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.