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    3. Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    Posted By: Someonelse
    Date: 3 Sep 2011 14:44:30
    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412]
    A Film by Ingmar Bergman
    DVD9 | ISO+MDS | NTSC 4:3 (720x480) | Scans + Booklet -> 15 Mb | 01:32:28 | 6,06 Gb
    Audio: Swedish AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps + English Commentary track | Subs: English
    Genre: Drama, Art-house | Sweden

    Ingmar Bergman presents the battle of the sexes as a ramshackle, grotesque carnival in Sawdust and Tinsel, one of the late master’s most vivid early works. The story of the charged relationship between a turn-of-the-century traveling circus owner (Ake Grönberg) and his performer girlfriend (Harriet Andersson), the film features dreamlike detours and twisted psychosexual power plays that presage the director’s Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal, works that would soon change the landscape of art cinema forever.

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    Criterion
    DVDBeaver

    The film opens as a ragtag circus makes its way across the European countryside early in the morning. Cold, battered, and quiet, this caravan shows little of the fun and frolicking that is usually associated with circuses. The ringmaster, Albert (Ake Grönberg), goes and sits with the driver of the lead wagon, and the horseman reflects on a story from seven years before, when the troupe's pasty-faced clown Frost (Anders Ek) caught his wife Alma (Gudrun Brost) swimming naked with a bunch of soldiers who paid her to strip for them. Encouraged by the others to be a man and take back what is his, Frost doesn't have the cajones to stand up to the soldiers. The best he can do is swim out and bring his wife to shore. The laughter of the crowd strikes him as if riddled by bullets, and the poor clown–a stand-in for the common everyman, it could be any of us under that make-up–collapses. Instead of carrying his wife back to camp, she has to carry him.

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    This early anecdote serves two purposes: it shows the dark cloud that hangs over Albert's circus troupe and acts as an indicator for how Bergman is using performance and spectacle purposefully. For this interlude, he and cinematographer Sven Nykvist give the story an old-time look and feel. The whites are blown-out, and the heavily pantomimed action runs mostly without dialogue, the only audio being music, like a silent film. It's as if Bergman is backtracking. He is making a modern film, but by using old film styles, he takes one step back, taking us along with him toward even older performance arenas, the circus and the traditional stage.

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    Once the circus gets to town, Bergman puts together a multifaceted social drama, the structural complexity of which, as well as the focus on infidelity, makes it a darker cousin to Smiles of a Summer Night. Who wants to be with whom, and whom will they sleep with instead?

    The current stop happens to be the town where Albert left his family, and he intends to go see his wife (Annika Tretow) and two sons for the first time in three years. This makes his current lover, the Spanish horse rider Anne (a buxom Harriet Andersson), feel insecure. Deciding this is her time to get out of the circus life, she goes into town thinking that a lothario actor (Hasse Ekman) will take her in. It's not a bad instinct, because Albert is also trying to jump from the caravan and settle back down at home. Both of them are dreaming larger than they are capable of. Here, though, is where Albert's story crosses with Frost's. Realizing that Anne has cheated on him, and denied by a wife whose financial security depends on Albert staying out of her life, his very manhood is called into question. Will he just drop down and take it like Frost, or is Albert capable of more?

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    Sawdust and Tinsel in a lot of ways feels more like fodder for Federico Fellini than it does Ingmar Bergman. The Italian director loved looking backstage and showing the lives of performers. One mustn't forget, however, that Bergman has written and directed stage plays his entire career, even after he retired from film, and he wrote about actors even as late as Fanny and Alexander. At this stage in Fellini's filmography, he would have been more fascinated with the female performers than even Bergman was. Though Bergman calls attention to the thin line between performing for the pleasure of others and prostitution, and the humiliations women often suffer, Sawdust and Tinsel is more in tune with the male cuckolds. The men are at various times framed in mirrors, either searching for or revealing their true nature in the glass. There is a split between Albert, who can barely face himself, and the actor, Frans, who isn't afraid of the things he so deviously hides.

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    In a similar vein, Bergman also uses make-up as a metaphor. Both the circus performers and the actors wear make-up in their work. Frost uses heavy powder to completely obliterate any pretense to being socially functional, whereas Frans wields it as a weapon of seduction and deception. When he and Anne are alone, the phrase "war paint" takes on a whole new meaning. Frans notes how poorly Anne's make-up is applied and tells her that he can show her how to do it properly. The sexual threat of the scene is clear, the tension rising as Anne first submits to the treatment and then tries to get out of it.

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    Adding further to the layers that separate these people is Bergman's clear delineation of the social strata that puts the circus at the bottom of the pack. The theatre people have a permanent place in town, but just as with everything else with the actors, it's a false placement. They can play the part of being respectable citizens, but they are wolves in sheep's clothing. Frans would make no more suitable a husband than Albert. Both types of performers are really just grist in the town's entertainment mill.

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    The final act of Sawdust and Tinsel takes place entirely at the circus. It's the performance night and the morning-after tear down. Under the big top, Albert is meant to be the master, and it's here that Bergman will lather on the irony and mete out his punishment. The tragic flailing of the ending is painful to watch–a reeling, impressionsitc battle of both body and will. When it comes down to it, the circus ring is its own circle of Hell, closed and unbending. Thus, it's fitting that the end of the film first shows Frost and Albert walking alone, men who see their position in this world all too clearly, bringing both a bitter resignation and one hope's a happy acceptance.

    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    Highly Recommended. An early creative breakthrough for Ingmar Bergman, Sawdust and Tinsel would see the Swedish director using the metaphor of performers and performing to expose the depths of deceptions in relationships, manhood, and society itself. Following a run-down circus troupe to its latest stop, he creates a swirling social drama where two lovers seek escape but find only rejection. Layering in a side story about a clown's marital woes, a prior indiscretion that hangs over everything, the movie becomes a painful examination of the action men are expected to take and the way these things can go wrong.
    DVDtalk
    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]

    Disc Features:
    - New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the film, featuring five minutes of material not included in previous U.S. editions
    - Audio commentary by Bergman scholar Peter Cowie
    - Video introduction by Bergman from 2003
    - New and improved English subtitle translation
    - PLUS: A new essay by critic John Simon and an appreciation by filmmaker Catherine Breillat
    Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) [The Criterion Collection #412] [Repost]


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