Visualized nightmare scenes: Isak (Victor Sjostrom) confronted by a clock and a watch with no hands, and a man with a rudimentary face who collapses and oozes blood, and by a corpse (Isak himself) who clutches Isak's wrist; later, by a "dead" patient who laughs at Isak. (Later, also, there's an actual gold watch with no hands.) Ingmar Bergman's Nordic "A Christmas Carol", with memories and dreams filling in for the Ghosts. At 77, it's a little late for me to be discovering Bergman, I guess, but as Tod Slaughter says, Never too late to mend. or to make amends. I guess it took the story of an old man to connect with another old man. Start with the film's strongest suit: Ingrid Thulin's absorbing gaze... that is, that gaze which seems to be absorbing everything around her. True, the film occasionally verges on the so-grim-it's-comical, but the grimness remains. It's a generational horror story, with a pretty believable "Christmas Carol" ending. Bergman gets there, partly by transitioning from Isak's silent witnessing of scenes from the past (some of which, in that past, he didn't really witness--dramatic license) to his interaction with vignettes from the past. Also, partly, by the presence, in one sequence, of Isak's granite-like mother, and also partly by daughter-in-law Marianne's (Thulin) description (I believe it was hers--the movie is a bit crowded with people and incidents, dreamt, imagined, re-imagined or actual)--her description of her husband/his son Evald (Gunnar Bjornstrom) as an unwanted child in a "hellish marriage". Shock images and words like that go a long way towards kindling a bit of a redeeming fire in old Isak. Two standout moments: the music and the abrupt darkening of the scene isolating Isak with his thoughts, and the three kids' charming parting serenade of Isak. I'll end by quoting just a few of my original, 1980 notebook comments: "the bleak and the sweet, not quite fused" and "the three kids act like they just strolled off "Dobie Gillis". In my defense, that was, you'll note, some 45 years ago.![😊]()
statistics: Posted by dcwillis9 — 46 minutes ago — Replies 0 — Views 18