Crisi

Crisis marks Bergman's first film in the director's seat and serves as a promising, if often stumbling, showcase of the director's future prowess as a filmmaker. Guided under the steady mentorship of Victor Sjöström, a legendary Swedish director from the silent era, Bergman quietly made his appearance on the world stage with this melodramatic coming-of-age story on the loss of innocence. A layout of many of Bergman's future motifs is established here, with the conflict between family generations, the psychological tension that lies between men and women, and themes on existential despair being peppered throughout the film's run time. Some of his visual flair also begins to take root here, most famously of which being his refusal to capitulate to the classic shot-reverse-shot technique for scenes of dialogue. Bergman, with his fascination with the human face, would prefer to simply focus in on the face of a single actor throughout the length of a conversation, often to great dramatic effect. While these elements of the film definitely appeal to a student of Bergman's work, they do not necessarily translate into a must-see masterpiece.

This film suffered from a tedious and tumultuous production, with pressure from a studio that had little faith in Bergman at the time holding sway over the director's approach. Bergman was known for being an even-keeled, highly professional director to work with, but he has admitted that this was a reputation that he had to earn through many trials. In the production of this film he retained little popularity with the ensemble he had assembled, with a cantankerous, explosive attitude ruling over the young perfectionist. This would produce strenuous tensions between Bergman and the staff during filming. One famous incident involved Bergman's insistence that the crew continue filming after a cameraman had been injured from taking a fall. As Bergman's confidence in his storytelling would grow, so would his professionalism and capability as a director, something that this film reflects.

From a story standpoint, Crisis presents a narrative on the loss of innocence for a beautiful eighteen-year old girl by the name of Nelly (played by Inga Landgré), her relationship with her foster mother, Ingeborg (Dagny Lind), and the arrival of her estranged biological mother, Jenny (Marianne Löfgren). Jenny's lover, Jack (Stig Olin) also has a crucial role to play in the moral crisis that Nelly comes to face, as he seduces her to the whims and whiles of city-life and leads her further astray from the child-like innocence of her youth. The film carries commentary on motherhood, urban culture, and the naivety of the innocent. The success with which it pursues these themes is done with varying degrees of success. Towards the end, some of the plot developments feel sudden, and rash character actions appear out of place, making a compelling psychodrama teeter onto the edge of becoming a melodrama. This flirtation with becoming a hackneyed, overacted stage play transitions to the other elements of the film, particularly the acting and cinematography. The film is bolstered by strong performances by Stig Olin and Dagny Lind, with Olin playing a conniving, manipulative young man to great success (up until the film's end) and Lind portraying the saintly foster mother who does her best to protect Nelly. Otherwise, the performances in the film were middling in comparison to these two. Likewise, the cinematography can at times show a great sense of creativity that serves our understanding of the characters. The focus on one character during dialogue, as previously mentioned, and Ingeborg's dream sequence aboard the train are excellent examples of Bergman's future prowess. But much of the rest of the film has little flair going for it, and often feels as though it was shop fairly cheaply. This does not mean that the film was shot poorly, but that it lacked the steady guidance and beautiful compositions that would be found in Bergman's later work (often thanks to the support from Bergman's two key cinematographers during his career, Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist). Thus, the clashing of these components of brilliance and mediocrity meld together to form a flawed, albeit strongly compelling psychodrama.

Bergman would describe this film as a, "complete disaster," in his later years, dismissing his earliest film with severe criticisms that were mostly directed at his capabilities and personal failures at the time. With Bergman being the perfectionist that he was, one would be remiss to take heed of his criticisms. While definitely one of Bergman's minor works, it is essential if one aims to view the first steppingstone in this filmmaker's journey. It also evokes a gripping narrative that hints at what was to come from the young director.

In a small town in the countryside of Sweden, the piano teacher Ingeborg (Dagny Lind) has been raising her foster daughter Nelly (Inga Landgré) for eighteen years with a simple life, but full of love. Ingeborg's tenant Ulf (Allan Bohlin) is in love with Nelly, but the spoiled girl despises him since she considers Ulf too old for her. On the weekend of the local ball, Nelly's biological mother Jenny (Marianne Löfgren) arrives in town with the intention of bringing Nelly to the big city to work with her in her beauty shop. In the ball, the naive Nelly feels attracted by Jack (Stig Olin), but she does not guess that he is Jenny's lowlife lover. Nelly decides to travel with Jenny to improve her future where she learns how tough life can be.

"Kris" is certainly dated in 2010, but it is still a great directorial debut of Ingmar Bergman. The dark and melodramatic story has a confused message of ingratitude – Why couldn't Nelly travel to the big city to learn a profession and earn money and still write to her beloved Ingeborg and visit her every now and then? Or Why the thirty and something year-old Ulf would be the best husband for Nelly if she does not love him? But this is a 1946 movie made immediately after-war when the values of the society would be different from the present days. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Crise" ("Crisis")

The narrator at the beginning of this film mentions it's a comedy, and while the film which follows is hardly that, maybe he's referring to the laughable choices we sometimes make in life when young, because that's what this crisis seems to be about. It's either that or the crisis Bergman himself was facing as a struggling first-time director. Anyway, in the film, a young woman has been raised to the age of 18 in a small town by her adoptive mother, and is being courted by her mother's lodger, who while annoying, boring, and older, at least seems like a decent guy who cares for her. Enter her birth mother, who wants to take her to Stockholm to work in her beauty salon, as well as her birth mom's younger boyfriend, who is a creepy and disturbing lothario. The choice is thus between town/adoptive mom/nice guy, vs. city/birth mom/ladies man, and the film sets it pretty much up in those black and white terms.

One exception to that is how the film shows selfish vs. selfless love, and we find that most of it (or maybe all of it?) is at least partially the former, which was interesting. I also appreciated how the film confronts adoptive vs. birth parent rights, with the adoptive mom asserting herself, though that doesn't really develop much from there, since the young woman is old enough to make her own decisions.

Most of the scenes felt pretty generic and not all that compelling, but there were some exceptions. I loved the scene at the ball when the youth rearrange the furniture in the next room, then improvise some modern music and dance wildly, to the consternation of the older folks trying to listen to an opera singer. There is also a lovely scene when the adoptive mom is lying sleepless on a train, and remembering moments from the past. Bergman also gets a little zinger in on men when a woman in the beauty parlor quotes Catherine the Great as saying once you've had 10,000 men, you find that there isn't a whole lot of difference between any of them.

Unfortunately, despite solid performances from the cast, the film suffers mainly because of its script, which is melodramatic and simplistic. The craziest thing was the signature move we find that the playboy puts on women. He tells them he's killed his girlfriend, wants to turn himself into the police, and may shoot himself ... and apparently this is an approach that gets them into bed. (What?) The film also suffers from a lack of clarity and a wandering in tone, complete with an oddly jaunty soundtrack in places, and the young director is to blame for this. He himself commented in 1973 that "If someone had asked me to film the phone book, then I would have done it. The result might have been slightly better. I knew nothing, couldn't do anything, and felt like a crazy cat in a yarn harness," and the result was the studio sending in Victor Sjöström to help supervise him through the chaos. As Bergman idolized the man, that must have been very tough for him. Despite all of this, the film is not awful or anything, but it is decidedly average, and for Bergman completists only.

For a directional debut, this is very solid stuff, not only skillfully directed but also set to a brilliant original music score. I would however identify one weakness with Bergman's directing here: it is very much tailored to the script, with dialogue or narration almost all the time, and this leads to it being too talkative, with limited breaks in which one can stop and admire the way that the story is being told. The film is in this sense very different to the style that Bergman would later adopt, and although perhaps somewhat weak, Bergman's skills do shine through. There are well-framed shots, an effective stream-of-consciousness sequence, great camera angles and excellent camera movement. The inclusion of some more non-dialogue bits possibly would have improved this film, but there is little else to complain about, with quite a good story behind the material too.

Nelly is far too contained, metaphorically tethered and chained, until Jack makes connection, Jenny sets defection, breaking habits for which she's been trained (or brainwashed as most of us are during our formative years).

Jack's clearly a bit of a lad, a deceiver, a liar, a cad, sneaky opportunist, loves to arrange a tryst, perpetually out on the gad (a stereotypical chancer who's been around for as long as woman have accommodated such characters).

Jenny likes to be among others, solitude is a feeling she smothers, but Nelly's deserter, has come to reclaim her, from Ingeborg who loves and still mothers (she wants her legacy to continue now she has the means, and Jack's attraction is wearing thin).

Ingeborg's overcome with emotion, a lifetime of love and devotion, now she's all alone, since Nelly's left home, a boat cast adrift in the ocean (alas, all children fledge sooner or later) .

Ulf has been patient and slow, waiting for Nelly to grow, now he's been rejected, not what he expected, full of seed he's unable to sow (in modern parlance, a groomer, how times change).

If you were in Nelly's small shoes, what would you do, who would you choose? The one thing I'd say, appreciate today, in the past, as a woman, you lose (although far too many still lose out today but there are better options or choices available).