dir : Ingmar Bergman Sweden 1968

A man and wife get caught up in civil war even though living in isolation on an island.
Yep,bleak film about being trapped by outside events and the banal violence of war.
Having said that,contains one of the funniest scenes I’ve watched for many a moon.
Max von Sydow,playing the husband attempts to shoot a chicken from 6 feet away.
Liv Ullmann and their farm is being bombed by collateral fire,they are fleeing and need to take food.
They argue,he aims,he misses,they argue,he grabs chicken,they get in car and escape.Pure Fawlty Towers.

Bergman sets up a country idyll,the farm is run-down but peaceful,their radio doesn’t work,they buy fish from a friendly neighbour,
they drink wine outside in the sun,they squabble but clearly love eachother.Both musicians that have escaped an earlier uprising and now
make a meagre living selling linginberries in town,reached only by ferry.Ullmann is the bossy and capable partner whilst sad-faced Max mopes about
and suffers agoraphobia.With the radio not working,the two have no idea of a new civil war brewing.They are then rounded up and forced to be
interviewed by the revolutionaries,later to have their apolitical answers dubbed over to seemingly give support.When the other side gains control of area
they are captured,he is tortured and punished for their supposed collaboration.This is meted out in a schoolroom which has been commandeered,so
behind the unsmiling interregators are sweet children’s drawings of happy suns and rainbows.The banality of war and the turning upside down
of the world is brilliantly evoked.

Liv Ullmann,sans makeup throughout apart from smears of mud or blood,wishes for a baby even though she soon realises the kind of world it would
come into.Bergmann, cleverly uses quiet interludes between the fear and violence,to reveal character…bucolic,touching scenes between husband
and wife,full of longing and regret.Both of them soon have to deal with appeasing people,soldiers,bureaucrats…she will be unfaithful with a benefactor,
beautifully played by Gunnar Bjornstrand,a damaged colonel who prevented them going to a concentration camp.Max will be forced to shoot this man
for corruption charges,but aware of the infidelity he aims a little straighter than the chicken.Now the husband has changed,been brutalised so when a young
soldier appears at the farm,again over Liv’s remonstrations,he kills him and takes his new boots and rifle.Shocked and weary,they plan an escape off the island with a fisherman and out on the sea the fisherman suicides by slipping off the boat.The bleakness doesn’t stop.The bleakness amplifies when the small boat is
caught in the doldrums of floating corpses,dead soldiers,hundreds of them,Max uses a pole to steer their passage through.

Sven Nykvist’s black and white cinematography is stunning,simple framing and clever when the action is
also being captured by the revolutionaries lights and camera as in one scene where an islander is executed like
the painting by Goya,”The Third of May”,all lit up by arc lights.Hand held camera is used very effectivey in crowd shots
when they are being moved like cattle.In the interludes between husband and wife,he will focus on one face,the annoying
switching to and fro of television avoided.

Two very human people,clinging to eachother even through betrayal,dazed and shocked,they are homeless,poor but not
quite defeated…in the boat on the now sluggish sea,Liv has a dream…of burning roses and new life..if only she could remember
what she HAD to remember.”Something one of us had said but which I had forgotten. I started to cry as I remembered.”

5 *****