Random Thoughts

It Rains On Our Love (Det regnar på vår kärlek). Ingmar Bergman. 1946. ⭐⭐⭐⭐★★.

Now we’re getting somewhere. This in a different league from the two previous films.

It’s based on a play written by a Norwegian guy, but, still, it’s a pretty good story. Very time-appropriate.

It’s got a nice flow, and Gunnar Björnstrand shows up in a small scene near the end. Björnstrand would go on to feature prominently in dozens of Bergman films, so it’s fun to see him pop up here. He’s wonderful here, too. “Proletarian ruffian!”

It’s a sweet film.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

Crisis (Kris). Ingmar Bergman. 1946. ⭐⭐⭐★★★.

Bergman’s directorial debut (if you don’t count the last scene of the previous film).

The introductory voice-over presents the film as “an everyday play… almost a comedy”. According to Swedish Wikipedia, the production was almost shut down, but the studio head gave Bergman a second chance and restarted the shooting from the start again. It bombed at the box office, and Berman himself allegedly called it “a magnificent failure”.

And it’s not a very distinct movie: I don’t think anybody would be able to guess that it’s a Bergman film if you were to blind test them on it. (Of course, then they’d only hear the dialogue, but I know what I mean.)

It’s a quite standard Swedish lighthearted film from the 40s, and as such it’s quite enjoyable, but it’s a rather choppy viewing experience. There are some really fascinating scenes (like at the train station), but long stretches of the film just bumbles along without much shape. (And the cinematography is rather indifferent.)

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

Torment (Hets). Alf Sjöberg. 1944. ⭐⭐★★★★.

This is very much a young man’s film: It’s all about a sadistic Latin teacher and his hapless pupils. I’m just guessing, but I assume that it’s Bergman’s revenge on a specific teacher.

This isn’t directed by Bergman, but Bergman wrote the script. It still looks a lot like you’d expect a Bergman film would, so either his script was very specific… OK, I just googled, and he was the assistant director, and directed the last scene himself. That makes sense.

It’s not a very good film. The characters are caricatures, the plot is both nonsensical and eye-rollingly obvious, and the dialogue is risible.

But it does have a mawkish charm going on.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

Ingmar Bergman. There’s nobody more jolly, so I’ve long wanted to (re-)watch all his films. But every time I’ve poked around to find a convenient way to do that, I’ve been discouraged by the spotty way his filmography has been made available: One film here; three films on this box set; five on this (with one overlap with the first one)… It just seemed exhausting.

I had kinda expected some enterprising Swede to get a government grant to create An Extremely Complete Bluray Box, but apparently the Swedes aren’t proud enough of their most famous person to do that…

In 2006 Tartan released a 30 DVD box set, but getting a copy was like £££. (That’s about 20% more than $$$.) It apparently went out of print toot sweet because Tartan went under. But, finally, this December, Palisades (who bought up the remnants of Tartan) made a new edition, and I got one, so now, surely, I could sit down and get jollified!

Then I started looking at the list of films included… “Hey… this doesn’t have that film… or that other film… HEY! THIS ISN”T COMPLETE!”

But, of course, it made no promise to be. I just assumed. So my OCD kicked in and I started poking around, and got the rest of the films on single DVDs. Which brought the total up to about 55. And then I started looking into his TV stuff, which a very nice person in France is selling bootleg ..DVDs of. (Isn’t that wonderful? That such a thing still exists in these torrenty days?)

And then I started thinking about the documentaries and shorts Bergman had made; some of which are available from Swedish TV (if you use a VPN terminated in Sweden; haha! me so haxorz), and then I found a torrent collection that included lots of other bits and pieces.

Which brought the total number of Bergman films, plays, operas, ad camplaigns, documentaries and shorts up to… *gulp* 87.

There are 8 items I’ve been unable to locate, but let’s just say that this is complete. Enough. It’s complete enough. *nervous OCD eye tick increases*

Let’s see if I can watch them all this winter.