Smiles of a Bummer Night

Easy for you to smirk, you didn't spend your evening dragging
dead weight out of a movie theater. Persconferentie van de Zweedse
filmregiseur Ingmar Bergman in het Amstel Hotel te
Amsterdam. 10 oktober 1966, by Joost Evers/Anefo.
Courtesy of Nationaal Archief via Wikimedia Commons.
CC BY-SA 3.0.

Now reading: "(Swedish Angst) An Ingmar Bergman Movie for Every Quarantine Mood" by Rachel Handler, Vulture.com, 15 July 2020.

 

Despite the author's claims, personally, I'm not sure I'd recommend you watch these films under the current circumstances. Nonetheless, it's an interesting read, and I do rather like Persona, Wild Strawberries, and Fanny & Alexander. I'd like to watch The Silence again (at least I think I've seen it before) and a version of Smiles of a Summer Night in which all the saucy dialog hasn't been neglected by the subtitles. 

 

And I will always remember Cries & Whispers ... but for all the wrong reasons.

 

Once upon a time, when I used to live in Washington, D.C., I would volunteer at the Smithsonian Institution's many cultural events, especially film series. Back in the day, it was one way to see some interesting arthouse movies. This was early days when VCRs and home viewing were still fairly new. This was also early days when I had zero dollars in my bank account, so every little freebie helped, no matter how constraining.

 

So I volunteered at an Ingmar Bergman film festival where I got to watch (most of) various films--The Silence (again, at least I think), Smiles of a Summer Night (saucy dialog-less), Persona, Fanny & Alexander, and, most famously, Cries & Whispers.

 

It's not an easy watch--but then again, I really wouldn't know for sure. Why? Well, I actually never got to view the entire movie. You see, there is a scene (which I will refrain from describing in all its gory details and thereby end up "spoiling the surprise" for you) that caused not one, not two, but *three* people to faint mid-movie. 

 

As a result, I spent most of the time in the theater lobby contacting security, who called the paramedics, who brought firefighters to the theater along with them, one of whom kept opening the movie theater door and saying things like, "Why in the hell is this movie making all these people faint!?"

 

So, really, I wouldn't recommend this particular Bergman movie at this time or any time. In retrospect, the scene in question just seems gratuitously disgusting, but, hey, it's Bergman. Oh that touch of Sweden with an ice pick in your chest and all that. 

 

Besides, why view a movie that I doubt would now seem as perverse as it was that evening some 35 years ago? You don't need fiction. You don't need celluloid. The reality of watching the American president talk about dishwashers when the COVID-19 death count is 138,000 and rising is perverse enough for a lifetime.