A virtuoso riff, played fast and close by Ingmar Bergman to adduce themes from The Magician, Through a Glass Darkly, Hour of the Wolf, et al. The impetus is censorship, the first image is shot through a magnifying lens, the camera's eye surely: The judge (Erik Hell) surveys the ravaged faces of a trio of traveling actors, whose act has been deemed obscene and requires one-on-one interrogation. Gunnar Björnstrand is the head of the troupe ("The really great artists can't be hurt. I am not one of them"), scarred drama-king Anders Ek supplies his own angels and devils, frazzled Ingrid Thulin is the former's spouse and the latter's mistress, "not substance, but movement;" they stew in the bureaucrat's office, Ek feels Thulin up as they see "not a living soul anywhere" out a barred window, the nine scenes that follow play out in the void. Thulin is first a provocative neurotic with Ek, then a bawling pagliacci with Björnstrand; the two men share a bar counter chat about the shortcut to her clitoris, elsewhere the judge visits a confessional to affirm his own role in a world of cruelty (Bergman is the cowled priest, who turns his face in silence). Thulin trembles from "overdeveloped senses," as does the movie -- a hotel mattress is set ablaze and clown makeup streaks in front of a mirror, breakdown is constant yet the characters unite to vanquish the nemesis with their art. At last, the Rite: Persona and Performance, mock-pagan and mock-pornographic, a very wry recapitulation of the invasiveness of Bergman's cinema (playing the critic, Hell deems it "melodramatic" and pays for the trouble). In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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