Bergman double bill!
The Touch : 6/10
Maybe the closest to straight up romantic drama from Bergman that I've seen to date.
The Touch is the dissection of an affair; a three-hander in which Bibi Andersson plays Karin, the frustrated wife of doctor Andreas Vergerus (Max Von Sydow). Andreas is a loving husband and father, but Karin craves excitement and a different kind of attention. When she meets American archaeologist David at the invitation of her husband, he rashly declares that he fell in love with her the first time he saw her (crying over her recently deceased mother in a hospital room!) and she willingly embarks down a path of intrigue and infatuation.
This was Bergman's only English language film and the closest he came to being lured by Hollywood. It's far from Hollywood in style though; the muted Eastmancolor palette and low-key, but precise mise en scène giving it a distinctly European art house flavour. Though the film is told entirely from Karin's perspective, Elliott Gould is probably the main draw (despite being a bit of a fish out of water) - his portrayal of the immature, narcissistic David is compelling: he's prone to snap and a lot of the enjoyment of his performance is not knowing what fierce mood is going to strike next. He's not a sympathetic character though and despite her charm, Karin is also frustratingly self-centred and irresponsible, hurting all those around her, including her own children, just to satisfy her own desires.
The three characters, especially David and Karin, do outstay their welcome in what begins to seem like an over-long film towards the end. David's final appearance feels unnecessary (oh, here we go again) and it's almost as if Bergman has had enough of his characters too by this point. The last scene almost cuts mid-sentence and it's as if Bergman just went 'ah, **** it' and told everyone to down tools and call it a wrap. Maybe that's the point though - that there are no nice neat endings in real life, as dysfunctional relationships are invariably sustained past the point of no return.
Hour of the Wolf : 9/10
If
The Touch was the closest Bergman came to making a soap opera,
Hour of the Wolf perhaps represents his one real foray into horror. There are undeniably many elements of the genre at play here, but it would be reductive to simply reel off tropes. I'd been expecting maximum darkness, knowing it was about a man's mental breakdown and journey into insanity, but I wasn't prepared for just how
weird this film was! From the moment a mysterious old woman appears to Alma Borg outside their island hut to tell her about her husband's diary, in a satchel under their bed, you know something very strange is beginning to happen. It's not just what she says, but the ways she says it; her words half drowned by the roar of ocean. You get the feeling the ground is opening up beneath your feet... and this rabbit hole goes deep. From this point on, reality and fantasy and different characters' individual perceptions merge in a fluid, dreamlike, surreal stream of consciousness. You could strive to read it as a linear narrative of mental collapse but I don't think that would do it justice. It's a film that appeals to the senses as much as the intellect. It didn't surprise me at all to read that this is one of David Lynch's favourite films - it's not hard to see how it's influenced him; not just in the way it's driven by a dream logic, but also in the characters that inhabit the nightmare. All the peripheral characters, who may or may not be just figments of Johan's damaged psyche, are all
off in a big way. The first dinner appointment at Baron von Merkens's castle reminded me of nothing so much as the party scene from
Lost Highway. The incredibly strange and aloof Baron is surrounded with a menagerie of even stranger friends.
Despite its overt weirdness though, I didn't find this as emotionally draining as some Bergman films I've seen like
Autumn Sonata, say; an emotional maelstrom that leaves you on the floor. Because of its dreamlike quality, this is a different kind of experience altogether. It's a film that transports you to another place, but also maybe one that reflects on the art of story-telling as much as the particular story it has to tell. The opening credits, with sound of scenery being shifted, actors directed, cameras primed to roll, foregrounds the artifice of the process; the formidable impresario, Lindhorst, directing his miniature people on a tiny set, is Bergman's alter ego. There's also something strange about the way Alma bookends the film, looking directly into the camera. It's tempting to take her story at face value, because she seems so sincere, but the clues are there all along that she may be the most unreliable of narrators. Who, if anyone, is telling the truth in this? Does it really matter? There's a suggestion that it wasn't just Johan who lost his mind but that they both went mad together, in that darkest hour before dawn.
As well as having dramatic scenes that will stay with me for a long time - the baron walking the walls, the flurry of wings in a gloomy corridor, the killing of the boy, real or imagined, following Johan into the forest - Sven Nykvist's black and white cinematography is beautiful. The precise chiaroscuro lighting, and steady camera work invites you into a world of dark ethereal wonder, the spirit of the Gothic writ large. Enigmatic, weird and wonderful; I have a feeling that much like Lynch's most Delphic offerings, this one is going to richly reward repeat viewings, even if it never fully gives up its mystery.
I get where you're coming from, I just don't feel the same way. For the record, I am an original trilogy fan - I grew up watching them, around the time they were actually out in the cinema (Jedi, anyway - went to see that a couple of times in the cinema as a kid) and loved them all; still do. I need to re-watch all the new ones to give them an honest reappraisal and I'm sure I'll see the flaws a lot more clearly second time round but my gut feeling is that I'll still enjoy all three more than any of the prequels; massive fanservice, PC overkill and lack of originality fully acknowledged. I'd still take 'em over The Bantam Menace and Attack of the Clowns in a heartbeat.
