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Posted: |
Mar 14, 2020 - 2:03 PM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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I rated Hour of the Wolf a 5/10 when I first watched it three years ago. Having seen it again today I would raise that rating to a 7/10, which to one FSMer would be on a par with A View to a Kill. This is why I have reservations about numbered rating systems.
Hour of the Wolf's biggest flaw is the Liv Ullmann character. Not so much her performance, which is serviceable, but the reason that character is even in the film at all. If there's some big point to what Bergman was trying to say, it's lost on me.
Still, there are some fine visuals, performances--Max von Sydow is superb and the island residents are wonderfully mad, particularly Gertrude Fridh.
Lars Johan Werle, who composed the score, provides outstanding music in the scene in which von Sydow is fishing and has a violent encounter with a boy. The scene is over lit like the dream sequence in Bergman's earlier film, Wild Strawberries.
Werle's music really "ratchets up the tension" and comes with my highest recommendation.
Oh, and I will always carry a torch for Ingrid Thulin.
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Posted: |
Aug 20, 2020 - 6:23 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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Passion of Anna (1969) 9/10 (IIRC, the same rating from before)
Beautifully filmed on desolate Fårö Island. Andreas Winkelman (Max Von Sydow) is an isolated loser with a failed marriage and jail time in his past. Andreas lives in a shabby-but-ideal house. The property outside consists of drab, brown mud, and rock-stacked fences and walls--a prison of Andreas’ own creation.
Bibi Andersson is great as Eva Vergérus, a drunken, flirty, and sadly pathetic, self-loathing woman. Eva considers herself a boring lover and exists only to appease--an FSM dreamgirl. She knows this, but like the other characters, is trapped amid her misery--welcome to Bergman's World, baby.
Bibi is especially good in her playful, tipsy scene at the dinner gathering, and she’s mesmerizing in her love scene with Von Sydow. Andersson, despite her natural beauty, doesn't seem to mind that her complexion is less than "movie perfect"; it's a typically fearless and admirable trait of hers as an actor.
Elis Vergérus (Erland Josephson), Eva’s husband, is indifferent to everything, especially his high-paying career as an architect. His disinterest extends to his photography, which categorizes seemingly every conceivable subject. He refers to collecting as a pointless act. The viewer "knows" Elis is emotionally removed from everything, if only because of his Banacek-style haircut and hip turtleneck.
Liv Ullmann is excellent playing a physically, emotionally, and mentally-wrecked Anna, who can come apart at the seams even faster than Eva.
Characters frequently drink and smoke. Elis has a well-stocked bar with seemingly every type of booze, yet he and Andreas only drink whiskey; it’s like the rest of the bar is merely for show, like Elis' god-damned photo collection.
Passion of Anna is more interesting for how the characters flounder through their existence rather than any narrative or plot considerations. Bergman even has his actors “step out” and discuss their characters in brief interludes that serve as act breaks. In these, Von Sydow, Andersson, Ullmann, and Josephson never mention plot, only their views on the character they’re portraying.
Apart from the actor interludes, Passion of Anna's most interesting scene is a black & white flashback that could easily have been taken from Bergman’s previous film, Shame (1968).
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Posted: |
Sep 13, 2020 - 11:44 AM
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By: |
dogplant
(Member)
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I’m reading his autobiography The Magic Lantern, which is unlike any that I remember... Fascinating.
One of the most powerful books ever written about filmmaking. He wrote a couple more – a novel called "Sunday's Children" and another autobiographical piece, "Images," the latter pretty interesting – but "Magic Lantern," and maybe Andrei Tarkovsky's "Sculpting in Time" are perhaps the most personal and moving books I've encountered about filmmaking (John Boorman's autobiographies are pretty good, too, for laying himself bare; though I've not read John's most recent "Conclusions"). After you finish "Magic Lantern," TG, you should check out "Fanny and Alexander," if you haven't seen it already. You'll find many autobiographical flourishes that haunted him his whole life. The four-part (312 minute) TV version is a masterpiece.
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While I've found something to like in every Bergman film I've seen, it's his 1950s films I enjoy most.
Of my favorite Bergman, the earliest one is SAWDUST & TINSEL (though SUMMER WITH MONIKA is very notable as well). Love the 1955 DREAMS, too.
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Cries and Whispers (1972) 7/10
I appreciate the performances--everyone does a great job, especially Harriet Andersson--more than I do the film itself, and while there are some truly powerful scenes, at times it goes over the top, like Liv Ullmann's reaction to Harriet and Ingrid Thulin in the (in)famous scene she has.
There's also something about this film that leaves me cold; I'm watching Autumn Sonata next, and I hope whatever it was about Cries and Whispers doesn't extend to "Sonata."
What did you think of Bergman's use of color in C&W (or Whispers and Cries, as Bergman authority John Simon thought should be the title's proper translation)?
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