A Lesson in Love (1954)

Not rated, but SURPRISE, SURPRISE!  It's another movie that's fundamentally about adultery.  It has some of the most messed up morals of the group too.  I'll talk about that if I remember.  But there's also some violence, some drunkenness, and some over all misogyny sewn all the way through it.  It has the tone of a rom-com because it is meant to be a rom-com.  But the whole thing is just a bummer.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

How is that owning the Ingmar Bergman box set make me dislike Bergman?  I know what few people have been following this blog are saying.  I should stop binging the Ingmar Bergman box set if it is making me dislike Ingmar Bergman.  After all, I asked for the set so I could have a deeper appreciation for Bergman.  But here I am, movie after movie, just rolling my eyes harder.  It's not like I don't like any Bergman movies.  The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander are top tier films.  Honestly, I get that the man was a genius.  It's just seeing the movies that would normally be in the Eclipse line are driving me nuts.

The big thing I need to remember is that I had incredibly similar opinions about Woody Allen when I was binging his movies and I like Woody Allen films.  I don't like Woody Allen himself.  I think the same might be true about Ingmar Bergman.  Bergman keeps making movies about how cool it is that men cheat on their spouses.  For the even fewer people who follow this blog and have also seen A Lesson in Love, you might be yelling at me that A Lesson in Love is meant to be a condemnation of infidelity.  I will argue against that pretty hard.  While the movie definitely wants David to end up with Marianne, it really has a sinister message underneath.  The one thing that we're supposed to agree with is that David is a well-meaning scoundrel.  I used to write the phrase "cake and eat it too" on this blog a lot.  That's what this movie is all about.  David starts the movie in a noble position.  He is seduced by one of his patients.  She seems younger than he is, which is super gross --but in line with what I'm getting from Bergman himself.  But he protests!  Oh man, for at least three minutes he protests.  But Bergman, because this is supposedly a comedy (which I want to discuss more if I can remember!), allows the character to flip at a certain point.  We've seen the story of how women have been coerced into extramarital affairs.  I just watched that movie with Dreams, so I at least have a leg to stand on with this.  But with this being a comedy, David has to make a flip.

He all of the sudden becomes this man free of burden.  He has met a woman who has allowed him to free himself from the shackles of commitment. He reveals that he has always been attracted to this younger girl and that the cross he has been carrying is unbearable.  We then get this message that his wife is a shrew of a woman for not understanding the challenge that he is undergoing.  To the film's credit, we find out that Marianne isn't this harpy that she's been set up to be.  But David is still the protagonist.  I wish the film was about redemption.  It dips its toe into that pool, but it isn't really about redemption, is it?  When Marianne is introduced, there's this game that the film plays on us because the characters are playing a game.  We don't realize that Marianne is David's wife until well into the game.  David and Marianne are in a train car together. David does not seem surprised to see his wife on the train, which is a bit of a lie to the audience.  He then sets up a bet with another man on the train (in the most misogynist, back-era way possible) to see which man can kiss the woman first.  It's meant to be funny.  I don't care for it.

See, we're meant to be in this place where we see David as this quiet guy who loves a bit of hijinks.  He's not, though. He's a guy who is going through such a messy separation with his wife that she's considering marrying someone she once considered boorish. There's a flashback where Marianne remembers fondly the love that she had for David, back when he still didn't suck.  She is in a torn apart apartment lamenting that she has to marry Carl-Adam.  She confesses that she doesn't want to marry Carl-Adam because she is madly in love with David.  That's a nice touch for a rom-com, but we meet Carl-Adam immediately after this moment.  She's right.  Carl-Adam is boorish.  It's done for laughs.  Bergman can't stop excusing infidelity, even something as wholesome as David and Marianne's last second love affair.  (She even tries to convince David to have premarital sex, but David is so noble in his youth that he considers this as immoral...which is what I think too!) But Carl-Adam is presented in a way where we know that he's the villain of the piece.  But from his perspective, his best friend stole his fiancée the day of their wedding.  

The insane thing, the movie keeps letting David off the hook.  There's this whole scuffle at the wedding that is played for laughs.  But ultimately, Carl-Adam pours David a drink and has one to their happy marriage.  Come on.  That's such a narrative short cut.  Maybe that's my biggest problem with the constant tales of infidelity in Bergman movies.  Even movies that are about fallout from infidelity are polishing complicated feelings out. Scenes from a Marriage is probably the most vulnerable movie about infidelity that I've seen out of his ouvre so far.  But even with that, the two kind of excuse the cruelty to one another for the sake of happiness in the long run.  With A Lesson in Love, it's worse. People just stop being angry when the joke is done.  The weird part is that the plot for Carl-Adam isn't over.  When he comes back as the chore that Marianne must marry, he becomes full on villainous. He sets up this whole scenario where David is tempted by another woman. 

The weird part is that Carl-Adam is right!  I mean, the whole thing is a smoke and mirrors thing.  David doesn't know the woman who is there to seduce him.  It's implied that she's a sex worker, not a teacher, and she's there because she's paid to be.  But the thing is, David doesn't fight her off.  It's all part of that rascal charm I was talking about earlier that I don't think hits in the least.  Carl-Adam even gets David incredibly drunk --fantasy-land drunk that doesn't exist in reality --so that he makes a spectacle over his love for this mystery woman in front of Marianne. Now, if this was a story of redemption, we'd see him fight for Marianne and reject this woman, regardless of how much alcohol is in his system.  If the message is that David only really cares for Marianne, then no amount of alcohol could stop him from getting her back.  But he does fall for Carl-Adam's plan.  Why?  Because Bergman is being cheeky.  I really believe that the man believes that you can love one person and be promiscuous with other people.  I'm not saying that it can't happen.  (Okay, I don't believe that can happen, but I'm also for other-strokes-for-other-folks.)   

The end is the most depressing thing for me.  David has this whole plan to woo Marianne back.  He takes her to this fancy hotel where they have all of these servants willing to dote on them and then Cupid just says that they are in love again?  That's the lesson in love?  Buy your spouse things when you are bad?  Come on.  I know the message is supposed to be "Remind your spouse that you love them".  But David is a turd to Marianne throughout the story.  By the end, he's pretty unredeemable and we're supposed to say that money makes things all better?  Money can't buy trust.  Again, I'm trying to bring this old world morality to a movie that is supposed to be pretty forward thinking about polygamy.  I never find these movies to be romantic.  It's getting so old.  It feels like he's just cramming this faux romantic sentiment down my throat.  

The dumbest complaint I have about the movie is that it straight up isn't funny.  Maybe it's because I'm getting so tired with Bergman, but nothing in this movie makes me crack a smile.  The crazy thing is that there are bits. But in a movie where a daughter is worried about losing her father due to a divorce, wacky hijinks don't work in the least.  It's not that Bergman can't be funny.  I laugh at silly moments in his dramas.  He does them all the time.  But an attempt at a Hollywood style Bringing Up Baby style rom-com is frustrating.  I don't like it at all.  I actually might straight up hate this movie.  It's not a bad movie.  It's a bad entry in a series of very similar movies.