In contrast to Prison, here is an early Bergman film in which he had no input to the script which brings together two separate narratives and three relationships. The script is by Herbert Grevenius, a theatre writer and mentor to Bergman, based on a collection of short stories by Birgit Tengroth who also appears in the film – she was both a ballet dancer and an actor. The narrative begins with a young woman, Ruth (Eva Henning) unable to sleep in what turns out to be a hotel room. Flashbacks to a few years earlier (at various points in the film) reveal that she is a ballet dancer and that she once had a holiday affair with a military man who she later discovers is married. Ruth eventually wakens her sleeping partner Bertil (Birger Malmsten) and the hotel is evidently in Switzerland where the couple have a stopover before they catch a train back to Sweden. They have been on holiday on the Mediterranean coast.
In a double link, Ruth then sees her former military lover through the open train window. He is in another train on his way South with his wife. But as we settle in to follow the the difficult relationship between Ruth and Bertil in the hot and crowded sleeper train, we are introduced to Viola (Birgit Tengroth) via an argument about Midsummer, Strindberg and lilacs – or violets? I confess that I couldn’t interpret this exchange. The narrative now shifts to Viola, a woman in her thirties who has been widowed and is now visiting a psychiatrist (played by Hasse Ekman). Bertil became her lover after her husband died and before he took up with Ruth. This past love is one of the grounds for the goading of Bertil by Ruth. We now cut between Viola in Stockholm and the couple on the train travelling through a still devastated Germany. Viola will meet Valborg (Mimi Nelson) a dancer she knew earlier who once befriended Ruth in the ballet school. The two women get drunk together on the Midsummer Night with a street party in full swing below Valborg’s room. This proved the most controversial segment of the film and Valborg, the lesbian character, arguably prevented the film being released in the UK during the 1950s (it only received a video release in 2004). It also initially caused censor problems in Sweden. I won’t spoil the ending of the two parts of the narrative.
Once again, this is a film which Bergman fans see as introducing his later themes and ideas. Compared to Prison this seems a more fully realised film and I can see what some critics mean with their identification of ideas that we now tend to associate with Godard films from A bout de souffle onwards. The bickering in the hotel room is not dissimilar to the scenes with Belmondo in girls’ rooms in Paris. There are various cultural references including a pair of ancient coins Bertil has bought in Sicily, one bearing the head of Arethusa – the nymph from under the sea who emerged as a freshwater fountain in Syracuse.
I found this a more satisfying film than Prison. It seems more coherent even as a dual narrative. Eva Henning and Birger Malmsten are an attractive couple and their taunts towards each other seem both realistic and erotic. I think seeing this film in the 1950s or 1960s would have been an eye-opener for my younger self. The representation of the central relationship is helped by a decision that Bergman made to build an ‘outsize’ railway carriage in the studio to allow more movement for the camera and therefore longer takes. Gunnar Fischer is behind the camera as he was on Port of Call and he offers a range of interesting exteriors as well as working the two major sets of the hotel room and the train. I think there are also more big close-ups of the central couple, intensifying their interaction. On the downside we are now with the middle-class, though with Bertil as a college assitant lecturer and Ruth as a ballet dancer, the couple don’t have much money. They are however better off than the starving crowds who clamour for food at the train windows in Germany. Ruth and Viola are strong intelligent women laid low by patriarchy. Ruth has had an abortion which has left mental and physical scars (the fate of three young women in three Bergman films in 1948/9). Viola needs psychiatric help but Dr. Rosengren is an extremely unpleasant character and I found his scenes bewildering. The ‘three strange loves’ involve four different women and the perspectives of two of them are explored in detail. I’m presuming this is as a result of not just Birgit Tengroth’s source stories, but also the help that she seems to have given Bergman, especially with the lesbian sequence. This film and Port of Call are two of the Bergman films I’ve enjoyed most and they were both sourced from existing literary works rather than Bergman’s own writing.
There are two more early Bergmans on MUBI which I will try to catch before they disappear. I have been surprised by the three I’ve seen. They do show remarkable skill and creativity from a filmmaker also working in the theatre as well as making so many films in a short time. He also seems to have been through two marriages by the age of 32. I wonder how much that affected his view of relationships? I don’t think I’ll ever ‘warm’ to Bergman but these early films are fascinating as film narratives.
The Case for Global Film 