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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...
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...