Musique dans les ténèbres

A film directed by Ingmar Bergman at the beginning of his career, based on a screenplay written by someone else, Dagmar Edqvist who adapted it from his own play.

It tells the story of a young man who becomes blind in a military accident and has to rebuild his life with that big limitation. At first a huge, insurmountable obstacle, but which, little by little, becomes not only tolerable, but even a means for rediscovering the world, music and love, with a new sensitivity and a positive attitude towards life.

It may not be one of the Swedish master's best films, but it's certainly worth seeing.

'Music in Darkness' is early Bergman, his fourth as a director. Early Bergman is actually same expression like Early Kurosawa or Early Hitchcock - usually well made (far from being amateurish), but shallow in plot and void of depth in characters and dialogue. 'Music in Darkness' is exactly like that. Beautiful cinematography, but no other Bergman traits. If one wouldn't know it's a Bergman movie then they would think it's just OK melodrama about blind musician and his struggles with life and love. Pretty predictable and by the numbers drama that actually follows more classical Hollywood formulas than carries Bergman's voice (I guess that's the reason this is called Early Bergman). The subject of depression and human's inner fights are only touched on the surface. By far from being a bad movie, but nothing too memorable also. Competently directed little film.

In Sweden, the upper-class pianist Bengt Vyldeke (Birger Malmsten) suffers an accident in the military drill and becomes blind. He returns to the house of his aunt Beatrice Schröder (Naima Wifstrand) and is initially supported by his sister Agneta (Bibi Skoglund) since his fiancée Blanche (Marianne Gyllenhammar) has called off their engagement and his friends have abandoned him. When Agneta goes to the university, the young servant Ingrid (Mai Zetterling) helps Bengt in his daily life and falls in love with him. But she overhears a conversation between Bengt and Beatrice when his master belittles her calling Ingrid of "little maid". Bengt travels to play piano in the restaurant of a cunning manager and finds humiliation and loneliness. Years later he meets Ingrid, who has studied and is near to graduate and he falls in love with her. But Ingrid has a boyfriend Ebbe (Bengt Eklund), strong and handsome, and Bengt has to fight with his inferiority complex first to win the love of Ingrid.

"Musik i mörker" is a melodramatic romance by Bergman with fight of classes in the darkness. Only recently the firsts films of my number one director have been released in Brazil by Versátil Distributor and all of them are bleak non-Hollywoodian romances. Birger Malmsten is again the lead star and the sweet Mai Zetterling is impressively gorgeous with her wonderful eyes. It is amazing the fight of classes in this period of Sweden. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Música na Noite" ("Music in the Night")

Bengt's lost his sight and is blind, his future now closed and confined, a musical career, may also disappear, a world for which he wasn't designed (just how do you come to terms with losing your sight and all the unplanned futures it brings).

Ingrid is a servant, a maid, she's become Bengt's supporter and aid, now he's opened her eyes, to the world and its skies, no longer surrounded by shade (the foundation for all success - opportunity, empowerment and education).

It's not a complex tale of two people finding themselves, but it's a beautifully performed story of two people falling in love under circumstances neither would have wished for, as their social status adjusts and their outlooks align.

It is always worth paying special attention to the music of Ingmar Bergman's films, because it always carries great significance. This is one of his almost numerous films dealing directly with music, as it tells the story of a brilliant young pianist who in an accident loses his sight but goes on playing, although he can't get any stable position, and as an alternative he educates himself to a piano tuner. The scenes from the school for the blind are the most poignant and interesting in the film, especially the class of blind children reading together, while the scene then changes into the concert the blind pianist is giving for the blind. His films with music for a major theme are perhaps his most personal and interesting and might be the best ones, and here for the first time he pierces the mental darkness of the black side of music and creation. Mai Zetterling is the enduring light in this darkness, and when you lose her in the beginning you long for her to reappear, which of course you are certain she will, and she does indeed. Birger Malmsten as the blind pianist makes a very delicate performance of both great pain and superior integrity, and all the other actors are outstanding as well, especially Douglas Håge as the rowdy restaurant boss. As a film of his youth, it is still of the experimental stage of Bergman's long career, but as such it is perhaps the most interesting of his early experimenting films.