BTXXXII 1960: The Virgin Spring

The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan). Ingmar Bergman. 1960. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐★.

This is Bergman’s first Oscar win? It’s not difficult to guess why (spoiler warning: God turns out to be real; i.e., instant US appeal). Even so, it’s rather good.

Sven Nykvist is back as the cinematographer, and that really shows. Every scene is a perfect little tableau.

And Ulla Isaksson, who wrote the recent Brink of Life Bergman film, wrote the script, so apparently Bergman was really impressed. But it’s the last film he would direct that wasn’t based on his own script for decades. The next one is…. Oh! In 1986! And it’s written by Ulla Isaksson again!

And it is a stark and unexpected film. Less of Bergman’s usual ticks and more strangeness.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

BTXXX 1958: The Magician

The Magician (Ansiktet). Ingmar Bergman. 1958. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐★.

We’ve now reached the point where a Bergman film can be immediately identified by just looking at any random frame from his movies, so I guess we’ve gone past the “early” bit of his career.

It’s all so programmatically present in this one: All the characters being metaphors for Bergman’s own life (Bergman’s both the tortured artiste Vogler and the huckster selling the artistiness here, I think?); the religious affectations; the stylised repartee…

I mean, it’s brilliant, but…

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

BTXXIX 1958: Brink of Life

Brink of Life (Nära livet). Ingmar Bergman. 1958. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.

At a time when very few men had ever been present at an actual birth, Brink of Life came as a shock for many viewers. The newspapers reported people fainting (the record being set in Bergen in Norway, where eight people passed out during the same screening!).

This was a very controversial film, because it deals with women giving birth.

It’s not produced by Bergman’s usual technical staff (even if it features his usual cast of actors (is this the first one where Erland Josephson appears?)), and it’s really grainy and scratchy.

The obvious comparison is to the much later Cries & Whispers film: Much anguish in and around sick beds. I’ve never seen this film before, but if I remember Cries & Whispers right, it’s stylistically a very different film.

Isn’t that perceptive commentary?

Eh, whatchagonnado.

Anyway, this is pretty brilliant. It’s a bundle of emotions, but it’s also funny (especially the Eva Dahlbeck parts (and I love that Max von Sydow plays her dotty husband)). The actors are all wonderful and play extremely well off each other.

It won all the awards at Cannes that year.

And it’s one of those extremely rare films that fails the reverse Bechdel test, which is always refreshing.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

The Best Countries

A while back, I watched a film and drank a cocktail from each country on Earth, but it occurred to me just now that I had never done any visualisation of where on Earth the good movies and drinks are.

Since I had the data semi-readible available, I whipped up some charts.

Here’s the film map (brighter red is better):

Here’s the cocktail map (brighter blue is better):

Hm…  I should run some regression on the data set to determine whether there’s a correlation or not between what I thought of the cocktail, what I thought of the film, and how drunk I was.

Oops!  No data on the last bit.

It looks like Africa leads on the cocktail scale…  And the dry bits between Europe and Asia (as well as South America) on the film scale.

Here’s the interactive version of the film map and the cocktail map if you’re really curious, for some reason or other.

Anyway, this is all statistically valid, since I have a sample size of 1 per country, so you can totally trust me here.  The p value is definitely < 0.05 according to my math.