1970s – Page 2 – Scene by Green

Fellini’s Roma (1972)

Federico Fellini | 2hr 8min

The two eras of Rome that Federico Fellini displays in his offbeat homage to the Italian city are set apart by three decades, though the boundaries separating one from the other aren’t always so clearly outlined. Hippies lounge around ancient monuments in the 1970s, air raids send civilians running for cover in the 1940s, and yet still life goes on for those who seek the simple pleasures of sex, entertainment, and good food. After all, what else is there to cling to in a world eternally bound within a state of perpetual chaos?

This is not quite the Rome chronicled in history books, nor the Rome captured with authenticity in the films of the Italian neorealists. This is Fellini’s Roma – an absurd, urban landscape defined more by its culture, politics, and traditions than any individual icon. Not to say that Fellini’s film lacks idiosyncratic characters – in fact virtually everyone here sets themselves apart from the colourful crowd – but they are simply threads woven into a larger, vibrant tapestry. Despite its familiar interrogations of modern Rome’s debauchery, Roma bears far greater resemblance to the surreal, episodic madness of Fellini Satyricon than the focused character study of La Dolce Vita. Such a grandiose defiance of narrative convention comes with some structural unevenness, though Fellini’s recreation of the city he both loathes and adores is nonetheless rich with impressionistic detail, filtering moments in time through the wily incongruity of satire and memory.

*A city littered with millennia of history – fading, crumbling, yet always to be replaced with new artefacts and stories.*

*Hippies lounge around ancient monuments in the 1970s while bombs drop on Rome in the 1940s – parallel timelines marked by war and celebration.*

If there is a consistent character in Roma whom we are to follow beyond Rome itself, then it is the strange presence of Fellini himself in two forms. The first is a semi-autobiographical representation of the director watching silent films about Ancient Rome as a child, and later moving to the Nazi-occupied city as a young man. The camera moves with him past magnificent fountains and cathedrals in travelogue-style tracking shots, before he finally finds lodging at a shabby guesthouse bustling with vain actors, rowdy children, and religious zealots. The insanity seemingly has no boundaries, populating the streets at night with noisy al fresco restaurant patrons, and still we continue weaving through the crowd as our attention jumps from a waiter carrying a plate of pasta to the young Fellini being invited to eat with friendly strangers.

*Fellini self-autobiographically enters the film as his younger self moving to Rome, embracing all that the city has to offer.*

This version of Fellini is often little more than a passive observer accompanying our journey, while the second cinematic representation of the filmmaker manifests as an older, wiser extension of the same man – an unseen tour guide of sorts, offering amusing descriptions and opinions on Rome’s eclectic culture through omniscient voiceover. He is our constant companion through this adventure, possessing a whimsical self-awareness as he introduces a “portrait of Rome” exactly as a young, naïve Fellini once perceived it – “a mixture of strange, contradictory images.” Later as we stumble across Italian actress Anna Magnani walking home to her palazzo, this voiceover even holds a conversation with her, distilling all the facets of Rome down to this living symbol who has lived out its many lives on film.

“Rome seen as vestal virgin, and she-wolf. An aristocrat, and a tramp. A sombre buffoon.”

*Rome’s proclivity towards fascism echoes through time, dominating the culture with fervent nationalism and authoritarianism.*

On occasion, Roma does not always handle these fourth wall breaks so well, leading to some patchiness in one highway scene that turns the camera back on Fellini’s own crew capturing the traffic jam. Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend is the obvious influence here, as we observe anarchy unfold on the roads one stormy night. Dead animals, burning trucks, hippie protestors, and police barricades are illuminated under harsh spotlights to paint an image of societal breakdown, but for once the chaos seems to escape Fellini’s control.

*Some vignettes in Roma are more effective than others, and the highway set piece is one that suffers in comparison.*

It is evident that Fellini handles the mayhem with greater poise when he is aligning these disordered elements under unified set pieces, digging into the bedrock of culture and history the city quite literally rests upon. The wondrous regard these people hold for their heritage is not to be outdone by their relentless pursuit of progress, as industrials drills paving the way for a new transit system smash the walls of an ancient Roman house to pieces, revealing alabaster sculptures, mosaics, and frescoes that have miraculously survived for two thousand years. “Look how they seem to be staring at us,” one woman remarks as these artworks cast a stern eye upon their new visitors. Suddenly, the paint’s exposure to the outside air triggers a rapid deterioration, and thus these representatives of the ancient world cast their final judgement on modern civilisation for its graceless, irresponsible ineptitude.

The tension between past and present comes through bleakly in the industrial dig site. Attempts at establishing a new underground transit system are frequently halted by historical discoveries, and inadvertently ruin them in the process.

Still, little can erase the immense pride of a culture that annually celebrates the Festa de’ Noantri – literally translating to ‘Festival of Ourselves.’ Fellini stations his handheld camera in a car as it passes by colourful lights, bustling crowds, and folk musicians filling the air with joy, capturing a slice of the real celebration in an almost documentary-like manner, and even bringing in American writer Gore Vidal to reflect on his life in Rome. “This is the city of illusions,” he ponders to an audience of rapt listeners. “It’s a city, after all, of the church, of government, of movies. They’re all makers of illusions.”

*Fellini’s location shooting soaks in the sights of the Festa de Noantri – the lights, the food, the community, everything comes together to form a lively picture of Roman celebration and joy.*

Fellini does not attempt to escape from beneath the shadow of this reputation either, but rather devotes his vision of Rome to its extraordinary artifice, understanding that the truth never lies far from its projected façade. With Roma’s production taking place a few years after Vatican II, this is especially relevant to the church’s struggle of identity in a modern world, and thus he launches a scathing attack upon its attempted reinvention through a hilariously gaudy fashion show.

“Model number one: Patience in a classical line of black satin for novices,” the emcee announces to the crowd of cardinals, bishops, and nobles, as a pair of nuns walk down the catwalks in glossy habits and leather boots “suitable for Arctic wear.” Next, two more nuns with headdresses that flap like turtledove wings, priests on roller skates clad in “robes for sport,” and then men in frilly doilies swinging thuribles with choreographed panache – “Elegance and high fashion for the sacristan in first-class ceremonies.” The ecclesiastical accoutrements only grow more ridiculous, eventually culminating in the arrival of the Pope himself on a blinding white set, radiating sunbeams as the audience collapses to their knees in awe.

The true highlight of Roma comes in the form of an ecclesiastical fashion show, sending up the material obsession of the Catholic Church is it seeks a connection to modern culture. Particularly magnificent costume work from Danilo Donati.

Costume designer Danilo Donati must be commended for the visual extravagance of this vignette, though it is Fellini’s genius which unites each garment under a single, scathing criticism of religious hypocrisy, and its attempts to win modern audiences through material spectacle. Then again, how can we blame the church for appealing to the masses in such an excessive manner when the people themselves are so blinded by escapist self-indulgence? Men from across the lower and upper ends of this society are far more likely to frequent local bordellos for a taste of intimacy, as Fellini only separates their endeavours by the sophistication of the facilities themselves. In the shabbier brothel, a long corridor fills with working class men hoping to pair off with a woman, before it is eventually shut down by police. In the more luxurious one, older men take their pick of the escorts before taking an elevator up into grand bedrooms decorated with red wallpaper and classical paintings.

*An up-class and rundown brothel continue to draw parallels between different segments of Rome, uniting its men as seekers of physical pleasure.*

Art and entertainment similarly prove to be effective distractions from the ills of the modern world, manifesting in the 1970s as a film director neglecting to depict the negative aspects of Rome, and in the 1940s as a vaudeville show that unites audience members in laughter, bawdiness, and nationalistic sentiment. The musical and comedy acts run for a little too long here, but the announcement of Germany and Italy’s successful defence of Sicily that interrupts the performances is worth it, erupting in disconcerting cries of support from the crowd.

The irony that this jubilant resolve dissipates into pandemonium the moment sirens start blaring a few short moments later is not to be missed. “Whose baby is this?” one patron shouts upon discovering a baby left alone in the evacuated theatre, while outside Fellini shoots the emptying streets in a chilly blue wash. Though present-day Rome has long moved past the terror and instability of World War II, the insecurity that comes to light here is a ghost that continues to haunt this city – a city which, as Vidal elucidates, “has died so many times and was resurrected so many times.”

*A haunting juxtaposition between Rome’s nationalistic celebration and the violent bombing a few short minutes later – this is a snapshot of a city in turmoil, at odds with its own contradictions.*

More specifically, it is Rome’s historical inclination towards fascism which can’t quite be expelled from its culture, and which becomes the subject of the town fool’s rhyming couplets comparing Italian dictators across time. “This fascist shit, his head is split,” he cackles at a damaged statue of Julius Caesar, before turning his insubordinate poem to the 1940s.

“Now we’ve got another meanie,

By the name of Mussolini.”

Fellini’s obvious disdain towards the police in the 1970s timeline formally brings this partisan statement full circle, noting that despite the political lull, there remains an oppressive, authoritarian influence quashing freedoms in contemporary Rome. These people may find any excuse for a communal celebration of family, art, food, or religion, and yet such lively passions can sway dangerously towards prejudice with the right provocation. “It seems to me the perfect place to watch if we end or not,” Vidal predicts, and by the end of Roma, Fellini has thoroughly substantiated his claim. Within this vividly surreal portrait, its culture is a vibrant epicentre of history and modernity, community and intolerance, highbrow art and lowbrow entertainment – and worth cherishing in all its wonders, contradictions, and flaws.

Fellini’s Roma is currently available to buy from Amazon.

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Robert Wise | 2hr 11min

Though the primary antagonist of The Andromeda Strain may be the extra-terrestrial organism described in its title, it isn’t too hard to see the wariness towards world governments lingering beneath the film’s doomsday warnings. As the scientists of the secret underground facility Wildfire note early on, the Andromeda bacteria may not even necessarily be deliberately hostile in its native environment, and its harmfulness to terrestrial lifeforms could very well be an incidental mismatch between their biological codes. Until it is brought into contact with humanity, its nature is not inherently good or evil. It only becomes a global hazard through its exploitation by political leaders, and our own arrogant belief that we can keep such unknown forces as these under control.

In short, The Andromeda Strain offers the perfect metaphor for widespread nuclear warfare at the dawn of the 1970s, falling into the same subgenre of paranoid political thrillers as so many other films of the era like The Conversation and The Parallax View. Though the atomic detonation built into Wildfire was designed as a safeguard, the eventual discovery that it may in fact fuel Andromeda with enough energy to end all life on Earth effectively turns a protective countermeasure into an apocalypse waiting to happen. That the lead scientists behind Wildfire believe this newly discovered organism can be used as a biological weapon is pure hubris, leaving only a small team of contracted experts to unravel Andromeda’s mysteries and defuse a potentially world-ending threat.

*Haunting scenes at the town of Piedmont, where all but two citizens dropped dead in the middle of everyday activities – a horrifically intriguing start to this scientific mystery.*

*Wise’s staggering of bodies throughout shots is executed with clinical precision, using the full breadth of his wideframe and an incredible depth of field.*

The realism that Robert Wise applies to The Andromeda Strain also speaks to a far more authentic feeling of insecurity too than the sensationalised Cold War allegories that pervaded the cinematic landscape up to this point, including his own 1951 adaptation of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Having been well-established in the industry since the 1940s, he is essentially a bridge between Old and New Hollywood, applying his talent for deep focus cinematography learned from Orson Welles to a more naturalistic aesthetic. More specifically, it is the split diopter lens that becomes the foundation of so many Wise’s greatest compositions, applying two different focuses at once to effectively allow for a close-up and wide shot within the same frame. Brian de Palma would be the director most associated with this technique in years to come, but not even he was so rigorously bound to the stylistic device as Wise is in The Andromeda Strain, which barely goes a minute without underscoring the dramatic irony disconnecting subjects in the foreground and background.

Many directors have mastered the split diopter lens, but none have made a film that uses it so perfectly and consistently as The Andromeda Strain which turns it into a fully realised aesthetic. Close-ups and wide shots are effectively achieved within the same shot, imparting a great deal of visual information and dramatic irony.

In this way, Wise uses the split diopter as a tool for suspense, particularly in the early scenes when we learn about the small, rural town of Piedmont whose entire population suddenly died without warning. When military police officers arrive at Dr Jeremy Stone’s home and urgently summon him to ground zero, the two greeting his wife at the door evenly frame the third restlessly pacing by the car behind them, astoundingly dividing the lens’ focus into three individual segments. Later when Stone arrives on site with Dr Mark Hall, their investigation is eerily laced with more of these shots, pressing the profile of a dead man right up against the camera while they anxiously observe from a distance.

*An inventive twist on the split diopter – segmenting the frame into thirds rather than halves, and framing the police officer in the background with two more on either side.*

*Chilling scenes in the town of Piedmont, viscerally captured with Wise pressing a dead man’s face in close-up against the camera while scientists investigate from a distance.*

*The two survivors of the ghost town make for a compelling mystery – a crying baby and the local drunk, both seemingly unaffected by the lethal bacteria.*

The other purpose this deep focus serves during Stone and Hall’s reconnaissance mission is purely economical, loading the visuals with a great deal of information without needing to cut between multiple shots. The pacing here is slow but gripping, thoroughly earning each puzzle piece that gradually slots into place – the satellite that recently crashed in town, the clotting of human blood into a powdery substance, and the two sole survivors being a crying baby and the town drunk.

The mosaic use of split screens during this sequence consequently feels like a natural extension of the split diopter technique, drawing our eyes to multiple subjects in the frame while abundant evidence of an invisible alien invasion stacks up. On the left, Stone and Hall peer through windows of quiet houses, while on the right we are given the view of dead bodies inside. Similarly, their studies of Andromeda in the depths of Wildfire use these split screens in place of conventional montages, methodically drawing connections between different parts of their experiments without impatiently rushing through their painstaking processes. Along with the time stamps frequently marking the date and time of significant events, Wise’s precise visuals are effectively cataloguing this scientific study into a detailed presentation of exacting focus, desperately trying to apply hard logic to what remains impenetrably enigmatic.

*Wise approaches his narrative with clinical precision, formally marking its progression with timestamps that help to sort through its sheer density.*

*Wise’s mosaic split screens serve a similar purpose as his split diopters, connecting disparate points of the investigation to reach a firmer conclusion.*

*The colour red punctures Wise’s sterile sets with jarring urgency.*

With such remarkable formal precision guiding Wise’s direction, the Stanley Kubrick influence is clear, especially given the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey just three years prior. Just like that science-fiction masterpiece, accusations could be levelled at the dry jargon and cold characterisations of Nelson Gidding’s screenplay, though the clinical restraint displayed here is merely part of Wise’s sterile atmosphere. Instead of a small crew journeying into outer space, we watch four scientists descend deep into the Earth, yielding their humanity to the artificial technology that keeps them alive. To reach the main laboratory at its base, they must first pass through four sublevels of decontamination, with each room possessing the sort of intricate production design that wouldn’t be out of place in Kubrick’s spaceships. The crimson, silver, and yellow uniforms worn by these scientists vividly match the metallic walls of their respective floors, while the red warning lights on the bottom level pierce its polished grey surroundings with jarring urgency, though it is the laboratory’s central core which proves to be the most impressive set piece of them all in the heart-pumping climax.

The 2001: A Space Odyssey influence is distinctly felt in Wise’s uniform production design and blocking, making for some particularly striking imagery as the scientists descend ever deeper into the Earth.

To draw that 2001: A Space Odyssey connection even deeper, Wise’s decision to hire special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull pays off in the green computerised depictions of Andromeda itself, dynamically visualising its mutations into different variants. This rapid evolution may be its greatest weapon against human analysis, granting itself the power to disintegrate the plastic and rubber keeping it contained, though it is equally the fast thinking of scientists which at least temporarily defuses the situation. The threat in the film’s final act is a little contrived, counting down to an apocalyptic nuclear detonation, but Wise’s deft editing paces the tension perfectly right to the final seconds. An uneasy stalemate is the only solution which guarantees survival for both species, and may be the best anyone can hope for given their immense powers of mutual destruction. In an era so fraught with mistrust between neighbours, the pursuit of greater knowledge is nothing more than a path to existential insecurity in The Andromeda Strain, forcing civilians to grasp the fragility of their own blissfully ignorant lives.

*Even 2001: A Space Odyssey’s special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull contributes to the morphing design of Andromeda itself, rendered digitally as a green, mutating prism.*

*The measured pacing ramps up in the final act with a climactic countdown to the end of the world, but Wise continues to wield an excellent control over his camera angles and tension.*

The Andromeda Strain is currently available to rent or on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video, and the Blu-ray can be bought on Amazon.

The Tenant (1976)

Roman Polanski | 2hr 5min

It is a horrifying enough realisation on its own that Polish immigrant Trelkovsky is slowly transforming into Simone, the previous occupant of his Parisian apartment who jumped from its window. Even more disturbing is the creeping feeling that his condescending neighbours are erasing all traces of his real identity, leaving the ambiguous question by the end of The Tenant as to whether it is even worth distinguishing between the two residents. From the moment he goes to visit a barely alive Simone in her hospital bed with her face wrapped in bandages, he feels strangely drawn to her, though he is abruptly interrupted from investigating further when she locks eyes with him and lets out a monstrous scream. Sometime later, she dies from her injuries, though one thing at least has been made clear – she too sensed the presence of that mysterious, frightening connection between them.

*All that is left of the previous tenant Simone is this bandaged, dehumanised mummy, letting out a monstrous as she locks eyes with Trelkovsky.*

In the eyes of Monsieur Zy and the other inhabitants of their building, that bond is superficially obvious. Both the foreigner Trelkovsky and the queer-coded Simone are troublemakers with little regard for those social conventions that keep a tenuous peace – no loud noises, no visitors, fall in line with the majority opinion. They are as bad as that mother and her disabled daughter being viciously evicted from their apartment via a petition that Trelkovsky refuses to sign, which incidentally alienates him even further. The unifying thread binding him together with these similarly ostracised strangers is never explicitly labelled, but it doesn’t need to be. Whether one diverges from the mainstream through their sexuality, ethnicity, or physical condition, there is little room to be made for outsiders in these flats.

With a setting this absurdly oppressive, one could easily imagine some alternate version of The Tenant as a Kafkaesque comedy, or a drama aimed at confronting social issues. As the final piece of Roman Polanski’s Apartment trilogy though following Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion, Trelkovsky’s disintegrating psyche is complete submerged in paranoid horror, creeping into those safe spaces one would hope to savour as their last sanctuary in a treacherous world.

*German expressionism in this manipulation of shadows, angles, and sets – there is a lineage from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari to this shot.*

Cinematographer Sven Nykvist strays far from his usual close-up heavy work with Ingmar Bergman here, using wide-angle lenses that claustrophobically warp the dimensions of building hallways around Trelkovsky, and tracking his camera through dark rooms with measured precision. The Hitchcockian influence is apparent too, mounting an intrusive suspense in the opening shot as we float outside the dreary grey establishment and peer through its windows, and later when the central stairwell is framed at dizzying angles that almost look to be straight out of Vertigo. Like James Stewart’s private detective Scottie, he too is destined for a great fall.

*Overhead shots looking down stairwells call back to Vertigo, leading our protagonist to an inevitable fall from a great height*.

*The Alfred Hitchcock references continue in abundance – Rear Window here as Trelkovsky spies on his neighbours through binoculars, suspicious of their odd behaviour.*

With an inquisitive Trelkovsky being pulled deeper into a mystery that won’t let him go, the comparisons don’t end there either. His observations of suspicious behaviours through binoculars frame him like Stewart in Rear Window, as he amasses a collection of bizarre clues pointing back to Simone in long, patient stretches of purely visual storytelling. So too does Psycho’s influence rear its head as her identity begins to take over, cutting a feminine silhouette of his body in the apartment that has steadily grown darker and messier over time, and which reverberates disarray across a wintery lakeside chaotically littered with fold-up chairs. Though Polanski often uses wide shots to frame his deteriorating mise-en-scène, his compositions frequently carry a psychologically invasive effect, isolating him at the centre of a conspiracy that follows him wherever he goes.

*Polanski hits the trifecta of Hitchcock allusions with Psycho, putting Trelkovsky under a microscope as his identity and gender come into question.*

*The chaos of Polanski’s mise-en-scène is astonishingly composed, littering a wintery lakeside with green fold-up chairs – a visual representation of Trelkovsky’s disintegrating psyche.*

As for how much of this plot is merely in his head, Polanski consistently underscores Trelkovsky’s loose grip on reality, but otherwise remains purposefully ambiguous. “The former tenant always wore slippers after ten o’clock. It was always more comfortable for her – and for the neighbours,” he is first advised when he moves in, though what starts as simple pointers soon becomes a cloud of ridiculously strict expectations hanging over his head, making him anxious to even turn on a tap. Though lingering deep in the subtext, Polanski’s past as a Holocaust survivor and victim of prejudice after the war is embedded in Trelkovsky’s experiences with this community of authoritarian neighbours, and the allegory is only emphasised in his bold but ultimately misguided choice to cast himself as the lead. When he begins to realise the influence coming from servers at a local café trying to offer him Simone’s regular orders and cigarette brands, Polanski’s acting simply cannot sustain the intensity of his own direction.

Still, this imperfect performance does not keep The Tenant from excelling in its psychosexual study of alienation and guilt, leading us along a string of bizarre motifs disassociating Trelkovsky from his physical body. When he finally investigates the bathroom where he has spied neighbours standing motionless for hours on end, he finds a wall of hieroglyphs, leading him back to Simone and her academic studies in Egyptology. Looking out the window, he sees another figure watching him through binoculars from the reverse angle – only to realise with horror that it is himself in his own apartment. An effectively unnerving score of trembling and plucked strings accompany these unearthly discoveries, many of which are never so much explained outright as they are weaved together into an occult of urban conformity and ostracisation, until that sacred sense of selfhood comes into question.

“At what precise moment does an individual stop being who he thinks he is?”

Conspiracies, connections, and delusions emerge. Hieroglyphs in the bathroom call back to Simone’s interest in Egyptology, and Trelkovsky even witnesses his own double spying on him from across the courtyard.

In the midst of his madness, this is the question Trelkovsky is driven to one drunken night as he feels himself slowly slipping away. “If you cut off my head – would I say, ‘Me and my head’ or ‘Me and my body’? What right has my head to call itself me?” he slurs to his new friend Stella – a woman who of course used to be Simone’s friend too. Like the Ship of Theseus that had all its original components replaced over time in the famous thought experiment, we too are left to question how long he can still call himself Trelkovsky while all those pieces that once defined him are being swapped out. In the end, he is only becoming what everyone else already sees him as – just another outsider, trying and failing to play by an impossible set of rules.

Of course, the more Trelkovsky tries to placate his neighbours’ demands, the more he loses control of his own mind, leaving us to wonder with this recent emergence of Simone is really the manifestation of a more authentic, transgressive self he has tried to repress for the sake of the status quo. His courtship with Stella often feels more like a social obligation than anything else, hinting at a part of his sexuality that he has never properly sought to understand, and which has only fuelled his fear of being exposed.

*Transgressive and controversial characterisations, situating characters as outsiders from the status quo due to their queerness, ethnicity, and disability*.

Trelkovsky’s fate is written out from the beginning with Simone’s attempted suicide, revealing the broken glass that she fell through, and which Trelkovsky will soon shatter again in the exact same way.

In effect, Trelkovsky is caught in a destructive loop of self-loathing, finally throwing himself out of his apartment window as Simone did before him, and then almost immediately repeating the act a second time. So too does Polanski recall the opening tracking shot at this moment as well, floating the camera around the outside of the building, but this time seeing Trelkovsky’s hallucination of all those who had conspired against him cheering and clapping his attempted suicide.

It isn’t until Trelkovsky finds himself waking up under layers of bandages that The Tenant finally comes full circle though. Now at his lowest point, he is more identical to Simone than ever, bearing a perfect resemblance to the maimed, faceless woman he met back in the hospital ward that he now occupies. As his eyes meet those of the visitor standing above him, all he can do is let out a monstrous scream – not just in recognition of his own face, naively peering down at his disfigured body, but also of that infinite loop which will once again take him down the same deranged path of stolen individuality and mutilated personhood.

*A haunting closure of the narrative loop, bringing us back to the start with the reveal of Trelkovsky and Simone’s merged identity – a path of mutilated individuality and dehumanisation.*

The Tenant is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play, or YouTube, and the Blu-ray or DVD can be bought on Amazon.

Mirror (1975)

Andrei Tarkovsky | 1hr 48min

If one were to ask Andrei Tarkovsky, applying literal interpretations to his semi-autobiographical film Mirror is about as futile as discerning the past through rigorously objective methods. After all, factual history cannot possibly take any tangible form that may be touched, smelt, and tasted by future generations the same way it could for those who were there. The moment it disappears from the present, it no longer exists even in the minds of firsthand witnesses, who now filter it through their own subjective recollections. To then attempt a faithful reconstruction of its events through whatever form of media they deem most effective only separates our current understanding of the past further from whatever truth once existed.

This is no reason to give up entirely on such an endeavour though, Tarkovsky asserts, but rather to appreciate the reflection of our imperfect humanity that is found in such evocative illustrations. It is through his cinematic manipulation of time’s subjective flow that Mirror escapes the false impression of constructed reality, and instead becomes a portal into his pre-war childhood memories warped by the dreams, doubts, and desires that have emerged in the decades since. No decent film should be interpreted purely through a literal lens, but Mirror least of all ought to be taken as such, lest one finds themselves misguidedly rejecting Tarkovsky’s profoundly spiritual meditation on family, nostalgia, and humanity’s flawed consciousness.

*The elderly Maria is played by Tarkovsky’s real-life mother, emphasising the autobiographical nature of this surreal study of memory.*

The setting of Alexei’s family cottage on the edge of a forest suggests an ominous tranquillity, framing his childhood as a fairy tale where things that were once deemed impossible manifest with ethereal wonder.

It quickly becomes apparent that the first-person perspective taken by Tarkovsky is a surrogate for his own, as we realise our protagonist Alexei is never quite visible in the post-war timeline. He is the source from which these memories spring forth, his face always sitting just outside the frame while he commands the non-linear narrative with pensive voiceovers and conversations, and only ever appearing onscreen as a child in the story’s pre-war timeline. That he seems to be recalling the past as an out-of-body experience is the first clue that these flashbacks aren’t quite accurate renderings, but as Tarkovsky sinks us deeper into Alexei’s pool of dreams, we come to recognise it as the mirror upon which this unseen man’s life is reflected and distorted.

It is revealing too that the figure who looms largest here is his mother. Being named Maria after Tarkovsky’s real-life mother, and thus drawing parallels to the Blessed Virgin Mary, she becomes an icon of sacred veneration in Mirror, yet also a woman with a vividly complex life just beyond the periphery of Alexei’s view. In our first meeting with her, Tarkovsky even painstakingly recreates an authentic photograph of the real Maria sitting on a roughly erected fence of sticks, gazing towards the green fields beyond her home as if expectantly waiting for an important arrival. With her face totally hidden, she seems to exist in a world inaccessible to the young Alexei, her thoughts preoccupied by ideas and emotions beyond his naïve understanding. Still, the camera pushes forwards past rustling branches and into her orbit, where we can finally see what she sees – a man approaching from the distance.

Tarkovsky painstakingly recreates a photograph of his mother sitting on a fence, though here he dollies the camera forward past branches and leaves into her orbit, compelled to understand her world that has been kept secret from her children.

He is not her husband, we discover, but rather a passing doctor who carries a warmer demeanour than Alexei’s actual father, and who on this day happens to be walking the same path. In the grand scheme of Alexei’s childhood, this man holds very little significance, and yet it is notable that this memory stands out in the absence of the family patriarch. Though his appearances are rare, the void he leaves behind is often filled with the poetry of Tarkovsky’s own father, Arseny Tarkovsky, standing in for a traditional film score.

With evocations of Greek tragedy, physical death, and spiritual transcendence emerging from one poem ‘Eurydice’, new impressions are drawn from Maria’s reluctant slaughter of a cockerel at her neighbour’s house and her guilty departure. Though the scene eventually comes to an end, the poetry continues its gentle contemplations through black-and-white, slow-motion imagery of a mighty wind running through dense vegetation, rolling a brass ornament off a small wooden table, and billowing through translucent white drapes hung in Alexei’s home. Whether expressed in spoken word or moving image, the romantic abstractions of both father and son run strong, and merge to create a cinematic lyricism.

“I dream of a different soul dressed in different garb,

burning up like alcohol as it flits from timidity to hope,

slipping away, shadowless,

leaving behind lilacs as a memento on the table.

Run, my child, and mourn not for poor Eurydice,

but drive your copper hoop through the wide world,

while in response to every step, you hear the earth reply, its voice joyful and dry.”
An excerpt from ‘Eurydice’ by Arseny Tarkovsky

Though Arseny Tarkovsky’s words encourage his son to move on from the lost love of Eurydice, the actual struggle is far more burdensome with the weight of memory holding him down. Does the mythological figure of Orpheus’ deceased wife stand in for Alexei’s childhood, his ex-wife Natalia, or perhaps even his mother? Andrei Tarkovsky would never claim such a direct correlation, though given his Oedipal casting of Margarita Terekhova as both Maria and Natalia, the two women are tied very strongly to Greek legend. Where they split is in their characterisations – where Maria embodies divine grace, Natalia is cold and cynical, suggesting a spiritual corruption that has degraded with time.

*An inspired Oedipal casting of Margarita Terekhova as Alexei’s mother and wife, drawing a sharp division in their personalities – and of course Tarkovsky creates doubles of her in this mirror.*

At least, this is how Alexei perceives them, and Tarkovsky is fully aware that he is far from a reliable narrator. It is more than likely that Maria never had the face he recalls now, instead letting her take the appearance of the other most significant woman in his life, and when Alexei even admits this to Natalia he also expresses a slight suspicion of why this is the case.

“I pity you both, you and her.”

He is not alone in seeing these echoes across past and present either, as the double casting of both a young Alexei and his son, Ignat, reflects the patriarchal side of the Oedipus allegory that Natalia bears witness to. Just as Alexei’s father grew distant from his son, so too is Alexei failing to connect with Ignat, who Natalia notes in horror “is becoming like you.”

Tarkovsky does not seek so much to explain these repeated generational patterns though as he wishes to capture the raw essence of time as it passes through them, cycling in rhythms that may be more richly experienced from outside history’s traditionally linear progression, and beyond the limits of conscious thought. As Tarkovsky intercuts Alexei’s reluctant rifle training during World War II with archival footage of Soviet battles, time is compressed into a single point that weighs on the young boy’s mind. Meanwhile, those long, slow camera movements which gently drift through uninhabited rooms stretch it out into eternity, offering a retreat into the soothing reverie of his frozen dreams.

*Tarkovsky intercuts archival footage of Soviet battles, interrogating the notion of memory from historical artefacts as well as subjective recollections.*

*Tarkovsky’s camera drifts through the hallways and rooms of Alexei’s childhood home, offering a retreat into the soothing reverie of his frozen dreams.*

Perhaps the greatest manifestation of time’s transient passage though is in Tarkovsky’s observation of nature’s effervescent, primordial elements, moving independently of any human influence. As if brought to life by some invisible creator, a gust of wind sends a single rippling wave through a field of long grass while Alexei’s neighbour walks away, and the frequent emphasis on grass, snow, dirt, mud, and stone on the ground imbues Tarkovsky’s mise-en-scène with distinctly earthy textures. Even the setting of this cottage on the edge of a forest suggests an ominous tranquillity, framing Alexei’s childhood as a fairy tale where things that were once deemed impossible manifest with ethereal wonder.

*Elemental imagery as a sudden gust of wind ripples across a field of grass, as if touched by some invisible hand.*

*Snow, ice, and wood – so much of Tarkovsky’s imagery is connected to the earth and its seasonal changes.*

Somewhat paradoxically, fire and water frequently co-exist in the same spaces throughout Mirror too, creating a subtly incongruent dreamscape where candles light the room of Maria’s self-baptism, while rain simultaneously trickles in from cracks in the ceiling. The water which consecrates her as a divine entity in Alexei’s mind is the same which eventually caves in the room’s ceiling, wielding an equally immense power over life and death.

*Water drips from the ceiling and down walls even while candle flames burn around the room, making for an eerie visual paradox.*

Elsewhere, Tarkovsky’s floating camera pauses on a dirtied mirror reflecting the burning of Alexei’s family barn, but as it turns around and directly approaches the disaster, we note the quiet patter of rain dripping from the wooden roof. Like the grand final set piece of Tarkovsky’s later film The Sacrifice, this fiery structure becomes a theological icon of divine destruction in stark contrast to the nourishing waters of life. On an even more fundamental level though, he is composing a surreal image of primal elemental power that we, like the characters, are simply forced to gaze at in helpless awe.

*The camera first catches sight of the burning barn through a dirtied mirror in the house, concealed from our view as the family watches on.*

The camera slowly spins around and moves outside to the porch, and suddenly the rain becomes audible and visible – another visual contradiction revealing either an impossible spiritual force, or an unreliable memory.

From within the fragile bubble of Alexei’s dreams, we can easily see why he pities those like Natalia who claim to have never witnessed a true Old Testament miracle. For Alexei, such miracles are impossible to escape. One strange visitor disappears mid-scene, leaving no trace of their existence besides the condensation of their absent teacup, and in what may be the defining shot of Tarkovsky’s filmography Maria levitates several feet above her bed, draped in white bedsheets. “Here I am, borne aloft,” she tenderly whispers to Alexei, becoming an angelic image of maternal transcendence in the eyes of her child.

*One of the defining shots of Tarkovsky’s career, transforming the mother into an angelic figure levitating several feet above a bed, spiritually elevated in the eyes of the child.*

*An unexplained miracle as one strange visitor disappears mid-scene, leaving no trace of her existence besides the condensation of her now-absent teacup.*

As much as sequences such as these feel like a total departure from reality, their roots in mid-century Soviet Union history remain incredibly relevant. We see them not just in the grainy newsreels of the Spanish Civil War, nuclear explosions, and the launch of a USSR balloon that tangentially connects Alexei to a broader cultural context, but Tarkovsky even takes the time to examine a portion of Maria’s life working in a printing press for propaganda under Stalin’s totalitarian rule. Her fear that she may be responsible for a misprint is understandable when considering the consequences of such an error in this oppressive era, which may see her accused of treason. Though the young Alexei is absent from these scenes, touches of an almost imperceptible slow-motion continue to suggest that they are similarly being lifted from outside their original time frame – perhaps some attempt from an older Alexei to reconstruct an alternate image of his mother through second-hand stories.

Black-and-white flashbacks to Maria’s work at the printing press are weaved into the split timelines, infiltrating Alexei’s childhood with the politics of 1940s Soviet Union under Stalin’s totalitarian rule.

It is not uncommon for hazy memories such as these to come flooding back when one reaches the end of their mortal life, though Tarkovsky suggests that Mirror is in fact depicting the complete inverse of this. Alexei is not revisiting his past because he is dying, but as the doctor mysteriously hints after his death, he rather wasted away due to his heavy conscience. Tarkovsky’s pain can be felt acutely here, trying to resolve his guilt over perpetuating those cycles of distant fathers and overburdened mothers that were ingrained in him as a child. Even as the mysteries of the human mind continue to elude us throughout Mirror, his precise control over the raw elements of time, memory, and life keep sinking us further into its surreal depths, not so much crafting an artefact of absolute historical truth than revelling in the extraordinary impossibility of such a task.

Mirror is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, can be bought or rented on Apple TV, or you can buy the Blu-ray on Amazon.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Sidney Lumet | 2hr 4min

Over the course of a few hours on one hot summer day, crowds congregate around the First Brooklyn Savings Bank in New York City, with journalists and television crews eventually joining the mix. Inside, a failed heist has turned into a police stand-off, with the two robbers taking the entire building hostage, and incidentally providing a bit of light entertainment for the masses. A pizza delivery guy milks his time in the spotlight when he brings lunch around, and the head teller excitedly flirts with the cameras while being used as a human shield, momentarily putting aside the present danger to feed her ego.

It appears for a time that Sonny, the brains behind the operation, doesn’t mind the attention either. Despite being out of his depth in this robbery gone wrong, he quickly learns that many viewers see him as a hero of the common man, railing against the police and throwing cash out to feverish onlookers. A small riot starts as they burst through the barricades, undermining the police’s attempts to control the situation, and yet media sensationalism is an unwieldy beast. When a more complicated portrait of Sonny begins to emerge, revealing a man desperately seeking money for his transgender wife’s gender affirming surgery, audiences aren’t quite sure how to reconcile that with their preconceived notions. The breaking news story soon becomes solely about his queerness, and the praises once thrown his way become nasty jabs. There is no regard here for the figure at the centre of it all, rich with flaws and personal struggles. Looking in from the outside, he is just the latest television character to capture the fleeting interest of the public.

To the general public of New York, this failing bank heist is little more than afternoon entertainment, with hostages and pizza delivery boys alike relishing their moment in the spotlight. In this context, Sonny and Sal’s humiliation is made even worse – they are victims of a ravenous media frenzy.

This is not the perspective Sidney Lumet decides to take in Dog Day Afternoon though. The real events upon which the film is based are readily available in historical records, while this fictional interpretation lends a greater sensitivity to those trapped inside the bank. The false confidence that Sonny and his friend Sal initially project dissipates almost instantly when the third part of their trio, Stevie, nervously backs out and leaves them stranded. They have clearly never done anything like this before, caving a little too easily to the demands of their hostages and even developing somewhat friendly relationships with them. These are not the heroes nor sick-minded villains that the media would like to believe – merely short-sighted victims of their own poor decisions.

The uneasy nuances of these characters offer a wealth of rich material for both Al Pacino and John Cazale to deliver two standout performances as well. In Cazale’s case, Dog Day Afternoon would be the second-last film of his short career before passing away in 1977, though he makes every minute of his screentime count as the nervous, simple-minded Sal. He partly serves as comic relief from time to time, telling Sonny that the country he would want to escape to most of all is Wyoming. Most of all though, we feel pity towards this man who takes offence at being mislabelled a homosexual, and who we come to realise is too easily exploited by both the police and his own friend.

*This is not a film that gets by on visual style like so many others on its level, leaving Al Pacino to singlehandedly carry many scenes with his powerhouse performance.*

Pacino may be the feature, but John Cazale shouldn’t be slept on. Along with his performance as Fredo in The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon features some of his best acting as the tragically dim-witted Sal.

The true tour-de-force of acting in Dog Day Afternoon comes from Pacino though, who in 1975 was coming off a hot run of the first two Godfather films and Serpico. His portrayal of Sonny treads a fine balance between the deep, internalised performances of his early career and the loud personas he would play further down the line, generating an instability that cuts through layers of insecurity and anger. His incendiary evocation of the Attica Prison riot which saw police carelessly mow down hostages and inmates alike becomes a powerful catch cry as he furiously paces outside the bank, inciting a righteous anger in the anti-authoritarian crowds.

Still, the longer we sit with him inside, the more we understand the sensitivity of those wounds being picked at by the mass media. His trans wife Leon has been hospitalised for attempted suicide and now, despite Sonny’s good intentions, wants nothing to do with these criminal plans, while his estranged cis wife Angie laments his stubbornness and abandonment of their family. Even his mother is brought in to help the situation, though she is insistently blind to his culpability, blaming everyone in his life but him for his own mistakes. Sonny may be reckless, but he does not lack self-awareness, as Pacino’s face slowly breaks down with guilt, self-loathing, and a tragically weakened resolve over the course of the film.

*Sidney Lumet may not develop a strong cinematic style, but his blocking can’t be faulted in many scenes, using the camera’s full depth of field to keep the ensemble dynamics visually alive.*

*A tangible arc unfolds on Pacino’s face throughout Dog Day Afternoon as we watch him grow shabbier, sweatier, and increasingly anxious.*

On top of all that, Lumet never quite lets us forget the physical factors of the environment that Sonny must contend with, observing the sweat form on his face from both the humid summer heat and the sheer stress of the stand-off. Though Lumet is picking up a few techniques from Hitchcock with the long camera takes and tight, suspenseful editing, he is largely committed to the authenticity of the piece. By and large, Dog Day Afternoon does not draw the same breathtaking beauty out of its New York location shooting as we see in The French Connection or Taxi Driver, and yet there is still a cumulative effect in the grounded urgency of its gritty aesthetic and pacing, pulling a highly-strung Pacino into an uncontrollable whirlpool of rapidly escalating stakes.

*Solid location shooting out on the streets, grounding this story in real world stakes.*

*Instead of shooting on a studio soundstage, Lumet converted a warehouse into the bank interior, and then slowly dims its lights as the stand-off stretches on and night begins to fall.*

Paramount to Lumet’s realism is the pained sympathy he has for these complicated characters, both naively believe that some happy ending is still possible at the end of it all. When the two men finally secure a deal that will let them fly out of the country, one of their hostages takes the time to comfort a nervous Sal who reveals he has not been on a plane before. It is a small twinge of unexpected kindness in an otherwise tense sequence, enveloped by Lumet’s cutting between Pacino’s anxious face and the suspicious police activity unfolding around him.

*Remarkably tense editing from Dede Allen all throughout, but especially as Sonny and Sal secure a deal and nervously make an exit while surrounded by police.*

Dog Day Afternoon’s denouement unfolds rapidly from there – a fatal shot to Sal’s head ends his life before he even knows what’s going on, while Sonny is arrested at gunpoint. The shame we have seen him bear throughout the film is nothing next to the guilty anguish on his face as he watches Sal’s body taken away, recognising the role he played in the death of his far more innocent friend. Within this great tragedy though, Sonny’s delicate story of queer love and financial desperation was never going to survive the noise of sensationalist journalism. All that is left is a cheapened legacy embedded in New York’s quirky local history, destined to be recalled by strangers as that bizarre, failed bank heist they spent one hot, summer afternoon following on television.

*Lumet lands a devastatingly tragic blow to end the film – robbed of hope, Sonny submits to the police, as he gut-wrenchingly watches Sal’s lifeless body wheeled away.*

Dog Day Afternoon is currently streaming on Binge, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, or Amazon Video.

Mean Streets (1973)

Martin Scorsese | 1hr 52min

When low-level mafioso Charlie Cappa tentatively reaches for the flames of candles and gas stoves in Mean Streets, he does not do so lightly. There is a reverent trepidation written across his face, but also a mindful curiosity seeking to glimpse the fiery wrath of God. The act borders on self-punishment, becoming a reminder of the damnation that awaits him should he fail to atone for his sins.

“The pain of hell. The burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite. Now, you don’t fuck around with the infinite. There’s no way you do that. The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand, the kind you can feel in your heart. Your soul, the spiritual side. And you know, the worst of the two is the spiritual.”

*The vast Roman Catholic cathedral is not to be seen again after the film’s opening minutes – this place is not meant for low-level gangsters like Charlie.*

The vast cathedral where he seeks counsel from priests radiates a grand opulence that is scarce to be found elsewhere in Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough gangster film. In the hierarchy of the Italian American mob, these characters are about as distant from the high-ranking Dons and Consiglieres of The Godfather as they are from the icons of Christ and the Madonna that decorate the church’s stained-glass windows. Instead, Charlie can often be found frequenting the underground, Mafia-owned bars of New York City, submerged in a hell that burns blazing red lights through every corner. The visual impact is daunting, though Scorsese is clearly at home here with his handheld camera effortlessly floating through its dingy interiors. It is no wonder Charlie needs to intermittently feel the fiery heat of hell to remind himself of the present danger, given how ordinary it has become in his everyday life.

*Keitel holding his hand close to open flames is an inspired motif that runs throughout Mean Streets, forming the basis of his Christian faith and fearful desire for redemption.*

For a large portion of Mean Streets, this limbo-like banality is a punishment in itself. Charlie has his own dreams of making something more out of his secret relationship with Teresa, an epileptic woman shunned for her condition, as well as starting a nightclub where he can support those he cares about. In the meantime, his time is spent carrying out odd jobs, and pulling his reckless friend Johnny Boy out of trouble. There is little plot to be found in this hangout film, but while it lacks the narrative momentum of greater gangster films such as Goodfellas, its inertness also refuses to move Charlie any closer to his dreams. If anything, the fragile grip he has on keeping his life together brings a far greater threat of them slipping even further away.

*A young Robert de Niro making a loud entrance – Johnny Boy is volatile, reckless, and a complete idiot, blowing up a mailbox the moment in his very first scene.*

After all, it is Charlie’s neck on the line should Johnny Boy’s reckless misadventures and gambling debts put him on the wrong side of any dangerous men. Charlie’s brotherly shouldering of this responsibility is more than just a reluctant duty. It is his form of spiritual atonement, proving to himself that he has some capacity for goodness despite being consumed by a life of crime. If he can protect what he believes is a paragon of childlike innocence in Johnny Boy, then he can fulfil the directive offered in the film’s opening minutes.

“You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.”

The Johnny Boy that we see though is a far more unscrupulous figure than Charlie would like to think. Robert de Niro’s performance here couldn’t be more distant from his intensive take on Vito Corleone a year later, as he violently blows up a mailbox in his very first appearance and proceeds to walk through every scene with an aloof, upbeat swagger. Innocent may not be quite the right word to describe him, but rather stupidly naïve, like a sociopath who lacks the brains to recognise the consequences of his wild behaviour. Believing that there is some capacity for goodness or reason in Johnny Boy’s immature mind is Charlie’s fatal flaw, and it is through his internal struggle that Harvey Keitel delivers a magnificently nuanced performance that outdoes even de Niro’s.

*Though often compared to Goodfellas, this narrative does not have the same forward momentum, instead sitting in the uncomfortable, day-to-day routines of these characters.*

The New Hollywood movement is truly alive in these morally grey characters, but it reverberates with just as much purpose through Scorsese’s location shooting on New York’s gritty streets, rundown apartment buildings, and grimy bars. The visual similarities to The French Connection are striking, following in the footsteps of William Friedkin’s crime film while developing a distinct style that audiences would identify as Scorsese’s unique voice within a few years’ time. Those scenes spent driving through the city at night with neon signs, shabby storefronts, and lights bouncing off wet roads presage the brilliant visuals of 1976’s Taxi Driver, while the heavy jump cuts, triple-edits, and montages draw a direct line from the French New Wave through to his later career.

*One of the great New York films, basking in the modern architecture of its iconic skyscape.*

*This shot could easily be from Taxi Driver with the bright neon lighting, wet pavement, and of course the creative placement of the camera on the roof of a taxi.*

Scorsese’s famous triple jump cut, borrowed from Agnes Varda and later returning in The Departed. It is used to especially brilliant effect here as Keitel lays back down in the intro, and we launch into ‘Be My Baby’ by the Ronettes.

*We are witnessing the birth of Scorsese the master filmmaker here with the tracking shots in Mean Streets, hanging on the back of Keitel’s head as he dances through the bar.*

Scorsese’s camera becomes even more creative in one reverse-POV tracking shot that hangs on Keitel’s sweaty face as he drunkenly wanders through a party, downing spirits while the world seems to sway around him. He is the disorientated centre of this shot, much like he is for the film at large, bearing multiple burdens that pile on his conscience as the wildly energetic scatting of ‘Rubber Biscuit’ plays in the background. The broader doowop soundtrack it is part of marks another innovation as well, with Mean Streets being one of the first films next to American Graffiti to use existing pop songs rather than original scores, and forging an even closer connection to the contemporary American culture that envelops and isolates Charlie.

*A brilliant, frenetic tracking shot literally attached to Keitel’s sweaty face, disappearing into a fever dream set to the disorientating scatting of ‘Rubber Biscuit.’*

It is a struggle for anyone in an environment so steeped in secular modernity to maintain any sort of connection to their spiritual roots, and so while Scorsese formally cuts away to those festivities celebrating the Feast of San Gennaro in the streets of Little Italy, he simultaneously frames the mafia as a mutated outgrowth of such deep-rooted traditions. Roman Catholicism does not embody pure moral virtue to these men, but rather encourages them to accept sin as a fact of life, leaving penitence as the only path to salvation.

*Scenes of Catholic icons and Italian traditions out in the open, acting as formal reminders of the culture these gangsters have distorted and exploited.*

*Blazing red lights flood the underground bars where Charlie hangs out, trapping him in the pits of hell.*

In Charlie’s case, this relationship becomes one of unhealthy dependence, driving him into mortal peril in the hope of spiritual redemption. Blind to the fact that Johnny Boy’s soul is unsalvageable, he remains loyal through his friend’s lies and transgressions, right until their last moments together. After almost two hours of spending time with these characters, Scorsese ramps the tension up in the final act as Johnny Boy gets close to paying off his gambling debts, only to pull out his gun and foolishly threaten a loan shark. It appears to be a stroke of good luck that Charlie defuses the situation without casualties, and safety even seems to be within reach as the two men drive out of town to lay low for a while, and yet our sense of security is completely shattered when a car that has been tailing them starts shooting.

Johnny Boy’s wound in the neck seems fatal, though his fate is left decidedly ambiguous. Whether or not he survives, Charlie’s misguided path to redemption has effectively been redirected as he collapses to his knees in a position of prayer. With the gunshot in his hand drawing direct allusions to Christ’s suffering, and a burst fire hydrant dousing him in a baptismal fountain of water, Scorsese’s theological symbolism effectively canonises Charlie as a saint among gangsters. Still, the tragedy he has suffered from seeking atonement in a godless inferno is devastating. In Mean Streets, there is no saving those demons that have fallen from grace into the pits of hell. For as long as he is trapped in his own personal purgatory, Charlie must look towards the heavens to be redeemed from his own mortal sins.

*An ambiguous yet deeply spiritual ending, spraying a baptismal fountain of water over Charlie as he collapses to his knees – a saint among gangsters.*

Mean Streets is currently streaming on Paramount Plus, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV and Amazon Video.

Duelle (1976)

Jacques Rivette | 2hr 1min

It wouldn’t be hard to believe that each location in Duelle is interconnected within some giant, labyrinthine complex, entangling its human characters in an enigmatic web of manipulation and deceit set up by two warring goddesses. Besides their archetypal representations as opposing forces of nature, the Queen of the Sun and the Queen of the Night are not so different in their common goal – to claim the mystical Fairy Godmother diamond as their own, and use its power to spend their remaining lives on Earth as mortals. The premise of this high-concept fantasy wouldn’t seem out of place in ancient mythology, but given Jacques Rivette’s roots in the French New Wave one should not expect such a clean narrative. Duelle is as much an obscure spin on a film noir mystery as it is a whimsical fairy tale of extraordinary stakes, transforming 1970s Paris into a battleground for its quarrelling entities.

Rather than any hardboiled Philip Marlowe character tracing down loose threads though, Rivette situates Lucie the hotel night porter as our amateur detective, linking up with taxi dancer Elsa and her brother Pierrot to investigate the conspiracy of the mysterious Lord Christie and his priceless gem. With this gender subversion, Rivette adds another fascinating dimension to this ensemble – any of our four leading women could slot in as Duelle’s manipulative femme fatale. Goddesses Viva and Leni are both fully aware of their genderfluid power too, playing to their feminine sexuality when seducing Pierrot, and dressing in traditionally male, sharp-cut suits as they flirt with Lucie and Elsa.

*The two fantasy Queens play with the gender presentation around men and women, subverting the noir archetypes they represent.*

The tension generated by these interactions is surreal in their obscure subtext and mannered performances, lulling us into a sleepy, poetic reverie. The cumulative effect is both intoxicating and distancing, letting us feel as if we are looking through a window into an alternate world that escapes the rules of our reality, rendering us powerless. Elsa cryptically lyricises as much in one crucial metaphor too.

“Dreams are the aquarium of the night.”

When Rivette visually manifests this imagery as the backdrop to a meeting between Leni and her ill-fated victim, a murky ethereality takes hold. Fish and turtles lazily drift through the water behind them, which diffuses a green light into the surrounding atmosphere, illuminating gods and mortals alike in an unearthly glow. As the scene progresses, Rivette’s camera continues to circle the aquarium in slow movements, as if similarly moving through a mystical, underwater realm that refuses to release those under its time-slowing spell.

*Sea creatures swim lazily through the green aquarium backdrop of one meeting between characters, projecting an otherworldly atmosphere in the dreamy visuals.*

Rivette has this strange talent for world building without constructed sets, turning urban locations into fantasy settings. The roots are clearly in noir, though it is also comparable to the way Jean-Luc Godard transformed the streets of Paris into a futuristic city in Alphaville.

*Enigmatic character interactions unfold through gambling clubs and greenhouses, with Rivette always providing a strong sense of setting to inform his surreal atmosphere.*

It is a remarkable command over cinematic visuals that extends throughout the rest of Duelle too, made even more impressive by the fact that Rivette is largely shooting on location across Paris’ urban landscapes, imbuing his dark fantasy with a seemingly paradoxical authenticity. Through racetrack centres, underground stations, shady hotels, and lush greenhouses, his camera floats with unhurried ease, basking in the verdant colour palette that he weaves through his lighting and production design. Whenever the opaque plotting escapes us, it is all too easy to fall into the mesmerising atmosphere instead, much like the crowds who move through settings as hypnotised zombies. Ignorance has evidently trapped the world in a state of monotonous routine. Around baccarat tables, gamblers silently rake in chips and smoke cigarettes, while in the background of a burgundy-coloured club, couples sway in synchronicity to the sound of a jazz pianist.

*Green in the lighting fixtures of bridges, hotel corridors, and flooding nocturnal streets – Rivette is deliberate and self-assured with his uniform colour palette.*

How curious it is too that this musician seems to be virtually omnipresent throughout Duelle, appearing in private hotel rooms, bars, and dance studios alike to accompany scenes with his diegetic improvisations. He is not so much a silent witness as he is a ghostly embodiment of Rivette’s lucid dream, revealing the strings behind the scenes that shape our psychological experience, yet never intruding so much as to break our total immersion.

It is a fine line that Rivette is walking on virtually every level of his filmmaking here, simultaneously inviting us into his phantasmagorical mystery while keeping us at just enough of a distance to recognise its deceit. With one foot in reality, we see gods take human form and walk through familiar streets, and with the other foot in a beautifully unstable dreamscape, we see humans as warped refractions of themselves. Mirrors populate his mise-en-scène at every turn, subtly hinting at a world existing beneath our own in tremendously layered compositions, and it is only when Pierrot shatters one that the illusion breaks entirely. Suddenly, the secret identities of both goddesses are stripped away, and seeing each other for who they are, they challenge each other to one last duel.

*Mirrors and illusions woven through Duelle’s mise-en-scène and blocking, until both are shattered.*

*Dual archetypes at war with each other in Rivette’s surreal noir fantasy – the Queens of day and night locked in eternal battle.*

Parallel to this escalating conflict, Rivette laces a series of formal cutaways that build to a subtle crescendo, keeping the night sky’s waxing moon in our sights. For as long as it is partially impeded by darkness, the astrological powers holding the world in its spellbinding thrall cannot reach their maximum potential. Only when Lucie vanquishes Viva with the diamond does it shine its full, bright light down upon the Queen of the Sun’s defeat, before a brightening dawn illuminates the Queen of the Night’s subsequent downfall. Harmony is finally found in Duelle’s whimsical, elegiac poetry, simultaneously restoring the cosmic cycles of creation, and keeping intact the intransient magic that simmers beneath the most inconspicuous corners of modern society.

*Formal repetition in the waxing and waning moon, connecting the small human characters back to the astrological powers governing their lives.*

Duelle is currently streaming on Mubi.

Autumn Sonata (1978)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 39min

True to Ingmar Bergman’s seasonal metaphors drawn through so many of his films, Autumn Sonata oversees a harvest of the emotional kind unfold in the twilight years of one mother’s life. For the entirety of her daughters’ childhoods, Charlotte has been dedicated to her career as a classical pianist, and held both Eva and Helena to standards as rigorous as those she imposes on herself. Perhaps she has wanted to see them succeed in similar fields, letting them enter the world as even more refined versions of herself, though now with a more mature mind and decades’ worth of hindsight, this does not seem the case to Eva. All at once, the insecurity which haunts Charlotte’s mind simultaneously turns them into similarly flawed copies, and ensures that their successes may never exceed her own. Bergman’s framing of them as echoes of each other represents just as much too, as both habitually grasp at their faces in close-up while Eva levels biting accusations at her mother.

“The mother’s injuries are handed down to the daughter. The mother’s failures are paid for by the daughter. The mother’s unhappiness will be the daughter’s unhappiness. It’s as if the umbilical cord had never been cut. Is that true? Is the daughter’s misfortune the mother’s triumph? Is my grief your secret pleasure?”

*Shared habits carrying across generations of women in a single shot – brilliant acting from both Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman, but also an excellent framing of their faces.*

For Eva, this grief most prominently manifested in the form of an abortion forced on her at age 18, introducing her to the profound trauma of losing a child that would strike her again many years later in the death of her four-year-old son Erik. So too does she blame her mother’s abandonment for indirectly causing Helena’s severe disability, leaving her paralysed and unable to speak. In the grand scheme of things though, it is the accumulation of subtle, cruel acts which have left the deepest psychological imprints. With a childless void left in Eva’s life, and Helena feeling the absence of her mother, a surrogate relationship has formed between the two that cuts Charlotte out altogether, seeing one sister become the other’s caretaker. Now with Charlotte suddenly visiting their home after many years of silence though, the time has come for her to reap the seeds of misery she has sown – not merely neglecting the wellbeing of her daughters, but wholly sabotaging their attempts to lead happy lives.

*The earthy, autumnal colours of Bergman’s exteriors seep indoors, grounding his film in the season of harvests.*

Besides the symbolism of growth and harvest that Ingmar Bergman attaches to Autumn Sonata, it is fitting that this is the season he left until last as a figurative representation of his career, having previously used Spring, Summer, and Winter in cinematic illustrations of life’s cycles. At this point he still had a couple more decades of filmmaking ahead of him, including one of his greatest accomplishments in Fanny and Alexander, but the large bulk of his work from the 1980s onward would largely be in television productions that inhibited his creative freedom. As such, Autumn Sonata is located near the edge of his sharp artistic decline, reflecting Bergman’s concerns of old age and mortal regrets in its central mother figure.

Maybe this is also why he finally resolved to collaborate with the last truly great Swedish actress of the era that his path had not crossed yet, Ingrid Bergman. Autumn Sonata marks her final film performance before she would pass away four years later, but even so she makes every minute onscreen count, embodying a severe repression that holds back any displays of maternal affection. Quite significantly, this coldness extends to her music as well. Though her face breaks into soft tenderness while listening to her daughter play the piano, this is not something she can express verbally. Instead, her only remark is an aloof correction of her stylistic interpretation, and a far more refined demonstration of how the piece should be played instead. The way she speaks of music, it might as well be a form of self-punishment, proving her wilful endurance against the temptation to connect with her audiences.

“Chopin was emotional, but not sentimental. Feeling is very far from sentimentality. The prelude tells of pain, not reverie. You have to be calm, clear and harsh. Take the first bars now. It hurts but he doesn’t show it. Then a short relief… but it evaporates at once, and the pain is the same. Total restraint the whole time… The prelude must be made to sound almost ugly. It is never ingratiating. It should sound wrong. You have to battle your way through it and emerge triumphant. Like this.”

The piano scene succinctly captures everything about this mother-daughter dynamic and boils it down to a piano piece played twice over. Everything about this is brimming with subtext, from the musical performances to the monologue on how Chopin should be played.

On the other side of this relationship too, Ingmar sets up Liv Ullmann perfectly as the daughter dealing with her own repressed pain, only now bitterly recognising flaws in the woman she had been seeking praise from for so long. As Ingrid Bergman plays the same piano piece we heard a few moments earlier with greater technical proficiency, Ingmar captures both their faces in a shared close-up, though it is Ullmann’s defeated expression of contempt, exasperation, longing, and sadness which draws our attention. Very slowly, her gaze slowly shifts between Bergman’s face and hands, recognising how this single demonstration of snobbish superiority captures their entire relationship. When Bergman finally finishes playing, the only remark she can muster up is a feeble acknowledgment – “I see.” She has no words yet to express the emotional isolation she feels from her mother, but by the time the final act of Autumn Sonata arrives, they will start flowing freely like notes on a piano.

*Tremendous acting from Ullmann in this shot – an expression of contempt, exasperation, longing, and sadness as her gaze moves between her mother’s face and hands.*

In the meantime, verbal expressions of this grating tension are predominantly expressed through monologues in separate rooms. While they independently prepare for the evening meal, Ingmar Bergman intercuts back and forth between their petty jabs, each one imagining what the other is thinking and trying to outsmart them. “Watch carefully how she dresses for dinner. Her dress will be a discreet reminder that she’s a lonely widow,” Eva gripes to her husband, only barely masking her resentment with an air of humour. As if reading her daughter’s mind from across the house, Charlotte mutters her response. “I’ll put on my red dress just to spite Eva. I’m sure she thinks I ought to be in mourning.”

Besides Helena, it is that fourth member of the household who acts as a neutral witness to this malicious dynamic, at times even becoming a surrogate for the audience. Viktor has long grown distant from his wife, dealing with the grief of losing his son far more internally than Eva’s outpouring of emotion, and so within Autumn Sonata he becomes a framing device of sorts who opens and closes the narrative with direct addresses to the camera. He often silently watches from neighbouring rooms, refusing to involve himself in their drama, and it is often this perspective that Ingmar Bergman takes with his consistent framing of actors through doorways, mirrors, and casings.

*A superb framing device in the fourth wall breaks by Viktor, Eva’s husband, peering in at this complicated relationship as an outside observer.*

On one level, these beautifully curated interiors invite us into their warm, orange colour palettes, reflecting the seasonal exteriors in the lighting and décor of Eva’s cosy home. Its inhabitants frequently dress in bursts of red and other earthy tones, and there is even a cosiness to the light clutter of flowers, chandeliers, and striped wallpaper which decorate the mise-en-scène. Still, there is an undeniable harshness to Ingmar Bergman’s blocking, integrating a touch of Yasujirō Ozu’s aesthetic in his rigorous setting of frames in family environments. From this distance, Eva and Charlotte are totally isolated, oppressively bound together within close domestic quarters yet failing to reach any emotional understanding of each other.

*Some of Bergman’s most extraordinary visuals can be found in his framing of domestic interiors and blocking, painting out scenes of family discontent and isolation.*

This sense of peering into the lives of this family is magnified even further when Ingmar Bergman slips into dreams and flashbacks, imbuing each with the uneasy surrealism of their repressed memories. Easily the most horrific of all these scenes unfolds in Charlotte’s sleep, unfolding her nightmare of being choked by Eva while she lays helpless in bed, though our brief journeys into their subjective recollections of the past develop a far more wistful tone. Not once does Bergman submit his camera to close-ups when we are in this subjective realm, instead dedicating a single, wide tableau to each scene and thereby refusing to engage too intimately with such sensitive traumas. When a much younger Charlotte shuts herself away to play piano, her daughter waits patiently outside the room, further revealing the unnurtured roots of a relationship painfully captured in one long dissolve dominating the tiny child Eva with a close-up of her mother’s aged face.

*We too feel as if we are examining the past from a cold distance through Bergman’s tableaux, setting his camera back in wide shots for each flashback and looking through doorways.*

*Long dissolves dreamily connect the past to the present, underscoring the formidable dominance of Charlotte on her daughter’s life in this specific composition.*

When the seal is finally broken on Eva’s wounded silence and the past comes pouring back into the present, there is no longer any holding back the honest anger between both women. “I distrusted your words. They didn’t match the expression in your eyes,” Eva recalls, reflecting on the lie of her mother’s smile when she was clearly mad. Her attempts to live up to her mother’s beauty, intellectualism, and musical talent were never compensated with any sort of recognition. From that desperate insecurity grew hatred, which in turn gave birth to an insane fear, clearly stunting her emotional growth which has echoed through to her adult years.

Although Eva is effectively reduced to the mentality of a distressed child in her sobbing, there is at least a conscious connection being formed for Charlotte when, for the first time, she embarks on her own self-reflection. She too recalls her childhood where she was never touched by her parents, whether out of affection or punishment, and so she turned to music as a form of expression. She did not want to be a mother, she confesses, desiring to be held rather than the one who does the holding, though Eva does not hesitate in calling out the obliviousness of this desire.

“I think I wanted you to take care of me… To put your arms around me and comfort me.”

“I was a child.”

The final act of the film is where mother and daughter can finally speak honestly, leading to a showcase of virtuosic acting from both Ullmann and Bergman, and almost convincing us that they may move past their mutual traumas.

With Charlotte’s cold, stone heart finally breaking and recognising the trauma that has spread from one generation to the next, Ingmar Bergman almost gives us hope that there may be some change on the horizon for both women. Quite despairingly though, it only takes until the next day when she is on her way back home that old habits and attitudes rear their head, summoning them back into the toxic cycles which originally drove them apart. As far as Charlotte is concerned, she can’t be that terrible a person – after all, she plays concertos with warmth, and she isn’t at all stingy. Even more painfully, Eva has completely reverted into her submissive desperation for acceptance, resolving to write an apology letter to her mother.

“Dear Mama, I realise that I wronged you. I met you with demands instead of affection. I tormented you with an old hatred that’s no longer real. I want to ask your forgiveness.”

*Falling back into old habits as the reunion comes to an end – Charlotte blaming her daughter for their breakdown, and Eva shamefully taking the blame.*

Ingmar Bergman’s characters may be cruel and cowardly, but this is not a barrier to establishing empathy in Autumn Sonata. He has the utmost compassion for those who have experienced the profound depths of the human experience, emerged as maladjusted individuals, and faced up to their repressed desires and insecurities, even if they are unable to reconcile them with their outward expressions. Like the persistent rotation between immaculately framed wide shots and close-ups, and the seasonal changes which echo across his broader filmography, both mother and daughter here are trapped within cycles set in motion several generations before either were born. At the root of all emotional and psychological problems in Autumn Sonata, Bergman simply finds the inescapable reality of a past we never had any control over, inextricably connected to our defiant, tormented humanity.

Autumn Sonata is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV. The Autumn Sonata DVD can also be purchased on Amazon.

The Serpent’s Egg (1977)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 59min

Adolf Hitler is given no more than a few passing mentions in The Serpent’s Egg, largely being associated with a failed coup d’etat that has branded him a joke among the wealthy intelligentsia of 1923 Germany, including those who conduct the sort of unethical human experiments he might very well be endorsing within a couple of decades. These scientists may not realise it yet, but their vision of a society that stomps on romantic ideas of man’s goodness and reshapes people into machines of pure efficiency bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the future dictator they label an “incredible scatterbrain.” Therein lies the insidious subtext of the metaphor that Professor Hans Vergérus poses when the purpose of his shady work is brought to light.

“It’s like a serpent’s egg. Through the thin membranes you can already discern the already perfect reptile.”

The fascism that would destroy millions of lives in years to come is merely in its infancy here, not yet possessing the intellectual capacity and brute strength it will one day use to commit widespread genocide. Still, to underestimate the potential of its inhuman cruelty would be a grave mistake.

It isn’t that there is any particular weakness in the construction of this cold-blooded metaphor, but within the context of Ingmar Bergman’s broader filmography one might be struck by how relatively simple it is. The Serpent’s Egg is his second film to be written partially in English after The Touch, and the first to be produced within the confines of Hollywood, despite being shot in Germany. The creative constraints he felt working under these conditions are evident. Gone are the abstract, psychological examinations of human vulnerability and isolation, and in their place are surface-level renderings of both in the romance between alcoholic American immigrant, Abel, and his German sister-in-law, Manuela.

Even in her supporting role as a grieving widow and boisterous cabaret performer, Liv Ullmann often comes out looking better than her co-star David Carradine, continuing to prove her versatility as a woman driven to survive in the squalid pits of modern society. It is largely thanks to her that the relationship between Manuela and Abel is given any depth beyond their shared mourning of his brother and her husband, Max.

What The Serpent’s Egg lacks in a compelling narrative though is partially compensated for in Bergman’s thorough world building of 1920s Germany, raising his camera in crane shots above low-lit urban streets and sinking his characters into shabby, cluttered interiors. With the Russian Revolution just a few years in the past and a fear of Bolsheviks hanging over the people of Berlin too, cultural tensions permeate every corner of society, occasionally bursting into outright violence as soldiers overrun the brothel where Manuela works and kill its owner. Meanwhile, the starving masses are driven to cutting up dead horses on the street for meat when the food shops close, though perhaps even more chilling is the image of its bare skeleton a few scenes later, with passers-by accepting it as just another part of the urban scenery.

For those who are merely looking to survive, dark mysteries that swirl in the background of everyday life are the least of their concern, though Bergman never quite loses track of their danger. While Abel is investigating his brother’s seemingly random suicide, dead bodies are simultaneously appearing on nearby street corners, and he quickly comes under suspicion by antisemitic authorities. As conspiracies come to light, the formal thread connecting both subplots is revealed to be much tighter than we initially suspected, tying them all back to the same shady hospital. After all, it is no coincidence that wealthy doctors are able to conduct their exploitative human experiments in such dire circumstances, psychologically driving one mother to kill her baby out of sheer frustration and locking a man in total isolation for a week. The incentives are glaringly simple.

“People will do anything for a little money and a square meal.”

Suddenly, the future of Germany looks more desolate than ever. If this is where its power over the masses starts, with common people voluntarily submitting their bodies to the ruling elite, then there is no holding back Hitler’s manipulation of their insecurity. It is clear that Bergman has far greater interest in this conspiracy than in its direct impact on his characters, as the moment it is resolved he brings the film to an abrupt close with nothing but onscreen text filling in the rest of Abel’s story. Even as The Serpent’s Egg marks a strange departure from Bergman’s usual screenwriting strengths though, the menacing tension it builds in its bleak political statement can’t be denied, witnessing the birth of fascism amid dystopian landscapes of fear, starvation, and corruption.

The Serpent’s Egg is not currently streaming in Australia.

Face to Face (1976)

Ingmar Bergman | 4 episodes (40 – 48min) or 1hr 54min (theatrical cut)

The firm line that Dr Jenny Isaksson draws between her professional work as a psychiatrist and her own personal traumas can only hold the façade of composure together for so long before it shatters. At first, it is barely shaken when she meets with her mentally troubled patient Mari, played by Kari Sylwan as the exact inverse of her saintly character from Cries and Whispers – tormented, withdrawn, and disdainful of those who claim a higher moral ground. On one hand, her cutting accusation of Jenny as a woman incapable of love could be little more than an attempt to inflict her self-loathing on others, but there are also psychological parallels here between doctor and patient that offer her vitriol a measure of truth.

When Jenny comes home to her empty house one day and finds Mari curled up on the floor, Ingmar Bergman splits the space between them with a wall, manifesting that line dividing the two isolated halves of Jenny’s mind. Her confident authority as she calls for help on the telephone is almost instantly destroyed the moment a pair of trespassers appear and try to rape her, only to find penetration too difficult. Instead, they leave her lying on the floor in the same wounded state as Mari, with Bergman mirroring their anguish across both sides of the split shot that he has held for the entire agonising scene. Jenny’s psyche is still as fractured as before, but the bitterly repressed trauma that speaks to her through Mari has finally spilled out into reality, forcing a violent reckoning with her own physical and emotional fragility.

Bergman splits this frame right down the middle with a wall in Jenny’s house, and holds the shot for several minutes as she is confronted by a pair of intruders who try to rape her. By the end of the scene, she too is left lying crumpled on the floor like Mari – a mirror image of her inner and outer self.

Much like Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman’s intent with Face to Face was to produce a miniseries for Swedish television, and then to cut it down to a film version for international distribution. Unlike his marital epic though, this intensive study of mental illness has faded into relative obscurity and consequently become broadly underrated. Neither this nor Scenes from a Marriage necessarily stand among his greatest aesthetic accomplishments, but his intuitive staging of profound personal struggles in both supports a pair of sharply written screenplays, seeking to understand the psychological weaknesses that force humans into emotional isolation.

So too is Face to Face yet another showcase of Liv Ullmann’s immense acting talent, earning Bergman’s close-ups with a vulnerability that exposes the raw horror of her internal conflict. In Jenny’s mind, pain and pleasure are virtually indistinguishable, as she confesses her dark desire that those trespassers were able to follow through with their rape just so she could feel some sort of connection to her humanity. With these conflicting emotional responses suddenly surfacing all at once, Ullmann seamlessly shifts from manic laughter into full-bodied sobbing and back again, and in refusing to cut away from his long takes of such visceral turbulence, Bergman proves himself equally dedicated to the realism of her plight.

This showcases some of Ullmann’s greatest acting in an already incredible career, seamlessly shifting from manic laughter into full-bodied sobbing and back again. Her character is deeply tormented, and can only hold her cool composure together for so long before it cracks and reveals her vulnerability.

At a certain point though, realism is not enough to express the depths of her emotional torment. As she silently wanders through the bare, furniture-less house that she intends to sell, and later the cottage of her grandparents she is staying with, both become surreal limbos not unlike the hotel of The Silence or the family manor of Cries and Whispers. While her former home isolates her in bare rooms and corridors stripped of all their comfort, the dark green interior of the other is cluttered with photo frames and antique furniture that reek of old age. There, ticking clocks resonate through the repetitive sound design, as she disappears into dreams of an elderly woman with a single black eye. It isn’t just death that she fears, but the degradation of the mind and body that foreshadows its inevitable arrival at the end of one’s life, and Bergman wraps it all up into this sinister omen of mortality.

Superb production design noting the difference between Jenny’s empty home mid-move, and the cluttered, green decor of grandparent’s cottage. Both become claustrophobic limbos that she uneasily wanders through.

*A one-eyed crone stalks Jenny through her dreams, becoming a sinister omen of her deepest fear – death.*

The mental disturbances that one man expresses to Jenny early on in Face to Face manifest even more tangibly as she sits on the verge of taking her own life, planting the self-destructive paradox in her head – could anyone feasibly take their own life out of fear of dying? It is certainly possible at least for Jenny, who seeks to take control of her fate by leaving a suicide note, overdosing on prescription pills, and quelling the inner turmoil that she has repressed for so long.

“I suddenly realise that what I’m about to do has been lurking inside for several years. Not that I’ve consciously planned to take my life, I’m not that deceitful. It’s more that I’ve been living in isolation, that’s become even worse. The line dividing my external behaviour from my internal impoverishment has become sharper.”

This is her “recovery from a lifelong illness” she claims, confessing that she cannot even find the tears to cry over her inability to appreciate beauty, before submitting to the creeping unconsciousness. Bergman’s camera gracefully follows the movement of her hand tracing the patterns of the wallpaper before it drops out of the frame, and as if accompanying her soul out of the room, we continue to drift along to the persistent ticking.

A lengthy tracking shot follows Jenny’s finger tracing the patterns on the wallpaper as she slowly submits to the creeping unconsciousness. It drops out of the frame, but Bergman’s camera continues to float through the room, as if following her soul outside.

This is not the end for Jenny though, but merely a journey deeper into her subconscious, where Bergman’s surreal imagery exposes the fears that she has only ever verbalised to this point. This is also where Sven Nykvist’s cinematography truly strengthens, absorbing her into shadowy, decrepit dreams of her grandmother reading grim fairy tales to unsmiling audiences, inaudible whispers, and patients begging for her to cure their existential ailments. Her ineffective prescriptions do little to calm the crowd who grasp at her like lepers, holding her back from her daughter, Anna, who keeps running away.

Though Jenny drifts in and out of consciousness at the hospital, her grip on reality remains hazy in Bergman’s dreamy long dissolves, constantly pulling her back into those uneasy nightmares. The vivid red robe that she wears on this slippery descent to the core of her trauma makes for a number of striking shots against otherwise dark backdrops, framing her as a denizen of her own personal hell with that one-eyed crone as her only companion. Very gradually, the deathly terror surrounding this peculiar figure falls away, until Jenny embraces her strange maternal compassion by accepting her shawl for warmth.

*The darkness threatens to swallow Ullmann hole in her dreams, but she stands out with her blood red robes. This section has some of the strongest visuals of Face to Face, submitting to the surrealism.*

*Long dissolves bridging Jenny’s consciousness and dreams, forming some stunning compositions through close-ups.*

Still, the foundations of her insecurities are not so easily vanquished, as Bergman finally draws her to the childhood ordeal that started it all – the sudden death of her parents in a car accident. Ullmann reverts to the mind of Jenny’s nine-year-old self as she faces their abandonment, banging on doors and heaving with sobs over her guilty conscience, only to hatefully scream at them to leave the moment they return.

“It’s always the same. First I say I love you, then I say I hate you, and you turn into two scared children, ashamed of yourselves. Then I feel sorry for you, and love you again. I can’t go on.”

*The core of Jenny’s trauma emerges in this encounter with her deceased parents. There is little resolution to be found as she reverts to the mind of her nine-year-old self.*

It is one thing for Jenny to enter an unimaginable grief as an orphan, but it is another entirely to be completely cut off from any chance at resolving her troubled relationship with them, effectively damning her to a life of loose ends. It is no wonder she chose to become a psychiatrist. On some subconscious level, she sees herself in her patients, and through them feels just a little less alone in her suffering.

“To hold someone’s head between your hands… and to feel that frailty between your hands… and inside it all the loneliness… and capability, and joy, and boredom, and intelligence, and the will to live.”

Not that she has ever been able to offer them the same comfort. In its place she has established a cold emotional detachment, deciding that death is little more than a vague concept rather than a reality that encased her childhood in a tomb of endless mourning. Only now can she see it for what it is, as in one last dream she traps a copy of herself inside a coffin, nails it shut, and sets it alight, stifling her own panicked screams.

*Profound symbolism as Jenny shuts her double inside a coffin, damning herself to her deepest fear of death.*

Healing may not come so easily through this renewed self-awareness, especially with the news of her grandfather’s stroke still hanging the shadow of mortality over her life, and yet for the first time she is able to view his old age with neither aloofness nor fear. As she watches her grandparents face their final days together, instead she sees “their dignity, their humility”, and confesses feeling the presence of something she has never experienced before.

“For a short moment I knew that love embraces everything, even death.”

Behind Jenny’s façade of stability is an overwhelming numbness, further masking a deeply repressed terror, yet buried even deeper than that within her psyche is an innate, abiding belief in humanity’s capacity for selflessness and devotion. It isn’t that she is incapable of love, as Mari tells her, but she has simply let it lie dormant to protect herself from the pain of continual loss – a pain that can only be ignored for so long, and whose only cure is a gracious acceptance of its inevitability. Even by Bergman’s standards, Jenny’s characterisation is profoundly layered with immense psychological depth, treading a fine line between realism and surrealism as thin as that which stubbornly divides her outer and inner identities. Only when this denial dissolves entirely and both come crashing into each other can any sort of self-actualisation be found in Face to Face, finally drawing a resounding peace from the chaos and trauma of being.

Face to Face is currently available to rent or buy on Vimeo.