In The Presence Of A Clown

 In the Presence of a Clown is Bergman's penultimate film. It was made for Swedish TV in 1997 and, though shown at Cannes, was largely ignored by critics and distributors. I've been searching for it for a quarter of a century, never giving up hope it would eventually be made available one way or another.- and the YouTube Bergman Channel has it! Yes! And whether it's good or bad I really couldn't say because I'm just so happy to have run it to earth.

The year is 1923 and Uncle Carl- a person who really existed (see Magic Lantern) and whom Bergman fictionalised in a number of movies- most notably Fanny and Alexander- has had a wizard wheeze; he will invent talking pictures by positioning live actors behind the screen and have them speak in synch with their projected images! When he gets out of the Uppsala loony bin, where he has been incarcerated for attempted murder, he and his much younger finacee along with mad Swedenborgian Professor Vogler (played by the great Erland Josephson who had been appearing in Bergman's movies since the very beginning) make a movie about Schubert (with whom Carl identifies) and take it on a tour of village halls in the depths of a Swedish winter. The clown of the title is a creature of Carl's imagination- an elderly female pierrot who is both sinister and sexy- and seems to represent Death, though I doubt that it's quite as simple as that.  If you are new to Bergman it would be foolhardy to start here- though you might just catch the fever- and if you're a crazed completist (as I suppose I must be) you will be thrilled  to find him still working away at his classic obsessions and rewarding your long service with lollipops. Who is this character? Why, she's Bergman's mother Karin lightly fictionalised. And did you notice how closely the consumptive projectionist resembles Bergman himself as a young dude, with the long face and the floppy hair and the arty-farty beret he used to wear? 

In the Presence of a Clown is cracked and quixotic- just like its protagonists; the work of a very old artist who has earned the right...

In Brief

 t was sunny yesterday- and so pleasant that I sat out on the patio for as long as it took me to read a short story. Today the wind and the rain have returned.

A few nights ago I dreamed I was in a car being driven by my father. He was driving very badly and eventually got the car stuck on some narrow steps leading down from a churchyard. I was very relaxed about it. Last night I dreamed I was in a car being driven by my grandmother. I made a sarky remark which included the "f"word and she told me off from a lordly height. 

The books have mostly been transferred to the new shelves. There remain gaps and I tell Ailz I need to go and buy more. She says if I do she'll lock me out.

Words, Words, Words

 A personal library is a tendentious self portrait.

What it doesn't contain is as revealing as what it does. I tell myself I love Agatha Christie but if I was really passionate about her I'd own some of her books, wouldn't I?

A guy I once knew said a glance at a person's bookshelves would tell you exactly when they stopped thinking. I check mine every so often for signs that this may have happened to me.

I have no Darwin, no Marx, no Freud- nor commentators thereupon- but quite a lot of Jung. I have no Orwell- he creeps me out- and the only Huxleys I possess are a book of art criticism and The Perennial Philosophy. There's very little academic stuff. I admit John Buchan but not Ian Fleming. There's a lot of poetry, mostly 19th and 20th century.

 I have more books by G.K. Chesterton than anyone else. This reflects who I was forty years ago rather than who I am now.

 Next comes Dickens. I have a set of the collected works. Neck and neck with Dickens is Thomas de Quincey. I have read nearly all of Dickens but will confess that my reading of de Quincey has been rather more selective. 

 After Dickens and de Quincey comes Rudyard Kipling- an abiding love. That there are more Chestertons than Kiplings has to do with Chesterton publishing many more books in the course of an insanely prolific career.

 Next up are de la Mare, H. G. Wells and- a bit of a surprise this- Joan Grant. I think I may have a copy of everything Grant ever published.

 The most recent additions to the collection are books by Alice Munro, Michael Moorcock and Imogen Hermes Gowar- all living authors. They reassure me that I'm no deid yet....