The Night Visitor (1971)

          By dint of being made in gloomy Swedish locales and starring two of Ingmar Bergman’s favorite actors, The Night Visitor is an offbeat hybrid of Bergman-esque psychological darkness and pure escapist pulpiness. The story, about a killer who sneaks out of an insane asylum in order to murder a woman and frame his brother-in-law for the crime, is wildly inventive but also a bit silly, thanks to the far-fetched means by which the killer achieves his goals. Concurrently, the film is much, much darker than any American version of the same material would be, since the only purely sympathetic character—a dogged police inspector played by Trevor Howard—is a cipher rather than an active participant in the movie’s psychological gamesmanship. That said, The Night Visitor has as much technical polish as any Hollywood movie, even though the style is unrelentingly melancholic. The film’s locations are deeply evocative, particularly the remarkable stone edifice used to represent the asylum, and an iconic American composer, Henry Mancini, provides the effectively dissonant scoring.

          When we first meet him, Salem (Max Von Sydow) cuts a strange figure. Dressed only in underclothes and boots, he emerges from a sewer pipe some distance away from the towering asylum. Running through a cold winter’s night, he arrives at a farmhouse where Ester (Liv Ullman) argues with her husband, Anton (Per Oscarsson). Salem sneaks into the house and does a number of strange things, such as planting a necktie inside a doctor’s bag. Soon we discover the method to his madness (or vice versa), because he kills the beautiful Emmie (Hanne Bork) and plants a necktie as “evidence.” After Salem flees, the inspector begins his investigation, disbelieving Anton’s wild theory that Salem was responsible. Later, Salem makes another excursion from the asylum to permanently seal his hated brother-in-law’s fate, and that’s when The Night Visitor presents its most arresting sequence. Using sheets and clothing tied into ropes—as well as other equally resourceful means—Salem creeps through passageways, tunnels, and windows to escape the asylum, thereby demonstrating how he committed the original crime. Director Laslo Benedek keeps Von Sydow onscreen as often as possible (rather than a stunt man), selling the illusion of Salem achieving a superhuman task.
          The detective portion of the story is almost as effective, with Howard’s character using a combination of intuition and perseverance to track down every lead, no matter how unlikely it is to bear fruit. A Hollywood version of this material would inevitably have overstated the cat-and-mouse dynamic, while also giving gentler qualities to Andersson’s character, but it’s the sheer chilliness of The Night Visitor that makes it so interesting to watch. Instead of coming across like a melodrama, the picture feels like a procedural set in a cruelly unfair universe.

The Night Visitor: FUNKY

Face to Face (1976)

          Some films are best appreciated as the vessels that deliver extraordinary performances, and Ingmar Bergman’s probing psychological drama Face to Face is an example. Liv Ullman, one of Bergman’s most frequent collaborators, renders an extraordinary characterization as a woman succumbing to madness. Her portrayal climaxes in an epic-length crying/laughing jag that represents some of the most vulnerable work you’ll ever encounter in a movie—like all the best actors, she creates the illusion that she’s peeled off her skin, metaphorically speaking, to let viewers she the blood and viscera pumping underneath. The resulting sense of connection between actor and viewer is powerful to experience. The same cannot necessarily be said of the film as a whole. Although Ullman is in nearly every scene and remains compelling throughout, the story is a fairly standard iteration of Bergman’s style.

          Dr. Jenny Isaksson (Ullman) is a psychiatrist stuck in an unsatisfying marriage, so when she meets suave Dr. Tomas Jacobi (Erland Josephson) at a party, she indulges his romantic overtures—up to a point. After a first date during which she startles Tomas by asking clinical questions about his planned technique for sexual conquest, she later tests his interest even further by having a major breakdown in his presence. Eventually, Jenny’s torment leads her to attempt suicide, and that lands her in a psych ward. Amazingly, Tomas remains loyal to her, visiting Jenny on a regular basis while she wrestles with her demons. Since Bergman was never a sentimentalist, he’s not after the notion that love conquers all—Face to Face expresses something closer to the idea that love makes the pain of existence incrementally more tolerable.

         Along the way to articulating that mildly comforting expression, Bergman visits many dark places. Interestingly, the vignettes that connect most strongly in Face to Face are the unadorned ones, where Bergman employs nothing but acting and mise-en-scène, even though Face to Face contains a long surrealistic sequence that recalls the visually experimental Bergman of old—shades of The Seventh Seal (1957). The surrealistic sequence takes viewers inside Jenny’s mind. Wearing a metaphorically rich red dress, she drifts through pieces of her life, for instance raging at her parents. This sequence represents a noble attempt at bringing a character’s interior life to the surface, but it’s perhaps too linear and obvious to genuinely evoke a disturbed mental state.

          Plus, as with many of Bergman’s dramas, there’s the overarching aesthetic question of how much emotional horror an audience should be asked to endure. Beyond Jenny’s breakdown, her suicide attempt, her institutionalization, and her wrenching dream sequence, Face to Face also includes an attempted rape and various scenes of interpersonal cruelty. Face to Face is tough to get through, and not every viewer will agree it’s worth the investment of attention and endurance.

Face to Face: GROOVY

The Serpent’s Egg (1977)

          Swedish director Ingmar Bergman had such a consistent and singular voice that, generally speaking, even his misfires feel like attempts at scaling the same thematic mountain atop which he made his most important discoveries. Proving there’s an exception to every rule is The Serpent’s Egg, one of two English-language pictures that Bergman directed and the closest thing to a Hollywood movie that Bergman ever made. Disjointed, meandering, and stiff, the picture seems like one of Bergman’s signature psychological dramas until it evolves (or devolves) into a conspiracy thriller with a hint of science fiction. Worse, The Serpent’s Egg has elements that are highly derivative of Bob Fosse’s extraordinary musical Cabaret (1972), even though Bergman was usually an artist whom others emulated, not the other way around.

          Reading about the circumstances surrounding The Serpent’s Egg provides some illumination, since Bergman was a tax exile from Sweden at the time he collaborated on this picture with American star David Carradine and Italian producer Dino Di Laurentiis. Sometimes, less-than-ideal situations push artists toward unexpected creative breakthroughs. In this case, it seems adversity bested Bergman.

          In 1923 Germany, American circus acrobat Abel Rosenberg (Carradine) reels from the suicide of his brother and performing partner, finding himself adrift and nearly penniless in a foreign land at a time of growing anti-Semitism. Abel finds comfort by spending time with his brother’s ex-wife, dancehall performer Manuela (Liv Ullman), but fate appears to have chosen Abel for a punching bag. As he wrestles with depression, looks for work, and half-heartedly investigates his brother’s life and death, Abel has a number of strange and/or violent encounters until discovering a conspiracy involving medical experimentation. As in Cabaret, the idea is to foreshadow the evil looming over Germany in the years preceding World War II. Yet while Cabaret found a perfect set of characters and metaphors to illustrate the means by which a society succumbs to tyranny, Bergman flails about while looking for something to ground his slapped-together storyline.

          At his best, Bergman created believably complicated individuals and drilled down into their psyches—so to say that he’s out of his element staging fist fights and mad-doctor scenes is to offer a considerable understatement. Nonetheless, The Serpent’s Egg looks as exquisite as any other Bergman production, mostly because Bergman’s regular cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, creates remarkable atmosphere and texture. Furthermore, Bergman’s muse, Ullman, renders a committed performance despite playing a role that borders on the nonsensical. As for Carradine, he seems lost, with the script’s contrived scenarios and stilted dialogue precluding him from manifesting his usual naturalism.

The Serpent’s Egg: FUNKY

The Emigrants (1971) & The New Land (1972)

          Screened in tandem, The Emigrants and its sequel, The New Land, comprise nearly seven hours of narrative material, all depicting the travails of a 19th-century Swedish family that relocates from their homeland to Minnesota. Accordingly, the first question that must be asked is whether cowriter/director Jan Troell needed seven hours to communicate the story that he tells across the two pictures. The simple answer to that question is no, but the simple answer is deceptive. It’s inarguable that both The Emigrants and The New Land contain superfluous scenes. Similarly, both films suffer from extraordinary bloat. Important scenes drag on past the point of impact, minor scenes are given too much screen time, and Troell periodically stops the drama cold to linger on an idyllic shot of a stream or a panoramic view of a forest. Both films are so indulgent, from the perspective of content and pacing, that it’s tempting to joke that Troell set out to tell an epic story in real time.

          Yet buried inside the expanse of these movies, and indeed woven into the very fabric of scenes that run longer than they should, is something deeply important—a sense of chronological weight. In telling a story about an era that precedes the fast-paced modern age, Troell found an appropriate style for conveying the drudgery of work, the monumental scope of international travel, and the sheer hardship of survival. Making audiences feel as if they’d been on an exhausting journey wasn’t the only way to explore the themes of the Vilhem Moberg novels upon which the two films are based, but it was an artistically credible way of doing so. No surprise, then, that massive acclaim was showered upon The Emigrants and The New Land both at home in Sweden and internationally.

          The first film introduces viewers to Karl Oskar Nilsson (Max Von Sydow) and his wife, Kristina (Liv Ullmann), as well as Karl Oskar’s younger brother, Robert (Eddie Axberg). In the broadest strokes, Karl Oskar realizes that he cannot sustain life in Sweden anymore, thanks to a deadly combination of famine, poverty, and religious persecution. With several children in tow, the Nilssons and several of their friends embark on a brutal journey from Sweden to America. By the time Karl Oskar finds what he deems the perfect location for a new homestead in the woods of Minnesota, the first movie is over. The New Land dramatizes the struggles that Karl Oskar, his family, and other Swedes encounter while trying to become successful farmers despite language barriers, limited resources, and the threat of hostile Indians. Much of the second picture is devoted to a harrowing adventure that Robert experiences when he leaves the homestead to seek gold in California.

          Although joyful moments occur periodically, deprivation and tragedy dominate The Emigrants and The New Land. Part history, part soap opera, and part tribute to indomitable settlers, these films are monumental in their dimensions. The stories cover decades, and the entire lives of certain characters are depicted. Troell accentuates subtle tropes, so many scenes feel impressionistic or even surreal, even though the movies address certain topics (especially religion) with detailed dialogue. At their best, these pictures have the sort of immersive realism that later became commonplace in American miniseries derived from literature. The Emigrants and The New Land require tremendous attention, patience, and stamina from viewers, so the movies are not for everyone, especially because the narratives are bleak. By any measure, however, the films represent extraordinary accomplishments.

          The labors of Troell and his collaborators were recognized by entities including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—both movies were nominated as Best Foreign Film in their respective release years, and The Emigrants has the odd distinction of receiving Oscar nominations in two separate years, because when the film was rereleased, it earned a nomination as Best Picture, rare for foreign films in any circumstances. FYI, Hollywood generated a short-lived TV series based on the material. Costarring Kurt Russell, The New Land aired for all of one month in the fall of 1974, flopping so badly that half the produced episodes were shelved.

The Emigrants: GROOVY

The New Land: GROOVY