This Ingmar Bergman film doesn't have that many fans, and it's often bagged, but I really liked it. It's much better than The Touch - the subject matter is so much richer and varied, for starters, being set in 1923 Germany as people go to cabarets, have kinky sex and the Nazis gain in power.
It takes a while to get used to seeing David Carradine in a role clearly meant for Max Von Sydow but once I did I liked him. He's a Jewish American whose brother has killed himself in Germany and gets involved with his ex (shades of The Third Man) Liv Ullman isn't that good as the girl but it is fun to see her dressed up doing cabarets.
There's a lot going on here - dances, Nazis beating people up, an investigating policeman (Gert Frobe), black American men having sex with prostitutes, Carradine having a breakdown at the police station, mad doctors doing experiments, a tormented priest. Maybe it's a bit uneven and is not typically Bergman but I enjoyed it.
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