh, what desperation will engender.
And perhaps we will discover that Jack himself is not so stable.
This first film of Bergman is a good film for young filmmakers to study. Write some scripts. Adapt some plays. Direct some films. Get some stories under your belt.
And then just keep working. And keep getting better.
207 - Crisis, 1946, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
The stillness of this Saturday evening places its gentle hands over this little town.
This is such a small town.
With its feet in the river, it slumbers softly in the greenery.
There is no railway station to mar the reflective calm of this idyll.
Neither industry nor shipping hasten the steady pace of the day or the still peace of the night.
The event of the day is the arrival of the bus.
It brings newspapers, mail, and unfamiliar faces, in which one can discern a trace of a dangerous, bustling life.
Today, a wholly unfamiliar lady steps off the bus.
So says the narrator. Gustaf Molander.
Reading the words written by Ingmar Bergman. In his first film to direct.
This is a film about love triangles.
Triangle 1--
Ingeborg and Jenny are fighting over Nelly, each one wanting her to choose one of them as her mother. Jenny is Nelly's mother, insofar as she gave birth to her. But Ingeborg is Nelly's mother, in that she has raised her and loved her, and Nelly knows her as her mother. Nelly thinks Jenny is her aunt. Jenny abandoned Nelly after giving birth to her, and she has returned to the small hamlet to reclaim her. Jenny has lived a wild life in the big city, and she stands out in town when she gets off the bus.
Triangle 2--
Ulf and Jack are fighting over Nelly, each one wanting her to choose him as her lover. Ulf has grown up in the small town with Nelly, and he has taken a room in Ingeborg's house so that he can be near her all the time. Ingeborg lets out rooms as a means of income, and she gives piano lessons. Ulf is a good and decent man, and he has visions of his and Nelly's happiness together. Meanwhile, Jack has come from the big city, come chasing Jenny, and he seems to be a bit wild himself. And maybe up to no good.
Triangle 3--
Nelly and her mother Jenny are fighting over Jack, each one wanting him to choose her as his lover. Well, now, Jack really is a player. He has been in the big city with Jenny, "sometimes" as he puts it. He lives with someone else part of the time too. Yet when he comes to town and crashes the dance it is not too hard for him to sweep Nelly off her feet. He represents an excitement that the provincial Ulf just cannot give her. So he gets both mother and daughter vying for his affections.
There are two key sequences that add cinematic drama to this filmed adaptation of a stage play.
One is the dance, the pitting of youth culture against the mature establishment. A woman is singing, a proper-a opera, standing stately on the stage, The mayor is present. The town dignitaries. The kids move into the next room, and begin playing a jazzy number on the piano and snare drum. And they begin to dance. And Nelly plays the trumpet. Nelly, who has never played before. Jack has led the charge, and Nelly has gone along. They have created a combustion. A scandal.
Nelly leaves with Jack and they go to the lakeside, where he begins to kiss her. She warns him that Ulf will come to defend her, but she prefers Jack anyway. She has already told Ulf that she adores him the way she does the piano and the old chest of drawers--just what a man wants to hear from the girl he loves. But she goes ahead and kisses Jack by lake. He is more exciting. And sure enough, Ulf arrives and gives Jack a good belting. And then throws him off the dock, twice, the second time with a life preserver, dragging Nelly home.
The other sequence occurs towards the end, when Nelly now lives in the big city with her mother. On the night of the dance she came home upset and Ingeborg was there for her. Nelly had told Ingeborg that she loved her and never wanted them to be apart. Just what Ingeborg wanted to hear, as she was growing ill and could not bear to lose the daughter she raised to the woman who had abandoned her.
But the town itself had other designs. Nelly had caused a scandal--in front of the mayor no less!--and she would have to leave.
But now, later, Nelly lives with Jenny and their lives are a might bit messy. Jack after all comes and goes as he pleases, and he puts the moves on both of them in addition to the woman with whom he lives. When the showdown comes, he even accuses Jenny of having brought Nelly there on purpose to lure Jack to stay, as Jenny fears of getting old and losing him. Oh, what desperation will engender.
And perhaps we will discover that Jack himself is not so stable.
This first film of Bergman is a good film for young filmmakers to study. Write some scripts. Adapt some plays. Direct some films. Get some stories under your belt.
And then just keep working. And keep getting better.
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
206 - Torment, 1944, Sweden. Dir. Alf Sjoberg.
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
206 - Torment, 1944, Sweden. Dir. Alf Sjoberg.
Our profession is a vocation. That means it is a calling.
A tormentor of human beings. That is what you are.
So says one of the teachers to another.
Have you ever heard of Alf Sjoberg?
We are not so sure Criterion cares if you have or not. They are not focusing on the director of this picture. They want you to know the writer.
They have published another of Sjoberg's films, his adaptation of the August Stringberg play Miss Julie, starring Anita Bjork and Max von Sydow. But that choice may be for the writer as well.
If you look up Alf Sjoberg's profile on the Criterion website, you will see that it is left blank. They have nothing to say about him.
The writer in this case is someone you may have heard of before.
He dominated European cinema for decades. He was a theater director turned screenwriter turned filmmaker.
His works are known for plumbing the interiors of the human mind and heart and soul.
His influence is incalculable.
He is regarded by many as the master.
His name is Ingmar Bergman.
And for the record, he was not in any way related to Ingrid Bergman. He married an Ingrid, but she was someone else. Our Ingrid did work with him, and we will see it.
We will see plenty. Criterion has twenty-seven films connected to him, twenty-four directed by him, one written by him and directed by someone else, and TWO documentaries about him and his work.
And two of the titles are works done each for television and for theatrical release.
That locks us in to just under four weeks of watching Bergman.
Fasten your seatbelts.
You are in for a ride.
Jan-Erik Widgren is a high school student.
In an age when high school seemed more like college today.
Or like nothing today.
This is the type of school where the teacher puts his hand on you and says, "My dear boy."
The boys wear jackets and ties. They begin the day with chapel. They sing in Latin. In key. On pitch. They pray. In class they translate Latin aloud. Reading the Latin off the page and saying the translation in their own language. Which, in this case, is Swedish. They are being prepared for great lives as citizens in a civilized society.
Well, at least that is the intention.
Through the eyes of Bergman it is not so great.
He hated school.
And he uses this script to take out his hostility on it.
The Latin teacher is weak and cruel. He threatens and taunts the students as he brandishes a long stick. Throughout the film the students refer to him as the Sadist. They also call him Caligula. He is listed as Caligula in the credits! We never know his real name.
Our protagonist is Jan-Erik Widgren. He is tall, handsome, intelligent, earnest, and seemingly good-hearted. He looks like a college student. He looks like an all-American. I know we are in Sweden, but he does. He wants to read and play the violin. He is everything one would think the school would wish to have--a future great alumnus, a future graduation speaker, a future benefactor.
But not in Caligula's eyes.
Caligula belittles him, berates him, embarrasses him.
And Caligula seems to take pleasure in it.
Final exams are approaching. These boys are seniors. They will soon graduate and enter society. But not if Caligula can help it. He seems determined to stop as many as he can. He seems to desire to ruin lives.
Widgren meets a girl at the tobacco shop. He later runs into her late at night, out on the street, upset about something that has happened--presumably mistreatment by a male--and Widgren takes her home. They start dating, and he is good to her. He brings over his violin and plays it.
There is just one little problem.
Caligula entered the tobacco shop at the same time. Widgren was too young to buy any, but Caligula was not. The film makes a point about this. Caligula takes his tobacco from the girl--Bertha--and treats her in a smarmy kind of way, in front of Widgren and on after Widgren leaves.
Widgren gets his torment at school, and when he visits Bertha he discovers that she gets her torment at home.
Eventually they discover they are being tormented by the same man. Caligula is coming over to Bertha's apartment and trying to break in! Trying to do things to her.
Yes, Bergman had some serious hostility against teachers, or at least one teacher. His school's response to the film, and his counter response, are documented.
Things are going to end badly for somebody.
The film features moments in the lives of a couple other students, a couple other teachers, Widgren's family, and the Dean. Another teacher is portrayed as being the kind of teacher one would want, and he confronts Caligula. The Dean is portrayed as being fair-minded but forced to follow school policy. The father is portrayed as being stern and unsupportive of Widgren.
What stands out in this film are its cinematography (Martin Bodin) and production design (Arne Akermark). It is done in the Expressionist tradition, with the school's being composed of great staircases and balconies, and with high-contrast lighting throwing shadows all over the place. Caligula's own hand as it comes up over Bertha may as well be Nosferatu's--or Count Orlok's, as it were.
Bergman's first screenplay already feature psychology, and the inner life of a man.
And it just so happens that Widgren has a classmate in his class.
Named Bergman.
Who graduates first.
With honors.
Someone is having some fun.
206 - Torment, 1944, Sweden. Dir. Alf Sjoberg.
Our profession is a vocation. That means it is a calling.
A tormentor of human beings. That is what you are.
So says one of the teachers to another.
Have you ever heard of Alf Sjoberg?
We are not so sure Criterion cares if you have or not. They are not focusing on the director of this picture. They want you to know the writer.
They have published another of Sjoberg's films, his adaptation of the August Stringberg play Miss Julie, starring Anita Bjork and Max von Sydow. But that choice may be for the writer as well.
If you look up Alf Sjoberg's profile on the Criterion website, you will see that it is left blank. They have nothing to say about him.
The writer in this case is someone you may have heard of before.
He dominated European cinema for decades. He was a theater director turned screenwriter turned filmmaker.
His works are known for plumbing the interiors of the human mind and heart and soul.
His influence is incalculable.
He is regarded by many as the master.
His name is Ingmar Bergman.
And for the record, he was not in any way related to Ingrid Bergman. He married an Ingrid, but she was someone else. Our Ingrid did work with him, and we will see it.
We will see plenty. Criterion has twenty-seven films connected to him, twenty-four directed by him, one written by him and directed by someone else, and TWO documentaries about him and his work.
And two of the titles are works done each for television and for theatrical release.
That locks us in to just under four weeks of watching Bergman.
Fasten your seatbelts.
You are in for a ride.
Jan-Erik Widgren is a high school student.
In an age when high school seemed more like college today.
Or like nothing today.
This is the type of school where the teacher puts his hand on you and says, "My dear boy."
The boys wear jackets and ties. They begin the day with chapel. They sing in Latin. In key. On pitch. They pray. In class they translate Latin aloud. Reading the Latin off the page and saying the translation in their own language. Which, in this case, is Swedish. They are being prepared for great lives as citizens in a civilized society.
Well, at least that is the intention.
Through the eyes of Bergman it is not so great.
He hated school.
And he uses this script to take out his hostility on it.
The Latin teacher is weak and cruel. He threatens and taunts the students as he brandishes a long stick. Throughout the film the students refer to him as the Sadist. They also call him Caligula. He is listed as Caligula in the credits! We never know his real name.
Our protagonist is Jan-Erik Widgren. He is tall, handsome, intelligent, earnest, and seemingly good-hearted. He looks like a college student. He looks like an all-American. I know we are in Sweden, but he does. He wants to read and play the violin. He is everything one would think the school would wish to have--a future great alumnus, a future graduation speaker, a future benefactor.
But not in Caligula's eyes.
Caligula belittles him, berates him, embarrasses him.
And Caligula seems to take pleasure in it.
Final exams are approaching. These boys are seniors. They will soon graduate and enter society. But not if Caligula can help it. He seems determined to stop as many as he can. He seems to desire to ruin lives.
Widgren meets a girl at the tobacco shop. He later runs into her late at night, out on the street, upset about something that has happened--presumably mistreatment by a male--and Widgren takes her home. They start dating, and he is good to her. He brings over his violin and plays it.
There is just one little problem.
Caligula entered the tobacco shop at the same time. Widgren was too young to buy any, but Caligula was not. The film makes a point about this. Caligula takes his tobacco from the girl--Bertha--and treats her in a smarmy kind of way, in front of Widgren and on after Widgren leaves.
Widgren gets his torment at school, and when he visits Bertha he discovers that she gets her torment at home.
Eventually they discover they are being tormented by the same man. Caligula is coming over to Bertha's apartment and trying to break in! Trying to do things to her.
Yes, Bergman had some serious hostility against teachers, or at least one teacher. His school's response to the film, and his counter response, are documented.
Things are going to end badly for somebody.
The film features moments in the lives of a couple other students, a couple other teachers, Widgren's family, and the Dean. Another teacher is portrayed as being the kind of teacher one would want, and he confronts Caligula. The Dean is portrayed as being fair-minded but forced to follow school policy. The father is portrayed as being stern and unsupportive of Widgren.
What stands out in this film are its cinematography (Martin Bodin) and production design (Arne Akermark). It is done in the Expressionist tradition, with the school's being composed of great staircases and balconies, and with high-contrast lighting throwing shadows all over the place. Caligula's own hand as it comes up over Bertha may as well be Nosferatu's--or Count Orlok's, as it were.
Bergman's first screenplay already feature psychology, and the inner life of a man.
And it just so happens that Widgren has a classmate in his class.
Named Bergman.
Who graduates first.
With honors.
Someone is having some fun.
Monday, July 24, 2017
205 - Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier, 1995, Denmark. Dir. Torben Skjodt Jensen.
Monday, July 24, 2017
205 - Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier, 1995, Denmark. Dir. Torben Skjodt Jensen.
Look. I do matrimonial work. It's my métier. - Jake Gittis, played by Jack Nicholson, Chinatown.
A métier is a vocation or calling. It is a French word presumed to have come from the Latin ministerium, meaning ministry.
Jake Gettis uses it in one of the great lines in one of the greatest movies ever made.
Outside of that, when have you ever heard this word used? It is almost as though it was preserved for this one film quotation.
So how much more appropriate to discover that it was used before by one of the world's great filmmakers, referring to his vocation.
Carl Theodor Dreyer said that film was his métier.
And Torben Skjodt Jensen has preserved that statement in the title of his 1995 documentary on Dreyer.
The documentary contains generous interviews with people who worked with Dreyer.
Clara Pontoppidan, who played Siri (yes! Siri) in Leaves from Satan's Book (1920).
Helen Falconetti, the daughter of Maria Falconetti, who played Joan of Arc in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
Lisbeth Movin, who played Anne Petersen in Day of Wrath (1943), and whom we will see 44 years later in Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1987).
Preben Lerdoff Rye, who played Johannes in Ordet (1955), and who also played in Babette's Feast.
Birgitte Federspiel, who played Inger Borgen in Ordet (1955), and who also played in Babette's Feast.
Axel Strobye, who played Axel Nygen in Gertrud (1964), and yes, who played in Babette's Feast.
Baard Owe, who played Erland Janssen in Gertrud (1964).
Jorgen Roos, cinematographer.
Henning Bendsten, cinematographer for Ordet and Gertrud (1964).
Jensen organizes the documentary into three components: 1) the interviews, 2) clips from Dreyer's films, and 3) narrated passages from Dreyer's writing about film.
The stories provide some insights into his philosophy and methodologies, and how people felt when they worked with him.
There seems to be a consensus that he was a soft-spoken, humble man on the outside, who ruled with an iron will from his years of meticulous preparation for each film. He knew what he wanted. He got what he wanted. And his actors enjoyed working with him, as he was gentle with them.
He would stand with complete calm, confident that he would get his shots.
Yet the suits themselves, the producers, were afraid to speak to him when they came to set, and they largely left him alone. How wonderful for a film director!
He was said to have "10,000 volts" beneath the surface of that calm. The actors got the calm. The producers got the volts.
One of the takeaways from this documentary is that Dreyer made too few films.
Film is my one great passion. - Carl Theodor Dreyer.
205 - Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier, 1995, Denmark. Dir. Torben Skjodt Jensen.
Look. I do matrimonial work. It's my métier. - Jake Gittis, played by Jack Nicholson, Chinatown.
A métier is a vocation or calling. It is a French word presumed to have come from the Latin ministerium, meaning ministry.
Jake Gettis uses it in one of the great lines in one of the greatest movies ever made.
Outside of that, when have you ever heard this word used? It is almost as though it was preserved for this one film quotation.
So how much more appropriate to discover that it was used before by one of the world's great filmmakers, referring to his vocation.
Carl Theodor Dreyer said that film was his métier.
And Torben Skjodt Jensen has preserved that statement in the title of his 1995 documentary on Dreyer.
The documentary contains generous interviews with people who worked with Dreyer.
Clara Pontoppidan, who played Siri (yes! Siri) in Leaves from Satan's Book (1920).
Helen Falconetti, the daughter of Maria Falconetti, who played Joan of Arc in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
Lisbeth Movin, who played Anne Petersen in Day of Wrath (1943), and whom we will see 44 years later in Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1987).
Preben Lerdoff Rye, who played Johannes in Ordet (1955), and who also played in Babette's Feast.
Birgitte Federspiel, who played Inger Borgen in Ordet (1955), and who also played in Babette's Feast.
Axel Strobye, who played Axel Nygen in Gertrud (1964), and yes, who played in Babette's Feast.
Baard Owe, who played Erland Janssen in Gertrud (1964).
Jorgen Roos, cinematographer.
Henning Bendsten, cinematographer for Ordet and Gertrud (1964).
Jensen organizes the documentary into three components: 1) the interviews, 2) clips from Dreyer's films, and 3) narrated passages from Dreyer's writing about film.
The stories provide some insights into his philosophy and methodologies, and how people felt when they worked with him.
There seems to be a consensus that he was a soft-spoken, humble man on the outside, who ruled with an iron will from his years of meticulous preparation for each film. He knew what he wanted. He got what he wanted. And his actors enjoyed working with him, as he was gentle with them.
He would stand with complete calm, confident that he would get his shots.
Yet the suits themselves, the producers, were afraid to speak to him when they came to set, and they largely left him alone. How wonderful for a film director!
He was said to have "10,000 volts" beneath the surface of that calm. The actors got the calm. The producers got the volts.
One of the takeaways from this documentary is that Dreyer made too few films.
Film is my one great passion. - Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
204 - Gertrud, 1964, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
204 - Gertrud, 1964, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Amor Omnia.
Love is all.
There is nothing else in life but love. Nothing. Nothing else.
That is what Gertrud says. She wrote a poem about it when she was 16. She stands by it in her old age.
She reads the poem to her lifelong friend Axel Nygreh.
Just look at me. / Am I beautiful? / No, but I have loved.
Just look at me. / Am I young? / No, but I have loved.
Just look at me. / Do I live? / No, but I have loved.
Nygreh asks if she regrets her position now that she is old. She says, No. She does not regret it. She stands by it.
Even though she is alone.
Even though she has spent the last half of her life alone.
Because she left the ones who loved her. Or specifically, the man who loved her. The man who married her. The man who wanted to stay with her.
Because he did not make her feel the way she wanted to feel.
Gertrud has lived the modern problem.
It is 1964.
People have started to be liberated.
They can love when they want to and leave when they want to.
Gertrud's own husband Gustav promised her that freedom when they got married. He just never expected her to cash in on it so suddenly.
Gertrud decides to take her freedom.
"Love is patient. Love is kind."
Gertrud is not patient. She is very much impatient.
Her husband works too hard. He spends his time and attention on his job, on money, on social standing, on honor. He does not give her enough time and attention. He does not make her feel the way she wants to feel. She wants all of him or nothing. She refuses to compromise.
So she gives herself to the great musician. Erland Jansson. She will leave with him. He will give her what she wants. They will be together, just the two of them always.
Except that he is a player.
He brags at a party about his having conquered her, and he has already gotten another woman pregnant.
Well, then there is Gabriel Lidman the poet. No, she already had an affair with him, before Gustav. He does not mean the same thing to her as Jansson does.
Gertrud's husband Gustav begs her to stay. He will be faithful to her. (He has always been faithful to her.) He will even let her have her other lover. He will be a friend to her. Just stay.
No.
She wants perfection or nothing.
Perfection being defined by her feelings.
She will leave.
And leave she does and lives her life alone.
The modern problem.
Freedom to leave. Perfection or nothing. My feelings are all that matter.
And fifty years later we still have not realized that maybe the sexual revolution of the 1960s did not deliver on its promises.
Or take a moment to look up the word love and discover its definition.
Perhaps love is about the other person.
About sacrificing my desires for someone else's good.
About being faithful. About being steadfast. About being true.
No matter what the circumstances.
The irony here is that Gustav is faithful to Gertrud, while she is unfaithful to him. Yet she justifies herself by accusing him of not loving her the way she wants him to.
Gertrud says that "love is all." But she does not have the faintest idea what love is.
No. She has not loved.
She has felt intense longing followed by the pain of not getting what she wants.
Which is what most pop songs are about which have the word "love" in the title. Not the pursuit of another's good, but intense longing followed by the pain of not getting what one wants.
She has rejected men because they were not good enough for her. And she has thrown herself at men who did not love her.
She has only cared about herself.
And her invisible, abstract, idealized image that she calls love.
Frankly, this invisible, abstract, idealize image is her god. Her idol.
And she has given her life to it.
And she is alone.
When all the while there stood a man who was willing to love her.
If she had just been patient.
And not demanded that it be perfect.
And not focused primarily on her own feelings.
And let him.
204 - Gertrud, 1964, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Amor Omnia.
Love is all.
There is nothing else in life but love. Nothing. Nothing else.
That is what Gertrud says. She wrote a poem about it when she was 16. She stands by it in her old age.
She reads the poem to her lifelong friend Axel Nygreh.
Just look at me. / Am I beautiful? / No, but I have loved.
Just look at me. / Am I young? / No, but I have loved.
Just look at me. / Do I live? / No, but I have loved.
Nygreh asks if she regrets her position now that she is old. She says, No. She does not regret it. She stands by it.
Even though she is alone.
Even though she has spent the last half of her life alone.
Because she left the ones who loved her. Or specifically, the man who loved her. The man who married her. The man who wanted to stay with her.
Because he did not make her feel the way she wanted to feel.
Gertrud has lived the modern problem.
It is 1964.
People have started to be liberated.
They can love when they want to and leave when they want to.
Gertrud's own husband Gustav promised her that freedom when they got married. He just never expected her to cash in on it so suddenly.
Gertrud decides to take her freedom.
"Love is patient. Love is kind."
Gertrud is not patient. She is very much impatient.
Her husband works too hard. He spends his time and attention on his job, on money, on social standing, on honor. He does not give her enough time and attention. He does not make her feel the way she wants to feel. She wants all of him or nothing. She refuses to compromise.
So she gives herself to the great musician. Erland Jansson. She will leave with him. He will give her what she wants. They will be together, just the two of them always.
Except that he is a player.
He brags at a party about his having conquered her, and he has already gotten another woman pregnant.
Well, then there is Gabriel Lidman the poet. No, she already had an affair with him, before Gustav. He does not mean the same thing to her as Jansson does.
Gertrud's husband Gustav begs her to stay. He will be faithful to her. (He has always been faithful to her.) He will even let her have her other lover. He will be a friend to her. Just stay.
No.
She wants perfection or nothing.
Perfection being defined by her feelings.
She will leave.
And leave she does and lives her life alone.
The modern problem.
Freedom to leave. Perfection or nothing. My feelings are all that matter.
And fifty years later we still have not realized that maybe the sexual revolution of the 1960s did not deliver on its promises.
Or take a moment to look up the word love and discover its definition.
Perhaps love is about the other person.
About sacrificing my desires for someone else's good.
About being faithful. About being steadfast. About being true.
No matter what the circumstances.
The irony here is that Gustav is faithful to Gertrud, while she is unfaithful to him. Yet she justifies herself by accusing him of not loving her the way she wants him to.
Gertrud says that "love is all." But she does not have the faintest idea what love is.
No. She has not loved.
She has felt intense longing followed by the pain of not getting what she wants.
Which is what most pop songs are about which have the word "love" in the title. Not the pursuit of another's good, but intense longing followed by the pain of not getting what one wants.
She has rejected men because they were not good enough for her. And she has thrown herself at men who did not love her.
She has only cared about herself.
And her invisible, abstract, idealized image that she calls love.
Frankly, this invisible, abstract, idealize image is her god. Her idol.
And she has given her life to it.
And she is alone.
When all the while there stood a man who was willing to love her.
If she had just been patient.
And not demanded that it be perfect.
And not focused primarily on her own feelings.
And let him.
Saturday, July 22, 2017
203 - Ordet, 1955, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Saturday, July 22, 2017
203 - Ordet, 1955, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
If someone you loved were to die, would you have faith to believe God to raise her from the dead?
If you have faith, you shall see the glory of God.
So says one of the family members. Let us see which one.
Morten, the patriarch, has faith. But he is not sure he has that much faith. Or that kind of faith. He just wants to live a good life on the farm and raise his children and grandchildren.
Mikkel, his eldest son, does not have faith. And he says so.
Mikkel is married to Inger, who lives with the family. Morten is a widower, so Inger is the woman of the house. She and Mikkel have two children and are pregnant with their third.
Inger has great faith. In fact, she might be the one who could believe God to raise a loved one from the dead.
The only problem is that she is the one who dies.
Johannes, the middle son, has faith. But his faith is a little off. It is so off that he has started to believe that he is Jesus Christ himself.
Perhaps that is not exactly what Jesus meant in John 11:40 when he said, "If you should believe, you will see the glory of God." Which Johannes quotes when he poses the question that we have here on the table.
Jesus actually poses the quotation as a question. Just before saying, "Lazarus, come forth." At least Johannes understands the context of the quotation. And he is all in.
He walks the farm preaching, and in fact begins with beautiful passages of scripture. Until he begins to deviate into nonsense. Or at least, what the rest of us think is nonsense. Because he is mad and we are sane.
Johannes has been studying Soren Kierkegaard a little too long. It has made him mad.
Kierkegaard is Denmark's greatest philosopher and the father of Existentialism. Yet Dreyer has Kierkegaard's student go mad! Or maybe Kaj Munk did, who wrote the play on which this film was based.
I read Either/Or twice when I was in grad school. I hope I am okay.
But enough about Kierkegaard. Let us continue.
Anders is the youngest son. He does not really come into the discussion of having faith. He has love. Love for Anne. He loves Anne, and he wants to marry her.
But his father says No to him. Absolutely not. You need to wait for the right woman to come along.
Until Anne's father, Peter Petersen the Tailor also says No to him. Then Morten changes his tune. What! My son is not good enough for your daughter? How dare you make such a claim! My son can marry your daughter if he wants to, and you may not ever say otherwise.
Morten is partially incensed because Peter the Tailor wants to convert him--from Morten's branch of Christianity, which is joyful and life-affirming--to Peter's branch of Christianity, which Morten sees as dour and life-negating.
Regardless of all that, this film is extraordinary. It has nothing to do with Bonanza, but because it features a widower and his three adult sons, it is fun to compare it.
It is about the details of ordinary life. With each character fully drawn.
We are back inside the house, like in Master of the House. And we are watching a family live.
And Dreyer is not afraid to show everything. The details. The beliefs. The faults. The struggles. The failures.
Or to place The Word (the meaning of Ordet) in the mouth of the madman.
Who reasons, "Is it crazy to wish for life?"
They cannot deny him. So they let him speak. And he speaks.
In the name of Jesus Christ I bid thee arise.
To which we find out what follows.
203 - Ordet, 1955, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
If someone you loved were to die, would you have faith to believe God to raise her from the dead?
If you have faith, you shall see the glory of God.
So says one of the family members. Let us see which one.
Morten, the patriarch, has faith. But he is not sure he has that much faith. Or that kind of faith. He just wants to live a good life on the farm and raise his children and grandchildren.
Mikkel, his eldest son, does not have faith. And he says so.
Mikkel is married to Inger, who lives with the family. Morten is a widower, so Inger is the woman of the house. She and Mikkel have two children and are pregnant with their third.
Inger has great faith. In fact, she might be the one who could believe God to raise a loved one from the dead.
The only problem is that she is the one who dies.
Johannes, the middle son, has faith. But his faith is a little off. It is so off that he has started to believe that he is Jesus Christ himself.
Perhaps that is not exactly what Jesus meant in John 11:40 when he said, "If you should believe, you will see the glory of God." Which Johannes quotes when he poses the question that we have here on the table.
Jesus actually poses the quotation as a question. Just before saying, "Lazarus, come forth." At least Johannes understands the context of the quotation. And he is all in.
He walks the farm preaching, and in fact begins with beautiful passages of scripture. Until he begins to deviate into nonsense. Or at least, what the rest of us think is nonsense. Because he is mad and we are sane.
Johannes has been studying Soren Kierkegaard a little too long. It has made him mad.
Kierkegaard is Denmark's greatest philosopher and the father of Existentialism. Yet Dreyer has Kierkegaard's student go mad! Or maybe Kaj Munk did, who wrote the play on which this film was based.
I read Either/Or twice when I was in grad school. I hope I am okay.
But enough about Kierkegaard. Let us continue.
Anders is the youngest son. He does not really come into the discussion of having faith. He has love. Love for Anne. He loves Anne, and he wants to marry her.
But his father says No to him. Absolutely not. You need to wait for the right woman to come along.
Until Anne's father, Peter Petersen the Tailor also says No to him. Then Morten changes his tune. What! My son is not good enough for your daughter? How dare you make such a claim! My son can marry your daughter if he wants to, and you may not ever say otherwise.
Morten is partially incensed because Peter the Tailor wants to convert him--from Morten's branch of Christianity, which is joyful and life-affirming--to Peter's branch of Christianity, which Morten sees as dour and life-negating.
Regardless of all that, this film is extraordinary. It has nothing to do with Bonanza, but because it features a widower and his three adult sons, it is fun to compare it.
It is about the details of ordinary life. With each character fully drawn.
We are back inside the house, like in Master of the House. And we are watching a family live.
And Dreyer is not afraid to show everything. The details. The beliefs. The faults. The struggles. The failures.
Or to place The Word (the meaning of Ordet) in the mouth of the madman.
Who reasons, "Is it crazy to wish for life?"
They cannot deny him. So they let him speak. And he speaks.
In the name of Jesus Christ I bid thee arise.
To which we find out what follows.
Friday, July 21, 2017
202 - Day of Wrath, 1943, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Friday, July 21, 2017
202 - Day of Wrath, 1943, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
With this movie Dreyer showcases the full high-contrast expressionistic lighting style that he has been approaching with the previous films we have seen.
It is 1943. Eleven years after his last feature film, yesterday's Vampyr (1932). We are in the period of American film noir and its influence in Europe. We are in the period of Nazi occupation. Of Denmark. World War II. Nazis have been occupying Denmark for three years. Denmark Resistance has been fighting back for over a year. People are afraid. People are paranoid.
It is 1623. Witches are being burned at the stake. Not in Salem, Massachusetts (where none were ever burned, but hanged). But in Denmark. Where potentially up to one thousand were burned over a two-hundred year period. People are afraid. People are paranoid.
Herlot's Marte is accused of witchcraft. She hides in Anne's house. Anne is the young wife of Absalon, a sober-minded minister who is much older than her. Herlot's Marte is captured. As she is being burned at the stake she accuses Anne's mother of being a witch. They demand she give them a name, so she gives them a name. Anne's mother is already dead. Herlot's Marte is tied to the top of a ladder, and the ladder is pushed over into the flames.
Absalon's son Martin comes home. He is Anne's age. He and Anne spend time together. A lot of time. She falls in love with him. He falls in love with her.
Absalon's mother Merete has been watching all along. She condemns Anne. She condemned Anne's mother. She condemned Herlot's Marte. She is good at condemning.
She claims a witch has the power to speak death to someone. Absalon confronts Anne. Anne admits she loves his son Martin. Then she speaks death to him.
And something happens to Absalon. Something bad happens.
Oh, Absalon! Absalon!
My son. My son.
The film is a beautiful romantic drama. A suspenseful horror story. A paranoid fever dream. A stylistic feast.
And those clothes.
If there is any advice I can give to you--
Do not mess with Absalon's mother.
202 - Day of Wrath, 1943, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
With this movie Dreyer showcases the full high-contrast expressionistic lighting style that he has been approaching with the previous films we have seen.
It is 1943. Eleven years after his last feature film, yesterday's Vampyr (1932). We are in the period of American film noir and its influence in Europe. We are in the period of Nazi occupation. Of Denmark. World War II. Nazis have been occupying Denmark for three years. Denmark Resistance has been fighting back for over a year. People are afraid. People are paranoid.
It is 1623. Witches are being burned at the stake. Not in Salem, Massachusetts (where none were ever burned, but hanged). But in Denmark. Where potentially up to one thousand were burned over a two-hundred year period. People are afraid. People are paranoid.
Herlot's Marte is accused of witchcraft. She hides in Anne's house. Anne is the young wife of Absalon, a sober-minded minister who is much older than her. Herlot's Marte is captured. As she is being burned at the stake she accuses Anne's mother of being a witch. They demand she give them a name, so she gives them a name. Anne's mother is already dead. Herlot's Marte is tied to the top of a ladder, and the ladder is pushed over into the flames.
Absalon's son Martin comes home. He is Anne's age. He and Anne spend time together. A lot of time. She falls in love with him. He falls in love with her.
Absalon's mother Merete has been watching all along. She condemns Anne. She condemned Anne's mother. She condemned Herlot's Marte. She is good at condemning.
She claims a witch has the power to speak death to someone. Absalon confronts Anne. Anne admits she loves his son Martin. Then she speaks death to him.
And something happens to Absalon. Something bad happens.
Oh, Absalon! Absalon!
My son. My son.
And those clothes.
If there is any advice I can give to you--
Do not mess with Absalon's mother.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
201 - Vampyr (The Dream of Allan Gray), 1932, Germany, France. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
201 - Vampyr (The Dream of Allan Gray), 1932, Germany, France. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Carl Theodor Dreyer has some range. This is our third of his films to watch, and all of them could have been made by a different director.
Master of the House (1925) was a chamber drama with a moral. It was filmed on a sound stage with a built house with removable walls. Watching it was like watching a play.
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) was a biographical drama of a Christian martyr, filmed in style unique to itself. It was like watching a surrealist fantasy in close-ups and Dutch angles.
Vampyr (1932) is a horror film playing with reality and subjectivity. It was filmed on location. It is like watching a story that moves back and forth between a third-person and a first-person narrative, between objective reality and subjective daydreams, without its always being clear which is which.
Dreyer was prepared to release Vampyr nearly a year before he did, but producers delayed it in order to release a couple of popular American films first: Dracula and Frankenstein. Dreyer was reportedly not happy, as he felt those two films took away some of his audience.
In our story Allan Gray takes a room at the inn. He has studied the occult, so his mind is susceptible to what is about to occur.
He sees strange things happening at night as he attempts to go to sleep.
Then a strange man enters the room and leaves him with a mysterious small bundled tied up with string. And he writes, "Open upon my death." And he leaves.
Later Gray finds himself walking in the half-light. A shadow will move on its own. Then it will attach itself to a person that it matches and follow that person as we would expect it to.
Gray follows.
He meets an old woman. We might learn later that she is a vampire.
He meets an old man. We might discover him to be a doctor. And for that matter, he might be a vampire too.
He will at least ask for Gray's blood. In a transfusion. To save a woman's life, of course. And Gray will give it to him.
Was that a good idea?
Oh, there will be a showdown.
Have you seen Peter Weir's film Witness (1985), starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis? Consider the ending of that film, and consider that it may have happened here first.
Dreyer once said, "All good films are characterized by a rhythmic tension."
He described one type of rhythmic tension as that which happens when a character moves, and one changes either the lighting or the camera or both. The background itself moves as when we watch a real person moving and we follow him with our eyes.
He described another kind of rhythmic tension as a "succession of images," as with that which happens during a stage play when stage hands move sets around and there is as much action off stage as on.
And here, he will do things off-screen, especially sounds.
But what will happen to Allan Gray?
Will it be good? Or will it be bad?
Let us find out.
And please bring your iron stake with you.
201 - Vampyr (The Dream of Allan Gray), 1932, Germany, France. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Carl Theodor Dreyer has some range. This is our third of his films to watch, and all of them could have been made by a different director.
Master of the House (1925) was a chamber drama with a moral. It was filmed on a sound stage with a built house with removable walls. Watching it was like watching a play.
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) was a biographical drama of a Christian martyr, filmed in style unique to itself. It was like watching a surrealist fantasy in close-ups and Dutch angles.
Vampyr (1932) is a horror film playing with reality and subjectivity. It was filmed on location. It is like watching a story that moves back and forth between a third-person and a first-person narrative, between objective reality and subjective daydreams, without its always being clear which is which.
Dreyer was prepared to release Vampyr nearly a year before he did, but producers delayed it in order to release a couple of popular American films first: Dracula and Frankenstein. Dreyer was reportedly not happy, as he felt those two films took away some of his audience.
In our story Allan Gray takes a room at the inn. He has studied the occult, so his mind is susceptible to what is about to occur.
He sees strange things happening at night as he attempts to go to sleep.
Then a strange man enters the room and leaves him with a mysterious small bundled tied up with string. And he writes, "Open upon my death." And he leaves.
Later Gray finds himself walking in the half-light. A shadow will move on its own. Then it will attach itself to a person that it matches and follow that person as we would expect it to.
Gray follows.
He meets an old woman. We might learn later that she is a vampire.
He meets an old man. We might discover him to be a doctor. And for that matter, he might be a vampire too.
He will at least ask for Gray's blood. In a transfusion. To save a woman's life, of course. And Gray will give it to him.
Was that a good idea?
Oh, there will be a showdown.
Have you seen Peter Weir's film Witness (1985), starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis? Consider the ending of that film, and consider that it may have happened here first.
Dreyer once said, "All good films are characterized by a rhythmic tension."
He described one type of rhythmic tension as that which happens when a character moves, and one changes either the lighting or the camera or both. The background itself moves as when we watch a real person moving and we follow him with our eyes.
He described another kind of rhythmic tension as a "succession of images," as with that which happens during a stage play when stage hands move sets around and there is as much action off stage as on.
And here, he will do things off-screen, especially sounds.
But what will happen to Allan Gray?
Will it be good? Or will it be bad?
Let us find out.
And please bring your iron stake with you.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
200 - The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928, France. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
200 - The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928, France. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
The Passion of Joan of Arc is one of the most famous silent films in film history.
For many who know of Dreyer, it is the only film by him that they know.
It is the kind of film you may have watched in elementary, junior high, or high school, shown by teachers who themselves had never studied film in a formal way.
And you may have thought it to be odd, strange, or over-the-top with its seemingly bare set (set! not sets), its constant vignetted frame, the Dutch angles (where the camera is tilted up and rotated at a diagonal), the many close-ups, the strange cuts, and the big bug-eyed faces.
If you further study film, you discover that this film breaks all kinds of rules. In fact, in some ways it does not even seek to keep them in the first place.
Such as matching one shot to the next, for example. Are they even looking at one another when they speak?
And if you do not know, you might think that the film seems so odd because it is old, because it was released in 1928, and maybe films were just that strange back then.
But 1928 is actually late in the game, and it is late for Dreyer himself, let alone the industry. It was his thirty-third film to be involved with and his eighth film to direct.
He had already made outdoor epics in the mode of the American D.W. Griffith, and he had already made chamber dramas in the mode of the German kammerspielfilm.
If you are looking at keeping cinematic rules, then this is a step backwards.
Have we mentioned that Dreyer is not concerned with keeping the rules? At least not all of them.
He is definitely going after a distinctive style here. Maybe even one that will mark the film as unique.
He is reported to have researched the subject thoroughly and to have insisted on precise authenticity of story, dialogue, architecture, and clothing.
If so--if the historical Joan really was so afraid during the trial, as she is depicted in the film--then how does that fit in with her being fearless as a teenage girl leading grown men into battle?
It can happen.
The mighty prophet Elijah cowered before Jezebel.
There is much to say about this one, but we shall stop there for now.
Watch the movie.
Let me know what you think.
This film's influence on films that followed is immeasurable.
200 - The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928, France. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
The Passion of Joan of Arc is one of the most famous silent films in film history.
For many who know of Dreyer, it is the only film by him that they know.
It is the kind of film you may have watched in elementary, junior high, or high school, shown by teachers who themselves had never studied film in a formal way.
And you may have thought it to be odd, strange, or over-the-top with its seemingly bare set (set! not sets), its constant vignetted frame, the Dutch angles (where the camera is tilted up and rotated at a diagonal), the many close-ups, the strange cuts, and the big bug-eyed faces.
If you further study film, you discover that this film breaks all kinds of rules. In fact, in some ways it does not even seek to keep them in the first place.
Such as matching one shot to the next, for example. Are they even looking at one another when they speak?
And if you do not know, you might think that the film seems so odd because it is old, because it was released in 1928, and maybe films were just that strange back then.
But 1928 is actually late in the game, and it is late for Dreyer himself, let alone the industry. It was his thirty-third film to be involved with and his eighth film to direct.
He had already made outdoor epics in the mode of the American D.W. Griffith, and he had already made chamber dramas in the mode of the German kammerspielfilm.
If you are looking at keeping cinematic rules, then this is a step backwards.
Have we mentioned that Dreyer is not concerned with keeping the rules? At least not all of them.
He is definitely going after a distinctive style here. Maybe even one that will mark the film as unique.
He is reported to have researched the subject thoroughly and to have insisted on precise authenticity of story, dialogue, architecture, and clothing.
If so--if the historical Joan really was so afraid during the trial, as she is depicted in the film--then how does that fit in with her being fearless as a teenage girl leading grown men into battle?
It can happen.
The mighty prophet Elijah cowered before Jezebel.
There is much to say about this one, but we shall stop there for now.
Watch the movie.
Let me know what you think.
This film's influence on films that followed is immeasurable.
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
199 - Master of the House, 1925, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
199 - Master of the House, 1925, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife.
Carl Theodor Dreyer is a giant of early cinema. His imprint is seen on many directors who came after him, and his influence is seen in many of their films.
By the time he made Master of the House (properly, Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife) in 1925, he was already established as a major filmmaker in a Europe, a kind of Danish D. W. Griffith.
Dreyer had made outdoor epics already, and had worked in other countries, such as Germany, but now he turned his eyes on a household drama.
Nearly all action takes place in two rooms of the house.
Victor, the husband, is irritable and demanding. Ida, the wife, bears up under his cruelty and works for him. The children help.
They were happy once. And he was good to her. But he lost his business and was broken. Now he goes through the motions of awakening each morning, dressing, and going to work. But he has no job. So he resorts to barking orders at everyone and making the family's lives miserable.
Ida is patient with Victor and continues to love him. But she is dying inside. His scolding is slowly killing her.
Enter Mads.
Mads was Victor's own nanny when he was a boy. And she is still in his life as an old woman. She shows up to save the day.
She cannot take any more of Victor's abusive behavior towards Ida, so she gets Ida's mother involved and they take Ida away to live with her mother first and then somewhere secret, in order to get away from Victor and in order to heal.
Victor is not happy when he discovers that Ida has left him.
But Mads makes it clear that he goal is to make Victor stand in the corner--as he has done to his own son--and that she will do whatever it takes to make it happen.
Mads begins to make demands on Victor, essentially requiring him to do his wife's chores. She stays on him like a drill sergeant in boot camp.
And we watch to see if she will win her goal.
Can she make Victor stand in the corner? Can she make Victor want to change and do whatever it takes to win Ida back?
Master of the House was filmed in crisp black and white. The rooms were constructed on a soundstage, using the architecture of a real house as a model. The walls were built to move so that the camera could move in and get close to the actors. Close-ups were made by applying a vignette to the frame (a black matte around the edges with a circle cut out in the middle) rather than by moving in closer. Dreyer worked with established actors.
The film can be seen as a comedy and as a drama.
And as a cautionary tale.
Will Victor learn his lesson?
Will Mads succeed in getting him to stand in the corner?
And repent of the way he has treated his wife?
And change?
And honor her?
Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife.
199 - Master of the House, 1925, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife.
Carl Theodor Dreyer is a giant of early cinema. His imprint is seen on many directors who came after him, and his influence is seen in many of their films.
By the time he made Master of the House (properly, Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife) in 1925, he was already established as a major filmmaker in a Europe, a kind of Danish D. W. Griffith.
Dreyer had made outdoor epics already, and had worked in other countries, such as Germany, but now he turned his eyes on a household drama.
Nearly all action takes place in two rooms of the house.
Victor, the husband, is irritable and demanding. Ida, the wife, bears up under his cruelty and works for him. The children help.
They were happy once. And he was good to her. But he lost his business and was broken. Now he goes through the motions of awakening each morning, dressing, and going to work. But he has no job. So he resorts to barking orders at everyone and making the family's lives miserable.
Ida is patient with Victor and continues to love him. But she is dying inside. His scolding is slowly killing her.
Enter Mads.
Mads was Victor's own nanny when he was a boy. And she is still in his life as an old woman. She shows up to save the day.
She cannot take any more of Victor's abusive behavior towards Ida, so she gets Ida's mother involved and they take Ida away to live with her mother first and then somewhere secret, in order to get away from Victor and in order to heal.
Victor is not happy when he discovers that Ida has left him.
But Mads makes it clear that he goal is to make Victor stand in the corner--as he has done to his own son--and that she will do whatever it takes to make it happen.
Mads begins to make demands on Victor, essentially requiring him to do his wife's chores. She stays on him like a drill sergeant in boot camp.
And we watch to see if she will win her goal.
Can she make Victor stand in the corner? Can she make Victor want to change and do whatever it takes to win Ida back?
Master of the House was filmed in crisp black and white. The rooms were constructed on a soundstage, using the architecture of a real house as a model. The walls were built to move so that the camera could move in and get close to the actors. Close-ups were made by applying a vignette to the frame (a black matte around the edges with a circle cut out in the middle) rather than by moving in closer. Dreyer worked with established actors.
The film can be seen as a comedy and as a drama.
And as a cautionary tale.
Will Victor learn his lesson?
Will Mads succeed in getting him to stand in the corner?
And repent of the way he has treated his wife?
And change?
And honor her?
Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife.
Monday, July 17, 2017
198 - The Phantom Carriage, 1921, Sweden. Dir. Victor Sjostrom.
Monday, July 17, 2017
198 - The Phantom Carriage, 1921, Sweden. Dir. Victor Sjostrom.
New Year's Eve.
Nearly midnight.
The first one to die will become the next year's Grim Reaper.
And he will collect all the souls for the next year.
Georges is the current Grim Reaper. He died first last year. He has spent the year collecting souls. While driving--
The Phantom Carriage.
Edit is dying at the Salvation Army.
David Holm is dying at the graveyard. He and two drinking buddies are drinking.
Who will die first?
Edit asks to see David. She knows him. She tried to help him. On more than one occasion.
David used to be a family man. He had a wife named Anna and two children. And a brother. He had a job. He was young and responsible.
Then he met Georges. And Georges led him astray. The two of them used to tear up the town. And they were cruel to their wives and children.
David once went to jail. Then his brother went to jail. Then his wife Anna left him, and in searching for her he found his way to the Salvation Army.
The first time he came, Edit showed him kindness. She prayed for him and mended his coat. She asked him to return in one year and tell him about the blessings that he had received, for which she had prayed.
Edit did see David again, at a bar, where she found him with a man named Gustafsson, and when David and Gustafsson came to the Salvation Army meeting, Gustafsson gave his life to God.
David, no. But his separated wife Anna was there, and at Edit's behest, she gave him another chance. He repaid her by breaking through the kitchen door with an axe.
Now it is New Year's Eve.
Edit is dying.
David is dying.
Who will die first?
Edit asks to see David Holm. She wants to speak to him before she dies. To tell him one more time that God loves him. And to apologize for encouraging him and Anna to reconcile.
Gustafson works with her now. He goes to get David. He finds David at the graveyard with his drinking buddies. He asks him to come to Edit.
But a fight breaks out. And David is hit over the head with a glass bottle.
And dies.
Georges arrives.
Dressed as the Grim Reaper.
In the Phantom Carriage.
When he discovers that David will take his place, he feels awful. He is the one who had led David into a life of sin.
Now David is dead. Dead like him. And will have to spend the next year collecting souls.
David resists him.
But David cannot resist The Grim Reaper.
Georges takes him.
Edit will be next.
Georges drives The Phantom Carriage to Edit.
Edit begs Georges to let her see David. Georges will not take Edit anyway. When she dies, it will be David's turn to take her soul.
Georges lets Edit see David. Edit apologizes to David, even though she did nothing wrong. David repents.
David calls upon the name of Jesus Christ.
David does not die.
David lives.
David returns to Anna. At first she resists. But he convinces her that he has changed. That he is saved. She was about to take poison. But he has arrived just in time.
The family is saved.
The family is restored.
The family is reunited.
The Phantom Carriage is categorized as a horror movie.
But it is a ghost story.
With a moral lesson.
That preaches the Gospel.
It is one of the most influential films of the silent era. And its impact is felt today.
Bergman himself took the character of The Grim Reaper for his world classic The Seventh Seal.
Kubrick borrowed the axe through the kitchen door for The Shining.
Sjostrom himself later acted in Bergman's film Wild Strawberries (1957), thirty-six years later.
And Sjostrom's DP Julius Jaenzon further developed his own technique of double exposure to create the eerie ghostlike effect of The Phantom Carriage. By using quadruple exposure.
Using a hand-cranked camera in which each superimposed take had to be cranked at precisely the same rate as its predecessor to make it match.
On controlled sets in the studio, which Sjostrom had built to resemble the town of Landskrona, where Lagerlof had set the story and where she had wanted it filmed.
Making the carriage and driver appear as translucent images that move across the screen, before some objects and behind others.
In one scene the carriage moves out onto the sea. And the Grim Reaper (Georges) goes down under water and collects a fisherman who drowned and puts him in the carriage.
In another scene David as a spirit separates from his body to talk to Georges and to try to resist him. Georges of course succeeds in taking David and putting him in the carriage.
And we should note that the novelist who wrote the novel (Korkarlen) on which this film was based, Selma Lagerlof, won the 1909 Nobel Prize for Literature. The story's flashbacks, with their moralizing influence, are reminiscent of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
Victor Sjostrom himself played the role of David.
The success of The Phantom Carriage was so great that in 1924 Victor Sjostrom would be invited to Hollywood, where he worked for Goldwyn and MGM, and where he directed actors such as Lon Chaney and Lillian Gish.
His colleague Mauritz Stiller came with him and worked for Paramount.
And so did the actress whom Stiller discovered, Greta Gustafsson.
She made just a few films in Sweden and one in Germany.
When she came to America she changed her name.
To Greta Garbo.
198 - The Phantom Carriage, 1921, Sweden. Dir. Victor Sjostrom.
New Year's Eve.
Nearly midnight.
The first one to die will become the next year's Grim Reaper.
And he will collect all the souls for the next year.
Georges is the current Grim Reaper. He died first last year. He has spent the year collecting souls. While driving--
The Phantom Carriage.
Edit is dying at the Salvation Army.
David Holm is dying at the graveyard. He and two drinking buddies are drinking.
Who will die first?
Edit asks to see David. She knows him. She tried to help him. On more than one occasion.
David used to be a family man. He had a wife named Anna and two children. And a brother. He had a job. He was young and responsible.
Then he met Georges. And Georges led him astray. The two of them used to tear up the town. And they were cruel to their wives and children.
David once went to jail. Then his brother went to jail. Then his wife Anna left him, and in searching for her he found his way to the Salvation Army.
The first time he came, Edit showed him kindness. She prayed for him and mended his coat. She asked him to return in one year and tell him about the blessings that he had received, for which she had prayed.
Edit did see David again, at a bar, where she found him with a man named Gustafsson, and when David and Gustafsson came to the Salvation Army meeting, Gustafsson gave his life to God.
David, no. But his separated wife Anna was there, and at Edit's behest, she gave him another chance. He repaid her by breaking through the kitchen door with an axe.
Now it is New Year's Eve.
Edit is dying.
David is dying.
Who will die first?
Edit asks to see David Holm. She wants to speak to him before she dies. To tell him one more time that God loves him. And to apologize for encouraging him and Anna to reconcile.
Gustafson works with her now. He goes to get David. He finds David at the graveyard with his drinking buddies. He asks him to come to Edit.
But a fight breaks out. And David is hit over the head with a glass bottle.
And dies.
Georges arrives.
Dressed as the Grim Reaper.
In the Phantom Carriage.
When he discovers that David will take his place, he feels awful. He is the one who had led David into a life of sin.
Now David is dead. Dead like him. And will have to spend the next year collecting souls.
David resists him.
But David cannot resist The Grim Reaper.
Georges takes him.
Edit will be next.
Georges drives The Phantom Carriage to Edit.
Edit begs Georges to let her see David. Georges will not take Edit anyway. When she dies, it will be David's turn to take her soul.
Georges lets Edit see David. Edit apologizes to David, even though she did nothing wrong. David repents.
David calls upon the name of Jesus Christ.
David does not die.
David lives.
David returns to Anna. At first she resists. But he convinces her that he has changed. That he is saved. She was about to take poison. But he has arrived just in time.
The family is saved.
The family is restored.
The family is reunited.
The Phantom Carriage is categorized as a horror movie.
But it is a ghost story.
With a moral lesson.
That preaches the Gospel.
It is one of the most influential films of the silent era. And its impact is felt today.
Bergman himself took the character of The Grim Reaper for his world classic The Seventh Seal.
Kubrick borrowed the axe through the kitchen door for The Shining.
Sjostrom himself later acted in Bergman's film Wild Strawberries (1957), thirty-six years later.
And Sjostrom's DP Julius Jaenzon further developed his own technique of double exposure to create the eerie ghostlike effect of The Phantom Carriage. By using quadruple exposure.
Using a hand-cranked camera in which each superimposed take had to be cranked at precisely the same rate as its predecessor to make it match.
On controlled sets in the studio, which Sjostrom had built to resemble the town of Landskrona, where Lagerlof had set the story and where she had wanted it filmed.
Making the carriage and driver appear as translucent images that move across the screen, before some objects and behind others.
In one scene the carriage moves out onto the sea. And the Grim Reaper (Georges) goes down under water and collects a fisherman who drowned and puts him in the carriage.
In another scene David as a spirit separates from his body to talk to Georges and to try to resist him. Georges of course succeeds in taking David and putting him in the carriage.
And we should note that the novelist who wrote the novel (Korkarlen) on which this film was based, Selma Lagerlof, won the 1909 Nobel Prize for Literature. The story's flashbacks, with their moralizing influence, are reminiscent of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
Victor Sjostrom himself played the role of David.
The success of The Phantom Carriage was so great that in 1924 Victor Sjostrom would be invited to Hollywood, where he worked for Goldwyn and MGM, and where he directed actors such as Lon Chaney and Lillian Gish.
His colleague Mauritz Stiller came with him and worked for Paramount.
And so did the actress whom Stiller discovered, Greta Gustafsson.
She made just a few films in Sweden and one in Germany.
When she came to America she changed her name.
To Greta Garbo.
Sunday, July 16, 2017
197 - The Stranger, 1991, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
Sunday, July 16, 2017
197 - The Stranger, 1991, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
The Stranger.
No, this is not an adaptation of the 1942 Albert Camus novel.
Nor is it a remake of the 1946 Orson Welles film noir drama.
And while we are listing what it is not, let us add that it has nothing to do with the 1977 Columbia studio album by Billy Joel or its titular song, produced by legendary producer Phil Ramone, the album that gave us the hit singles "Just the Way Your Are," "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "Only the Good Die Young," and "She's Always a Woman," as well as the classics "Everybody Has a Dream," "Vienna," and my favorite, "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant." If only Billy Joel had not quit writing and recording new material. . . . Sigh.
But enough about other Strangers. And other Lovers for that matter.
Let us discuss this Stranger. The Stranger. Also known as Agantuk. The 1991 Bengali film written, produced, and directed by the legendary (that's two legends in one blog article) Satyajit Ray, based on his own short story "The Guest" ("Atithi").
Anila receives a letter. She looks at it while her husband Sudhindra reads the paper. He looks up. He is curious. It could be from your side of the family.
It takes her awhile to read it.
"That's a massive missive." Ha! The translator who wrote the subtitles writes the way I do. Not "long letter." But "massive missive." Touche, translator. Keep up the good work.
It is from her great uncle. The one who left 35 years ago, in 1955, when Anila was two.
Or so he says.
The last anyone heard from him was 22 years ago, in 1968. It is now 1990. Anila has no memories of him.
Sudhindra is immediately suspicious. They have items in the home worth one million rupees. Surely he is coming to scam them.
They discuss what to do. Telegram him we are going on a holiday. No, they decide to let him come. They will keep their guard up.
Uncle Manomohan arrives. It is during the day. Sudhindra is at work. Anila and their son Satyaki receive Manomohan. He is polite, charming, engaging, and entertaining. He seems devout. He speaks impeccable Bengali. He sings. He regales them with stories of his travels. He talks of Coca-Cola at Times Square, Bison paintings in Spain, the Inca civilization, Popeye the Sailor Man. He tells great stories to Satyaki and his friends. How the sun and moon and Earth seem the same sizes during eclipses due to their precise distances from one another. He gives them coins from foreign lands.
He talks of Wanderlust. Anila is won over.
Sudhindra comes home ready to confront. He cannot believe his wife is already taken in.
When he enters Manomohan's guest bedroom, Manomohan wins him over too. Here is my passport, but do not believe it. Anyone could forge a passport. See that I have not unpacked yet. I can be out of here in five minutes. You may ask me to leave at a moment's notice. Take your time. Get to know me. You have every right to be suspicious.
And we're on.
For the rest of the film we watch as Uncle Manomohan seeks to win the trust of the family and their friends, charming us along the way with such great stories. Surely, he has seen the world.
He is so likeable that movie works as a great character drama, regardless of the mystery.
But one of the friends decides to take him on. He challenges him and they speak bluntly. Sudhindra and Anila are embarrassed for their lack of hospitality, but the truth must come out.
And in the end it does.
We find out.
Who is this man?
And the answer is satisfying.
And with that, Satyajit Ray concludes his work.
A marvelous way to end a brilliant career.
197 - The Stranger, 1991, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
The Stranger.
No, this is not an adaptation of the 1942 Albert Camus novel.
Nor is it a remake of the 1946 Orson Welles film noir drama.
And while we are listing what it is not, let us add that it has nothing to do with the 1977 Columbia studio album by Billy Joel or its titular song, produced by legendary producer Phil Ramone, the album that gave us the hit singles "Just the Way Your Are," "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "Only the Good Die Young," and "She's Always a Woman," as well as the classics "Everybody Has a Dream," "Vienna," and my favorite, "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant." If only Billy Joel had not quit writing and recording new material. . . . Sigh.
But enough about other Strangers. And other Lovers for that matter.
Let us discuss this Stranger. The Stranger. Also known as Agantuk. The 1991 Bengali film written, produced, and directed by the legendary (that's two legends in one blog article) Satyajit Ray, based on his own short story "The Guest" ("Atithi").
Anila receives a letter. She looks at it while her husband Sudhindra reads the paper. He looks up. He is curious. It could be from your side of the family.
It takes her awhile to read it.
"That's a massive missive." Ha! The translator who wrote the subtitles writes the way I do. Not "long letter." But "massive missive." Touche, translator. Keep up the good work.
It is from her great uncle. The one who left 35 years ago, in 1955, when Anila was two.
Or so he says.
The last anyone heard from him was 22 years ago, in 1968. It is now 1990. Anila has no memories of him.
Sudhindra is immediately suspicious. They have items in the home worth one million rupees. Surely he is coming to scam them.
They discuss what to do. Telegram him we are going on a holiday. No, they decide to let him come. They will keep their guard up.
Uncle Manomohan arrives. It is during the day. Sudhindra is at work. Anila and their son Satyaki receive Manomohan. He is polite, charming, engaging, and entertaining. He seems devout. He speaks impeccable Bengali. He sings. He regales them with stories of his travels. He talks of Coca-Cola at Times Square, Bison paintings in Spain, the Inca civilization, Popeye the Sailor Man. He tells great stories to Satyaki and his friends. How the sun and moon and Earth seem the same sizes during eclipses due to their precise distances from one another. He gives them coins from foreign lands.
He talks of Wanderlust. Anila is won over.
Sudhindra comes home ready to confront. He cannot believe his wife is already taken in.
When he enters Manomohan's guest bedroom, Manomohan wins him over too. Here is my passport, but do not believe it. Anyone could forge a passport. See that I have not unpacked yet. I can be out of here in five minutes. You may ask me to leave at a moment's notice. Take your time. Get to know me. You have every right to be suspicious.
And we're on.
For the rest of the film we watch as Uncle Manomohan seeks to win the trust of the family and their friends, charming us along the way with such great stories. Surely, he has seen the world.
He is so likeable that movie works as a great character drama, regardless of the mystery.
But one of the friends decides to take him on. He challenges him and they speak bluntly. Sudhindra and Anila are embarrassed for their lack of hospitality, but the truth must come out.
And in the end it does.
We find out.
Who is this man?
And the answer is satisfying.
And with that, Satyajit Ray concludes his work.
A marvelous way to end a brilliant career.
Saturday, July 15, 2017
196 - An Enemy of the People (Ganashatru), 1989, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
Saturday, July 15, 2017
196 - An Enemy of the People (Ganashatru), 1989, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
In 1987 Satyajit Ray received France's highest civilian award, The Legion of Honor. It was given to him by then-French president Francois Mitterand.
In 2017, thirty years later, Ray's most prolific collaborator, Soumitra Chatterjee, will himself receive The Legion of Honor. It was announced on June 10 of this year.
Chatterjee starred in fourteen of Ray's films. We were first introduced to him as Apu in the third installment of The Apu Trilogy. We have now seen Chatterjee in four of Ray's films: The World of Apu (1959), Chaulata (1964), The Home and the World (1984), and now An Enemy of the People (1989).
Yes, this is an adaptation of the 1882 Henrik Ibsen play.
In the play, Dr. Stockmann discovers that the town's public baths are contaminated. The newspaper editor, Hovstad, agrees to publish this information and alert the town, which will make Dr. Stockmann a hero. However, Dr. Stockmann's brother, the town Mayor, fights him in order to protect the town's economy, which depends on the public baths.
Mayor Stockmann first succeeds in changing Hovstad's mind over fears that the newspaper's readers will turn against the paper and that it will loose subscribers. Then he sabotages a meeting that Dr. Stockmann calls, which is intended to communicate directly with the townspeople. By the end of the meeting the town has turned against Dr. Stockmann and branded him an enemy of the people.
By the end of the play, Dr. Stockmann is reduced to standing alone with his family in his assertions.
Our film follows the format of the play. Dr. Gupta discovers that the water in Chandipur is contaminated. There is the beginning of an outbreak of jaundice, or what the medical community calls infective hepatitis, along with other cases of waterborne diseases, such as typhoid and gastroenteritis. He calls the newspaper editor and asks him to print an article about it, and the editor is happy to help.
But Dr. Gupta's brother Nishith gets involved. He is the head of the municipality, and he does not want a scandal. Bhargava's temple, built ten years prior, is a popular draw, and the masses who come there should not be told that their holy water might be contaminated. They would panic. Attendance would plummet. Nishith succeeds in turning both the editor and publisher of Janavarta against Dr. Gupta, as well as sabotaging the public meeting and turning the entire town against him.
The film, however, ends on a note of hope, with Dr. Gupta's family and a few close friends committing to educate the citizens through the distribution of pamphlets and the staging of dramas in the streets. The film begins and ends on a close-up of a doctor's stethoscope on Dr. Gupta's desk.
Satyajit Ray said that he chose a play, which he had never filmed before, because he had been sidelined for a few years due to heart problems and his doctors told him he could film only indoors in the studio and not outside or on location. So he looked for something that could be easily confined to a smaller space.
He had read Ibsen in college and remembered An Enemy of the People, so he reread it and then wrote the script. Filming gave him energy, and he credited his adrenaline with bringing him back to health. He also credited the performances of his actors with turning a 45-day shoot into a 28-day shoot, as he was often satisfied with the first take and moved on without shooting safeties.
An Enemy of the People is not exactly the play that most of us think we remember. We think of it as the noble striving of a good man in the face of the irrational masses--a kind of To Kill a Mockingbird for doctors. However, Dr. Stockmann's motives were not so pure; his methods were not so practical; and his worldview was not so noble.
Dr. Stockmann wanted to publish his report in the newspaper so that he would be regarded as a hero. He was driven by pride and self-serving glory. Critics have noted that he could have also recommended the use of chlorine, a solution which would have been quick, inexpensive, and effective, and which had been known for decades by the time Ibsen wrote his play, but Dr. Stockmann chose rather to take the more controversial and public route, as if to stir up the people on purpose so that he could play the martyr.
Ibsen himself was playing the martyr. He wrote An Enemy of the People as a response to the public's reception to his previous play Ghosts (1881). He took things personally. He wrote emotionally. He felt insulted and he wanted revenge. By couching his feelings in the character of the doctor, he felt he could play the trump card of science and position himself as a righteous man. However, the dialogue Dr. Stockmann uses is not always so rational and not always so generous.
He insults the people. He demeans them. He sees himself as superior and wants others to know it. He despises the common people because they are inferior to him.
And what many people forget--or more likely, never knew in the first place--is that Ibsen believed in eugenics. In fact, his generation of writers--Ibsen, Shaw, Wells, Lawrence--who turned Reason into a god, were willing to believe that they themselves were gods of reason, Nietzsche codifying their justification in his 1883 work Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the concept of the Ubermensch, the Overman, the superior man.
What is eugenics? Breeding people the way you breed dogs, in order to improve their characteristics to create a superior man. Dr. Stockmann explicitly uses this analogy in the play, comparing humans to dogs and preferring poodles over mongrels, preferring himself to the very public he is addressing.
The idea goes all the way back to Plato with his concept of "selective mating." Darwin's theory of natural selection gave it fuller scientific support, and it developed to its ultimate logical application in the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler.
"If we desire a certain type of civilization, we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it." - George Bernard Shaw, On the Rocks, 1933.
Read that again.
Now try to imagine Shaw saying it. In his day, among his peers, it was common. Our memories have retained the good in their work and forgotten the other.
Arthur Miller contributed to our selective memory by adapting the play in the 1950s, eliminating this element.
And Satyajit Ray's film is completely devoid of any of this baggage. He presents Dr. Gupta as the hero that we all thought we remembered. Dr. Gupta has none of the arrogance, superiority, or bad manners that Dr. Stockmann does. Nor does he have contempt for the little man. Dr. Gupta simply wants to help people. There is one moment where he is proud, when he imagines that he will be seen as a hero and he smiles. But this thought does not drive him. He is driven by his work and by his commitment to saving people's lives.
As for the story itself, I have always wondered why we do not follow it to its conclusion. Ibsen and everyone who followed him in adapting the play end it with the good doctor stuck in his banished state, defeated by political intrigue, crushed by mob rule.
But if an epidemic is truly imminent, then will not the good doctor be proved correct and restored to his rank, even if grudgingly and out of necessity?
Think of Jor-El in Superman. He tells the council that the planet is about to be destroyed. They disbelieve him and force him to stand down. He agrees to do nothing, and he and wife Lara send their son Kal-El on a spaceship to escape this doom. Kal-El becomes Superman on Earth.
What if the story stopped right at the moment the council succeeds in forcing Jor-El to stop his predictions.
Jor-El is now an outcast. The End.
Really?
But the destruction of the planet does happen. And Jor-El is justified. And the council is destroyed. And Kal-El goes on to a life of service on his adopted planet.
The same thing is about to happen in An Enemy of the People!
The outbreak will happen. Masses of people will die. The doctor will be vindicated. They will be forced to call him back in a panic to stave off the attack. That would be the story. Ibsen came up short!
But enough about Ibsen. We are here to talk about Ray.
Ray does a fine job with this movie. While its theatrical origins limit its cinematic potential and render it more stagy, it is engaging and well played.
And Ray continues to keep us in awe and admiration.
* * * * *
Dr. Stockmann: . . . Well, isn't that true with all the rest of living creatures? Look at the difference between pedigree and non-pedigree stock. Look at the ordinary barn-door fowl: how much meat is there on a stingy carcass like that? And what sort of eggs does she lay? Any self-respecting crow or rook could lay one almost as big! But now take a pedigree Spanish or Japanese hen--or a good pheasant or a turkey--and then you'll see the difference. Or look at dogs--they're nearer to us human beings in a lot of ways. First, think of an ordinary mongrel--one of those filthy, ragged, plebeian curs that does nothing but run round the streets fouling the doorposts. Then put that mongrel beside a poodle with a pedigree going back through generations of famous ancestors--who's been properly reared, and brought up among soft voices and music. Do you really think the poodle's brain won't have developed quite differently from the mongrel's? You can be sure it will. It's well-bred poodle pubs like that the showman train to do the most incredible tricks--things that an ordinary mongrel could never learn, even if it stood on its head!
A Citizen: Do you want to make dogs of us?
Another: We're not animals, Doctor!
Dr. Stockmann: But bless my soul, that's exactly what you are, my friend--we're the finest animals anyone could wish for . . . though you won't find many pedigree animals even among us. Yes, there's an enormous difference between between the human poodles and the human mongrels. And the amusing thing is that Mr. Hovstad entirely agrees with me--as long as we're talking about four-legged animals!
Hovstad: As far as they're concerned . . .
Dr. Stockmann: All right. But as soon as I apply the argument to two-legged animals, then Mr. Hovstad stops short. He daren't think for himself any longer, or follow the idea to its logical conclusion. No, he turns the whole principle upside-down, and proclaims in the Herald that the barn-door fowl and the mongrel in the alley are just the finest specimens in the menagerie! But that's always the way, so long as the common man will stick in the muck, and won't work his way up to intellectual distinction.
Etc.
196 - An Enemy of the People (Ganashatru), 1989, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
In 1987 Satyajit Ray received France's highest civilian award, The Legion of Honor. It was given to him by then-French president Francois Mitterand.
In 2017, thirty years later, Ray's most prolific collaborator, Soumitra Chatterjee, will himself receive The Legion of Honor. It was announced on June 10 of this year.
Chatterjee starred in fourteen of Ray's films. We were first introduced to him as Apu in the third installment of The Apu Trilogy. We have now seen Chatterjee in four of Ray's films: The World of Apu (1959), Chaulata (1964), The Home and the World (1984), and now An Enemy of the People (1989).
Yes, this is an adaptation of the 1882 Henrik Ibsen play.
In the play, Dr. Stockmann discovers that the town's public baths are contaminated. The newspaper editor, Hovstad, agrees to publish this information and alert the town, which will make Dr. Stockmann a hero. However, Dr. Stockmann's brother, the town Mayor, fights him in order to protect the town's economy, which depends on the public baths.
Mayor Stockmann first succeeds in changing Hovstad's mind over fears that the newspaper's readers will turn against the paper and that it will loose subscribers. Then he sabotages a meeting that Dr. Stockmann calls, which is intended to communicate directly with the townspeople. By the end of the meeting the town has turned against Dr. Stockmann and branded him an enemy of the people.
By the end of the play, Dr. Stockmann is reduced to standing alone with his family in his assertions.
Our film follows the format of the play. Dr. Gupta discovers that the water in Chandipur is contaminated. There is the beginning of an outbreak of jaundice, or what the medical community calls infective hepatitis, along with other cases of waterborne diseases, such as typhoid and gastroenteritis. He calls the newspaper editor and asks him to print an article about it, and the editor is happy to help.
But Dr. Gupta's brother Nishith gets involved. He is the head of the municipality, and he does not want a scandal. Bhargava's temple, built ten years prior, is a popular draw, and the masses who come there should not be told that their holy water might be contaminated. They would panic. Attendance would plummet. Nishith succeeds in turning both the editor and publisher of Janavarta against Dr. Gupta, as well as sabotaging the public meeting and turning the entire town against him.
The film, however, ends on a note of hope, with Dr. Gupta's family and a few close friends committing to educate the citizens through the distribution of pamphlets and the staging of dramas in the streets. The film begins and ends on a close-up of a doctor's stethoscope on Dr. Gupta's desk.
Satyajit Ray said that he chose a play, which he had never filmed before, because he had been sidelined for a few years due to heart problems and his doctors told him he could film only indoors in the studio and not outside or on location. So he looked for something that could be easily confined to a smaller space.
He had read Ibsen in college and remembered An Enemy of the People, so he reread it and then wrote the script. Filming gave him energy, and he credited his adrenaline with bringing him back to health. He also credited the performances of his actors with turning a 45-day shoot into a 28-day shoot, as he was often satisfied with the first take and moved on without shooting safeties.
An Enemy of the People is not exactly the play that most of us think we remember. We think of it as the noble striving of a good man in the face of the irrational masses--a kind of To Kill a Mockingbird for doctors. However, Dr. Stockmann's motives were not so pure; his methods were not so practical; and his worldview was not so noble.
Dr. Stockmann wanted to publish his report in the newspaper so that he would be regarded as a hero. He was driven by pride and self-serving glory. Critics have noted that he could have also recommended the use of chlorine, a solution which would have been quick, inexpensive, and effective, and which had been known for decades by the time Ibsen wrote his play, but Dr. Stockmann chose rather to take the more controversial and public route, as if to stir up the people on purpose so that he could play the martyr.
Ibsen himself was playing the martyr. He wrote An Enemy of the People as a response to the public's reception to his previous play Ghosts (1881). He took things personally. He wrote emotionally. He felt insulted and he wanted revenge. By couching his feelings in the character of the doctor, he felt he could play the trump card of science and position himself as a righteous man. However, the dialogue Dr. Stockmann uses is not always so rational and not always so generous.
He insults the people. He demeans them. He sees himself as superior and wants others to know it. He despises the common people because they are inferior to him.
What is eugenics? Breeding people the way you breed dogs, in order to improve their characteristics to create a superior man. Dr. Stockmann explicitly uses this analogy in the play, comparing humans to dogs and preferring poodles over mongrels, preferring himself to the very public he is addressing.
The idea goes all the way back to Plato with his concept of "selective mating." Darwin's theory of natural selection gave it fuller scientific support, and it developed to its ultimate logical application in the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler.
"If we desire a certain type of civilization, we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it." - George Bernard Shaw, On the Rocks, 1933.
Read that again.
Now try to imagine Shaw saying it. In his day, among his peers, it was common. Our memories have retained the good in their work and forgotten the other.
Arthur Miller contributed to our selective memory by adapting the play in the 1950s, eliminating this element.
And Satyajit Ray's film is completely devoid of any of this baggage. He presents Dr. Gupta as the hero that we all thought we remembered. Dr. Gupta has none of the arrogance, superiority, or bad manners that Dr. Stockmann does. Nor does he have contempt for the little man. Dr. Gupta simply wants to help people. There is one moment where he is proud, when he imagines that he will be seen as a hero and he smiles. But this thought does not drive him. He is driven by his work and by his commitment to saving people's lives.
As for the story itself, I have always wondered why we do not follow it to its conclusion. Ibsen and everyone who followed him in adapting the play end it with the good doctor stuck in his banished state, defeated by political intrigue, crushed by mob rule.
But if an epidemic is truly imminent, then will not the good doctor be proved correct and restored to his rank, even if grudgingly and out of necessity?
Think of Jor-El in Superman. He tells the council that the planet is about to be destroyed. They disbelieve him and force him to stand down. He agrees to do nothing, and he and wife Lara send their son Kal-El on a spaceship to escape this doom. Kal-El becomes Superman on Earth.
What if the story stopped right at the moment the council succeeds in forcing Jor-El to stop his predictions.
Jor-El is now an outcast. The End.
Really?
But the destruction of the planet does happen. And Jor-El is justified. And the council is destroyed. And Kal-El goes on to a life of service on his adopted planet.
The same thing is about to happen in An Enemy of the People!
The outbreak will happen. Masses of people will die. The doctor will be vindicated. They will be forced to call him back in a panic to stave off the attack. That would be the story. Ibsen came up short!
But enough about Ibsen. We are here to talk about Ray.
Ray does a fine job with this movie. While its theatrical origins limit its cinematic potential and render it more stagy, it is engaging and well played.
And Ray continues to keep us in awe and admiration.
* * * * *
Dr. Stockmann: . . . Well, isn't that true with all the rest of living creatures? Look at the difference between pedigree and non-pedigree stock. Look at the ordinary barn-door fowl: how much meat is there on a stingy carcass like that? And what sort of eggs does she lay? Any self-respecting crow or rook could lay one almost as big! But now take a pedigree Spanish or Japanese hen--or a good pheasant or a turkey--and then you'll see the difference. Or look at dogs--they're nearer to us human beings in a lot of ways. First, think of an ordinary mongrel--one of those filthy, ragged, plebeian curs that does nothing but run round the streets fouling the doorposts. Then put that mongrel beside a poodle with a pedigree going back through generations of famous ancestors--who's been properly reared, and brought up among soft voices and music. Do you really think the poodle's brain won't have developed quite differently from the mongrel's? You can be sure it will. It's well-bred poodle pubs like that the showman train to do the most incredible tricks--things that an ordinary mongrel could never learn, even if it stood on its head!
A Citizen: Do you want to make dogs of us?
Another: We're not animals, Doctor!
Dr. Stockmann: But bless my soul, that's exactly what you are, my friend--we're the finest animals anyone could wish for . . . though you won't find many pedigree animals even among us. Yes, there's an enormous difference between between the human poodles and the human mongrels. And the amusing thing is that Mr. Hovstad entirely agrees with me--as long as we're talking about four-legged animals!
Hovstad: As far as they're concerned . . .
Dr. Stockmann: All right. But as soon as I apply the argument to two-legged animals, then Mr. Hovstad stops short. He daren't think for himself any longer, or follow the idea to its logical conclusion. No, he turns the whole principle upside-down, and proclaims in the Herald that the barn-door fowl and the mongrel in the alley are just the finest specimens in the menagerie! But that's always the way, so long as the common man will stick in the muck, and won't work his way up to intellectual distinction.
Etc.
Friday, July 14, 2017
195 - The Home and the World, 1984, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
Friday, July 14, 2017
195 - The Home and the World, 1984, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
A.D. 1907. Bengal.
Did you know women used to choose their own husbands?
Nikhil is talking to his wife Bimala.
She was arranged to marry him when she was a child. She lives, according to tradition, secluded in his palace, kept away from men and the world.
Nikhil loves Bimala.
He knows that she loves him, yet he does not fully know.
How could she know? She has never had a choice.
Nikhil is modern. He wants his wife to be free to choose. Free to choose her own life. Free to choose her own love.
If she is going to love him, he wants it to be from her own will and not out of duty.
He has a friend named Sandip.
Sandip is staying with them on the other side of the palace. Beyond the closed doors of the sunlit stained-glass hallway. Taking advantage of Nikhil's hospitality.
Sandip is the leader of the Swadeshi movement. The Swadeshi want to remove all foreign influence. India has been under British rule. The British Viceroy Lord Curzon has divided the land and placed the Muslims and the Hindus in different sections. Sandip believes he has done so to set them against each other. To keep them divided. To keep them from gaining power. Sandip wants solidarity. Sandip wants revolution.
Nikhil follows a different strategy. He states that Swadeshi is convenient for those who can afford it. They can swear off foreign goods because they can afford to buy only locally made items. But the poor traders at the marketplace rely on foreign goods to survive. If Nikhil were to enforce Sandip's demands, then the poor would have nothing and they would die.
Nikhil also sees that Sandip's methods lead to violence. A schoolboy threw a rock at Bimala's British piano teacher as she was walking to church on a Sunday morning, hitting her in the head and hurting her badly. Sandip's followers are starting bonfires, burning everything foreign. Remember book burning? Sandip himself goes to the market and demands that the traders place their goods in the bonfire. When they resist, he has his boys raid their stalls and burn their goods for them. They file complaint. They resent him. He is hurting them.
Meanwhile, the Muslims are not siding with the Hindus anyway. They have their own way of life. They are not interested in subjecting themselves to Sandip's leadership. And they are certainly not going to stop slaughtering cows to submit to Hindu custom.
Nikhil makes his own speeches. He appeals to people to compromise with one another. To live and let live. To allow for free trade. Free trade of goods both foreign and domestic. And to recognize that true solidarity with the Muslims is to give them the freedom to follow their own ways. Even if it means slaughtering cows.
All of this is happening in the movie.
Yet we are watching are the changes taking place inside Bimala.
A great deal of the film belongs to her.
When she walks through the sunlit stained-glass hallway for the first time, she grows enamored with Sandip. She helps his cause. She grows to love him. Yet she loves her husband too.
What will come of it?
Will the region break out in violence?
Will Sandip's revolution win the day?
Will the men's friendship survive their opposing viewpoints?
Will the marriage survive?
What will Bimala choose?
Sandip will confront Nikhil. "I follow the Bhagavadgita, Nikhil. I am concerned only with the action, not the result. And I consider Ravana to be the hero of Ramayana, not Rama. So I can't accept advice from the followers of Rama."
He is referring to the national epic. Rama is the prince. Ravana is the demon king. Rama is the protagonist. Ravana is the antagonist. Sandip sides with the antagonist.
Ravana kidnaps Rama's wife.
Rama kills Ravana.
Not that Nikhil and Sandip will follow suit. But it is an insight into Sandip's thinking. And to the opposing sides on which these long-time friends have found themselves.
Bimala will point out to Sandip that he smokes foreign cigarettes, observing an incongruity between his principles and his behavior.
He does not apologize.
He says he allows himself this one indulgence. He is hooked and cannot stop himself.
Nikhil would call this convenient.
Ray filmed The Home and the World in beautiful Eastmancolor. Watching it reminds one of watching the latter films of Jean Renoir, with the frame so lushly filled with exquisite production design in vibrant colors. Films such as The Golden Coach (1952), French Cancan (1955), and Elena and Her Men (1956). They were all filmed in Technicolor, but both processes share an affinity for rich and glorious hues.
And one remembers that Ray assisted Renoir when Renoir came to India to film The River (1951), just four years before making his own first film Pather Panchali (1955), and that Ray admired Renoir so much.
Tagore published the novel The Home and the World in 1916. He created the characters of Nikhil and Sandip as representing different personalities. Different points of view. Different solutions to the same problem. Some see Gandhi as being like Sandip, with his insistence on nationalism. Yet his pacifism more closely resembles Nikhil.
At the end of the day, Bimala will make her choice.
She will exercise her own free will.
And one of the sides will win.
At least in the home. If not yet in the world.
195 - The Home and the World, 1984, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
A.D. 1907. Bengal.
Did you know women used to choose their own husbands?
Nikhil is talking to his wife Bimala.
She was arranged to marry him when she was a child. She lives, according to tradition, secluded in his palace, kept away from men and the world.
Nikhil loves Bimala.
He knows that she loves him, yet he does not fully know.
How could she know? She has never had a choice.
Nikhil is modern. He wants his wife to be free to choose. Free to choose her own life. Free to choose her own love.
If she is going to love him, he wants it to be from her own will and not out of duty.
He has a friend named Sandip.
Sandip is staying with them on the other side of the palace. Beyond the closed doors of the sunlit stained-glass hallway. Taking advantage of Nikhil's hospitality.
Sandip is the leader of the Swadeshi movement. The Swadeshi want to remove all foreign influence. India has been under British rule. The British Viceroy Lord Curzon has divided the land and placed the Muslims and the Hindus in different sections. Sandip believes he has done so to set them against each other. To keep them divided. To keep them from gaining power. Sandip wants solidarity. Sandip wants revolution.
Nikhil follows a different strategy. He states that Swadeshi is convenient for those who can afford it. They can swear off foreign goods because they can afford to buy only locally made items. But the poor traders at the marketplace rely on foreign goods to survive. If Nikhil were to enforce Sandip's demands, then the poor would have nothing and they would die.
Nikhil also sees that Sandip's methods lead to violence. A schoolboy threw a rock at Bimala's British piano teacher as she was walking to church on a Sunday morning, hitting her in the head and hurting her badly. Sandip's followers are starting bonfires, burning everything foreign. Remember book burning? Sandip himself goes to the market and demands that the traders place their goods in the bonfire. When they resist, he has his boys raid their stalls and burn their goods for them. They file complaint. They resent him. He is hurting them.
Meanwhile, the Muslims are not siding with the Hindus anyway. They have their own way of life. They are not interested in subjecting themselves to Sandip's leadership. And they are certainly not going to stop slaughtering cows to submit to Hindu custom.
Nikhil makes his own speeches. He appeals to people to compromise with one another. To live and let live. To allow for free trade. Free trade of goods both foreign and domestic. And to recognize that true solidarity with the Muslims is to give them the freedom to follow their own ways. Even if it means slaughtering cows.
All of this is happening in the movie.
Yet we are watching are the changes taking place inside Bimala.
A great deal of the film belongs to her.
When she walks through the sunlit stained-glass hallway for the first time, she grows enamored with Sandip. She helps his cause. She grows to love him. Yet she loves her husband too.
What will come of it?
Will the region break out in violence?
Will Sandip's revolution win the day?
Will the men's friendship survive their opposing viewpoints?
Will the marriage survive?
What will Bimala choose?
Sandip will confront Nikhil. "I follow the Bhagavadgita, Nikhil. I am concerned only with the action, not the result. And I consider Ravana to be the hero of Ramayana, not Rama. So I can't accept advice from the followers of Rama."
He is referring to the national epic. Rama is the prince. Ravana is the demon king. Rama is the protagonist. Ravana is the antagonist. Sandip sides with the antagonist.
Ravana kidnaps Rama's wife.
Rama kills Ravana.
Bimala will point out to Sandip that he smokes foreign cigarettes, observing an incongruity between his principles and his behavior.
He does not apologize.
He says he allows himself this one indulgence. He is hooked and cannot stop himself.
Nikhil would call this convenient.
Ray filmed The Home and the World in beautiful Eastmancolor. Watching it reminds one of watching the latter films of Jean Renoir, with the frame so lushly filled with exquisite production design in vibrant colors. Films such as The Golden Coach (1952), French Cancan (1955), and Elena and Her Men (1956). They were all filmed in Technicolor, but both processes share an affinity for rich and glorious hues.
And one remembers that Ray assisted Renoir when Renoir came to India to film The River (1951), just four years before making his own first film Pather Panchali (1955), and that Ray admired Renoir so much.
Tagore published the novel The Home and the World in 1916. He created the characters of Nikhil and Sandip as representing different personalities. Different points of view. Different solutions to the same problem. Some see Gandhi as being like Sandip, with his insistence on nationalism. Yet his pacifism more closely resembles Nikhil.
At the end of the day, Bimala will make her choice.
She will exercise her own free will.
And one of the sides will win.
At least in the home. If not yet in the world.
Thursday, July 13, 2017
194 - Charulata, 1964, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
Thursday, July 13, 2017
194 - Charulata, 1964, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
The Broken Nest.
Charu sews a monogram. She embroiders a B. Onto a handkerchief. For her husband. Because she loves him.
She hums a name.
Bankim.
The great writer. The novelist. The composer of India's national song.
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.
She looks for a book.
She looks through her opera glasses.
She looks out the window.
She watches a man with a closed umbrella walk outside.
She looks through the room.
A beautiful room. With great wallpaper. And fine furniture.
Charu feels like the furniture.
A kept woman.
A piece of property.
She is bored.
Her husband, Bhupati, a newspaper writer, is concerned about her. He invites his cousin Amal to stay with them.
Amal comes in like a storm.
Amal is a poet.
Bhupati may be a writer, but he is not into literature. He will not be reading Bankim. Or the literary magazines that come to the house. He is political. He has work to do. His uses his newspaper, The Sentinel, to affect social and political change. Not to speak eloquently of flowers and meadows.
Maybe Amal can help her.
Yes.
Amal helps her.
Amal and Charu form a friendship.
They spend days in the garden talking about literature. About their dreams.
Charu is happy. She sings as she swings. She sings a Tagore song, her character being unaware that she herself is a Tagore creation. As this film was based on a Tagore novella.
The film in fact is filled with literary and musical delights.
Before Amal's arrival, Charu played cards idly with her sister-in-law Manda.
Now she has someone with whom to share her heart. Her cousin-in-law Amal.
Amal calls Manda a traditional woman and Charu a modern woman. He encourages Charu. He encourages her to publish. She publishes one of her stories in a literary magazine. One of those magazines that her husband has no time to read.
Her heart grows full.
While in the garden she realizes her feelings. Discovers the love that has arisen in her heart.
But Amal is a good man. Just as Bhupati is a good man. He will not take advantage of Charu any more than Bhupati would want to neglect her.
He leaves.
And Charu's heart is full of his memory. Broken over the loss.
Bhupati comes home to Charu.
And as with the ceiling painting in the Sistine Chapel.
And as with John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn."
And as with Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows.
The frame stops.
Just before their hands meet.
Just before their fingers touch.
And the film ends with pregnant possibilities.
Anyone who has had his heart awakened by literature, or by art, has felt what Charu feels.
The desire to experience. The desire to express. The desire to share.
And the loneliness that arises from having no one with whom to share.
The world may be full of artists. And people who appreciate art. But where are they who will share with me? And why am I alone in my world? And why do those who love me not love what I love--even if only as a way of loving me?
Where is my companion?
We feel for Charu.
We feel for Bhupati too.
He too is a dreamer.
And he who claims not to be a writer makes a living writing about political idealities that will never come to be.
Two people who write. Two people who dream. Two people who write about what they dream.
But who cannot read each other.
And cannot understand.
194 - Charulata, 1964, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
The Broken Nest.
Charu sews a monogram. She embroiders a B. Onto a handkerchief. For her husband. Because she loves him.
She hums a name.
Bankim.
The great writer. The novelist. The composer of India's national song.
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.
She looks for a book.
She looks through her opera glasses.
She looks out the window.
She watches a man with a closed umbrella walk outside.
She looks through the room.
A beautiful room. With great wallpaper. And fine furniture.
Charu feels like the furniture.
A kept woman.
A piece of property.
She is bored.
Her husband, Bhupati, a newspaper writer, is concerned about her. He invites his cousin Amal to stay with them.
Amal comes in like a storm.
Amal is a poet.
Bhupati may be a writer, but he is not into literature. He will not be reading Bankim. Or the literary magazines that come to the house. He is political. He has work to do. His uses his newspaper, The Sentinel, to affect social and political change. Not to speak eloquently of flowers and meadows.
Maybe Amal can help her.
Yes.
Amal helps her.
Amal and Charu form a friendship.
They spend days in the garden talking about literature. About their dreams.
Charu is happy. She sings as she swings. She sings a Tagore song, her character being unaware that she herself is a Tagore creation. As this film was based on a Tagore novella.
The film in fact is filled with literary and musical delights.
Before Amal's arrival, Charu played cards idly with her sister-in-law Manda.
Now she has someone with whom to share her heart. Her cousin-in-law Amal.
Amal calls Manda a traditional woman and Charu a modern woman. He encourages Charu. He encourages her to publish. She publishes one of her stories in a literary magazine. One of those magazines that her husband has no time to read.
Her heart grows full.
While in the garden she realizes her feelings. Discovers the love that has arisen in her heart.
But Amal is a good man. Just as Bhupati is a good man. He will not take advantage of Charu any more than Bhupati would want to neglect her.
He leaves.
And Charu's heart is full of his memory. Broken over the loss.
Bhupati comes home to Charu.
And as with the ceiling painting in the Sistine Chapel.
And as with John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn."
And as with Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows.
The frame stops.
Just before their hands meet.
Just before their fingers touch.
And the film ends with pregnant possibilities.
Anyone who has had his heart awakened by literature, or by art, has felt what Charu feels.
The desire to experience. The desire to express. The desire to share.
And the loneliness that arises from having no one with whom to share.
The world may be full of artists. And people who appreciate art. But where are they who will share with me? And why am I alone in my world? And why do those who love me not love what I love--even if only as a way of loving me?
Where is my companion?
We feel for Charu.
We feel for Bhupati too.
He too is a dreamer.
And he who claims not to be a writer makes a living writing about political idealities that will never come to be.
Two people who write. Two people who dream. Two people who write about what they dream.
But who cannot read each other.
And cannot understand.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
193 - The Big City (Mahanagar), 1963, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
193 - The Big City (Mahanagar), 1963, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
Such a big city. So many jobs.
Subrata and Arati love one another.
They live together with their daughter and son, and with his father and her mother.
Subrata works to provide for the family.
He has a good job at a bank.
However, his income is not enough to feed all of them.
Arati decides to help.
She is impulsive.
She acts out of her heart. She makes quick decisions.
She has never worked before, but she wants to help the family.
So she starts with a company that sells knitting machines. Selling them. Door to door. Making only commission.
Arati rings the doorbell.
The dogs begin to bark.
A man answers the door.
She turns away. She looks back at him.
He asks about her visit.
She shakes her head and walks away. She walks down the street and stops. Collects herself.
Arati is scared. How will she ever be able to sell knitting machines to total strangers?
She tries again.
She asks for the lady of the house. The man lets her in. The lady appears. They have a nice though awkward conversation. Maybe Arati can do this.
Four women have started with the company at the same time. Three of them, including Arati, are Bengali and speak Bengali. One of them, Edith, is Anglo-Indian and speaks English. Each speaks her own language, and each can understand the other.
The boss has a bias against the Anglo-Indian. But he favors Arati.
Before long, Arati is making money.
Enough to buy toys for her children and fruit for her father-in-law on his birthday.
He struggles with the new arrangement. Calcutta is changing, and he has a hard time changing with it.
Subrata's situation grows more difficult when there is a run on the bank where he works. And he loses his job in an instant.
Just in time for Arati not to quit hers, as she was about to do.
Through all the ups and downs, we believe that they are going to be OK. They certainly believe it.
Even when both of them are out of a job.
It is a big city. There are so many jobs.
Subrata and Arati love one another.
193 - The Big City (Mahanagar), 1963, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
Such a big city. So many jobs.
Subrata and Arati love one another.
They live together with their daughter and son, and with his father and her mother.
Subrata works to provide for the family.
He has a good job at a bank.
However, his income is not enough to feed all of them.
Arati decides to help.
She is impulsive.
She acts out of her heart. She makes quick decisions.
She has never worked before, but she wants to help the family.
So she starts with a company that sells knitting machines. Selling them. Door to door. Making only commission.
Arati rings the doorbell.
The dogs begin to bark.
A man answers the door.
She turns away. She looks back at him.
He asks about her visit.
She shakes her head and walks away. She walks down the street and stops. Collects herself.
Arati is scared. How will she ever be able to sell knitting machines to total strangers?
She tries again.
She asks for the lady of the house. The man lets her in. The lady appears. They have a nice though awkward conversation. Maybe Arati can do this.
Four women have started with the company at the same time. Three of them, including Arati, are Bengali and speak Bengali. One of them, Edith, is Anglo-Indian and speaks English. Each speaks her own language, and each can understand the other.
The boss has a bias against the Anglo-Indian. But he favors Arati.
Before long, Arati is making money.
Enough to buy toys for her children and fruit for her father-in-law on his birthday.
He struggles with the new arrangement. Calcutta is changing, and he has a hard time changing with it.
Subrata's situation grows more difficult when there is a run on the bank where he works. And he loses his job in an instant.
Just in time for Arati not to quit hers, as she was about to do.
Through all the ups and downs, we believe that they are going to be OK. They certainly believe it.
Even when both of them are out of a job.
It is a big city. There are so many jobs.
Subrata and Arati love one another.
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