La fontaine d'Aréthuse

While Ode to Joy is undoubtedly the gem of Eclipse's Early Bergman box set, Thirst is a close second, at least in my mind. It's kind of a precursor to Scenes of a Marriage, where the story follows a married couple (played by Eva Henning and Birger Malmsten) on a train trip through war-torn Europe. The tumult of the film comes not from the mostly ignored outside world, but from the rocky marriage itself. We also get glimpses of the couple's former lovers. The film is at its best when sticking to the couple. When it strays to the stories of side characters, it's weaker. Since the film is so short (just over 80 minutes), you have to wonder if some of the tangential stories were added as padding. But even the scenes that don't add much are well written, acted and directed. Henning gives a masterful performance, and Bergman was really coming into his own by this point.

The early Bergman films are interesting in how they portray an artist evolving with increased experience. They're not always successful artistic endeavors overall, but they show how a studio system can foster and hone talent through experience.

Thirst tells the story of a young married couple on their way back from a vacation in Italy. We see them in France as they are about to board a train through 1946 Germany back towards Sweden. The woman is haunted by a previous affair and a subsequent abortion all while she nurses a bad knee in the hopes that one day she will dance ballet again. The husband is a penny pinching academic obsessed with coins and who had had an affair with another woman out of, what he calls, pity for her status as a widow. None of this is a secret, all of the sins are out in the open.

The two have the kind of talks typical in Bergman films (in particular his later, post-existential films like Scenes from a Marriage) and come to the conclusion that they should reconcile their differences and try to work through their problems to a happy marriage in the film's final moments.

The problem with the movie is its structure. This could be a case study in a poorly structured story pretty much killing a film. The first twenty minutes are dedicated to flashbacks to the wife's affair with a lieutenant in the Swedish military before we ever meet the husband. The husband's lover is first mentioned about thirty minutes into the movie, and she is introduced a few minutes later in a scene with her cruel psychologist. She then disappears for a half hour. There's also the wife's old dancing friend who appears in another flashback and then shows up with the husband's former lover, trying to seduce her which ends up leading to the lover's suicide.

The problem isn't the events themselves, but the fact that they are bunched together without any real effort to weave it in and out of the other threads. As typical, I read the essay in the Criterion Collection's large book and was unsurprised to discover that the script (which Bergman didn't write) was based on a series of short stories. Considering my issues with the film's structure, it made perfect sense. It felt very staccato with one story going through its beginning, middle, and end before another one took over. It's not quite that, but, especially considering the initial twenty minutes with the wife's lover, it feels very apropos.

I do think that if the movie had been re-arranged it would have worked better. I don't think it's something that purely an editing job would have done. At least some of it would have needed to originate at the script. The husband's lover needed at least one more scene to flesh her out for instance (her first scene with the psychologist is highly emotionally delivered and feels out of place because we had never met her before).

Stylistically, the movie feels very Bergman. The topics he loved are there (the marriage, even the dancer is a performer that he frequently featured). His visual style sometimes feel a little more active than normal, but we clearly see his visual tics such as two people in frame talking to each other, letting actors demonstrate who they are through long exposures to their smaller actions, and strong performances throughout. I just wish the story had been arranged in a way that made sense.

True, the movie has got a few flaws, mostly in the construction; the structure lacks necessity and the flashbacks appear a bit randomly, it seems. However, the essential Bergman is already present (it's 1949): a few absolutely superb close-ups on the main characters' faces, the way people suddenly appear on camera, from unexpected angles, etc. And Bergman is already displaying some of the themes he will use constantly : the train travel, war and ruins as a background for difficult relationships, plus of course the impossibility and at the same time the inevitability of the relationship between man and woman : it's doomed, but there's no other way... In fact, the French title is "La fontaine d'Aréthuse", which points to this very idea. Precisely, I'd like to discuss another point : the original title is "Thirst". And in fact, people in the movie drink a lot : wine, beer, milk, or fail to drink : in a dramatic moment, one character refuses to drink coffee, tea is prepared, but doesn't taste good. I believe people never drink water, but water (the sea) is the backdrop for the happiest moment of the movie and the most desperate (with the suggestion of a suicide). For Bergman, I believe, Man is essentially thirsty, is desperately thirsty for something to calm and comfort him. But the world is hostile, relationships can offer only brief moments of satisfaction on a backdrop of tension and pain. Other comments on this title ? Very interesting movie overall.

Bergman's first foray into marriage - a long visited topic for him. Moving on from a previously familiar summer holiday romance scenario that ends in pregnancy termination, the story shows how the now sterile ex ballet dancer faces frustrations with her new husband. The married soldier that was the subject of her affair (I presume he was killed in action), leaves a widow who comes to haunt her, in spirit and in body.

For Bergman, we see his first slightly bleached-out ultra close up and face to face shot. The psychiatrist too makes a first appearance as emotional damage is pursued as a topic. There's also quite a bit of flash-backing and a train journey that runs through most of it which is supposed to symbolise both a passage in time but also the empty, barren vessel she now feels herself to be.

The distinctively intelligent dialogue that so appeals to me is sharp and acerbic, probably for the first time. "I only stay alive so I can keep you as miserable as you've always kept me" is typical of Ingmar's angst. Subtleties of depressive subjects such as suicide are shown by someone leaping to their death into water but all we hear is a plover or some-such seabird changing its call.

A little lumpy in its narrative but for those who love Bergman, the gems are starting to shine and we are reassured by the burgeoning qualities of who we now know to be one of the World's greatest ever directors.

Bergman is beginning to develop some of his personal traits to be found in the later, more mature film. He hasn't yet learned to unveil the characters quite yet but the interactions are quite interesting. There are several stories going on here and a couple of groups of characters and sometimes the switching back and forth can be confusing. I would certainly agree with one reviewer that "thirst" was used not only metaphorically throughout but quite literally from the first image of an eddy of water during the credits to the very end. The characters are always drinking something or other - water (it's midsummer after all), wine(one of the characters is an alcoholic), even milk. The characters are actually quite self-centered, as in so many of Bergman's earliest films, and not particularly likable. The scene with the "therapist" was especially disturbing and the characters seem more prone to bounce off each other than anything. It's when they start to communicate that the trouble really begins to brew as we've learned from the later films.

Curtis Stotlar