Was Ingmar Bergman a Changeling?

They should have suspected something. He has a huge wart on his cheek, his mother didn't.

[Warning: I was so eager to get this blog post out there that I haven't reeaally checked all sources. Do it yourself if you don't believe me. But believe everything I say, my Messiah complex tells me that I am indeed correct.]

I was going to trash the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film to pieces (I won't even link to its IMDb page), but it's not really necessary. It's shit. I will make a one-sentence-review: The mermaids were cool and should have been a short film on it's own, while the rest was tired recycled-predictable-once-successful bullshit. Don't see it. Don't give Disney the money. Don't let Johnny Depp disappoint you this way any more. And don't f*cking watch 3D movies, it's shit.

Now to the real subject of this blog post. It does not seem to have hit the international news yet (but the Swedish, so use Google Translate on this article if you're obsessed), but apparently... Ingmar Bergman's mother was not his biological mother! He was a bastard!

At least according to a DNA analysis. Well, I can't argue with science, can I? No, but I can argue with the sources of the DNA samples, which were two stamps that Bergman may have licked in the 1950's. And the world is flat, because it looks that way.

But - so what if he was a bastard child? Unfortunate for him, in that case, since he had to grow up in a strict and mentally disturbed pastor family without really having to. BUT. Artists go nuts, totally bananas. They think we will have to reinterpret all Bergman's films now, since most of his films had strong ties to his personal life and his upbringing.

I don't think that's necessary. I will explain why, referring to that Swedish news article that you can't read. The reporter has contacted a scholar (oh yeah, a scholar) called Jan Holmberg, and asked him how the these news about Bergman's biological heritage is going to affect the director's creations.

- I would say nothing. But I am not very naive. When it comes to Swedish artists such as Bergman, one is interested in his works mostly from a biographical perspective. He has repeatedly said that childhood is the key to his artistry," says Jan Holmberg.

On the other hand, Jan Holmberg thinks that researchers, critics and journalists have been somewhat uncritical when it comes to the analysis of Bergman's films.

- You should remember that Bergman was amazingly good at convincing. He was also terribly sneaky. Just because Bergman said that something was in a certain way, it need not necessarily mean that it was like that," said Jan Holmberg.

And, of course, Bergman was not aware that his mother wasn't his biological mother (if she wasn't, but she probably was), so how the hell could that affect his work?

But then again, as an arguing friend of mine teased me with: he may have KNOWN, but didn't TELL...

I had to argue that Bergman was a narcissist and liked to share his private life. He would have let us know about it. Then again, probably not truthfully. He liked to spice up the stories of his life, add a few "dämons" and canted camera angles. (He did not say "demons" like normal people, he had "dämons". Then again, he was far too different from ordinary people to have ordinary demons.) But he would NOT have kept quite about being a bastard child, it would have been too good and scandalous story at the time and the context of a strictly religious home.

So if anyone thinks that these news are a reason to revalue all of Bergman's films, that person is no better than the idiot that thought Hitchcock was adding poop and rectums in all his film. (Read another blog post of mine.)

This angel can't be a bastard, can he?

The Philadelphia Story and an Impending Doom

I'm so hyped! There is no secret that I adore the deeply disturbed Danish doomsday-filmmaker (alliteration for the win) Lars von Trier, so of course I look forward to his next film Melancholia (2011). But there is more!

The latest edition of the Swedish movie magazine Cinema just arrived to a thankful Lolita, and isn't there one of those strange, surreal interviews with Lars von Trier about his latest film in it? Of course there is! There is a reason for my strange blog title, so listen up: The film Melancholia is inspired by The Philadelphia Story (1940).

I will repeat that. In this interview Lars von Trier says that his latest film, the one that succeeds Antichrist (the film with a stillborn deer, an evil fox that proclaims "Chaos REIGNS" and Willem Defoe ejaculating blood), is inspired by the Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn/James Stewart screwball comedy The Philadelphia Story. Suck on that!

So if you can imagine the hilarious wedding chaos of Tracy Lord with a planet ten times bigger than Earth that soon will collide with our dear Tellus, you seem to have gotten the gist of Melancholia. This sounds so awesome that I don't know what to do of myself. I think I will jump off the balcony and try to fly away with anticipation. (No, I haven't taken any drugs that I don't already take regularly. I'm just psyched about this.)

It's alright, Alexander. I won't kick you out of bed. Non! maintenant...! viens...

Now the cast. It's awesome! Surprisingly enough Kirsten Dunst - I have high expectations for her. Do this right, woman! Then we have one of my favorite actresses of this day and age, Charlotte Gainsbourg (yep, the daughter of the man that so sexily sings Je t'aime moi non plus with Jane Birkin). She was fantastic in Antichrist, I don't doubt that she will match that performance. Then there is Kiefer Sutherland (another surprise), Charlotte Rampling (yay! a favorite superbitch of mine), John Hurt and scary Udo Kier. (See him in Blood for Dracula from 1974, if you have no self respect. Like me.) Among the Swedish cast we have father and son Stellan Skarsgård and Alexander Skarsgård - known in great, big, amazing America for the tentacle monster in Pirates of the Caribbean respectively a sexy vampire in the True Blood series. And a Lady Gaga video, in which he is called "Alejandro", for some reason. (Crikey, why do I know that?)

[Lot's of vampire actors/actresses, when I think about it... Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire (1994), Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys (1987), Udo Kier as Count Dracula and Alexander Skarsgård as Eric Northman in True Blood. There is a vampire inflation going on. Be ware. Pull the strings!]

Now watch the damn trailer. It really is The Philadelphia Story - Lars von Trier style! Sometimes I'm so proud of Scandinavia! *happy sigh* Who wants to buy me movie tickets?

Note: it's filmed in Trollywood, Sweden. Woo-hoo! (No, Denmark and Sweden are in fact not the same country.)

[Update May 11: I'll just copy-paste what dear Tim Williams e-mailed me.

Just read your blog post for "Melancholia"--nice as always; however, I felt bound to point out that in the Pirates of the Caribbean milieu, Stellan Skarsgaard in fact plays Orlando Bloom's cursed father ("Bootstrap Bill") and not the "tentacle monster" ("Davy Jones") who is played by Bill Nighy. Small faux-pas, probably insignificant, but I thought I would tell you that privately before anyone else did publicly.

Keep 'em flying!

Sorry for the error, but in my humble opinion bad movies don't need any serious research before being mentioned. Like the first Pirates of the Caribbean, though. And obviously, the Skarsgård/Skarsgaard family.]

Fucking unbelievable

Well, Sweden's election is over, and it looks like 5,7% of the votes were given to a nationalistic party with roots in White Power movements - Sweden Democrats. I am ashamed of my country. I can't believe that so many people voted for them. This will take some time for me to handle. I will be back with my usual cheery self as soon as I can, but right now I just want to kick someone.

I love Lucille Ball

I have soon watched the whole first season of I Love Lucy (1951-1952). I am so going as Lucille Ball this Halloween! How I will manage that hairdo is a future problem.

The Swedish election finishes this Sunday (even NYT have written about the election drama), and then I will probably be able to concentrate once again on my classic movie passion. I'm even too distracted to study.  Even my mother complains about me talking more politics than television and radio unitized. I guess I'm black or white: either throwing up in the gutter outside Blue Oyster, or boring people to death with unemployment issues.

Until then: lo and behold my Photoshop skills. I look like a hot emo girl! I experimented with some Clara Bow lips, between television debates.

Pre-glamour Greta Garbo

The picture above is obviously Greta Garbo after her Hollywood make over. But how did she look as a curvaceous Greta Gustafsson appearing in Swedish commercials, early 1920's? The answer to that is to be found in the archives of Swedish Television.

If you have trouble recognizing her among the other models, she is the one with eyebrows painted with a piece of charcoal. Hideous. Sometimes a physical make over half a world away, obviously, can bring out the inner beauty of the Scandinavian womanhood.

In this 2:45 long (or short) clip, we see Greta "Garbo" Gustafsson in three different milieus: As a fashion model for the brand PUB, at the terrace of the Strand Hotel and at a picnic in the sweet green grass of the North.

The clip is silent, so you can always hum "Yes, We Have No Bananas" to yourself to liven it up a bit.

And yes: the Swedish word for "The End" really is "Slut"... It has amused many an international audience since the beginning of time. Or the beginning of  Swedish film, that is.

Inconvenient Swedes

"I am a broker. There has to be some of them too."

Ah, come on - Swedish culture is fun. But since interest in my previous post on Hasse Ekman was quite absent (shame on you - I think that's a hate crime), perhaps one of the more eccentric Swedish film makers is more in your taste. I mean, we are rather weird at times.

"Abstinence or, for those who have someone, prolonged fidelity, are advised."

Roy Andersson is known for his bizarre and stale staging and absurd long takes, making almost every scene in his films inconveniently humorous. It's a spot on parody on Swedish manners: we do not like to speak in public, we are stale and uncomfortable with the unknown (whether it be strangers or foreign culture) and Jesus, we have no humor.

[Interestingly enough, this somewhat malicious portrait of Sweden is the extreme opposite of the other picture of us: the sexually promiscuous population that loves to bathe topless. Can't the world decide if we are boring or exotic? I feel this fact gives me great difficulties in defining my own personality.]

"You know - just about anything could suddenly turn up down there, in the warmth and damp."

Anyways. Roy Andersson, nicknamed "slapstick Ingmar Bergman) has made several popular films and TV commercials, often leaving the audience scratching their heads wondering whether to laugh at it, love it or reject it. Of course, if you choose to reject Roy Andersson you have no taste in art at all.

What I will now introduce to you is a work of his called Something Has Happened (Någonting har hänt, 1987), a short film that deals with the (then) ongoing AIDS paranoia. The humor in this piece is not the disease itself (we Swedes do still not maliciously laugh at disasters, mind you), but rather the different approaches doctors and the public take to explain the origins of the disease.

It was of course the homosexuals' fault. Or was it the monkeys? Or black people? It's really bizarre to see a an embarrassing "professor" trying to share his Negro-in-the-damp-jungles-of-Africa theory to a classroom full of wax-doll looking students, accompanied by bored coughing. The above mentioned blocking of the actors, stale and bizarre like a 16th century painting, add to the weird humor.

"It could have been a Negro who was wandering about down there one day - like this."

Something Has Happened was shown at film festivals world wide in 1993, and was obviously well received. I would have loved to hear the audience's opinion. Note that the film is not a documentary- it's a staged satire on common assumptions and theories at the time.

"And now to something completely different" (yes, I'm well-read on stiff humor from all nations) - Roy Andersson has in 40 years (1967-2007) only made nine movies, according to IMDb. Quality rather than quantity, it seems.

"It's very, very natural."

Give Roy 24 minutes of your time, or face a slow, painful death by ingesting plague infested rats.

Girl with Hyacinths (1950)

Flicka och hyacinter or Girl with Hyacinths
Director: Hasse Ekman
Sweden 1950
89 min
Starring: Eva Henning, Ulf Palme, Birgit Tengroth, Anders Ek and Marianne Löfgren, among others.

Often mentioned as one of the finest Swedish films in history, especially if one was to exclude that Bergman director who always gets the spotlight, Girl with Hyacinths has been strangely forgotten. Once in a while it is shown on television, and perhaps a film festival every now and then has a Hasse Ekman special and praises it - but outside of Sweden? Time to do something about it.

There was actually a time, in the 1950's, when the public loved to try figuring out who was the best Swedish director: Ingmar Bergman or Hasse Ekman? "Ekman, who?" is your response (and even if you have heard of him, please let me believe that I know everything).

Hasse Ekman was the son of a highly respectable and talented stage actor, Gösta Ekman Sr. Gösta was kind of a Swedish Lon Chaney, a master of disguise. He mastered the role of a young aristocrat as well as that of an old, dirty beggar. You may have seen him in the title role of Faust (F. W. Murnau, 1926), or opposite Ingrid Bergman in her Hollywood ticket Intermezzo (Gustaf Molander, 1936). After the German character actor Emil Jannings, ironically playing the evil Mephisto in Faust, introduced Gösta to cocaine he slowly died the usual Hollywood death - without having been to Hollywood, of course.

Hasse Ekman (1915-2004) and father, Gösta Ekman (1890-1938).

Then there was the dapper son, Hasse Ekman. Oh, I'm so in love with him. He acted, wrote scripts and directed. And as I mentioned earlier, even was a "rival" to the great Ingmar Bergman. While Bergman cast Hasse in sadistic sociopath roles in his own films (see Sawdust and Tinsel, 1953), Hasse made fun of Bergman's crazy being with loopy characters in his films. Even though the media at the time wanted to believe that they hated each other intensely, the truth was that they had the highest respect for each other. And rightfully so.

Then Hasse went and had a son of his own, Gösta Ekman Jr., that is a beloved comedian and actor in Sweden since the 1970's. But enough about the prestigious Ekman family.

The handsome director of the film.

Looks a little bit like Robert Montgomery, doesn't he?

This brings us to what is known as Hasse Ekman's finest directorial achievment - Girl with Hyacinths. Think of it as a Swedish film noir, if you will. It is most likely inspired by films like Laura (1944) and other Hollywood successes at the time, but with the typical dark humor and off beat tone of (good) Scandinavian films.

The film begins with an almost entirely black scene. A dialog is heard while the camera follows a bottle of champagne to a female hand holding a glass. The camera pans down to her feet and follows her across the room to a piano, where the title role silently plays a gloomy tune. She is later identified as Dagmar Brink (Eva Henning, the director's wife at the time and one of Sweden's finest actresses).

Man: One more glass...?

Woman: Pour it up. I've drunk stronger men than you under the table.

Man: Germans can't take much.

Woman: I've partied with all nationalities.

Man: And more than that?

Woman (in English): Mind your own business, brother.

After a while Dagmar leaves the badly lit party and goes home by herself. She sits down in a chair and lits a cigarette. She looks up at the ceiling and notices a hook. The scene cuts to the next morning, when her maid discovers her body hanging from the hook.

The protagonist in the story is Dagmar's neighbor, amateur writer Anders Wikner (Ulf Palme). Surprisingly, he and his wife Britt (Birgit Tengroth) is informed by the police that Dagmar's belongings now are in their possession, as Dagmar had written in her suicide note. Anders' curiosity is awoken: Why did Dagmar kill herself? Why did she entrust her belongings to her neighbors?

The rest of the film contains of Anders' detective work, as he tries to unravel Dagmar's past and her reasons for committing suicide. As her story unfolds through acquaintances of the deceased, scenes of the past are depicted and gives the viewer more information and explanations - as well as more questions, of course. The Wikner couple may as well be one of the cutest married couples in film, apart from Nick and Nora Charles of course.

Ulf Palme and Birgit Tengroth investigating.

Eva Henning as Dagmar Brink, and what is often called her best performance ever.

Girl with Hyacinths is an intriguing story with many of Sweden's finest actors. For the one who has seen many Ingmar Bergman films, there are a lot of familiar faces to be recognized - especially Anders Ek as the alcoholic artist Elias Körner, the one who portrayed Dagmar ("Miss Lonely", as he called her) in a painting he named "Girl with Hyacinths". Even though being Ekman's supposed enemy, Bergman had following to say about the film:

"An absolute masterpiece. 24 carats. Perfect."

Elias Törner: Merry Christmas! Merry fucking Christmas!

Not only is the film beautifully written and acted, but the mobile camera work is pretty admirable for the time and place and the musical score is wonderful. Another interesting aspect of the film, as it unravels Dagmar's past in the 1940's, is its depiction of WWII Sweden. Being a neutral country in the war (and every war since Napoleon), one hardly thinks about how it affected people then (or even that it affected anyone).
At one time Dagmar's husband turns on the radio, where news about Germany's invasion of Paris is being reported. How this is relevant to the story is not for me to spoil, but Dagmar looks terrified, turns off the radio and says that this is appalling. Her husband disagrees:

Capt. Brink: No worse than when they entered Brussels, Amsterdam or Warsaw.
Dagmar: They're vile.
Capt. Brink: But damn good soldiers. That rotten and corrupted France needs some cleaning up.
Dagmar: You sound like a Nazi.
Capt. Brink: I admire them, as an officer.

These conflicting attitudes toward Nazi Germany returns later in the film, and may or may not have something to do with Dagmar's sad ending.

All in all, this is a film worth being seen outside of Sweden. As you can see from the screenshots, subtitles are available if you know where to look. Give it a shot - especially if you are traumatized by having thrust yourself into Bergman films too early and think that all Swedish films are either existential migraine or 1970's exploitation.
Girl with Hyacinths is good stuff - even though Hasse Ekman never appeared in front of the camera, which makes me a little sad. But give it a shot if you have the opportunity.

Until then, you can always check out my new wallpaper with Hasse Ekman and Eva Henning. Married couples can be cool:

Persona (1966)

Persona
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Sweden 1966
85 min
Starring: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullman, Margaretha Krook and Gunnar Björnstrand.

Is it really important not to lie, to speak so that everything rings true? Can one live without lying and quibbling and making excuses? Isn't it better to be lazy and lax and deceitful? Perhaps you even improve by staying as you are.

- Alma

An actress, Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullman), has had a breakdown on stage and now suffer from muteness and a near-catatonic behavior. Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson) is assigned to take care of her. Elisabeth's doctor and Alma's supervisor (Margaretha Krook) recommends them to live in her beach house, which she thinks will help Elisabeth's health to improve. As the two women live together and become intimate (some would say in an erotic way, but I think that would be a misinterpretation) their identities start to merge.

Initially Alma feels great relief in being the only one to talk, experiencing comfort and sympathy from her silent listener, as she reveals the most intimate secrets about herself. Elisabeth's continuing silence does however make Alma uncomfortable, especially after having secretly read one of Elizabeth's letters to her doctor expressing a delight in studying Alma's behavior and increasing dependence on her, and Alma turns from being a compassionate and sweet nurse to an egotistical, irritable and violent woman.

A plot summary may sound simple (or complicated) enough, but the most interesting part of Persona is the way it repeatedly acknowledges itself for the piece of celluloid it actually is. Both the beginning and the end of the film consists of bizarre montages, brief pictures that the eye almost can't perceive: a silent film slapstick scene, an erect penis, a slaughtered lamb and a hand being pierced by a nail. There are also short sequences with a film projector, celluloid strips and carbon rods meeting each other, to further underline the fact that what we are watching is in fact a motion picture.

The film is also interrupted halfway through, when the movement of Alma suddenly freezes, and the celluloid burst into flames - about the time when the projectionist would change reels. Most famous of these self-reflexive moments is probably the one with the ca ten year old boy reaching for an out-of-focus woman on the wall, resembling the screen of a film theater, a face that switches between Alma and Elisabeth.

This motif is the reason behind Bergman's request that all publicity stills were to include a piece of the film strip on the edge. (See below.) Responsible for the breathtaking photography is the Bergman regular Sven Nykvist, whose style established with Persona is sometimes humorously summed up with the words "two faces and a tea cup". That's just brilliant.

Trying to summarize Persona in less than a proper blog post length is hard, and for an amateur like me close to impossible. For a fabulous analysis of the film I recommend an article from Sight and Sound in 1967, by Susan Sontag. You can find it here, on the fantastic Ingmar Bergman home page.

Sontag is very concerned with reviewers taking the easy way out, describing Persona either as "a film about the merging of identities" or "a film about lesbians and lesbianism", as well as people conveniently deciding that either everything in the film is supposed to be reality or entirely a fabrication of Alma's mind.

That was what I was referring to when I earlier mentioned something about Alma's and Elizabeth's intimate relationship: I had the strong feeling while watching Persona, that some parts (with increasing occurrence) were a result of Alma's distorted mind. Perhaps I should re-phrase: It is evident that Alma feels a close connection with Elisabeth after having revealed her inner self for her, something that in her unconscious mind (when asleep or drunk) turns into erotic fantasies, an embodiment of the closeness she feels to Elisabeth.

The paragraph above is entirely my own interpretation of some scenes in the film, and not Sontag's rantings. But for the interested I recommend the more professional Sontag analysis, even though everything I say is of course the unquestionable truth.

In short: My homeboy made it again, and even more so than before, with Persona. It deserves plenty of re-watches and philosophical discussion. I can't believe I haven't seen this film of his until... today.

Below:

1. Ingmar Bergman during the shooting of Persona.

2. Bergman with cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

Everybody's whining about freedom of speech

Prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask.

Well, I'll just put in a pretty little picture of Der Führer and his prime documentarist Leni Riefenstahl in order to at least have a brief relation to film in this post. Or just to express my dissatisfaction with our (Sweden's) current right-wing government. Cheap humor, I know, but it at least makes me smile a little.

Things start to look interesting in Sweden because of the upcoming election this autumn, and sitting here on my balcony with a cigarette in my mouth and my netbook makes me feel a bit like Spider Jerusalem in the Transmetropolitan comics.

But what does this post have to do with classic cinema, and why do I lately suck at updating my blog? I have no answer to either question. Is it interesting to answer? No. In this post I turn to people like me who seldom read the news, but preferring to have someone else reading them for you and updating you on anything of interest. (I have to fight the demons, you know.) News about Iceland's volcanoes and Tiger Woods' indecencies tend to reach me anyway, whether I like it or not.

Now about Sweden. We currently have a lot of stupid people ruling our country (not surprisingly, of course), but in the light of an upcoming election some really ridiculous things are said. The most hysterical thing lately was our Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask's suggestion of sending pink envelopes to people suspected of buying sex. Whether they are guilty or not is obviously of no importance: just shun those bastards.

There were of course a lot of debates about this in the media: "What would happen if, for instance, the suspects daughter finds the envelope, crushing their family?" "If the suspect is innocent, couldn't public humiliation like that destroy his/her life?" Still, Beatrice Ask took a hell of a lot of time before reluctantly taking the suggestion back. It just feels so good that our Minister of Justice truly understands the concept of "being innocent until otherwise is proven".


"CLEANTERNET"

Now to the subject of today. I found this hilarious video today, that at first is not apparently a joke. It is aimed at a Swedish right-wing politician by the name of Cecilia Malmström, who in the name of being a European Commissioner for Home Affairs "proposed a directive ordering the access blocking of child pornography on the Internet" (Wikipedia). In other words: She wants to censor the Internet.

Well, I couldn't counter that preposterous thought better than the following video does. You can watch it with better resolution and without Swedish subtitles on the website, cleanternet.org, but if you're lazy you can just push the play button here and now. This is just wonderful.





The creator is a design student by the name of Alexander Lehmann (his blog, in English). He accepts donations in order to release it in several languages.
I just hope that SÄPO won't barge in on me for writing this post.

Update: I just wrote about how proud I was of Lehmann being Swedish, but I just realized that he was German. Damn it. Well well - same shit, no difference. Right?

Lolita's film festival: Vilgot Sjöman

Vilgot Sjöman: 1924-2006

I've seen a lot of respectable bloggers making their own "film festivals" (see the adorable Matthew Coniam's viciously tempting Frank Tuttle Film Festival), and decided to make a contribution of my own.

After recently having watched My Sister My Love (original title: Syskonbädd 1782, 1966), from which I haven't yet quite recovered, I decided that the subject for my own film festival would be the Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman's protegee, the innovative Vilgot Sjöman. Haven't heard of him yet? No? Have you heard of "the Swedish sin"? Okay, but you do think about Swedish women as blonde and elusive? Okay, the initial indication of that comes from Arne Mattsson's One Summer of Happiness (original title: Hon dansade en sommar, 1951), where astonished audiences over the world saw Ulla Jacobsson's naked breasts - but I think offended Swedish women have a lot to blame on the fellow I now will introduce to you. (Just a small note: I am not to find among the offended women.)

Hang on, I think you'd like to put his name in bittersweet memory.

Vilgot Sjöman was born on December 2, 1924, in a working class family living in Stockholm, Sweden. At the age of 15 Vilgot worked as a clerk for a cereal company, but things would start to look brighter when he got his degree at Stockholm's University when he was 21. He started working in a prison, where he began writing plays, none of which was ever adopted on the theatre stage.

Three years later, 1948, he wrote a novel based on one of his plays called The Teacher (original title: Lektorn), which described a tense father-son relationship. A film based on the novel was released in 1952, called Defiance (original title: Trots) by Gustaf Molander.

This was the first, fresh breeze of what was yet to be created by Vilgot Sjöman - a series of provocative films dealing with relations, social standards and society problems, always stretching the boundaries of cencorship.

In 1956 Vilgot Sjöman had made his way to the United Stated and taken up a scholarship to study film at the UCLA. He worked as an apprentice for George Seaton during the filming of The Proud and Profane (1956), starring Deborah Kerr and William Holden, and soon felt ready to return to Sweden and turn the film industry and the cencorship upside down.

His debut as a film director was with a film called The Swedish Mistress (original title: Älskarinnan, 1962), sometimes just called The Mistress. The film shows a young woman torn between two men, one older and one younger, and had a cast that included regular Ingmar Bergman actors like Bibi Andersson (Persona, 1966) and Max von Sydow (The Seventh Seal, 1957).

The same year he assisted Ingmar Bergman in the filming of Winter Light (original title: Nattvardsgästerna, 1962). During that time he made a documentary called Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie (original title: Ingmar Bergman gör en film, 1963), following Bergman through the making of Winter Light. An extract from the documentary, with English subtitles, is included below.

But it was with Vilgot's second film, 491 (1964), that the cencor scissors (say that ten times in a row!) started to bother our dear director. The film was based on a novel by Lars Görling, and dealt with juvenile delinquency and homosexuality, a hot but avoided topic in Sweden at the time.

About the title: in The Holy Bible you can read about St. Peter, asking Jesus about how many times he should forgive his brother. Seven? Jesus answers that he should not forgive him seven times, but seventy times seven. 70 x 7 = 490.

The tagline of the film explains it further:

It is written that 490 times you can sin and be forgiven. This motion picture is about the 491st.

The film is made to look like a documentary that follows six tough boys being subject for a social experiment - one of observation. The boys are allowed to go wherever they want, do whatever they want, as long as they reside in the home that was appointed to them by the authorities. The absence of boundaries soon drives the boys to a life consisting of the pure thrill of brutality, petty crimes and anarchy. One scene that disturbed the audience, and quickly was cut, was a girl that, off-screen, was raped by a dog. Another cut out scene involved a homosexual rape.

The film remains unreleased in Sweden.

Stills from 491.

His next film was called The Dress (original title: Klänningen, 1964), and covered a disturbed mother-daughter relationship. The film, though featuring respected actors (among them the Ingmar Bergman favourite Gunnar Björnstrand, the squire Jöns in The Seventh Seal) it was totally rejected by the critics.

The next film by Vilgot Sjöman is the one I mentioned in the beginning of this post - My Sister My Love (also called Bed Siblings), and it is, to say the least, a remarkable film. To take it from the beginning:

The film is based upon a tragedy written somewhere between the years 1629-1633 by playwright John Ford, named 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. (Says quite a lot, huh?) Its subject of incest made the play one of the most controversial ones in the English litterature. The play was excluded from a 1831 collection of Ford's litterature, and the title has been changed many times to more acceptable versions like Giovanni and Annabella, 'Tis Pity or The Brother and Sister. The critics have been hard on the play well into the 20th century for not condemning the immoral characters enough. In 1961 Luchino Visconti directed a French adoption of the play at the Théâtre de Paris with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.

And now to the Sjöman version. Apart from changing the names and the locations to Swedish respective ones, and redusing the moral dilemmas of the leading roles, Vilgot Sjöman has adapted the play to the screen without doing it any harm. The leading characters are played by Bibi Andersson as Charlotte and Per Oscarsson as Jacob.

As the original Swedish title indicates, the plot takes place in Sweden i the year 1782. At the beginning of the film, the young nobleman Jacob has just returned from France to his cherished sister, Charlotte. A sweet reunion scene is followed by Charlotte's announcement that she is getting married to baron Carl Ulrik Alsmeden (played by my #1 male icon Jarl Kulle). Jacob's reaction is not the one you'd expect - he gets so frustrated that he actually kills a chicken with his bare hands. In a successful attempt of making his sister jealous, he shows interest for a young Audrey Hepburn copy of a girl, Ebba (Tina Hedström). One thing leads to another, and a stolen kiss in the dark between the siblings is the sparkle that starts a fire that never could be put out. As the immoral Count Schwartz we once again see the irreplacable Gunnar Björnstrand.

The film is a masterpiece - but you can't walk away from that deep inside disturbing feeling (as intended). I wish someone had filmed my facial expressions when the film was over. I still need to recover.

You can see the last scene of the film here. (Not for touchy people!) It's not texted, but there's hardly any dialogue neither. Translation here:
[Jarl Kulle, the man] "Get the doctor. Get the doctor!"
[old woman] "It's a healthy baby. It's a totally healthy baby."

Stills from My Sister My Love.

The film that brought Vilgot Sjöman international fame (or at least a heck of a lot of attention) was released the next year. Does the title I Am Curious (Yellow) (Jag är nyfiken - gul, 1967) ring a bell? If not, then you have missed out on something.

This film is about a girl of twenty called Lena (played by Lena Nyman). She is a sociology student who is curious of everything that has to do with life. She wants to experience everything and collects information about it, storing it in an enormous archive. She deals with relationships, sex, political activism, meditation and interviews people about the social classes in Sweden. The film is made as a pseudo documentary, allowing us in humorous side plots to see the actors' and the director's reaction to the story and each other.

Lena: Do we have a class system in Sweden?

The interviewed: It depends on the people. Undress them, and they're all the same; dress them, and you have a class system.

Quote from I Am Curious (Yellow)

Posters and stills from I Am Curious (Yellow) and (Blue).

The film raised an international outcry for its nudity and realistic intercourse scenes. The film was shortened with eleven minutes by British cencors. In the United States copies of the film were seized by U. S. Customs in January, 1968 for being obscene, and the film itself was banned as pornography in most parts of the United States. Even though the US Supreme Court overturned the anti-obscenity ban on First Amendment grounds, the film was still only screened on two venues in the country (one in New York City and one in New Jersey) in March, 1968.

However, the film's notoriety guaranteed its success, and for the next 23 years it was the most successful foreign film in the US.

We have a lot to thank Vilgot Sjöman for when it comes to the more and more obvious boycott of the horrible Hay's Code that restricted the film making from 1934 to this date. I Am Curious (Yellow), and its sequel I Am Curious (Blue) (Jag är nyfiken - blå, 1968), inspired to John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972). (The colours in the titles are of course references to the Swedish flag.)

You can see an extract from I Am Curious (Blue) here. No nudity, though.

"One of the most important pictures I have ever seen in my life."

Author Norman Mailer on I Am Curious (Yellow)

Vilgot Sjöman would later return to similar themes in his later work, but the ice had already been broken and people weren't as upset anymore. Worth mentioning, though:

1971 - Till Sex Do Us Part (original title: Troll), about a young couple who believe that they will die if they have pre-marital sex.

1974 - A Handful of Love (original title: En handfull kärlek), for which he received the Swedish motion picture award Guldbaggen (translated as "The golden beetle", I guess...).

1995 - Alfred (or Alfred Nobel), Vilgot Sjöman's last film about the inventor, industrialist and founder of the Nobel Prizes, Alfred Nobel.

In 2003 he received the Ingmar Bergman Award for his contribution to Swedish cinema. Three years later, in 2006, Vilgot died of cerebral haemorrhage, having made an unforseen mark in both national and international film history.

Vilgot Sjöman: You get a love scene with Lena. A love scene with consequences. 

Börje: What kind of consequences? 

Vilgot Sjöman: I don't know. I'll think of something. 

Quote from I Am Curious (Blue)

Harry Schein, Gunnar Björnstrand, Liv Ullman and Vilgot Sjöman.