CrisisThere's an old saying: "You don't know what you've got until it's gone". Raised in a small rustic village by her aunt, Nelly (Inga Landgré) has enjoyed an idyllic life of small town domesticity. Her aunt, Ingeborg (Dagny Lind), teaches piano and keeps a tenant named Ulf (Allan Bohlin), who pines for the lovely lass of scarcely eighteen years, although she regards him merely as a dear friend. It would seem that life for Nelly would be destined for simple placidity and unadulterated goodness, until her mother, Jenny (Marianne Löfgren), returns to reclaim the babe she abandoned, and Nelly's world is turned upside-down.
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Crisis marks the directorial debut of one of cinema's most celebrated filmmakers, Ingmar Bergman, and shadows key flourishes of the director's work to come. Crisis begins with a chorus (in the dramatic theatrical sense), providing narration and establishing givens and tone. Effectively, the narration "sets the stage", and this should not be surprising for those familiar with the filmmaker's later works, often interested in theatricality and stagecraft, from The Magician and The Seventh Seal, as well as later works like Fanny and Alexander. The characters in Crisis even seem to share qualities with other players in his other films. For instance, Nelly is a sweet and pretty young woman--albeit a bit naive and even self-centered--similar to Karin from Bergman's The Virgin Spring. And the aura of animosity--especially in the film's initial confrontation--between Ingeborg and Jenny reminds me of the confrontation between Maria and Karin in Cries and Whispers. Nelly's odyssey of self-discovery and exposure to worldliness represents the "crisis" of the title--an existential one and one of identity, first teasing a key theme which would be inexorably bound to Bergman's work in such films as Persona.
Nelly is caught in the tug of war between her birth mother and her surrogate one for all of her life. One could make assumptions about Jenny as to why she gave the girl up, and there seems to be a dissolute aura to her. There is the sense that Jenny is filled with inadequacy, perhaps fueled by guilt for abandoning Nelly, and acts this out by frequently upstaging Ingeborg and flaunting things she knows about Nelly to her when given the opportunity. When she reads to Ingeborg from Nelly's diary--whether true or false, who can say--Jenny speaks of how Nelly describes Jenny's skin as being younger looking than her own; that Jenny keeps a beauty salon as her business is an ironic reminder as to how she has made herself into a monument of artifice. Furthermore, these assumptions are not only reinforced by her vanity and arrogance, but also in the company she keeps. Jenny's lover, a young man not much more than half her age named Jack (Stig Olin), claims to find Jenny intriguing at the prospect of her young daughter. At the charity ball where Nelly has been eagerly awaiting to "make a splash", Jack begins his routine of seduction. His is a sly game, as he wears Nelly down at first by seeking the weaknesses in her defenses, eventually playing toward her pity and portraying himself as endowed with a poet's soul. He shows her a good time, gets her tipsy on his own concoction of spirits, and whisks her away to a moonlit meadow. Jack speaks in dramatic fashion, even verse occasionally; and why not? In effect, he is "putting on a production" of himself for Nelly, and knows that the guileless girl hasn't the experience or cynicism to see the wolf in sheep's clothing. And although Ulf heroically steps in to protect the maiden's modesty, Nelly resents his involvement and sees his intervention not unlike a father's oppressive protectiveness. Ironically, it is his actions which finally compel Nelly to leave Ingeborg to join her mother in the city, which raises the question when Nelly discovers later that they are now acquaintances if this wasn't the plan to begin with.
One of the broader themes of Crisis is that the "city" is inevitably a kind of poison which corrupts the soul, and that man cannot live removed from a natural life and still be sane, as manifested in Jack's tragic fate. From the beginning, a comparison is made between the wholesomeness of the countryside, and the worldliness of the city. Jenny pulls Nelly into her world which may look bright and vibrant, but is hollow and rotten on the inside, evidenced by her displeasure and dissatisfaction at living with Jenny, even though Nelly's mother seeks to spoil her at every turn. Nelly's position at her mother's salon exposes her to scandalous talk, a subversive way of corrupting the daughter by reducing her resistance to vice. Is it thus that Jenny wishes to "ruin" her own daughter? I don't think it's as nefarious as this, but that Jenny is looking for some kind of justification for her own life, and is willing to accept that her daughter should become more like her to gratify that sensation--and Jenny is a product of the city; it is an old maxim that parents often mold their children to be like them. After Jack deviously seduces Nelly, Jenny catches them and reveals Jack's game and rehearsed lines to her daughter, finally through with dragging her daughter down into her cesspool of depravity, pained to see life inflict the same cruel twists upon her while she remains complicit by her inaction. And even Jack, who remains earnest in his confessions to Nelly--as every con man does--finally gets dragged under into the vacuum of the soul inflicted upon him by the city. There is a moment when he takes Ingeborg to the train station, and talks of a simpler life he enjoyed prior to becoming the rake he has been in the city. So when Nelly is confronted with this crisis of conscience and morality, she takes the road less traveled--less paved, at least--and returns to Ingeborg to live the life she didn't know she missed; and it has made all the difference.
Recommended for: Fans of the works of Ingmar Bergman; this represents an enjoyable first step for a filmmaker so capable of describing the human soul, with many recognizable tropes throughout. It is also intriguing to see how this film from 1946 addresses potentially risque content, compared with its American counterparts of the era.
Nelly is caught in the tug of war between her birth mother and her surrogate one for all of her life. One could make assumptions about Jenny as to why she gave the girl up, and there seems to be a dissolute aura to her. There is the sense that Jenny is filled with inadequacy, perhaps fueled by guilt for abandoning Nelly, and acts this out by frequently upstaging Ingeborg and flaunting things she knows about Nelly to her when given the opportunity. When she reads to Ingeborg from Nelly's diary--whether true or false, who can say--Jenny speaks of how Nelly describes Jenny's skin as being younger looking than her own; that Jenny keeps a beauty salon as her business is an ironic reminder as to how she has made herself into a monument of artifice. Furthermore, these assumptions are not only reinforced by her vanity and arrogance, but also in the company she keeps. Jenny's lover, a young man not much more than half her age named Jack (Stig Olin), claims to find Jenny intriguing at the prospect of her young daughter. At the charity ball where Nelly has been eagerly awaiting to "make a splash", Jack begins his routine of seduction. His is a sly game, as he wears Nelly down at first by seeking the weaknesses in her defenses, eventually playing toward her pity and portraying himself as endowed with a poet's soul. He shows her a good time, gets her tipsy on his own concoction of spirits, and whisks her away to a moonlit meadow. Jack speaks in dramatic fashion, even verse occasionally; and why not? In effect, he is "putting on a production" of himself for Nelly, and knows that the guileless girl hasn't the experience or cynicism to see the wolf in sheep's clothing. And although Ulf heroically steps in to protect the maiden's modesty, Nelly resents his involvement and sees his intervention not unlike a father's oppressive protectiveness. Ironically, it is his actions which finally compel Nelly to leave Ingeborg to join her mother in the city, which raises the question when Nelly discovers later that they are now acquaintances if this wasn't the plan to begin with.
One of the broader themes of Crisis is that the "city" is inevitably a kind of poison which corrupts the soul, and that man cannot live removed from a natural life and still be sane, as manifested in Jack's tragic fate. From the beginning, a comparison is made between the wholesomeness of the countryside, and the worldliness of the city. Jenny pulls Nelly into her world which may look bright and vibrant, but is hollow and rotten on the inside, evidenced by her displeasure and dissatisfaction at living with Jenny, even though Nelly's mother seeks to spoil her at every turn. Nelly's position at her mother's salon exposes her to scandalous talk, a subversive way of corrupting the daughter by reducing her resistance to vice. Is it thus that Jenny wishes to "ruin" her own daughter? I don't think it's as nefarious as this, but that Jenny is looking for some kind of justification for her own life, and is willing to accept that her daughter should become more like her to gratify that sensation--and Jenny is a product of the city; it is an old maxim that parents often mold their children to be like them. After Jack deviously seduces Nelly, Jenny catches them and reveals Jack's game and rehearsed lines to her daughter, finally through with dragging her daughter down into her cesspool of depravity, pained to see life inflict the same cruel twists upon her while she remains complicit by her inaction. And even Jack, who remains earnest in his confessions to Nelly--as every con man does--finally gets dragged under into the vacuum of the soul inflicted upon him by the city. There is a moment when he takes Ingeborg to the train station, and talks of a simpler life he enjoyed prior to becoming the rake he has been in the city. So when Nelly is confronted with this crisis of conscience and morality, she takes the road less traveled--less paved, at least--and returns to Ingeborg to live the life she didn't know she missed; and it has made all the difference.
Recommended for: Fans of the works of Ingmar Bergman; this represents an enjoyable first step for a filmmaker so capable of describing the human soul, with many recognizable tropes throughout. It is also intriguing to see how this film from 1946 addresses potentially risque content, compared with its American counterparts of the era.