Sawdust and TinselThe truth can set you free, but it can also leave you feeling naked, as unconditional honesty can sometimes be humiliating. Sawdust and Tinsel is the story of the leader of a circus troupe, Albert Johansson (Åke Grönberg) and his young lover and fellow performer, Anne (Harriet Andersson). Per Albert's insistence, their struggling circus pulls into the city where Albert's estranged wife, Agda (Annika Tretow), resides with his sons, whom he hasn't seen in three years. Determined to put on a successful show, Albert begs of a local theater troupe, led by the demeaning director, Mr. Sjuberg (Gunnar Björnstrand), for costumes in exchange that they attend his circus. At that theater, Anne stumbles into a former lover, a serpentine actor named Frans (Hasse Ekman), who tempts Anne as the devil tempted Eve.
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Like many works by the great Swedish filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman, Sawdust and Tinsel is about a performance, about actors playing at being something else, and in the process revealing basic truths about themselves. The travelling Alberti Circus rolls across the hillside in a shot foreshadowing the famous "dance of death" from his later film, The Seventh Seal--even this parade is ultimately being led to a kind of judgment--for Albert and for Anne. As the band of misfits prepares to deliver its performance, they are accosted, doubted, even attacked by their audience, their critics, and civil servants, a dynamic later found in Bergman's The Magician. More than The Magician, Sawdust and Tinsel is concerned with discovering the psychology of its performers more than those who would mock and chastise them. Albert has made it clear that he intends to visit his wife and sons, to which Anne accuses him of plotting to leave her and the circus. Although he may not know it at the time--or pretends not to know--this is the subconscious motivation which propels him to do just that. His life in the circus is a hard one, where he and his fellows are always on the verge of starvation, commenting with all sincerity about shooting the circus bear for food. Anne is young, and were she not apparently stuck with the poor ringmaster, she might be accused of being something of a gold digger, or just biding her time until a better opportunity comes along. There is an allure in her eyes when she sees Frans again at the theater, and he puts on a show to plead and beg her for her affection, which she rejects more as a show of her own talents as an actress--as if she were auditioning for him. Out of spite, when Albert refuses to heed her protestations and threatens him when he leaves to see his wife again, she puts on the same sexy costume she wore when she and Albert went to entreat Sjuberg to begin with, and goes right to see Frans, pretending she has no idea what will happen. For Albert and Anne, this experience is a forced acknowledgement of the real motivations plaguing them, and the invisible wall of deception which has formed between them, forced to be battered down, but not without some bruises to their egos in the process.
From the start, the coach driver tells Albert the story of two of his fellow performers, the clown named Frost (Anders Ek), and his wife, Alma (Gudrun Brost). The event plays like a flashback, or even a fable, and it isn't really even clear until later that this actually happened to the couple, still together in the troupe. The story is supremely humiliating; Frost is told that his wife is performing and swimming all but naked with a military regiment performing maneuvers by the seaside. Already dressed as a clown, he is made a virtual cuckold by the experience, as the whole military group and others laugh heartily at his suffering as he wades barefoot into the shallows to pluck his wife from the waters, and carries her over rough stones until he collapses. What is interesting is how later, even though Frost appears to be a very strange--perhaps even broken--man, he and Alma are together in the same circus, still performing, their relationship serving as a template for Anne and Albert. Does this mean that this kind of humiliation ultimately strengthens their bond, or that it represents that the circus life has fully become a quagmire from which neither can truly escape? The circus troupe is treated with ignominy virtually by all, especially the theater troupe's leader, Dr. Sjuberg, who outright insults Albert when he begs for costumes, seeing right through his flattering act. The upbraiding commentary he gives to Albert is like the kind of vindictive superiority one would expect from the "cool kids table" at school, looking down upon those like them for being a bit poorer, a bit less fashionable, a bit less charming. When Albert and Frans finally have it out at the big circus performance, the entire staging bears the kind of puerile dramatics to their "duel" that would be found in the schoolyard, with the audience egging them on to fight for their amusement. Just earlier, after his discovery of Anne's clandestine visit to Frans--one which she attempted to conceal from him--Albert was on the verge of violence and rage at this revelation toward her instead. There is the sense that his frustration was really self-directed, following his own attempt to be unfaithful in an altogether different way--feeling like a hypocrite. The inevitable brawl becomes a rite of passage he had to bear in order for him to be the gallant hero to Anne, protecting her honor following Frans' open impugning of her virtue. One interpretation is that they mutually realize that the unresolved demons of their respective pasts were something they had to overcome to move forward, even if by moving forward, it was merely to leave town when the show is over, the caravan rolling along to their next destination.
Recommended for: Fans of an early work of Ingmar Bergman, which alludes to many similar themes and motifs which would dominate his oeuvre. It is also a romance, one which is frank and forthright in the way it approaches feelings of dissatisfaction and unresolved needs in a relationship.
From the start, the coach driver tells Albert the story of two of his fellow performers, the clown named Frost (Anders Ek), and his wife, Alma (Gudrun Brost). The event plays like a flashback, or even a fable, and it isn't really even clear until later that this actually happened to the couple, still together in the troupe. The story is supremely humiliating; Frost is told that his wife is performing and swimming all but naked with a military regiment performing maneuvers by the seaside. Already dressed as a clown, he is made a virtual cuckold by the experience, as the whole military group and others laugh heartily at his suffering as he wades barefoot into the shallows to pluck his wife from the waters, and carries her over rough stones until he collapses. What is interesting is how later, even though Frost appears to be a very strange--perhaps even broken--man, he and Alma are together in the same circus, still performing, their relationship serving as a template for Anne and Albert. Does this mean that this kind of humiliation ultimately strengthens their bond, or that it represents that the circus life has fully become a quagmire from which neither can truly escape? The circus troupe is treated with ignominy virtually by all, especially the theater troupe's leader, Dr. Sjuberg, who outright insults Albert when he begs for costumes, seeing right through his flattering act. The upbraiding commentary he gives to Albert is like the kind of vindictive superiority one would expect from the "cool kids table" at school, looking down upon those like them for being a bit poorer, a bit less fashionable, a bit less charming. When Albert and Frans finally have it out at the big circus performance, the entire staging bears the kind of puerile dramatics to their "duel" that would be found in the schoolyard, with the audience egging them on to fight for their amusement. Just earlier, after his discovery of Anne's clandestine visit to Frans--one which she attempted to conceal from him--Albert was on the verge of violence and rage at this revelation toward her instead. There is the sense that his frustration was really self-directed, following his own attempt to be unfaithful in an altogether different way--feeling like a hypocrite. The inevitable brawl becomes a rite of passage he had to bear in order for him to be the gallant hero to Anne, protecting her honor following Frans' open impugning of her virtue. One interpretation is that they mutually realize that the unresolved demons of their respective pasts were something they had to overcome to move forward, even if by moving forward, it was merely to leave town when the show is over, the caravan rolling along to their next destination.
Recommended for: Fans of an early work of Ingmar Bergman, which alludes to many similar themes and motifs which would dominate his oeuvre. It is also a romance, one which is frank and forthright in the way it approaches feelings of dissatisfaction and unresolved needs in a relationship.