Natalie Wooding reviews Federico Fellini’s iconic film, in celebration of its 60th anniversary.

La Dolce Vita is a party. It is a world of glamour and sophistication inhabited by larger than life characters, ranging from the mass of scrambling paparazzi (a term this film coined, from the character Paparazzo) jumping from walls and tumbling over each other in an effort to get the most scandalous shot, to the glamorous Swedish movie star, gliding around Rome at 3am in a full length ball gown topped with, instead of a hat, a kitten she has found and picked up along the way. The film follows Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), a jaded veteran reporter as he chases celebrity after celebrity through party after party, each one outdoing the next in decadent celebration.

Fellini’s hyperbolic style is often contrasted with the Italian neorealist movement that was popular when he began his cinematic career. With the aim of faithfully depicting the everyday lives of Italians suffering after the war, neorealist directors sought a sombre and objective style that distanced itself from Hollywood artifice and glamour as much as possible. In the words of Zavattini, a leading theorist and neorealist screenwriter, the aim of cinema was to represent “living social facts.” Films such as Ladri di biciclette, which depicts the struggle of a father trying to raise his son to be morally just in an unjust world, are heart breaking in their honesty and immensely powerful in their restraint.

By the end of the 1950s, Italy’s economy was thriving, and flourishing “made in Italy” design was quickly becoming world-renowned. In La Dolce Vita, life is an exciting celebration of opulence and entertainment, as the title affirms: ‘Life is Sweet’. In this world of glamourous parties, Fellini only refers to his neorealist forefathers playfully, with a knowing wink and a smile; when the audience are led down a series of broken steps into a flooded basement of a war torn building, the scene is not dire but comical – the professional prostitute who owns the house is swearing loudly and the two people she is leading fall into each other’s arms in a torrid affair. “Credi che il neorealismo italiano sia vivo o morto?” (Do you think Italian neorealism is alive or dead?) is one of the unanswered questions thrown from a horde of reporters to the glamorous actress Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) amongst “Do you practice yoga?” and “Do you like men with beards?”

Where neorealism offers sombre observation, Fellini uses all the tools of cinema at his disposal to offer scene after scene of beautiful, sensual and hypnotic cinematography. It is impossible to not get swept up in Fellini’s parties; to try to tear your eyes from the screen as the camera sways rhythmically, following Sylvia’s dancing to Nino Rota’s upbeat jazz soundtrack, leading a line of dancers as she sweeps across the screen; to not be enraptured watching Marcello decorate a drunken young show girl with feathers, the down from the ripped cushion swirling slowly around him.

La Dolce Vita is a film that does not shy away from the make-believe of cinema – it happily embraces spectacle to the point of being carnivalesque. The sets are vast and opulent; the costumes are heaving with feathers, adorned with glittering necklines and glimpsed suspenders between split skirts. Be they paparazzi, celebrities or wannabes, Fellini’s characters look up to professional actors, dancers, party-throwers, all happily immersed in the fairy-tale mythologizing of Hollywood. In the world of La Dolce Vita, everything is pretend and everything is wonderful.

Where Fellini differs from Hollywood’s superficial indulgence in visual glamour and movie star celebration is in the thread of existential anxiety he weaves throughout the film, an anxiety that eventually constricts every single character. La Dolce Vita follows characters’ drinking and sexual escapades without judgement, allowing the existential dread to manifest itself naturally through small details. In a hilariously chaotic scene where crowds of Italians run around chasing a miracle sighting of the Madonna, Marcello’s long-suffering fiancée Emma confronts an old woman who does not believe the miracle matters. “Why would you say such a thing?” presses Emma, who has just prayed that Marcello will finally marry her. By the time the most shocking and poignant scene of the film transforms La Dolce Vita into an ironic tragicomedy, we are already resigned to watching the characters entangle themselves in their superficially happy but empty lives. Fellini’s opulence and his cheeky joie de vivre conceal an underlying melancholy; for all their celebrating and elaborate costumes, all of the characters ultimately find themselves uncertain, lost and alone.

Fellini’s masterpiece is both a sumptuous visual feast and a social commentary on the post-war culture of excess. Perhaps, in his quiet observing and capturing of a generation’s existential ennui, he remains a neorealist after all.

You can catch La Dolce Vita at the BFI now, and the film is available to buy or rent online or in stores. Check out the trailer below:

Sabastian Astley examines the role of sex and misogyny in two classic horrors. 

The genre of horror has often been inseparable from the now-staple trope of teenagers having sex, with Friday the 13th (1980) and Prom Night (1980) to the parodist nature of Scream (1996) and The Final Girls (2015). While it is mostly used for no further meaning and instead as an easy activity to write characters into, there are two films in the sub-genre which transcend this simple use. Both John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014) explore sexuality in a metaphorical sense which is not immediately clear, with Halloween reflecting both an embrace and a rejection of the ‘Sexual Revolution’, while It Follows‘ titular monster is itself a misunderstood sexual metaphor.

To understand Halloween‘s sexuality, we must first look at the contextual backdrop within which it was produced. The ‘Sexual Revolution’ ended abruptly by the latter half of the 1970s, following through the blunt reality Vietnam’s failure alongside with the rise of Ronald Reagan, and his amalgamation of a rhetoric that was political in its motivation but religious in its metaphors. America’s subscription to Christianity was something that Reagan played off to an incredible response, and therefore inadvertently this idea of Christian values became the foundation of the American society throughout the Reagan era. These values include the traditional stigma against pre-martial sex, and the consequence of sin for indulging in the activity – Carpenter, albeit unintentionally, incorporates this rise of religious conservatism in America into Halloween itself; he does this through the diametric characters of Laurie and Michael.

Viewing Halloween through this lens of a rejection of the ‘Sexual Revolution’, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie represents the ‘ideal’ or the stereotype for such a society – she’s educationally driven, uninterested in sexual matters to the point of embarrassment upon the mere discussion of potential romantic feelings. Her friends go so far as calling her behaviour as “prudish”, thereby highlighting this seemingly negative attitude toward purity by the fellow teenagers of Haddonfield. The polar opposite of this metaphoric purity is Michael; the physical manifestation of sin accompanying pre-martial sex, displayed through the serial killings of lust-driven teenagers originating in the murder of his own sister. Constantly lurking within the darkness, furthering this malicious intent and aura that he exudes throughout the film, Michael only appears directly before or after sexual acts enter the narrative, e.g. choking Annie immediately before her departure to her boyfriend’s house.

Laurie’s survival throughout the film can be attributed to her lack of sinful pre-martial lust, conforming to her conservative stereotype to the point of taking on a motherly role, protecting both terrified pre-teens Lindsay and Tommy from Michael. This continuous conservatism is both a fantastic parallel to the puritanical outrage toward the Sexual Revolution as well as a striking contrast to the more liberal attitudes her friends display, reflecting the hedonistic attitudes of the Baby Boomer generation and concluding in a gruesome fate at the hands of sin that is delivered through the vessel of Michael Myers.

Alternatively, Halloween can also be read as an embrace of the ‘Sexual Revolution’, exposing the dangers of sexual repression.

This reading depicts Michael as the epitome of sexual repression, as a result of an incestual obsession with his sister culminating in his forcing himself upon her in an incredibly violent yet simultaneously intimate act of penetration – stabbing. Michael’s murderous actions throughout the events of Halloween reflect a furthering of this repression – there are two types of murder committed: the phallic and disconnected (male), and the intimate and personal violence (female), seen through the murder of Lynda and Bob. Bob’s murder is over in a matter of seconds, impaled with the iconic kitchen knife with a lack of effort or even care from Michael. However, with Lynda’s murder there is visible emotional reaction from Michael through his trembling grip and the actual act of strangulation.

This idea of sexual repression also translates to Laurie, being sexually repressed herself through her conservatism. Ironically, this makes her the only individual in Haddonfield with the ability to face Michael, allowing herself a violent nature similar to Michael’s, being his ‘equal’ in a sense. While this idea of sexual repression could be simply explained through the intimacy between Michael and the multiple girls he murders throughout the movie, Michael specifically targets Laurie due to her triggering that same individual obsession. This explains his attempts to penetrate Laurie with the kitchen knife similar to his penetration of Judy, as an outlet for his sexual repression. The idea is developed through Michael’s seemingly supernatural immortality throughout the latter third of the film, despite being both stabbed in the neck and later eye by Laurie, an act that also breaks Michael’s obsession due to the disconnect between Judy’s ironic passivity through sexual activity and Laurie’s active violence through her sexual repression. Ultimately however, neither is able to kill the other – as stated before, they are one another’s ‘equal’.

Halloween‘s use of sexuality is difficult to fully plot metaphorically, at times subscribing to one notion and at other times to another. However, it’s clear that its approach toward sexuality is multi-fauceted, and albeit unintentionally, influenced by the Sexual Revolution.

It Follows similarly uses the idea of sexuality, once again having a dual metaphoric pathway, with the former being the idea of sexually transmitted disease.

The idea of the ‘demon’ only appears following the sexual encounter between Jay (Maika Monroe) and Hugh (Jake Weary), and its lingering presence and malicious aura throughout the film reflects the social stigma of being inflicted with a sexually transmitted disease, as well as the dangers certain diseases pose. However, this analysis of the use of sexuality of It Follows is mostly rejected, and this is on the basis of a further appreciation and analysis of the opening sequence, to which a conclusion is reached: It Follows is about a sexual survivor.

Jay is presented as the typical modern teenage girl with an idealised view of romance, to which she monologues towards Hugh about; she expects her encounter with him to be this postcardesque date of holding hands with a cute boy in a car. This imagery is shattered immediately by David Robert Marshall with a horrific reality – from Hugh’s use of chloroform and subsequent rape of Jay (in narrative context, to pass on the ‘demon’) to the constant paranoia and distrust Jay treats everyone with throughout the rest of the film, the allegory of surviving sexual assault becomes clear. Additionally, the inability for others to see the ‘demon’ reflects the inability of friends and family of a sexual assault survivor to understand their mental state, and this difficulty to understand transforms into a subconscious disgust toward the behaviour of the sexual assault survivor, in this case Jay’s hysteria.

Despite the ending offering an initial glimmer of hope, with Jay finally facing and overcoming this distrust and the ‘demon’ through the aid of Paul (Keir Gilchrist), David Robert Marshall reminds the viewer that this scar upon Jay’s life is permanent through the final shot of an ominous lurking figure behind the pair as they walk together holding hands. It’s a painfully truthful reminder that sexual assault can leave one with a plethora of life-long issues such as post-traumatic stress, as well as the paranoia that Jay goes through.

It Follows displays an incredibly complex telling of the story of the survival of a teenage woman following a sexual assault, decorated with the idea of the horror being the physical manifestation, when in actuality, the horror lies within the mental torture that Jay faces and may have to face for the rest of her life.

Both Halloween and It Follows transcend the stereotypical sexual tradition of their genre, achieving through the metaphorical significance placed upon sexuality within their respective narrative contexts. The two films show two strikingly different eras of sexuality, and their comparison only brings to attention the development of societal attitudes toward sex in the decades that separate the two. Carpenter’s Halloween reflects a view of sexuality forever trapped between eras, partially liberated by the significance of the Sexual Revolution that precipitated it, while simultaneously carrying the weight of the Sexual Revolution’s corpse upon it with the rise of Reaganism. David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows shows us that some horrors are sickeningly human; depressingly timeless in its subject matter, highlighting an all-too-realistic horror. The film contains a message that is only increasing in relevance with the rise of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

True horror seems not to originate in the acts of masked murderers or demonic curses, but rather in the male mind.

Halloween was released in 1978 and It Follows was released in 2014. Halloween (2018), a direct sequel, is currently released in cinemas everywhere. Check out its trailer below:

Milo Garner revisits Terrence Malick’s 20-year-old war epic.

The opening shot of The Thin Red Line (1998) features a crocodile dipping into water and submerging itself. The image connotes nature as much as it does violence; a hidden threat, designed to kill. The following shots, overlain by voiceover, maintain a similar visual tenor. They peer up into the canopy, capturing great trees strewn with hanging vines. This vision of nature is then replaced by that of civilisation, a primitive Melanesian village entering the frame. Caught initially through exquisite underwater lenswork, these people and their land seem to reflect perfectly the Arcadia Joseph Banks had thought he found in Tahiti, when voyaging with Captain Cook. A place free of violence, a refutation of the ominous reptile that began the film.

The eye we peer through is not, however, one angled objectively. Witt (Jim Caviezel), an American soldier gone AWOL, leads us into this world, one with which he is clearly besotted. But soon a US gunboat appears off the shore, to a frenzied furore of the native people, set on retrieving Witt and returning him to his post. With this a schematic for the film’s structure begins to become apparent. Two extremes, wild nature and mechanised man, caught in an endless cycle of violence: the way of nature, as Malick would later develop in his filmography. For some this leads to a common criticism of The Thin Red Line, suggesting its celebration of the ‘noble savage’ in its implication that the inhabitants of Guadalcanal, more than their immediate surroundings, have discovered a certain truth in their way of life. But, like all the paradises of Malick, this one, too, is fallen.

That we see it through Witt’s eyes is indicative – he is spellbound, and wont for viewing the world through a theological lens. He often speaks of ‘the glory’, and of a paradise awaiting: he knows it exists, it’s just a matter of finding it. But a small montage of shots at the centre of the film throws the subjective presentation of these people into question. Intercutting between Witt and some villagers we see them beset with strife and disease. Many have interpreted this to represent the almost trite suggestion that the armies of advanced civility have infected this hidden Eden, but the final shot of this montage, of skulls lining a wall, contradicts this assessment. These people, like the Tahitians that Banks was so enamoured with, have been warring with each other long before foreign intervention. While the incursion of the Second World War may have led to further degradation – we see villagers recruited into the US army, wearing their uniform – it was not the corruption of an ideal world. As beautiful as it may be, this idyll cannot escape the nature lurking in the hearts of men.

But Malick poses a counterpoint to this nature throughout the film, often drawing reference to a flame within, the suggestion of an immortal soul. That we might be capable of love, a love beyond that of nature and unique to mankind, threads its way through the many barely-distinguishable voiceovers of the film. Witt is at the centre of this dialogue, but his position is not taken as inherently true. Against him is Welsh (Sean Penn), an atheist and a cynic, but by no means an evil man. He is forgiving of Witt despite his desertion, but he doesn’t share his optimism. He can’t see any hope in an afterlife, and considers the war a vain quarrel over property, not morality. The spark that Witt speaks of – the soul – seems to him a grim contradiction of the world around him, a world imbued in the same nature that Malick constantly refers to. The birds of paradise featured early in the film are quickly replaced by birds of prey, with cruel scavengers circling the skies where battles once raged below; but just as they set to purloin the corpses lying still, so too do the American soldiers, ransacking and looting the Japanese camps as they break through. Malick does not abandon hope, keeping alive the spirit of grace throughout the film’s extensive running time, but neither does he let up on his bitter repudiation of war.

In this way he has constructed an anti-war film in a sense that so many others fail in. The obvious comparison might be in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, which released within a year of The Thin Red Line. Spielberg’s film, while not intending to be overtly jingoistic, valorises war and glorifies its combatants. It wants us to weep for their tragedy, but remember it as worthy. This is naturally related to the specificity of the films – Spielberg intended his to be about the Second World War and so directly appeals to the supposed morality of that conflict, whereas Malick’s could be set in any war to similar effect. Nonetheless, that the sombre military horns of Williams are replaced by the questioning and unsure brass of Ives is, alone, a telling account of how the two films differ in purpose. By the end of Saving Private Ryan, one might well find themselves in a recruitment centre, ready to fight the good fight. By the end of The Thin Red Line, there doesn’t seem to be one.

This is also evident in the battle sequences themselves. Most war films, as Sam Fuller astutely noted, often fail for the excitement they imbue in these scenes. In Saving Private Ryan we can’t help but cheer on Tom Hanks and co. as they seek to kill the German sniper that hunts them, or revel in a grim satisfaction as an American offers Nazi soldiers no pity: “Let ‘em burn”. Lesser filmmakers, such as Gibson, push this envelope even further. His ostensibly pacifistic Hacksaw Ridge indulges in the blood, gore, and heroism of battle. The slow-motion shot of an otherwise unseen Japanese general committing ritual and explicit suicide encapsulate this feeling – we are meant to glory in his graphic defeat. Malick’s film does not cast violence aside, but it also resists its dramatic lure. His battle scenes are captured with virtuosic poise and movement, with Toll’s camera often sweeping over vast plains, capturing the sheer expanse and expense of the war effort, both physically and psychologically. Yet he rarely encourages his audience to cheer on for the American soldiers, instead capturing the conflict a step removed.

The decision not to reveal the Japanese enemy for at least the first third of the film is essential in this. We follow the Americans stalking an enemy we cannot see and do not know. Maybe twenty minutes in their existence is confirmed by a POV shot situated in a bunker, but we can only see a gun pointed against the Americans, its swivel the only evidence that a man sits behind it. As the battle for the ridge opens in earnest only gunshots can be seen and heard, with faceless artillery pounding the field. The first full image of the enemy comes with the sight of stretcher-bearers silhouetted in the distance – an image of military care often refused the Japanese in war films – who are then promptly shot at by an American soldier. The faces of the Japanese foe are not seen until much later in the picture, after a group are captured following an American attack. While their words are untranslated, besides a telling (and perhaps imagined) monologue from a dead soldier, their faces speak in lieu. We see them as angry, afraid, sorrowful. The stoic samurai these are not; instead, soldiers. They are not all innocent or vulnerable, with a suicide bombing eluding to the fanaticism that captured many of the Japanese in the Second World War, but they are, essentially, human. That flame at the heart of men burns just as strongly in them as it does the Americans, so the film suggests.

This offers the film’s final set piece, in which the American soldiers raid a Japanese camp, particular efficacy. In this sequence the camera charges in with the soldiers, permitting an intimate perspective not offered in the former, more long-range battles of the film. Witnessing the American soldiers fall upon an often hapless, sometimes disarmed enemy does not suggest the glory of most war films, but rather an upsetting and incredible image of violence. Accompanied first by Zimmer’s effectual (and best) score, and then Ives’ The Unanswered Question, the tone achieved is unique. As much now as the first time I saw it this sequence remains incredibly moving, and, with some irony, one of the finest battle scenes put to celluloid. A monument both to Malick’s thematic integrity, and his unassailable filmic talent.

But these battles don’t last the film’s entire runtime, and I remember on first seeing the film a disappointment in its apparent trailing off towards the end, failing to build to a final set piece as might a standard war film. Yet in being more aware of Malick’s filmography and of the film’s dramatic arc, this issue quickly dissipated on second viewing. I found that it is often in the quieter moments The Thin Red Line speaks the loudest. This is partially achieved through its characters, who are often criticised as either cliched or hopelessly thin. A common example is of Staros (Elias Koteas) and Tall (Nick Nolte), who represent the noble and ignoble extremes of military hierarchy. Tall initially comes across much like the generals in Paths of Glory – a medal-chasing coward who is more than willing to sacrifice his men for a chance at recognition. But some depth is suggested in his portrayal, especially through Nolte’s admirable performance. He talks about how he had to bootlick his way up the ranks, how he is too old – how he missed his war. He feels, or perhaps knows, that he was overlooked, and sees now as his last and only chance to receive the credit he feels he deserves. Nolte betrays a certain regret in Tall, the idea that he knows what he’s doing is wrong, but feels compelled to do so anyway. When talking to John Cusack’s Gaff he sees himself in that young soldier, only with the opportunities he pined for. Risking his own glory he allows the soldiers an hours rest, if only to sate this younger version of himself, who demands a morality that perhaps he would have called for if stood in his place.

Staros, on the other hand, is also offered some complexity. While he is noble in fighting for his men, and protecting them against unnecessary sacrifice, he is imperfect. When Tall tells him that he’ll be sent home, with a desk job and a silver star for his trouble, Staros is clearly taken aback by the corruption at play. But he does not resist, or complain at this fate Tall is forcing on him. While he can clearly recognise the immorality of the act, the offer is too enticing to refuse, and he ultimately abandons the troop he (genuinely) cares for with this personal benefit in mind. Resistance would have been futile, and likely damaging to himself, but just as likely the right thing.

But despite these generally downtilt observations, Malick’s film is never lost in its grimness. Through Witt it engages with a hope, and while not a hope that can be believed in without question, it remains a consistent theme. Witt tells a story at one point, the reactions of two men to a dead bird. One sees something lost, forever disappeared; another, what comes next. This story recalls an earlier shot in the film focused on a dead chick, fallen from its nest, and will later reflect one of the film’s final shots in a more metaphorical sense. In Witt a hope lives on to the end, with the crashing of waves, and a memory of beauty. Or perhaps, not a memory.

10/10

Milo Garner looks back at a lesser-known Bergman through a fresh 2K restoration.

The Touch (Beröringen) is, quite surprisingly, one of Ingmar Bergman’s most obscure films. It came out in 1971, a point at which Bergman’s international reputation was near its peak, and more than that, was largely shot in English. In fact, its American financiers demanded that an entirely English version be made alongside Bergman’s preferred English-Swedish cut. And if that wasn’t enough, it starred Hollywood heavy hitter Elliot Gould alongside Bergman mainstays Bibi Andersson and Max von Sydow. If any film was to act as an accessible entrance into the Swede’s cinematic world, it would be this one. But upon its release, it received mixed reviews and slumped at the box office; ironically it was one of Bergman’s most overtly artsy films – Cries and Whispers – that would finally whisk him to the heights of commercial and critical renown. But now The Touch is being rediscovered, with the BFI presenting (and pushing with some vigour) a newly restored edition of the film. As it turns out, it is not the unmitigated disaster its reputation has come to suggest.

The film begins with Karin (Andersson) arriving at a hospital moments too late. She is told that her mother passed away just a little while ago. In a final attempt for some connection, she goes to her mother’s body and, tenderly, touches her face and hands. Perhaps this is the eponymous touch, a futile attempt to reach out to another, an ultimate failure to communicate. Still in the hospital, she meets David (Gould), with whom she has a brief and forgettable encounter, but not their last. Some time later, we see Karin and her husband, Andreas (von Sydow), entertaining David at their home; as it happens, David and Andreas are friends. David takes the initiative during a moment alone, and quietly informs Karin that he is in love with her. She is taken aback but, after some less-than-vague flirting from David, responsive. They engage in an affair that will spread over several years, and it is this affair that the film concerns.

The apparent abruptness of that small synopsis is no result of concision, either. David really does blurt out his love after seeing Karin once, and Karin really does engage in an affair with David without any significant motivating factors. This could be interpreted as a weakness to the film’s premise, but it rather serves as a gateway to The Touch’s greatest asset. While there is no lengthy monologue that explains Karin’s motivation to engage in a destructive affair, which is a notable exclusion for a Bergman film, the camera speaks in lieu. Early on we are presented a shot of her in the morning, with her perfect husband and her perfect children, preparing breakfast and getting ready for the school run. On the soundtrack, a rare moment of pop music sneaks into a Bergman picture. Coupled with the bright tones and Eastman Color photography, this scene has flashes of Varda’s Le Bonheur – a reality too perfect, unnervingly so. The Touch won’t travel the dystopian depths which that film explores, but it leaves a similar taste. Karin needs something different, something to break the perfect monotony of her life. This is again reflected through the lens – the bright scheme of her home is contrasted heavily with the dark green on the walls of David’s scrappy apartment.

Returning from one of her trysts she spends a while looking in a mirror, invigorated. She is desired again, and this stands to justify her infidelity. Of course the way in which the love affair is structured in the film lends to this angle – of desire and sex, touch of another kind. Almost every time the lovers meet, they quickly escalate to some sexual encounter – they often struggle to talk of anything else, bar David’s work and past. David himself is probably the weak-link of what is essentially a three-hander; Gould’s performance is (perhaps understandably) stilted, and his character seems to lack any outward attraction that might keep Karin interested. He is often cruel and dismissive, without a shimmer that might offset these behaviours. However, his nature does allow the film to consider another of its main concerns, and perhaps the core idea of Bergman’s filmography as a whole: connexion.

While Karin seems sated in a sexually angled relationship, David seems to both want this and something more. He wants to reach out and find something deeper between the two but, emphasised by the language barrier, a distance always remains. The scene in which Karin reads David Swedish poetry, first in her native tongue and then in an awkward English translation, perhaps best captures this. Another strong visual metaphor features a wooden sculpture of the Madonna, which David has excavated from a nearby church. He and Karin first glimpse it through an aperture in the church wall, just out of reach. Later in the film we see it again, removed from its ancient resting place. The archaeologists responsible, however, had unwittingly awoken a hive of medieval larvae that been long dormant within the effigy; slowly but surely, they eat away at the figurine from within. David suggests the statue may be doomed. But he adds that the insects eating away at it are, themselves, beautiful. Perhaps this affair, one intrinsically destructive and inherently temporary, might not be wholly ugly.

The visual content of the film is stirring, and its form is no less impressive. Nykvist is likely incapable of producing an ugly picture, but even then The Touch is exceptional. It operates primarily with an autumnal palette, deep greens and browns, often framed against minimal backgrounds. The lighting, too, is beyond reproach, with subtle tungsten beams illuminating characters despite their often-shadowy surroundings. The shots of David and Karin in the church mark a particularly good example, a soft beam grazing Gould’s face, emphasizing both bright and dark. On a more direct compositional level, there are also many moments worth mentioning. One is of Karin and Andreas, while the former is deep in the midst of her affair. She sits at her desk and her husband talks to her, three rooms down in their open-plan home. The camera does not permit this gap to be closed, using a wide lens to emphasise the distance between the two, the editing cutting between their POVs. A simple trick, but an effective one. Another moment comes in the final shot, with two lovers standing away from each other beside a lake. The camera zooms out and reveals their reflections in the water, distorted by a light pitter of rain. A consummate encapsulation of their relationship, almost rendering the argument moments before redundant.

Coupled with some truly excellent editing it’s difficult to denigrate The Touch on a formal level, but its script isn’t quite as watertight. While well-told, much of the story fails to reach beyond a typical tale of infidelity. It also leaves Andreas, a potentially interesting character with a brilliant performance by von Sydow, a little too estranged from the narrative-at-large. He has one captivating scene in which he essentially plays his hand, but his feelings and experiences are left mostly unexplored. Though this is ultimately a film about Karin (who only has so much psychological depth herself), it seems a missed opportunity. The third act is especially disappointing, failing to escalate the film’s central drama effectively and losing itself in some unsure subplots. Karin’s visit to London could have been illuminating, but is ultimately a forgettable encounter that helps to derail the pondering but deliberate pace the film had otherwise held.

But even keeping these issues in mind, The Touch stands far above the station it has been so often assigned, even by its creator. Taken solely from a visual angle, this might well be among the upper tier of Bergman’s filmography, and the script can hold its own with his high average. A rediscovery worth exploring.

7/10

The Touch (Beröringen) was released in 1971.

It was recently screened at BFI Southbank as part of their Ingmar Bergman season (January-March 2018), and will be released on Blu-ray/DVD April 23rd. Discounted 3 pound tickets available through the free 25 & Under scheme.

Milo Garner revisits Ingmar Bergman’s study of a couple’s relationship.

A masterwork that gathers many of Bergman’s key concerns in his post-Winter Light filmography, the miniseries Scenes from a Marriage is the closest and keenest examination of love and identity the man ever produced. Its premise is fascinating in its upended nature; it opens with a conclusion – a perfect marriage, sturdy and respected. We do not learn much of their meeting or courting, the typical subjects of a romantic film, nor do we enter a household at war, as might be more usual; instead the film opens to, a seemingly happy home. At first subtly, and then less so, we witness this relationship disintegrate and reintegrate; there is an ebbing, but a ten-year connexion cannot disappear in a breakup, as Bergman knows all too well. His most obvious angle is one that often emerges in his work, that of identity, though here an identity intrinsically linked to relationships with others. The masks that Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullmann) wear are to be thrown under a cold light, for them to find they have been wearing them so long there is nothing underneath. At least nothing they recognize as themselves.

Marianne in particular realizes her own mask has been shaped in reference to the needs of others – her nature is, at least outwardly, reflexive. This is clear in the opening of the first episode – when asked about herself she is only able to refer to her husband and her children; she is a wife, that term implying ‘husband’ more than it does ‘individual’. A feminist reading here would not miss the mark – while Johan makes light of ‘women’s libbers’ throughout the film, Bergman seems sympathetic. In Marianne he has created an intelligent and practical character who finds herself inarticulate, incapable of espousing what she believes about the world. Or at least she thinks that to be the case. At one point she beautifully encapsulates the nature of her affliction, the tragedy of an identity moulded by others; as the camera shoots to Johan, it finds him asleep. His own position is no more enviable, however, almost placing him in an opposite conundrum. He is outwardly charismatic, confident, and secure. His truth is, however, vulnerable. As soon as his worldly success dries up his sense of self suffers, and though he delves into individualism to find some sense of security, his reality contradicts such philosophies.

Imbued with the spirit of Ullmann and Josephson, these characters breathe in a way that few others, even in Bergman’s canon, ever do. Johan may share some traits of the director, such as his ‘retrospective jealousy’, but he is not a self-insert as many similar characters have been. Both become people in and of themselves, and while Marianne earns a more sympathetic position in the script, neither is posed as a mouthpiece for the correct way of thinking. It perhaps bears comparison to the equally brilliant My Dinner with Andre, which also presents two characters who might initially appear to represent a moral polarity, but develop into equals in different milieus. But where Andre stresses class as its key meta-division, Scenes instead focuses on gender, though to limit either of these films to that dynamic would be overly reductive.

Beside its ideas of identity in a personal and interpersonal sense is the closely related concept of communication, a staple of Bergman from the beginning. Again, he doesn’t strive for a simple moral conclusion, but rather presents a selection of responses offered for the audience’s judgement. Honesty, for example, comes under fine scrutiny, as does the axiomatic assumption that it’s always the best course of action. Initially Johan’s deceit, and the deceit of family friends, appears cruel and immoral; a later revelation that Marianne had hidden an affair from the very beginning of their marriage, however, appears reasonable with two decades of hindsight. The way in which Johan and Marianne tear off their disguises might be considered admirable in a society that values total emotional truth, with oneself and others, but the searing and irreparable damage these revelations cause must be balanced with their practical conclusions. As Scenes reveals, these fiery bouts can be just as damaging as the repression that engendered them.

But beneath the high-minded ideals of the self and the other we find love itself. After watching a marriage crumble for six hours it might be tempting to abandon any hope of love, but it can be detected, in moments and glances. This is not the romance that cinema and literature have forged over the years, of togetherness opposed by distinct apartness. Here they intertwine, and in this Bergman deploys his talent for tonal sinuosity. Johan and Marianne will often argue, but these conversations encompass a wide measure of feeling, flowing through gaiety, rage, longing, and sadness within the confines of a single scene. While a certain compression of events is necessary for the concept to function – six episodes covering six ‘moments’, rather than a more sweeping drama – Bergman never abandons the realism at the film’s core. He engages with his characters intimately and allows them the room to experience the often-contradictory emotions of a life thrown out of balance; while the theatrical cut of the film might be more intense, the TV version allows a more complex evaluation of a marriage at its end. The centre of Scenes from a Marriage relies on the idea that, in some form, Johan and Marianne still love one another. It may be a broken love, one tinged with hate and frustration, one that prevents any sort of healthy relationship between the two, but there is a connexion that binds them in a certain way. The inherent unsolvable nature of this pairing means that by the final episode there is no neat ending to be had. But of course, no such ending could ever exist – Bergman’s quality is in not contriving one.

10/10

Scenes from a Marriage was released in 1973.

It was recently screened at BFI Southbank as part of their Ingmar Bergman season (January-March 2018). Discounted 3 pound tickets available through the free 25 & Under scheme.