© 2022 James Clark
Filmmaker/dramatist, Ingmar Bergman began to show what he could do during the era of the Nazis. In all his presentations you would think that such a matter would be on his mind and his heart. As a tyro, he was not only working within neutral Sweden, but also happy to develop his skills within the Axis. His powers of reflection cannot be dismissed. He was, indeed, a brilliant exponent of that matter of palsy and rampant overrated, within the actions of religion and science. Many philosophically thinkers, over the past two hundred years, have tangled with this arduousness. They have been handicapped by murderous religion and murderous science.
This early (reckless) involvement by Bergman could not sustain very long. Our film today provides a dramatic form of his education. There is, at the outset, a vicious attack. In the tranquil, neat-as-a-pin village, a lady, namely, Mutti, had seen fit to take in a baby whose mother refused to touch. The violence, however, did not end with that. Mutti’s love and joy for the child, namely, Nelly, was to be arrested by the now eighteen-year-old girl rounded-up to become a decorative prostitute, in Stockholm. The girl had been given the idea that she would be a clerk in a chic clothing boutique. But in no-time Nelly adjusted.
Its follow-up is far more sophisticated. Most of the heavy lifting becomes the holder of one, Jack, a vague relative of the owner, and a seldom active actor. That he was a somewhat ambiguous sage, there was, on the train back to Stockholm, his pandemonium of glee in noticing on the seats there was stylized crosses of the Nazi type. (Of course, the business-lady had joined in.) Nelly’s confusion here would by only customary.
Nevertheless, Jack had ventured into dangerous and astounding territory. He and the so-called mother (who had sent ahead a flashy gown for the recruit) attend the yearly dance phenomenon of the village, focused upon the music of the waltz. Jack, already drunk, asks Jenny, “Would you mind if I asked your daughter to dance?”/ “Not at all. You can dance as you like…” During that first dance with Jack (which created anger in her partner), Jack blurts out, “You’re very beautiful, the Belle of the Ball.”/ “That’s very kind of you.”/ “Feminine beauty makes me sad… I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other… You look so sad.”/ “Me? I’m not sad at all.”/ “Not sad in in the usual way. It’s a sadness deep in your eyes. Perhaps your heart is sad…”/ “You sound like a novel.”/ “I was going to enter the church…. To live in peace, far from the noise and the worry…” (Nelly argues, “It can be a bit too peaceful.”) He requests two drinks. He then adds something. “I call it, ‘Jack the Ripper’s Evensong.’ It’ll go down easily. I’m sure you’ll like it.” (Easy revolutionaries! The world is cluttered with them. Bergman’s career being dedicated to better than that.)
The second step for the two show-offs fails to thrive. The “ripper” begins by mocking the sedate and rounding out a quorum for crushing the aged. Along the way, Jack finds a drum and a piano and a tuba. He and his jazz pianist and tubist delight the opposition within the basement. Some real dynamics ensue. Jack, particularly, has a heart for this music. How earnestly would he engage this? The mayor appears, telling the noisy crowd, “Stop it! Stop it, I say!”/ Jack comes back with, “What a bunch of crazy marionettes! And who pulls their string? Me!” (Out they go to the forest! The long summer night. Moreover, the drummer has been thinking about the resentment in Nelly’s dance partner. “What about that tall fellow?” / “He’d kill you!” (She kisses him!) Here he rattles off another skill, namely, a theatrical actor. (“Take that you clod!”) “There lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swards. Look thou but sweet and I am proof against their enmity. My life we’re better ended by their hate than death prorogued, wanting of their love…” / “That’s my clockwork! You wind me up with a key.” (The wrong metaphor.) “Who winds you up?”/ “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you? Poor man.” (She’s going to be a sensation in Stockholm.)/ “Don’t pity me. One day I’ll leave the puppet theatre and enter the darkness.” (Bergman revving up a long career of trouble. Does he have a finale?)/ A piccolo sounds. Down to the lake. She sits on his jacket. Nelly objects to his morose position./ “How do you mean?… I’m happy right now. May I kiss you. ” She closes her eyes to receive his kiss on the cheek. /”Once I lived under some stairs in an old castle in ruin. Across from the stairs was a big broken window. Through it I could see the fields beneath the moon, and the sea, the woods and two bone meal factories. In those days I was happy. Now I’m all right, but I’m not happy. A dragon stands guard over me. It gives me everything I need in exchange for just a few pounds of my body and a few ounces of my brain everywhere.”
A presence to avoid. Talent isn’t nearly enough. A train wreck. Having been exposed to the “very strange” (Jenny’s expression), Jack tries sanity: “But it won’t be that way longer… May I kiss you again?” He takes her to the ground… “This is a moonlight life…” Ulf the clod sends Jack into the lake. Even what could be called uncanny had taken place. But the main event carried this foible: “You little bastard…;”/ “Leave me alone! Don’t hit me!”/Nelly yells, “Ulf, don’t!” /”What’s wrong with you? Leave me alone!” (Bergman at the outset [and forever], intent upon humiliation in its various forms. Where does such militaristic concern touch Bergman as warping his gifts?) The skirmish had rapidly discovered the worst in all of them. Jack: A cheap opportunist. Ulf: “You go to a ball and behave like…” Nelly: “I was so excited about the ball. This dress made me want to sing. I didn’t sing that much… I didn’t know what I was doing. And Ulf just stood there gaping. ” The last of this embarrassment falls upon the sweet semi-mother. “I won’t let you go. You’re all I have. No one else means anything to me. I’m so happy now…” Here a show of trashing the authenticity. Grasping what is real seems to be of no great interest. That it is lucid is a voyage of crucial importance. The most important and difficult challenge to master.
The trampling of Mutti’s pride, and its sentimentality, has its own ironic overtake. But for now, the cynics are smiling. “You may [Nelly] not believe it, but I think of you often.” The girl replies, / “I think of you too, Auntie.” / “You think you might call me, Mother? “/ “Perhaps…”/ “Well, let’s settle for Auntie for the time being…I wasn’t much older than you are now when I had you.” (Jack, no doubt, having noted to Jenny the near thing.) Casual touching and the paramount being big money and big looks. Nelly speaks from out of Jenny’s prison experience, conveyed by a quick moment of bars. “I know you’ve been through a lot for my sake.” (Mutti’s fantasy for the girl’s well-being)./ Jenny brazen, “Well, we all have our crosses to bear…I own a beauty salon, and it’s very interesting work.”
Mutti’s bid to find her balance occurs while unable to be satisfied with her musical chores and helping a woman with twins. Moreover, she had been notified that she had cancer. A generous friend covers the trip; and she comes to see Nelly. (Before that, significantly, she knew that her baseline would not be tranquil. “When I get back, we’ll sit and knit in the evenings. We’ll light a fire in the autumn chill.”) On reaching the girl’s bailiwick, she finds that Jenny was working out of the office that day. The owner greets Mutti with a cheery smile. “Welcome! What a pleasant surprise… Nelly will be so happy.” Mutti tells her, “I hope I’m not disturbing you.” /”Not at all.”/ Mutti’s hands are tightened. “I just got into my head to come.” (Grasping for more cogency.)/ “A splendid idea,” (embracing irony). “Nelly isn’t home, but she’ll be here any minute. She’ll be happy to see you. Would you like to see her room?” /”Yes, please.” (A slip.)/ “Be my guest.” (Be my owner. Be my slave.)/ (Shadows in the movements of the girl’s supposed bedroom. Something amiss.)/ “Nelly seems to like it here… She’s often out enjoying herself. She’s made lots of friends. Everyone likes her…” / ” That’s nice,” the rural lady hopes. Mutti, ill at ease. / Jenny twists: “She has written, hasn’t she? I tell her often to write to you.”/ “That’s very kind of you.” /”But perhaps it’s hard to find the time. What do you think of her room.”/ “It’s very nice.” (Steps attacking the naive, while one tries to thrive.) /”This is her closet.” (Opulent. Overwhelming.) “I had a few things made for her. Look at this! A dress for a princess! Feel the silk! And look at her little shoes. And she has new undergarments too. It’s so nice to give her beautiful things. They look so good on her and make her so happy. Shall we sit down?” (Her broch has the form of a penis.) /”Here’s her diary…”/ “You read her diary?” /”No, I just leaf through it. It’s so amusing. Listen to this, for example. I watched Mother get dressed this morning. She looked so young standing naked before the mirror. Her skin looks young like mine.”/ “I don’t want to hear any more! I haven’t read her diary once in eighteen years.”/ “That’s you, Miss Johansson.” (That’s missing the boat in both cases.) Little tiffs clutter the heights. Bergman’s dramatic hard truth. “You look pale.”/ “Just fine, thank you.”/ “Any news about the province?”/ “Oh, yes. I bought a geranium” (something real). Mutti might be weak in money. But her musical art (which she downplays) allows sophisticated arguments, which slaps down the simpleton, who becomes livid, along with the entrance of the girl: “This is wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!” the girl emotes, embracing her real mother./ “My dear little girl. I’ve missed you so much. You’re older and more beautiful. Much more beautiful. And your hair! Back home, you had no hairstyle at all, really…” Nelly, wanting to change the subject of glamour (and its business), blurts out, “I had a feeling you were coming! Did Aunt Jessie see you off?”/ “Nothing happens back home, sadly that is really the truth. But you should have lots to tell.”/ “My job is lots of fun. I’m always meeting fun people and some odd ones. But Jenny is so nice to me, always giving me things and spoiling me. I think she was very lonely before, the salon got busy.” (Advantage on the march.) The subject of Ulf comes up, and in a flash, Mutti has mooted that the girl has more to say./ “Nelly, what is it you’re trying to tell me… that’s so hard to say? What is it? “/ “Nothing.”/ “What could it be?”/ “Can’t you see I’m just fine. That everything is fine…”/ “You’re not telling me the truth. You must tell me what it is!”/ “Nothing’s the matter, dearest Mutti!”/ Jenny comes in: “Dinner is served. I don’t understand where Jack is. He’s never on time… My half-brother’s son… He’s here a lot. He’s an actor, but he hasn’t worked in a long time.” (Maybe he should have tried becoming a playwright, like Bergman. Jack eventually will commit suicide. Bergman’s several emotional crashes follow the philosopher, Nietzsche.) Mutti makes the move to go home that night. The hating hostess sneers, “It’s a pity I can’t see you off. Will you come again soon?”/ “It may be a while…” (Nelly and Mutti embrace desperately.)
Jack recognizes Mutti leaving the building. He asks, “May I see you to the station?”/ “Don’t go to any trouble…”/ “No trouble at all. Let’s go!” On reaching the station, Jack rushes over to an exotic woman. Then he rushes to the timetable. Coming to Mutti, he offers candy. “Here’s your ticket and a magazine.” / “Thank you for all your help.” He sits down. “Not at all.” / “Don’t you want to go to that party with Nelly?” / “It’s not that.”/ “I see.” (Mutti does not see what Jack sees, sort of. Jack at work, here, at the station, imagining the mayhem if Mutti where to stay the night.) / “But you didn’t stay longer? It wouldn’t have been indiscreet for you to ask.”/ “What should I have asked?”/ “If Jenny is going to a party… And I’d say, ‘No, she’s not, because she’s doing a trick at home’. Everything is one great muddle… Up until I met your little girl [‘I say ‘your,’ because she is yours, even if Jenny happened to give birth to her]… Well, ever since then, I’m no longer a moonlit creature in the moonlight… You understand?”/ “Not really.”/ “It’s not easy to understand. What I mean is…”/ Mutti’s turn: “You mean you’re in love with Nelly!”/ “No. No, that’s not it at all. I can’t be in love with anyone. I only love myself.”
With Jack, there is that “great muddle.” A great muddle can find lucidity, if one stops insisting that only one is good enough to know. His appalling overrating of Nelly, a lost flake, brings to the matter of show biz. (Bergman’s dedication would want much more from theatre and film, as a study and an action, and a philosopher.) The remainder of this truly thrilling film, will set the table for crisis. One more time! “But Nelly is real, if you know what I mean…”/ “Yes, I do… She’s so real that I become more unreal and start wondering why I live my ghostly life at all.”/ “Perhaps I understand. I could do with her as my anchor in reality. For my own benefit, that is. It’s a purely selfish point of view. There’s a price to pay for that…Oh yes! If you only take and never give, the penalty is severe.”/ “May I have a cigarette?… Your words are a bit upsetting?” / “With pleasure… I must say I admire you.”/ “Me?”/ “You’ve given and given, without any for yourself.”/ “Have I?”/ “Nelly’s always talking about you. She loves you. She’ll come back to you one day. Then you’ll have your reward! And then Jenny and I will have to pay…” (Like a choleric, this duo dashes into absurdity. Enthusiasm, hoping to make some sense. But sense requires courage.)
“Jenny lives off me. And I live off Nelly. It’s all rather diabolic. But we must be content that we’ve had her on loan. And I’ll tell something else. Tonight, I’m going take off this stupid suit [zsuit suit], bundle up in a package and send it to Jenny. Ask me” what I’ll do after that? I’ll put on old rags! I’ll leave Jenny and that whole world. I’ll live under some stairs [the same garbage as when the ball]. Don’t miss your train.” (These two have already missed the train. How many others have missed the train?)
Mutti has a bad experience going home. He told Jack, “I’m so worried. Something’s going to happen, but I don’t know what.” What happens is the marriage of Jenny and Ulf. (It’s a matter of perspective.) But the bad experience will spoil the ride. And then she’ll be ignorant. (Mutti’s bad night: It begins promisingly. In the sleeping car, her berth was connected by a younger woman. She listened politely to, “I’ve been to see my grandchildren.” The drama at the solon and the station made it impossible for her to sleep. Therefore, she began to desperately look for her highlights: Jenny, a pliable child; piano playing with the child. “You see, I’m not your real mother…” (Never look back.) “I didn’t want to tell you. It would only make you sad…I sold my books so she could have a dress… I only love my self… I could do with her as my anchor of reality…. For my own benefit… Dear Lord, why is this happening to this old woman. I always thought I loved the girl for her own sake. Why else have I existed… Only one front tooth…Dear Lord, take these thoughts from me. I don’t want them! I can’t bear them!” (The train pounding. Black smoke. No easy action!) Mutti’s berth. Hands tight. Hands pushing up into the young woman’s back. “Help me! I don’t want to die!” The calm woman comes down. “Please help me!” the one in disarray, calls out. “I can’t bear it!”/ “Calm down! It’s probably something you ate… There, have a little water. There we are…” (Are they there?)/ “Goodness me…”/ “Keep the light on, and you’ll be able to sleep…”
After the jag of the bogus of the magic bimbo, Mutti’s new policy is, “There is nothing anyone can help. It’s something everyone has to go through on their one. No one can help you through it.” Jack’s way, now, was the way of sentimentality. Nelly opens the blinds, somewhat. A knock on the glass, and he’s in business. She asks him, “Please don’t smoke in here. Jenny doesn’t like it…” Jack ignores that, tossing his spent match on the floor. “This place is fantastic.”/ “Why?”/ “All these severed heads [of mannequins]… I’d like to come here when it’s full of women. I’d look in their eyes and say, ‘Tell Jack everything…’” (A mirror presents two Jacks. He pulls out a gun.) “Why don’t you say that to Jenny.”/ “Please don’t mention her name…”/ “What’s wrong. You’re not your usual self… I asked you not to smoke.”/ “Sure… Not my usual self, you say?” Jenny comes in. “You’re not your usual self. You’re not happy, Jack. What’s wrong. Did something happen?”/ “There’s one person I love, and it’s her.”/ “Why don’t you leave her?”/ “I tried to stay away a few days, but I couldn’t.”/ “Why?”/ “Don’t ask when I don’t want to answer or I’ll leave again.” (Jack into a murky showroom. Long shadows. Those shadows more substantive than them. He holds her, pushes her.)/ “Don’t touch me. I’ve kept my distance, and I’ll go on doing so. Why are you badgering me like this? We don’t love each other.”/ “I don’t know. I only know you’ve changed everything for me, so it’s your fault.” / “ ‘Poor Jack,’ I’ve said that too often myself.” / “I can’t go on. I can’t bear another day of grinning. I’m going to kill myself!” (His shadow, smallish.) “No, now I’m just acting. Although I always carry a revolver in my pocket.” (Shows the pistol.) “ But I don’t know if it’s to impress myself or to scare a young thing like you. Or if I’m actually serious about it. I really don’t know.”
Jack looks for a showy exit to overcome his humiliation. His humiliation in being routed by the elements concerns some wit. But this trial will only smile upon the strong. “We get just what we want, and we pay the price too.”
Jack and Nelly opt for sentimental melodrama. “You can help me, Nelly.” / “How.” / “Take me by the hand, lead me to the police and say…This boy wants to turn himself in for murder… He murdered a girl he was living with… She was pregnant. He turned on the gas and made it look like an accident. It was all very ingenious… I couldn’t help it, Nelly.” Not surprisingly, Jack plans to be a prisoner… Tomorrow! Jenny, coming back from another room completes shooting down the fakery. “How long has this been going on?/ Like a child, he yells out to Jenny, “Don’t answer her!… Go away!” Jenny, in rare lucidity, responds with, “No, I think I’ll stay.” / “Is that so? Then stay. Forgive me, Nelly…” / “You mustn’t listen to Jack. I was a fool to think I could have him in the house. He’s a sick man. Don’t listen to him. Perhaps he told you about murdering a girl… and had to end his moonlight life. Perhaps he said you were his anchor in reality… How many women do you think he’s said that to?” (Shadow of a dog.) Humiliation. The serial goof. But now only a real deal can salvage his stature. More scuttlebutt from the dying man. “You’re not telling the truth. You brought me to make your lover. You were getting too old. No one wanted you. No one.” / “Jack you were afraid of being alone. I was to be your escape. And you brought Nelly here for precisely the same reason.” / “You’ve never been any good. I only let you stay out of charity…” (Bergman’s theatrical dance.)
Humiliation with only that one step of a player. “I’m leaving.” / “Are you?” / “Yes, goodbye.” / “I suppose you’re going to shoot yourself. I hope your little cap gun is properly loaded. Do you know where your head is, so you don’t hit something else?” / “You’re quite right, my dear. I probably won’t shoot myself. People like me don’t kill themselves. It wouldn’t be in keeping with my style. Good-bye, Nelly.” A few moments after, the women hear the gunshot. He chose the sidewalk of the nearby theatre. An onlooker was to note that he was reading the theatre billboards. (Bergman, again, now giving a thumbs down to the competitors.)
Resolution.
After covering the suicide in this film, we pretty much ignore the “happy ending.” Here we manage to engage that matter.
Due to the neutral status of Sweden during World War II, the setting here is prim and proper. Bergman’s setting of a lovely lake and carefully constructed homes has been carried in this way. “I’ll be unfaithful” [her mother’s way]. “You’re so naïve…” The last voice-over being, “The stillness of a Saturday evening… The little town that is so small…”
Do we leave it at that? Or are there other possibilities beckoning? Two outstanding positions vying for our hearts have to be considered. One is world religion. The other is world science. Most of us find a haven within one or another, or in both. However, that disregards a significant constituency, namely the arts. Do they seem to be so trivial as to nothing but “entertainment?” Surely, one can distinguish the difference. Or can they? Religion and science would have no trouble finding their payoffs. Those of the arts, however, become active by attending to a sensibility that does not easily occur. Jack, in the film, becomes a fatality in that dangerous business.
As to succeed here, there is no easy way. We could carp about the historical violence meted to daring artists. But unless you are a survivor you won’t (especially, on a planet like this one) thrive. What, however, is a payoff, despite the madness? As with Bergman; but with many others (over, about the past two hundred years) the magic of hands. Two ways: business; and pleasure. Interplay. Interaction. Reaching to other worlds that notice.