1021 Bergman's Three Strange Loves

The first intention was to post my experience of Bergman films in the order of viewing rather than their creation chronology or their significance for my work indivisible from my work. I am great believer in following instinct and intuition.

The prologue of the Life of Marionettes is short and in brilliant colour. A young man is with a half naked young girl. He is tired and she tries to console him. He becomes violent chases her into a cupboard and then into what appears to be the bedroom of a tart. She cowers and he kills her off screen. Next a psychiatrist reports to the police being called to the scene by a patient. The patient has killed the girl and then had sex. The scene is in black and white. He is economical about his knowledge and relationships

The next scene occurs a month before. When the psychiatrist and patient are together discussing his urge to kill his wife in graphic terms. The psychiatrist reassures, but takes him seriously, appears to be honest and open about treatments.

The young man appears to leave, but does not.

The psychiatrist calls the wife, to warn her? No. A typical member of his profession? Perhaps, perhaps not! We learn much that is significant and important about the relationships between the couple and the psychiatrist, and their complexity.

We learn about the young man as a boy and the relationship with his mother

We learn about the wife and her relationship with a homosexual friend.

We learn more about the young man, his wife and relationships. The scenes go back and forth between before and after the killing.

Is this a film about why the young man did what he did? What is it really about?

In his film notes Bergman tries to be as honest and an open as only he can and more than most. It is a theme which had haunted him for some time, couples who are insolubly and painfully united (in love) still try and break themselves from what they have come to regard as bondage.

We are already familiar with this couple because they have already appeared in that searing opening up of the wounds of marriage, in Scenes, one of the great films if not the greatest on the subject, although in he film this couple are placed as a counterpoint with the principal subjects.

The film was shot in Germany where he had settled and vehicle for what he has to say and to discover is that part of the German soul which has always indulged in exploring sexuality in public, although it has become crude commercial exhibitionism, losing all the subtly and sophistication. Yet he successfully strives to match Brechtian brevity.

Is it real? Is it a dream, I asked?

The reality of this film is that the moment when the subject stops being an observer of the dream that his life has become he kills and enjoys the intense reality of his experience surrendering the rest of his life but also breaking free of the strings which created the situation. He is perpetrator and victim but our sympathies are with his mother, his wife and the relatives of the girl he has killed. She paid the price of not trusting in first instincts. The least sympathy is with the psychiatrist. But that is another story.

And my own experience? You have to work out the significance from what has been said and what has not and from what will and not be said over time and through what I do and the way I do it.