Snow business… Cocaine (1922)

Lazy, languid, laughing Jenny… to-day, depressed, to-morrow, merry.

 

Directed by Graham “Cut!” Cutts and produced by notorious, naughty Harry B. Parkinson, this film wastes absolutely no time it getting straight down to business. You want it, you got it, Jenny (Hilda Bayley), disaffected youth, a good-time girl, especially when Charlie’s around and sat at a table in The Live Hundred Club which could usually be relied upon for a secret supply of cocaine.

 

Here I am frequently lauding the cool Weimar hipsters for their lack of censorship and daring morality when less than two years after the drug was made illegal in the UK by the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920, some enterprising types were making an entertainment about “How girls become ‘dope fiends’!!” (and presumably boys too?).

 

Parkinson, of course had form in moral outrage, having previously plugged into moral panic for profit with the outrageous Trapped by the Mormons (1922) featuring a rather out of place Evelyn Brent, touring these shores on stage and behind Harry’s camera. Parkinson’s output at the time was prodigious with more schlock about Crushing the Drugs Trade and Mormonism before he produced his, genuinely wonderful, Wonderful London series. Then he went and (almost) spoiled it all by making an unauthorised biopic The Life Story of Charles Chaplin (1926), featuring Chick Wango (oh, my yes) as the title character and many sequences lifted from the real Charlie’s films. Chaplin sued and the film disappeared for ever…

Still, never let it be said that Harry didn’t have his finger on the pulse and this is entertaining exploitation that’s, of course, no where near as nasty as it could have been. I suppose that cocaine having previously been legal, it was viewed as a controllable drug just as alcohol was in the US with the prohibition which began slightly earlier in 1920. So maybe this wasn’t a call to be wary of what is now a Class A drug but a remembrance of fun times just past… No spoilers, but most everyone lives and “Lazy, Languid" Jenny doesn’t have to pay the ultimate price as so many women tended to even for minor misdemeanours normally involving moral missteps… sex being far more deadly than a bit of powder.

 

That said, maybe someone with a modern sensibility needs to go through this an edit out nonconformist sentiments about the drugs working? Or maybe it should be screened right away in the House of Commons?

 

There’s also blatant racism and ablism but we’re film historians we can handle it, we have to otherwise you might as well burn it all if a contextual interpretation cannot be found to enlighten, inform and explain the motivations of people clearly not giving a stuff for tomorrow’s opinions or, indeed, equality.

Anyway. The story… Ward McAllister wears yellow face as Min Fu, the Hundred Club’s manager and a dozen others as seedy. The character was apparently based on a gangster known as Brilliant Chang which, lets be honest is a tough epithet to live up to and I say that as Paul “Interesting” Joyce (courtesy of my ex-colleague Sarah from Bangor). Min Fu offers Jenny some blow as she sits bored in the club and we’ve already seen a drugs transaction take place outside, with cab driver passing a packet to Min Fu who gives it to his disabled assistant, Loki (Tony Fraser)… the signifiers of evil are not pleasant.

 

Loki gets busted outside and Min Fu has to report into “Number One” – there’s always a bigger boss, and hope that his pal keeps schtum. Meanwhile, back on the dancefloor… the joint is jumping as we take a sidestep to the opulent mansion of the charitable and respected figure of Montagu Webster (Teddy Arundell) who is, gasp, also Number One, leader of the whole trade. No one suspects him of such dirty dealing, least of all his daughter Madge (Flora Le Breton) who, as it happens is a friend of Jenny’s… and on an evening out where she meets the respectable Stanley (Cyril Raymond). After a wonderful evening she wants to go again but Monty does not agree, he doesn’t want her running wild!

 

You can see exactly where this is headed can’t you? Maybe...

Teddy Arundell and Flora Le Breton

Written by very Frank Miller, it’s a fast-paced moral tale with some style and is good value for it’s relatively short running time; another populist hit that Harry B. managed to smuggle past the censors with enough consequence for the criminal and the carefree to be deemed as a message to the gullible.

 

You can find it on the BFIPlayer for £1 and it’s cheap at twice the price!

Just say no.

Odes to joy… Beethoven (1927)/ The Martyr of his Heart (1918), Austrian Film Archive Blu-ray

Do you prostrate yourselves, you millions,
Do you sense the Creator, World?
Seek him beyond the canopy of stars,
Beyond the stars he must surely dwell.

Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy

Very few biopics stand the test of time and subject. Persons living and within memory are, by and large, hard to replicate on screen and for me at least it’s not easy watching Elvis, Elton or Freddie on screen; it’s frustrating seeing everything that they’re not based on what you have already experienced. It works better for lesser-known characters such as Noelle Gordon and especially those whose reputation needs to be re-established with great care. Talking of which, there are others who reputational slurs are simply reinforced with a lazy wink as in Babylon (2022) something of a hate-letter to silent film not to mention its audience.

In the case of national and global treasures long deceased, there’s a joy in just paying broad tribute and it’s here that we find these two pictures covering the life of Ludwig van Beethoven. Here we see Ludwig the man, the lover, the grump, the lonely driven soul who still liked a drink with friends even as he battled enemies… I doubt it’s a portrayal Haydn or his nephew Karl would have recognised but both are pop sketches that use the music, locations and Fritz Kortner’s physicality to remind us of this enigmatic powerhouse of classical music, a man who wrote over 700 pieces in a lifetime of the highest impact. Even as his health failed him, the composer produced his mighty 9^th Symphony, a work almost 70 minutes long that introduced a choral section for one of the first times in symphony-history and which has confounded scholars and conductors ever since.

This release from the Austrian Film Archive celebrates the 250^th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth and features two films, Beethoven (1927), celebrating the centenary of his death, and The Martyr of his Heart (1918) produced at a time when lauding national heroes was an end into itself. Both star Herr Kortner who clearly wasn’t at risk of typecasting in a career that eventually stretched over half a century well into the 1960s, acting and directing on screen and stage. He’s quite the screen presence with a face full of awkward features which he manages to contort into a vulnerable ferocity perfectly suiting the spirit of his subject. He’s believable as a romantic lead in the earlier film and as a man isolated by deafness and unyielding passions in the second. He’s a one-man Austrian Mount Rushmore of emotion, scaling alpine excesses with ease.

Young Fritz Kortner in 1918...

1918 and Ludwig van Beethoven is as close to living memory as Thomas Edison is to now only more fondly recalled… he did all his own work after all. Coincidentally, the third film on this set is The Origin of Beethoven's Moon Light Sonata (1909) a production of the Edison Manufacturing Company, and is entirely made-up rationale for the music, suggesting that Beethoven created it so that a blind woman could “see” the moonlight through his musical expression, nice thought though it may be and, indeed, indicative of its powerful effect on the imagination.

 

The Martyr of his Heart was directed by Emil Justitz, from a script he co-wrote with Emil Kolberg it’s a whizz through key touchpoints in the composer’s life with a focus on romantic turbulence. Beethoven is talented spotted conducting in his native Bonn by Joseph Hayden who invite him to Vienna to study with him. Once there he attracts the patronage of Prince Esterházy and others in the city’s cultural circle, he also makes a life-long enemy in the form of the entirely fictitious Baron Trautenfels (Anton Pointner) who acts as a representative of all those unknown obstacles to such a single-minded yet vulnerable creative genius. Beethoven did have a number of run-ins with theatrical impresario Baron von Braun but purely on musical business issues.

 

Beethoven's sworn enemy, Trautenfels at it again!

Their first clash comes, improbably, in a rivalry for the affections of Annerl, a serving girl at a bierhaus, the Baron does not want her consorting with minstrels although I’m not sure if those awarded princely patronage were ever seen as so lowly. Trautenfels is also faithless, even after marrying the barmaid, he still seeks out wealthy women to conquer and defraud.

 

All this is a little sordid next to Beethoven’s growing success and position, as his reputation grows and his love life is conducted, unsuccessfully among the upper classes. His deafness and fading health led him to become more isolated and more than ever, dedicated to his work with only his ward Karl, to care for. There’s extensive use of actual locations which adds some authenticity to the film along with the musical quotes from the composer’s most deeply autobiographical worldly statements.

 

The new score for this is from Birdmusicvienna and is a mix of old and new instrumentation and sound effects, which are sometimes funny and occasionally distracting. Overall, it’s a fun job and they include the inevitable quotations from the man who wrote his own life’s soundtrack which are deftly mixed with the mood and action on screen.

Ludwig conducts his latest groove with Annerl admiringly on the right

A decade later Kortner picks up the ear trumpet once more in Hans Otto Löwenstein’s tribute which, surprisingly doesn’t feel that different in technique although it has a more restrained and dramatic tone; no lusty barmaids or villainous Barons here, just a more straightforward attempt to capture the composer’s genius and isolation. We see Beethoven’s birthplace and more of his early life with his father pushing him hard to achieve what his own “powers” were too weak to attain.

 

In 1892 he is discovered by Hayden and travels there to be his student and to attract the patronage of Prince Lichnowsky as in the first film. Some scenes are similar to the earlier film and perhaps that’s to be expected but this is a more measured and evenly paced film. Beethoven gets so lost in his work he forgets to eat and then requests that the Prince moves his dogs so their barking doesn’t disturb him, both established tropes about the composer… as is the apocryphal story of his only recognising his hearing loss when he was walking with students and couldn’t hear a shepherd play his flute: it’s in both films but not provably truth, but it makes dramatic sense for a period of which there is some uncertainty – Beethoven being quieter than usual and possibly being ill prior to the beginnings of his debilitating tinnitus.

 

Lilian Gray and Fritz Kortner

Before all this Beethoven is romantically connected to the young Giulietta Guiccardi (Lilian Gray) who he teaches piano and dedicates the Moonlight Sonata too (see Edison, wrong again!). It doesn’t work out because of his recognition of the gap between their worlds, but he does get engaged to the more mature and understanding Therese von Brunswick (Dely Drexler) to whom he dedicates his opera Fidelio. But his continued dedication to work and issues with deafness lead to their breakup which, in the film, leads her to become a nun although in life she set up nurseries. Therese is very possibly Beethoven’s “immortal beloved” although he was also in love with her sister Josephine and they were both cousins of Giulietta… these aristos!

 

Beethoven approaches his last decade alone and surrounded by human silence and yet still producing the most transcendent work… his death is handled in a very inventive way in this film and we’re not left down as his eternal Ode to Joy plays us out in celebration of music still recognised by millions.

 

I really enjoyed Malte Giesen’s new score for the film, as performed by the Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach, there are so many skilful quotes from Beethoven’s work, all interwoven, sometimes diegetically, in tribute to the great milestones of his career, the turbulence of the Eroica, the calm of the Pastoral and love’s tribute in the Moonlight Sonata all cumulating in the ecstatic Ode to Joy which is the ultimate statement of Beethoven’s lasting achievement and humanity. There’s also a startling moment when Beethoven first experiences his deafness, the music stops completely and there’s silence until he sits down at the pianoforte and realises he can still “hear” what he plays and writes… it might be a bit too on the nail for some but it worked for me: it’s one of the markers of his genius that Beethoven could still thrive and develop his craft without being fully capable of hearing it.

Dely Drexler and Fritz Kortner

So, a highly commendable Blu-ray and one that has me listening to Herbert von Karajan’s versions of all nine symphonies as well as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s set, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras and featuring my Uncle Duncan Atherton in the first violins. He and my mother, a pianist, loved Beethoven and his influence continues to inspire.

 

You can order the set direct from Austrian Film Archive and European suppliers. Roll Over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news…

 

Reading list - all from my mother's library:

Beethoven: The Music and Life by Lewis Lockwood (Norton 2003)

Beethoven by John Suchet (Elliott & Thompson, 2012)

The Ninth, Beethoven and the World in 1824 by Harvey Sachs (Faber & Faber, 2010)

 

The Moonlight Sonata in 1909...

Girls will be boys… I Don’t Want to be a Man (1919)/Beverly of Graustark (1926), Kennington Bioscope and Vito Project

 

This was a glorious collaboration between the Kennington Bioscope and the Vito Project, a film club aimed at exploring cinema through a queer perspective, both meeting in elegant harmony with two silent films featuring two of the finest comedians of the period doing what they did best; challenging norms and making people laugh. This had to be one of the most celebratory atmospheres ever at the Cinema Museum with a meeting of minds from the two passion projects finding new aspects of appreciation, fresh angles to adore. There is always respect here for the context of century old cinema but there were new laughs to be had as the audience spotted patterns in the humour that some of us may have previously missed.

That said, some of us are clearly not that observant as I had completely forgotten the spectacular two-strip colour finale for Beverly despite having seen this restoration in Pordenone in 2019 with Mr Sweeney also accompanying. At the time I wrote about the importance of watching comedy with an audience and tonight this was proven once again with delicious new connections within the nuanced daftness that hold us all together in front of the world.

Marion’s a tonic and, as I put it in 2019, clearly hungover and heavily caffeinated, “…there’s no better sight than Marion’s look straight to camera eyes twinkling with the latest daftness. Mabel started it and Stan followed but Marion took it to another jazz-age level; her face bubbling and alive, as knowing as anyone, with perfectly timed beauty, an irresistible smile.”

Marion in colour!!

Vito supremo, Matheus Carvalho introduced and gave us an overview of Marion’s once misunderstood career…. Davis never made a seriously revered film (although Show People comes close: it is loved) but it doesn’t matter as she was the queen of romantic comedy drama for much of the Twenties producing a string of major hits that allowed audiences to laugh themselves out of the day-to-day and onto the screen in sympathy from When Knighthood was in Flower (1922), to Little  Old New York (1923) and onto this film. In all three, Marion dresses as a man to save the day and she does so in a manner, as Matheus quoting from Jeanine Bassinger in Silent Stars, aims at “comic androgyny”: she creates the physical sense of the male in her movements and attitude, with a grow-up, very meta sense, that anyone as feminine as she could every get away with really fooling anyone…

To this extent, Marion in drag is just an extension of her look to the camera and the audience, its’ a look of comic collaboration, we know and she knows but, strangely the rest of the cast don’t. We’re in on the joke and we can’t help but love her for it!

The story is brief on set-up and long on the situation. She plays a New York socialite, Beverly, called upon to impersonate her cousin, Prince Oscar of Graustark (Creighton Hale) after he injures himself in a skiing accident. If the Prince doesn’t make it to the Graustark coronation on time the deals off and the nasty General Marlanax (Roy D’Arcy once again fits the role of moustache twirling baddie to an evil T).

Marion just about a boy (screenshot from Movies Silently)

So, we literally have a Prince formerly known as Beverly having to dress as a man and convince the cabinet and court to save the throne and she does such a splendid job that even politically active and military-trained goatherd Danton (Antonio Moreno) can’t see that, with that skin, those eyes and all the rest, that she’s less of a man than he’ll ever be.

 

It’s exquisitely daft and the timing is absolutely perfect throughout and, this was reinforced by another masterclass in sympathetic accompaniment from John Sweeney on piano; the accompanist is the fourth element of the perfect silent mix: after film, location and crowd. Tonight, we were blessed with all round excellence from John and from Colin Sell on the first feature, an all-together more riotous affair.

Things getting out of hand...

The evening was also special one at the Bioscope as it was Michelle Facey’s birthday and, inundated with flowers, cards and gifts she celebrated her gift from Ernst Lubitsch and Ossi Oswalda in her introduction for the film. Ich möchte kein Mann sein (I Don't Want to be a Man) (1918) was one of the director’s last long-shorts made just before his first feature with Pola Negri, Die Augen der Mumie Ma (1918).  Oswalda is every inch as energetic as Negri and far more anarchic than Davies, or almost any American actor.

This was Weimar Germany and an initial post-war period that saw a flourishing of frank expression and, with no censorship for a year or two, some of the most forward-thinking sexual statements including, of course, Different from the Others (1919). Watching this film again there’s no doubt that the film does more than tease us with the implications of the cross-dressing; Ossi’s erstwhile counsellor Herr Brockmüller (Ferry Sikla) who she meets in a cabaret, dressed as a man, is in no doubt that he is kissing a he even if it’s a she. As he says later on about his new pal’s sister, “she’s a looker too…” Of course, what’s so great, what’s so free, is that Lubitsch makes very little of this… he leaves that to the audience in a tragically short lived permissive society.

Ossi is a rebellious tomboy, gambling, drinking and doing all manner of grown-up male things from which her uncle (Kurt Götz) and governess (Margarete Kupfer) forbid her if only to allow themselves to indulge. Lubitsch highlights the comic hypocrisy of both as she carries on smoking Ossi’s cigarette and he grabs a bigger glass to increase the rate of alcoholic intake.

Ossi’s like Iggy with a Lust for Life… or at least for eating cherries and gobbling candies in her window whilst a crowd of young men pleads to be fed like hungry penguins. She obliges only for Uncle to chase them away... what the girl surely needs is some discipline or maybe an adventure! Uncle is called away for the comically un-specific fact that “the institute he has set up is ready for him” but before he goes, he recruits a stern governor to make sure his ward is properly looked after: Herr Counsellor Brockmüller.

Brockmüller almost immediately brings Ossi to heel with his startling natural authority – he’s also a bit of a looker boys and girls! But Ossi is not so easily curtailed and she vows to resist whilst he promises to cut her down to size. The game is afoot! Ossi decides to play men at their own game and goes off to the gentlemen’s outfitters to order a dinner suit. The assistants fight over measuring her up and decide on splitting the work limb by limb. Men lust after Ossi in groups and make horrible obvious play of their intentions: but she’s in charge.

Kitted up in starched collar, bow tie, top hat and tails, Ossi sets off to have fun at the dance hall, catching the eye of a number of young women as she takes her pretty-boy swagger to the dance. She chances across someone familiar: Herr Brockmüller and tries to attract away his favoured escort and once she’s distracted by another man, the two get to know each other in the time-honoured rituals of male bonding: they get smashed.

 

Governess Margarete Kupfer enjoying forbidden fruit...

It’s a long night and by the time the two fall out onto the pavement it’s the morning and they’re struggling to think or walk straight, putting on each other's overcoats which happen to include their address cards. Confused by the cards, their driver takes them to each other’s houses but not before the above-mentioned drunken smooching. Cheekily subversive. the kissing has the audience running through the permutations: Ossi knows what she’s doing but Brockmüller is clearly a man of broad tastes…

Colin Sell accompanied with wit and the practices ease of a man who has worked with Graeme Garden and played up the storm Ossi’s anarchy deserved. In Germany as elsewhere, the War left an opportunity for gender equality and Ossi was here to grab that chance with both hands either in a suit or in a dress… for the continuation of the film’s title is clearly: I want to be a woman!

Back to Marion, Matheus quoted Cordelia D. "Delight" Evans writing in Screenland in July 1926 “…ninety years from now, when all the war pictures and propaganda films and arty productions have been forgotten, some old white beard is sure to mumble, ‘There was a girl named Marion who looked awfully cute in boy’s clothes.’”

Well, there were two awfully cute girls in boy's clothes here tonight, Miss Evans, it’s 2023 and my beard is indeed, mostly, white.

Antonio and Marion, he has no clue the sap!

 

Here's to more collaboration between the KB and Vito, a splendid time was had by all.

 

For further details of the Vito Film Club visit their Facebook page.

Bioscope details are to be found on the Cinema Museum website.

 

 

 

Childhood’s end… Ingmar Bergman, Volume 4 BFI box set, out now.

 

‘After the strokes had been administered, you had to kiss Father’s hand, at which forgiveness was declared and the burden of sin fell away.’ Ingmar Bergman recalling his childhood.

 

The BFI’s digital odyssey covering the epic and unique career of Ingmar Bergman reaches it’s crescendo with his final films, but not his final works as he continued on television and stage until 2007. This set includes both versions of his semi-autobiographical masterwork, Fanny and Alexander, the TV series (filmed first but released after reworking for cinema in 1984) and the film he intended to be his last big screen statement in 1982. Both are daunting but as soon as you set yourself down with snacks and suitable libations, you quickly become lost I the sheer human simplicities he addresses and the audacious connection he always seemed to have with us as viewers.

Fanny and Alexander drew on some of his upbringing with his father a Lutheran pastor would indeed hit his children with a carpet beater but there was love too, painful shades of grey with a God of love and hate. Bergman sets the story in the 1900s, with a vivid Christmas celebration introducing us to the family and even though there will be torment there is also so much joy in this film along with magic, the world seen through the eyes of his ten-year old protagonist, Alexander played with incredible assurance by Bertil Guve. In his booklet essay, Philip Kemp – who else are you going to get to write about this one? – also notes the Dickensian aspects to the story, maybe Swedish children have as much connection with these tropes as the British?

The budget was Bergman’s biggest. the most expensive film made in Sweden up to that point, at over $6m, with more than 60 speaking parts and some 1,200 extras. It took a year of pre-production and a mountain of editing to produce the longform TV version and the ruthlessly edit it down to the three hours plus cinema version. It won four academy awards and was recently ranked as number 53 in the Sight and Sound Hundred Best Films poll…

Alexander directs: Bertil Guve 

The film begins with young Alexander moving cut out characters in a toy theatre, before searching for the rest of his family in their huge, richly-decorated house; a director in search of his characters? Here’s also a boy with a rich imagination, seeing a statue’s arm move as he hides beneath the dinning room table.

What follows is as rich and magically real as a Dickensian Christmas with Bergman dealing with the extraordinary behaviours and imaginations of his players in a casual way, oddness just happens and we’re expected to deal with it. The story begins and ends with the warmth of the Ekdahl family and the imperious, heart-warming matriarch Helena as played by the remarkable Gunn Wållgren, a woman who manages to convey world-weary yet still youthful energy. Helena looks on her family and is concerned and delighted in equal measure.

She has three sons, Carl (Börje Ahlstedt) fearful and in debt, the other theatre restaurant manager Gustav (Jarl Kulle) warm yet careless in love and the third Oscar (Allan Edwall), the manager of the family theatre. Oscar is the oldest and his mother’s most reliable son, happily married to the beautiful but much younger Emilie (Ewa Fröling) and father of Alexander and his sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin). Rehearsing Hamlet, Oscar suffers a stroke and the children’s world is to be turned upside down. In time Emilie is married to the handsome Bishop Edvard Vergérus (Jan Malmsjö) who offers her love and a new more spartan existence for the family. Things do not go well… his puritanical authority soon brings the children and especially Alexander, into fierce conflict and the beatings begin as Bergman releases the spirit of his father on screen.

Gunn Wållgren

 

Max von Sydow was to have played the part of the Bishop Edvard Vergérus, but a mix up between an over-zealous agent and a frugal SFI meant by the time he said yes to Bergman it was too late and he  cast Malmsjö instead as the conflicted cleric. As it turns out he was inspired casting, a light entertainer usually, here his dramatic shifts were perfect for the stepfather who ultimately is frightened by his wilful, new son although, according to Kemp, the boy took some time to get over the fact that he was more used to seeing the actor singing Puff the Magic Dragon. His smile and good humour make his unyielding will to punish and constrain all the more unpleasant: it’s a nightmare.

 

The struggle between Alexander and the Bishop is the heart of the film and plays out in unexpected ways, everything does in fact and with twists and turns that my prose can’t do justice too. It’s the most intense and cinematic ride… a glorious drama with a cast alive to the depths of meaning expected from Bergman. As Oscar says in his Christmas speech at the theatre, see below*, sometimes the little world succeeds in reflecting the big one so that we understand it better… as with the best of Bergman, all art in fact, you don’t leave it, it stays with you, meaning infused consciously and subconsciously to eventually filter through over days, months and years. In different circumstances the film will take on new aspects and I watched with my daughter, wife and 91-year old mother-in-law, a PhD in English Literature and MAs in English and Film. She wrote about Fanny and Alexander at length when studying, but refused to let me crib from her essay… but we had some great conversations.

 

Much as he seemed to have enjoyed the whole project, Bergman was well into his sixties and he later said in a TV interview, Farewell to Film, ‘my body is tired and it hurts, and you realise these are signals, warnings to take it easy… Altogether this is a good place to stop.’ From this point onwards he would focus on TV and theatre, alternatively less pressurised and also more gradual experiences than cinema. But what a legacy he left in all three disciplines.

 

The family that plays together, stays together...

I’m also quite pleased with myself for having spotted that one of the actors in the theatre is named, Tomas Graal (Heinz Hopf) a reference perhaps to two silnet films from 1917 featuring Bergman’s mentor and friend, Victor Sjöström, as Thomas Graal, a scriptwriter, with both directed by another epic Scandinavian, Mauritz Stiller. You could spend weeks in the two versions of this huge film and still find new connections and meanings.

 

The other films on this six-disc set are:

Cries and Whispers (1972), I saw last year when the BFI re-released it in cinemas for its 50th Anniversary. It’s one of Bergman’s greats, and one of the first in colour, a cross-over success that led Francois Truffaut to suggest that maybe his other films would have been more popular with the vibrant red that dominates this raw tale of illness, familial love and honesty. It strikes chords with such force though and Bergman felt that with this film and Persona, he had gone as far as he could in touching wordless secrets that only cinema could uncover.

Wordless secrets eh? Bit of a challenge for the amateur blogger but safe to say Bergman dealt in these issues successfully and used cinematic language to the fullest of his ability to address feelings and relationships that we all recognise and which we all struggle to articulate.  This doesn’t make him a paragon just exceptionally observant.

There’s so much more in these films and these BFI sets are to be treasured.

Liv Ullman, Ingrid Thulin and Kari Sylwan

Scenes from a Marriage (1974) Berman doesn’t terrify with his honesty much more than in this film featuring his long-term partner, the genius Liv Ullman.

Autumn Sonata (1978), Bergman directs Bergman, aka When Ingmar met Ingrid… a powerhouse film!

Fårö Document 1979 (1979), the ten-year follow-up to the documentary Bergman made about his adopted home.

From the Life of the Marionettes (1980) a TV movie about the events before and after a murder in a strained marriage.

After the Rehearsal (1984), another TV film, this time about a controlling director putting on a performance of Strindberg's A Dream Play.

Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata (1978)

All look sparkling and restoration-fresh with After the Rehearsal  the only one to have been only available in standard edition, it still looks grand. Special features include a 100-page perfect bound book featuring new essays by Geoff Andrew, Catherine Wheatley, Leigh Singer, Andrew Graves, Philip Kemp and Ellen Cheshire.

You can order the set from all good home entertainment online retailers but especially the BFI Shop, in person or online.

 

*My only talent, if you can call it that in my case, is that I love this little world inside the thick walls of this playhouse and I’m fond of the people who work in this little world. Outside is the big world and sometimes the little world succeeds in reflecting the big one so that we understand it better. Or perhaps we give the people who come here a chance to forget for a while…