Crise

I'm not a big fan of Bergman's directorial style but his "Wild Strawberries" I adore with all my heart which was a good enough reason for me to get acquainted with his filmography more closely. After watching a couple of uninteresting and weird movies of his I was beginning to lose hope and that's when I decided to dive into his early stuff and start with his debut body of work. 1946's "Crisis" shows only a hint of a future genius of Ingmar as a great playwright and a director. And precisely his remarkable script makes you want to stick with the movie for a while. It tells a story of fallen angels with their demons inside and how just one person can influence so many lives, make them do the things they don't want to do, lie and deceive and remain a human being after all. "Crisis" is a dark and psychological drama where there isn't any character you can really relate to or sympathize with but the plot and its characters will lead you to the ending with your mouth open. This is a good movie that stood the test of time and even 70 years later looks fresh, a bit too theatrical at times but this is Bergman we are talking about.

I guess it is forgivable for a first film to be maudlin, with cardboard characters and silly dialogue. This is the story of a young woman who decides to get out of town because there is no future there. She lives with her dying stepmother, her real mother leaving her behind for 18 years. She just kind of flits through things because she has pretty much been adored. She is impetuous. I haven't seen such a tear jerking woman as her loving stepmother, maybe Mrs. March in little women. She goes to be a hair stylist and gets hooked up with some bad ones, including a wolfish playboy. Meanwhile some big lunk with a silly name, Ulfe, carries a torch for her. In fairness, it has lots of very good shots and is pretty polished for a first film. It's just a bit dull and silly and very predictable.

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.

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.

Bergman's adaptation of Leck Fischer's play behaves like a stage play that has been slightly adapted for the screen. It is essentially a chamber melodrama and it makes little use of the cinema's expanded scope. The film is watchable and the cast is competent. Almost everything about it is competent. It was Bergman's first go at directing a film. He was 27/28 years old at the time.

Bergman is clearly influenced by Ibsen - I say "is", because the old master (nearly 85 years old now) is still at it on the stage - I have the privilege to hold tickets to see his adaptation of Ibsen's Ghosts in London May 2003 - can't wait. Kris is clearly influenced by Ibsen, but while the piece has borrowed Ibsen's mastery of structure and development, Kris lacks depth. If Ibsen is grand opera, Kris is operetta. Bergman had not yet acquired the skill to turn a minor play into a major film.

There is the odd hint of greatness to come, in particular the railway scene between Jack and Ingeborg. There is also the odd interesting camera angle. But some of the cutting is amateurish and the music is ghastly.

If the weatherman tells you that there is going to be a tremendous storm, you do not need to be a genius to recognise that the wispy breeze is a prelude to that storm. In the absence of that weather forecast, you could be forgiven for not recognising the breeze as an early hint at the big one. So it is with this film. Because we know it is Bergman, we see hints of greatness to come. Otherwise this would seem like an (admittedly above average) ordinary 1940's film.

Bergman aficionados will enjoy it, but it should be quite a way down the list for people who want to start discovering the greatness of Bergman's work.