Left Field Cinema

It is fair to state that Bergman’s career defining films came in the mid-1950’s with Smiles of a Summer Night in 1955, and both The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberry’s in 1957. Before this point there were a few other notable films of his in the early 50’s Sawdust and Tinsel in 1953 for example, but before this point his work is far less known. Examples include two excellently crafted relationship drama’s Summer Interlude released in 1951 and To Joy released in 1950, but further back still and we reach the first decade of Bergman’s film productions - the 1940’s. Whilst none of the films he directed in this era can be discussed in the same vein as his later masterworks like The Faith Trilogy or Fanny and Alexander, there are however some gems in the rough which are more than worth watching - Three Strange Loves is one such film. But before we discuss this film further, here is a quick breakdown of Bergman’s earliest entries into cinema. He wrote and directed two films in 1946 the first was Crisis which whilst no where near as poor as you might expect or as Bergman asserts, it is a deeply flawed film with ill-thought-out casting for the lead protagonist and a somewhat over dramatic conclusion which would be mirrored in some of his later works. His second film from ’46 was Man with an Umbrella, uninspiring title aside this film is currently unavailable on DVD and few have ever seen it. He directed A Ship Bound For India a year later, this was heavily censored and in fact completely re-edited for its U.S. release mainly to exclude what was then considered unacceptable implied sex scenes, also currently unavailable it is another of the lost Bergman films that die hard fans long to get a hold of. He directed two more films in 1948, Music in Darkness and Port of Call; Music in Darkness representing one of his weakest films with unbelievable performances from both the lead actors, and some terribly contrived plot developments, it’s only redeeming quality is some excellent lighting and moody noir like sequences. Port of Call however is probably Bergman’s first good film, an interesting narrative structure which effectively starts in the middle and then comes back on itself. It also represented the first riskier production from Bergman with a story featuring abortion, pre-marital sex and young girls being broken and pushed to suicide by a system meant to protect them, it also touched on the hypocritical nature of the Swedish class system where abortions are perfectly fine for upper-class girls if the father is of ill breading, but the lower classes are forced to seek out riskier procedures from illegal abortionists. That all said Port of Call still isn’t great or as engaging as his later works, but something changed at the end of the 1940’s for Bergman with his film Prison in 1949 which featured a story of young girl being prostituted by her parents to make money, a girl who gives birth to an illegitimate child she is forced to give away an eventually kills herself because of her grief. For the year of the production Prison like Port of Call, explored dangerous subject matters and presented risky material on screen. It also boasted a bizarre and early use of a film production within a film production and satirized those who work within the industry. Arguably far ahead of its time in many respects, before the likes of Sunset Blvd would tackle cinema within cinema, Prison represents Bergman’s first major risk as a director, but it would be nothing compared to his next project, Three Strange Loves.

One of the only films in Bergman’s career that he did not also write, instead Herbert Grevenius takes the credit for the screenplay based on the novel Thirst by Birgit Tengroth. Thirst is the literal translation of the title, why the international release changed the title to Three Strange Loves is a matter for speculation but it wasn’t uncommon for Bergman’s films to be renamed, Winter Light for example is actually Holly Communion, a far more appropriate title of the subject of the film if a little less cinematic.

Thirst was a collection of short stories published a year earlier, Grevenius had been contracted to merge the stories together into a single stranded film. The structure of this screenplay is somewhat clumsy, whilst it has great merit in the form of edgy subject matters which I will come to later - structurally it is not as clear. The plot is non-linear and multi-stranded, following Rut played by Eva Henning and Bertil played by Birger Malmsten traveling by train back to Sweden from Italy via war torn Germany, whilst on the train they bicker and fight, break-up and make-up, meanwhile Rut recalls an affair she once had with a married man many years her senior. Running in parallel with this duel timeline is a story of Viola played by Thirst’s author Tengroth, who is tormented by her psychiatrist and then becomes the object of the homosexual affections of an old school friend. The switching between the three story lines, (one of them in flashback) does seem a little unconnected and random, there appears to be no reason to move from one to another, and the fact that two of the stories features Rut as the protagonist means that the third story does feel a little like a left over. If Viola’s character had been changed and adapted to also be Rut some years later this might have been a more harmonious film. This messy structure is actually a flaw fairly easy to overlook, we can’t dismiss it entirely because of the time of the production, Citizen Kane for example predates Three Strange Loves and effortlessly managed its non-linear structure. If Grevenius had chosen to push the script in the other direction and instead only use Rut as the protagonist in one story so it was a film of three different women this could have also have worked. However given the subject matter and themes of the film, a more audacious structure might have meant the film would never have seen the light of day. This is a film made in the late 1940’s which followed storylines featuring Adultery, extra-martial affairs, abortion, and lesbianism. With modern television programmes this is all just a weeks material, but sixty-years a go it was shocking, so shocking that one scene featuring the most implied of implied homosexuality was cut by the Swedish censors and was not restored to the film until the 2004 DVD release. But this is merely Bergman and Grevenius being faithful to Tengroth’s book, Tengroth was very involved with production and even thought it was fundamentally changed by Grevenius’s adaptation, merging storylines which were once separate, she was not kept out of the loop, and the spirit of her book was maintained. Not only did she star in the film, but she also helped with Bergman’s direction, as Bergman himself states:

"Birgit Tengroth also made a directorial contribution that I will not forget; it taught me something new and decisive. The two women are sitting together in the summer twilight, sharing a bottle of wine. Birgit is rather drunk and gets a cigarette from Mimi, who also lights it for her. Then Mimi slowly brings the burning match toward her own face and holds it for a moment by her right eye before it goes out. This was Birgit Tengroth's idea. I remember it clearly since I had never done anything like that. To build the plot with small, almost imperceptible, suggestive details became a special component in my future filmmaking."

This is a beautiful moment in the film, a film filled with memorable character moments, a flirtatious glance here, or a tear there, this was the beginning of a far subtler Bergman, a Bergman film which does not give in to melodrama as Prison, Music In Darkness, Port of Call and Crisis had all done previously. It was also the first time he’d found the right leading lady for his main female protagonist, previously in films like Crisis and Prison his central actors were not accomplished enough to achieve the emotional range Bergman’s demanding scripts required of them, but Eva Henning portrayal of Rut is elegantly balanced and eagerly performed, which is part of what makes Three Strange Loves Bergman’s first truly great film. But it is also a film filled with visual innovations which clearly illustrates the beginning of the work Bergman would later be known for, it is a clear touchstone for the thematic explorations Bergman became obsessed with, but also for his visual development. In his book Images: My Life in Film, Bergman makes mention of how his camera work was developing:

"A large part of the film takes place during a train journey through was-torn Germany. In Prison I had begun to experiment with longer takes. In order to develop that technique, we had to build a monstrous train car, one that could be taken apart in different sections. The clumsy camera used at the time could then roam around freely in compartments, corridors, and other spaces. The long scenes in Prison had come about for economical reasons. Here I was striving for another simplification: for complicated camera movements to go undetected. The studio train was far from perfect: you can see the seams if you look closely. Furthermore, I had wanted the ruins of buildings, seen through the train window, to be actually filmed in Germany, but that couldn't be done for reasons of economy. The homemade result was a less than convincing compromise. Other than that, Three Strange Loves does show a respectable cinematographic vitality. I was developing my own way of making movies. I made myself master the ungainly machinery, and it functioned by and large as I wanted it to function. That was always a triumph."

Bergman also pushed the limits of censorship, years later with his film The Silence in 1963 the production was responsible for allowing explicit sex scenes within Swedish films. Nearly fifteeen years earlier and Bergman teases the censors as much as he can with scenes of Rut stripping bear or taking a shower. He never shows anything that would have been concidered explict at the time but it’s easy to see why the film caused a stir back in the ‘40’s. Both Port of Call and Music in Darkness feature natural nudity at times, but here Bergman leaves the unwed couple in the same room as each other as they strip off, he pushes this as far as the censors would possibly allow him to do so and some how he got away with it. There are many signs within Three Strange Loves of what would come later for Bergman, scenes on the train remind of his later film The Silence, especially when they pass through war torn Germany. It also reminds of the far less serious A Lesson in Love. The tempestuous relationship between Rut and Bertil reminds of many different Bergman relationships like those from Scenes From a Marriage or Shame. Style and technique are also begining here, people entering frame suddenly and from unusual angles, stark high contrast black and white photgraphy, the use of silence within the story space as the music continues. All of these techniques returned in his later work so in many respects this is the begining of what was to come for Bergman.

M.Dawson