Only two directors, Alfred Hitchcock
(with 18) and Howard Hawks (with 11), have more titles included on the 1001
list than Ingmar Bergman. His total of ten
entries surpasses those of Kubrick (with 9), Bunuel (also 9), and Scorsese (with
8), and blows Fellini (7) and Kurosawa (6) out of the water. For the last 55 years, Bergman has been a
notable namedrop of world cinema fans, and it is perhaps for this reason that
his films are so often associated with film snobbery. Bergman films are prototypes for the kind of
movies that characters in contemporary American comedies bash as “artsy,”
perhaps groaning over a reportedly wasted afternoon spent at some art house
cinema that they were dragged to by a former love interest (…or something like
that).
Admittedly,
some Bergman films are not without pretension (notably his over praised
purported masterpiece The Seventh Seal;
1957), and they aren’t likely to appeal to the audiences who crave car chases
and shootouts. Rather, Bergman, who died
in 2007, made pictures about human interactions, and the pain we cause one
another with words, spoken and unspoken, and actions, taken and not taken. The action for Bergman was all in the
emotion. Many of his titles have become
available to American home video audiences through releases from the illustrious,
but sometimes ostentatious Criterion Collection, a fact that has undoubtedly
spurred on more accusations of snob appeal.
However, much to my surprise, his Shame
(1968) has not received the Criterion treatment. What a tragedy, as it is one of his finest
works.
Bergman
regulars Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow play a married couple – former musicians
– who are forced by the realities of war to have taken up berry farming. They turn marginal prophets and live a mostly
secluded life on an island off the Swedish mainland. They have their problems – she wants
children, but he isn’t ready – but are mostly happy. They celebrate being able to afford a bottle
of wine, and they make love in the evenings. Then their lives, already interrupted by the war,
are turned upside down when the conflict literally comes to their front
yard. They are harassed and abused by
soldiers on both sides of the argument, and they find that their relative
comfort can be taken away in an instant.
As the life they’ve built together begins to unravel so does their
relationship, particularly when their loyalties to ideals and to one another
come into question.
These
are clearly two people who love each other, but war exacerbates every issue
between them. The performances by the
leads are stellar, in that they are layered so well. Behind every declaration of love there is an
ounce of malice. Within every verbal
lashing there is the hint of frustration that only comes from love. Von Sydow and Ullmann had worked with Bergman
so much by the time that they shot this picture that it is hard to imagine them
giving him anything less than exactly what he wanted. Still, Bergman was disappointed with the
film, feeling that the script he’d written was uneven. He’d undertaken the project to challenge
himself, wanting to confront the issue of war (to my knowledge, completely fabricating
a contemporary Swedish civil war) as well as its inevitable effect on
relationships. Indeed, no other Bergman picture displays the literal violence contained
herein.
I
referenced a Roger Ebert anecdote about the lack of violence in Bergman films
in my review of his Winter Light
(1963; #179). I didn’t enjoy Shame quite as much as that picture, but
I feel that the director was being too hard on himself in not being proud of
this one. There are other, Criterion
certified, films in his oeuvre which I believe it surpasses in quality, and it’s
inclusion in the 1001 tome certainly isn’t just a matter of padding
Bergman’s stats.
Language:
Swedish
Runtime:
103 Minutes
Available*
@Youtube.com
Grade:
3 Hats Off
*hidden
well
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