213 - Sawdust and Tinsel, 1953, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
Evening of the Clowns. A Broadside Ballad on Film.
A funny thing happened on the way to the filming.
Cinematographer Goran Strindberg was assigned to lens this film.
He had recently shot Miss Julie for director Alf Sjoberg, an adaptation of the August Strindberg play. Working for Bergman was to be his next job.
But instead he was sent to Hollywood to take a course on a new technology called Cinemascope.
And in his absence they suggested a young cinematographer named Sven Nykvist. Bergman was skeptical. He did not know if he wanted to work with this new person.
But he did, and Nykvist would go on to work with Bergman for decades, shoot more than 115 films, win Oscars for Cries and Whispers (1973) and Fanny and Alexander (1983), end his career with Woody Allen, and be considered one of the greatest and most influential cinematographers of all time.
Goran Strindberg would come back and shoot Barabbas, again for Alf Sjoberg.
And now we begin.
The Cirkus Alberti travels by caravaned wagons through the countryside.
The buggy driver wails.
The bear stands on its haunches in its rolling cage.
Albert awakens beside his lover, Anne. She is played by Harriet Andersson, who played Monika in yesterday's Summer with Monika (1953).
Albert looks down her fully clothed body. He lets her sleep. He climbs out of the compartment and onto the top seat of the carriage. He sits by the driver.
The driver tells him a story.
And in that story we enter another film, a film within a film, an homage to an Eisenstein montage in overexposed and wash-out close-ups. The light hard, white, dead, and without mercy.
She leads a group of men into the water, au natural, splashing and laughing in the cold, wet waves.
Someone goes and tells the clown. Frost. Played by Anders Ek. Your woman Alma is frolicking with the troops.
Clowns are supposed to be humiliated during the circus, as part of the performance. Not in real life.
Frost runs with him to the water. The others follow, likely not so much out of concern as scandal.
Frost strips to his undergarment and wades in. His struggles to lift Alma.
He carries his bare wife on his back like Christ his cross across the bleached and craggy seabanks. The crowd surrounds him, gaping as they go.
Frost falls. Alma scolds the crowds for what they have done to his condition. As if she had no part in it.
We return to the present. Albert and his driver sit asleep, bouncing on the buggy bench, the horses pulling forward on their own.
The circus sets up camp in the new town. The players complain. We are not getting paid and have nothing to eat. Half our costumes are lost. Yet they stay loyal to Albert. They are a family. They stick together.
Albert and Anne dress up in their finest foppery and go to the local theatre, asking to borrow costumes. They find themselves on stage, standing vulnerably before the footlights, begging the artistic director for a hand. He humiliates them. And then concedes.
The show will go on.
Albert is tired and wants to leave the circus. He misses his wife Agda, whom he had not seen in three years. He goes home.
They discuss the past. Agda says he left her. Albert says she refused to go with him. He is jealous. Did she play while he was away? Agda asserts her independence. Things do not work out. Albert returns to the circus.
Enter Frans. Anne is not alone either. Albert has competition. While Albert was with his wife Agda, Frans gave Anne a necklace. She discovers it is fake and takes it to a shop to pawn it. Albert sees her. Later he confronts her. They are on rocky road.
Either things will work out or they will not. Someone will end up with someone or not.
And through the vicissitudes of circumstances, the members of the troupe experience joy and humiliation.
Bergman explores the status of actors and artists, conflict between class and the common, and the effects of humiliation.
And the show goes on.
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