Crisis (1946)

Not rated, mainly because it was 1946 and NOT AMERICA.  While being tonally very mild, the actual content is actually quite upsetting.  A father figure manipulates the protagonist into a sexual situation (left vague...but not that vague). There is also a suicide in this sequence. Like many of Bergman's movies, one of the motifs is humanity's cruelty to one another.  Still, not rated.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

Why is melodrama so comfortable to watch?  I mean, I know the answer.  Like with Crisis, straight-up melodrama deals with archetypes and tropes.  I really don't have to think too much to understand a character.  In those scenarios, like with Crisis, we can hit emotion far better.  There's something absolutely blasphemous about my artsy-fartsiness.  I hate that I say this, but I actually tend to like early Bergman more than later Bergman. (I also kind of like pre-cubism Picasso quite a bit too, but that's almost me being a contrarian).  I've actually seen Crisis before.  I own a lot of the early Criterion Eclipse box sets.  I shotgunned that entire box set remarkably quickly back in the day.  I'll tell you what.  If Crisis is a reminder of what I liked back then, I bet you that I still like Bergman's early stuff better.

Now, before I go too deep, I have to wonder what the logic of connecting Smiles of a Summer Night to Crisis.  The most obvious answer is that they wanted to start off the Bergman set with a hit that wasn't it's #1 movie, but also was enough to get you excited to watch the box set and then transition into the older stuff.  But what accidentally happened is that these movies became an odd double feature about how Bergman is mildly obsessed with parental figures having sexual attractions to their non-biologically related children.  To paraphrase Dr. Doofenshmirtz, "it's just odd that it happened twice." What is that?  It's a very specific taboo that not a lot of people talk about.  I mean, I'm sure they do.  I just tend to stick my head in the sand.  But both of these stories normalize having crushes on your age appropriate stepparent.  I don't like it.  I'll tell you that.  Part of what makes Bergman tick, even in these early days, is  a sense of discomfort.  It's not like Bergman is a guy who lives off of shock value.  Honestly, as bleak as these movies get and even as controversial as these movies get, there's nothing all that graphic in the movie.  If Bergman is a thinking-man's director, he makes you invest in what ultimately should be a taboo.

But while Smiles of a Summer Night encouraged that taboo relationship, Nelly's relationship with Jack (who is dealing with the taboo of parental relationships twice) is meant to be abhorrent. But it's through the use of archetypes that we can shortcut our way into an understanding of the greater message of the film.  Even though I've expressed my love for archetypes, they don't offer the intellectual challenge of Bergman's other works.  (Again, my brain gets tired.) Jack hits all of the beats of the sleezy guy.  He wears a pinstripe suit.  He smokes excessively.  There are moments that require him to act human that he absolutely refuses to answer that call. He's scum.  Now, here's where the problems of melodrama come in.

As much as I like this stuff, because characters are archetypes, they don't really reflect the real world.  We can recognize Jack coming a mile away.  Jack's going to do anything he can to get ahead.  He even states (and then that quote is replayed in a nightmare) that Jack only loves himself.  There's no doubt that when Jack swears that he loves Nelly, it's all for show.  It's nice as an audience member to point fingers and say, "Boy, isn't that guy just awful!"  But it also is incredibly jarring for what happens to Jack.  Because Jack is almost entirely characterized by what we expect him to be, Jack's suicide almost doesn't feel appropriate for the film. (Again, this is a movie that I like.)  The other characters even establish this idea.  They straight up say that Jack loves himself too much to commit suicide.  In terms of servng the melodrama that the movie is milking pretty hard in Crisis, it does give the movie a bombastic emotional ending that kind of works with the tone of the film.  But it also doesn't make sense.  Bergman almost has characters lie to us throughout so we don't see that ending coming.

In terms of a message, it might almost accidentally deliver a message about the multifaceted elements of characters and people.  I have no doubt that Bergman is one of the greatest cinematic geniuses of all time.  He's a smarter dude than I am.  I could keep writing about this, but I can't harp on that concept enough. I get that there's a very real chance that Bergman did this intentionally.  But Jack stepping out of his caricature is almost a fascinating concept in itself.  It both supports the whole expectations of a subgenre coupled with the chaos that real life offers.  The canonical world of Nelly in Crisis would have us believe that Jack, for all of his bluster and bravado, was actually truly moved by what might have been a real love for Nelly.  His shameful tricks to seduce Nelly, telling the story of being a criminal so that he could come across as the bad boy, is an embarassment to him.  Compound all of that with the accusations that Jenny hurls at him, maybe it is possible that Jack would commit suicide.  Sure, she claims that the gun that he owns is a cap gun, but that's immediately undone by a successful (the worst word I can pick!) suicide.  But I also love the idea that people are masks.

Maybe there's a narrative where Bergman is saying that we all put on masks.  Jack, when he is talking to Nelly's Mutti, claims that he's going to put that old pinstripe suit away. He's aware that the suit is almost part of his character.  That entire conversation with Mutti reads more like a chance to sew discord.  That's Jack's entire motivation for most of the movie, by the way.  He's this little evil imp who just loves to bring a bit more chaos to the people he meets.  But if we read that scene differently (which I am actually hesitant to do), it could be that Jack is honestly coming to grips with his own place in this world.  It's oddly romantic thinking that Jack finds value in himself because he sees Nelly as someone who is objectively good.  (I'm still not loving this read, mainly because I don't think that Nelly gets enough screentime to really support that interpretation.)  But in terms of the end of the movie, it could be read as that this is the door that opens a bit for Jack to become the character that ends the movie.  It's unfortunate because we don't get much of a sliding gradual shift.  Instead, we have a lot going on really quickly and we're left to pick up some pieces.

I can't help but equate Crisis to what America was doing with the women's pictures in the '40s and '50s.   Part of what defines Nelly is not what she does.  Nelly, for being the anchor of the film (and I'm now sorry that I don't have more to say about Mutti), is incredibly reactionary.  Often, she's defined by what is expected of by society.  It's odd that the man that is rooted for by the town (but not necessarily by the audience) is Ulf.  Ulf is significantly older than Nelly, but has harbored a crush for a really long time.  I mean, let's unpack that for a second.  If he's been crushing on her for that long, we have to look at inappropriate ages.  Sometimes it's cool to take cultural factors into account.  Sometimes, you can be really judgy and look down on the implication made.  Right here?  I'm looking down on the implication made.  

But there's the bigger red flag.  Nelly is kind of treated poorly because she's not madly in love with Ulf, who seems fine at best.  There's almost an expectation put on her to marry this dude who is not at all attractive to her.  Similarly, hasn't Nelly really done enough by just being friendly to him?  There's that whole misunderstanding that starts and ends with "If a woman is nice to a man, there is must be romantic feelings."  But Ulf...sucks?  Like, he's boring and gross.  Great, he's nice to her.  That doesn't mean that he owns her.  I know.  I'm White Knighting again pretty hard.  It's just that I'm glad that the end isn't expressly pointing out that the two of them get together.  There's no happy wedding and I like that a lot.  (I did have some stuff on my mind while watching this.  I actively watched it, but my mind drifted a bit.  If they got married, I have a drastically different vibe about the end of the movie.) 

But I like melodrama!  I like this Bergman because I can write about it with a degree of confidence.  Sure, it's the bumper bowling of Bergman, but sometimes I do like to watch movies and kind of get them.