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"What's up?" "Just cursing my fate." The musical couple from Shame are at once visible, tragedy triggers the flashback, a weeping voice on the phone to drown out Beethoven during rehearsal. Two violinists in the same orchestra, he (Stig Olin) is an ambitious neurotic and she (Maj-Britt Nilsson) carries memories of "lies and deception" from her previous marriage. Autumn reunion, rainy wedding. He has little use for children ("I prefer extinction"), chokes during his first solo performance, and is mocked by a demonic rival (Birger Malmsten). She gives birth to twins, incidentally the protagonists have their own set of doppelgängers in the over-the-hill libertine (John Ekman) and the messy temptress (Margit Carlqvist). "I'll tell you the secret of real art," says Ingmar Bergman's stand-in, bringing a party to a halt with his gloomy vibes: "It's created when you're unhappy!" A young fool's education, fragile bliss that can end in a second, with a bang. Mendelssohn and Mozart and Smetana and old Ludwig van, nothing but "frightful squealing" in callow, clumsy hands, grumbles the conductor (Victor Sjöström). Domestic ups and downs, a wounding argument set in a darkened bedroom and scored to a distant foghorn. Becker is near with Antoine et Antoinette, Cukor nearer still with The Marrying Kind. Spilled nail polish dissolves to a bare beach, Chekhov's exploding oven has its role to play. It's all worth it for Sjöström lying on the grass on a summer day, savoring the memory of the newlyweds locked in an embrace, "tender yet erotic." "That's my pleasure. No one can take that from me." "Ode to Joy" for the coda, the craning camera arches over to find the tiny son in the audience, cf. The World of Apu. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |