Thursday, December 13, 2012

Movie review - Bergman#1 - "Crisis" (1946) **1/2

Ingmar Bergman's debt as a director is a small town melodrama that reminded me, oddly enough, of late 50s Sandra Dee soap - you can imagine Dee as an 18 year old girl growing up in a small town raised by a nice, dull piano teacher, when her flashy, trashy mother comes back to take care of her. Careful He Might Hear You territory with a teenage girl - even down to the girl having a fling with her mother's even trashier lover, and the temptations of life in the big city not being as wholesome as a small town.

It's not typically Bergman stuff (although the girl seems to contemplate suicide and there is a fair bit of misery) but it's fascinating. The small town sequences includes a scene where the kids get bored with an adult concert and have a party where they boogie-woogie on the piano (this felt very late 50s Hollywood), and there's some racy bare back some the teenage girl (even racier, she actually sleeps with the guy).

This is soap but its accessible, reasonably well made and acted (Ingra Landgre is the girl). I've seen a lot worse in this genre, and it's fun to think of Bergman paying his dues.

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