A Lesson in Love (En lektion i kärlek). Ingmar Bergman. 1954. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.
Yay. Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Björnstrand (Sweden’s Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant) are back in this delicious comedy (which is Bergman’s first real comedy). Harriet Andersson does a wonderful performance as a tomboy 15-year-old, too.
It’s a thoroughly entertaining film.
This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.
Music I’ve bought this month.
 |  |  |  |  |
 |  | %3A+Portfolio) | %3A+Fame) | %3A+Muse) |
 | ) | ) | +(1)) | +(2)) |
 |  |  |  | ) |
) |  |  |  |  |
 | ) | ) |  |  |
Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton). Ingmar Bergman. 1953. ⭐⭐⭐⭐★★.
Finally cinematographer Sven Nykvist is on board (for part of the film). Unfortunately, he doesn’t return to the fold until 1960, I think…
This film perhaps marks the beginning of the end of the end of the “Early Bergman” stretch of films? You’ve got Harriet Andersson and Gunnar Björnstrand, so you just need Eva Dahlbeck back…
The picaresque bits are very Italian, but the obsessions are mostly pure Bergman.
It was a box office bomb at the time. It’s well regarded now (in the risible Empire best-of list, it’s the highest-rated Bergman film), but I’m kinda unimpressed watching it now. Secrets of Women, for instance, seems like a more well-put-together film to me…
But, yes, there are some awesome scenes here.
This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.
Eva. Gustaf Molander. 1948. ⭐⭐⭐★★★.
This film didn’t arrive in time for its rightful place in this blog series. Shame! Shame! So cast your mind back from 1953 to the long gone past of 1948…
This one is not directed by Bergman, but the script is by him and it’s based on one of his short stories, and features basically all of Bergman’s usual actors. It’s very Bergman The Early Yearsesque.
Lots of lovely performances, and lots of fun scenes, but the last half is rather over cooked, and the last scenes are rated the coveted Two Continuously Rolling Eyes award.
This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.
I was reading the Fantagraphics collection of Zanardi by Andrea Pazienza tonight (it’s not very good; it’s like the stuff you’d stumble upon in European underground magazines in the 80s and be amused by for a couple of pages before you’d get annoyed by the incoherence and bored by the boorish humour and skimmed the last ten pages: Only here it’s a 230 page book and the tedium is unbearable (the only review I could find of this book is more positive), but at least you can play “spot the artist Pazienza’s ripping off on this page: Ah, Caza, yes, Moebius, and now it’s Spain, and huh, two random panels by Montellier, so it’s got that going for it).
But that’s not what I wanted to write about at all! I wanted to write about footnotes, and especially footnotes when doing a translation of an older work.
Yes, mentioning that those names belong to soccer players makes some sense.
And it’s an old work, so I guess pointing out what C.H.I.P.S. is makes sense. To an American audience, though?
And, sure, pointing out that Frigidaire…
… is the magazine that this very strip appears in is more than fine; it brings additional understanding and depth to the piece.
But since the original work was Italian, is…
… translating Latin proverbs and explaining them within a reasonable remit of a footnote? Perhaps?
When a character randomly mentions an Italian city, is that the right place to point out that’s where the artist studied?
And then we get to the “how stupid does the translator (or footnoter) think that Americans are?” department.
The answer:
Really, really, stupid.
* Footnotes pull you out of what you’re reading and makes your eyes skip up and down and are a general nuisance. Putting shovelfuls of them into books like this is disrespectful to the work.
Of course, the work in question sucks, so, eh, whatevs. FORGET I WROTE THIS BLOG ARTICLE!