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A virtuoso riff, played fast and close by Ingmar Bergman on themes from The Magician, Through a Glass Darkly, Hour of the Wolf, etc. The creator and the censor, the first image is viewed through a magnifying glass, the camera's eye surely. The judge (Erik Hell) surveys the faces of a trio of traveling thespians, obscenity charges against their act require a string of interrogations. Head of the troupe (Gunnar Björnstrand), his wife the frazzled leading lady (Ingrid Thulin), her lover the scarred drama king (Anders Ek). "Merged into an integrated body," this ménage à trois, stewing in the bureaucrat's bare office while outside lightning pierces through an August heatwave. Thulin is at first a provocative neurotic with Ek and then a bawling pagliacci with Björnstrand, the men later chat at a bar about the shortcut to her clitoris. Sweaty and feeble-hearted behind the officious suit, the judge meanwhile visits a confessional to affirm his own role in a world of cruelty. (The cowled priest is the auteur himself, turning his face away in silence.) Four characters and nine scenes, "overdeveloped senses" for all: Matchsticks on a hotel mattress and whistling amid the flames, runny clown makeup before the backstage mirror. Doubts, debts, demons. Finally, the Rite—Persona and performance, mock-pagan and mock-pornographic, quite the droll recapitulation of the invasive side of Bergman's cinema. The judge who fancies himself a critic deems it "melodramatic" and pays the price, revenge for Joyce and Miller and Stravinsky. The tribute is to theatrical creatures who work their magic, "suddenly lilies will shoot up out of the asses of carcasses." Cinematography by Sven Nykvist. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |