Summary:
A poor ringleader for a traveling circus returns home to his wife after three years away, making his mistress jealous and angry.
My Thoughts:
You know you’ve found a great director when even their smaller films, the ones that even cinephiles rarely talk about, have something transcendent to say, and Bergman’s “Sawdust and Tinsel” certainly does. Once again, Bergman uses his unique directorial vision to craft a world filled with simple people doing simple things, yet the way that he tells the story echoes themes of the metaphysical. His story might be about a circus leader and his affairs, but this film addresses so many themes that Bergman fans will be familiar with: mankind’s loneliness and distance from God, guilt for past sins, the human condition and the cruelty we as humans inflict on the ones we love the most.
“We’re all stuck, Anne. Stuck like hell.”
Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel concerns Albert Johansson (Ake Gronberg, “A Lesson in Love”), a weary ringleader a poor, failing circus troop. The circus returns to Albert’s hometown and, due to the hard times, he must beg assistance from a wealthy theater owner Mr Sjuberg (Gunnar Bjornstrand, “Persona”), and while there he meets a stagehand named Frans (Hasse Ekman, “Summer Place Wanted”) much to the distress of his mistress Anne (Harriet Andersson, “Cries and Whispers”), Albert decides to visit his wife Agda (Annika Tretow, “Garaget”) and young boys, whom he hadn’t seen in over three years.
The film starts with a story that feels almost like a fable. One day, Alma (Gudrun Brost, “Hour of the Wolf”), a wife of a circus performer, left the troop to go down to the lake where the army was practicing some drills. Alma takes off her clothes and goes swimming with some of the boys. A boy runs to tell Frost (Anders Ek, “The Seventh Seal”), Alma’s husband and one of the clowns for the circus. Frost runs down to the beach and hides Alma’s nudity with his own body, then drags her out of the water and begins to carry her back. Eventually, Frost collapses and can’t get back up, and Alma turns on the other circus performers and tells them that Frost’s exhaustion is their fault. The performers reply to Alma that she is the one to blame. The events of the short story are almost played out again in spirit twice through Albert and Adga and Alma and Frans.
The way that the story plays out the events again and again leads me to believe that the pattern is meant to represent what Bergman believes we as humans do to each other all the time. We might do something to hurt someone we love, as Alma did to Frost by committing an act of infidelity, and then refuse to take responsibility, and instead blame it on someone else. The result can be a tiring existence, and that’s what Bergman really gets at in this film.
Albert is just tired of the circus, tired of his weary poor existence. He often talks about better times and places, of America, where he claims that circuses there are welcomed with trumpets and parades. Here, his troupe is falling apart, literally having to borrow costumes in order to perform a show. He keeps looking for a way out, but he does so flippantly and without real drive. He’s indecisive about many things, including how he feels about his wife Adga and his mistress Anne; he flits back and forth between love and hate of both of them. When he first reunites with his wife, he’s happy, then in an instant for no reason at all he becomes irate, and then he’s calm again. The man never knows what he wants and that worsens as the film goes on.
Near the end of the film, when Albert is back in his wagon with Anne, and Anne reveals a transgression, Albert curses the sky and existence in general. He says something along the lines of “oh, how miserable it is to be,” and he repeats that over and over. Later he speaks to Frost of how he’s just tired and he wants a break, and Frost recounts a pleasant dream where he shrunk down and was placed in a womb, and then he kept shrinking until he was nothing at all. This scene and others like it lead me to believe that Bergman was trying to say that mankind’s existence is undoubtedly plagued with misery, but none of us are willing or able to do anything about it, except carry on. The way this film starts and ends is of shots of the circus caravan traveling forward- they are mankind carrying on in our weary existence.
Verdict:
I really enjoyed this film, but again, I really like Bergman. This is another deeper cut of Bergman’s work so if you’re new to him I’d probably suggest starting with “Seventh Seal”, “Wild Strawberries”, or “Persona”. Also, this film is pretty art-house heavy. While it isn’t at all as experimental as some of Bergman’s other stuff, it does use a lot of metaphorical storytelling. Certainly a good film, but not Bergman’s best; it’s absolutely worth watching if you’re a Bergman fan.
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