Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

Not rated, but this is another Bergman movie about adultery and the casual cruelty that people inflict on one another.  There's a lot of what I'd describe as "kinda nudity".  It's at a distance.  The characters are naked.  Often, you don't know if you are actually seeing what you are seeing.  There is one shot that clearly has nudity up close.  The film also has a scene that can at least be labeled as sexual assault if not full-on rape.  This leads into a character prostituting herself.  There's also a little bit of violence and blood and a character attempts suicide.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

Do you know how happy I would be if I could just get this whole thing done while I have time?  I mean, I absolutely don't have the time to write this blog in one sitting.  But I'm going to be in a stage of constant overwhelmed-ness for as long as I can think and it would be nice to have a really nice, completed blog about Sawdust and Tinsel before what few insights I had about the movie disappear from me.

I am honestly worried about that, by the way.  I was watching this movie and I had these lovely thoughts about the film.  But I'm stressed out now and all of those thoughts seem to be leaving me.  I'm worried that, the further I get out from the film, the more this blog will turn into something about overall vibes as opposed to poignant analysis.  There's a slight burden to write about Sawdust and Tinsel as well, considering that it might be one of Bergman's bangers.  I mean, I liked it.  I actually liked it more than a lot of the other ones that I watched in the box set, but I wonder if I'm burdened by the knowledge that this is one of his classics.  I always feel like I have to open my heart a little more to the movies that carry a certain amount of renown rather than simply absorbing it with a blank slate.  Is it a bad thing that I liked a classic, even if it falls into a lot of the tropes that Bergman often hits?

I mean, I am honestly brutally tired of the fact that Bergman keeps making movies about infidelity.  With this case, maybe Bergman is landing on the same page I am about infidelity.  This is one of the movies where the characters' problems all stem from the fact that they are cheating on the person that they promised that they wouldn't cheat on.  That's, at least, progress for Bergman, who often treats infidelity as simply a fact of life.  But Sawdust and Tinsel doesn't exactly fight that thought either.  Like many of Bergman's other films, these characters keep welcoming infidelity into their lives.  These moments are almost dictated by fate rather than the product of willful choices coupled with negligence. Albert and Anne's relationship is one that is based on infidelity.  It's one of those weird Bergman relationships where she's a 10 and he's a 4.  But that seems to be the norm of these things so I choose to ignore that fact.  These two are the product of workplace infidelity.  Albert hasn't seen his family in three years because he lives a nomadic lifestyle with the circus.  Anne is aware of the fact that he technically is married with children and not-so-secretly curses that Albert must interact with these people, albeit irresponsibly and sparingly.  Still, she knows what's up.  The thing that Bergman perpetuates is that, even though Albert and Anne seem to thrive in each other's companies, they are bound to find partners in other places.

In the case of Albert, which treats the Albert-Anne coupling as the healthy relationship, Albert yearns for a life with his wife, who is thriving without him.  If anything, it is because she does not need him.  I can't help but think to Scenes from a Marriage, knowing that the power dynamic has shifted that makes the characters somehow more attractive.  Anne does the thing that I just saw in the last Bergman movie (which I'm ashamed to say that I don't remember the title to) that had this chaste character tease (IT'S CALLED THE DEVIL'S EYE!) Don Juan only to become actually seduced by him.  Maybe I don't necessarily like Bergman's characterization of women.  There's this idea that women go around gaining pleasure at titillating men only to become enraptured by them.  Anyway, with the case of Sawdust and Tinsel, at least it all falls apart because of their respective cruelty to the others.

But what I found fascinating is the cruelty of everyone.  Bergman movies aren't exactly the healthiest places to hang out.  What's funny is that I keep viewing any artist in these movies as representations of Bergman himself.  If my job is to analyze these movies, I'm going to make these leaps.  Albert, in my head, is Bergman.  Oddly enough, I think that many of us view Ingmar Bergman as a hoity-toity, artsy-fartsy type, more in line with Mr. Sjuberg (I hope I have the right character).  But I view Bergman more as the type that views film as a subserviant medium to classic theatre.  So, if my forced analysis holds true, Bergman views himself as the circus director, trying to wrangle his troupe of actors from one project to another with the hope of moderate success.  Anyway, there's almost this expectation in the film that Sjuberg and Albert would be comrades in the trenches.  Both of these characters have had to be vulnerable to their audiences, presented exaggerated forms of themselves for audiences.  They both have sacrificed a sense of normalcy for art.  But with the dynamic of Sjuberg and Albert, it becomes this bullying project of high art versus low art, tying into the title of Sawdust and Tinsel.  The sawdust and the tinsel, not being literal in the case of the movie, are how the circus achieves a sense of wonder while the high art theatre embraces pagentry and high brow performance.  These two should get along, but instead there is a scorn for the lower art.

For such a smarty-pants film, you'd think that I would have the presence of mind to ignore something completely arbitrary, right?  I mean, this is a movie from a smart person for smart people.  But the entire time, I just kept thinking that Albert would have destroyed Frans in that fight.  For the sake of the story, Albert needs to get to a real low point.  Losing to Frans is the thing that drives him to partake in a one-player game of Russian Roulette, ultimately leading him to slaughter the bear.  But from a practical perspective, Frans is a bit of a wimp.  He's a guy who has had it cushy his entire life.  (I'm imbuing this character with a silver spoon in his mouth, despite the fact that we get criminally little about the character.)  I say that he doesn't really have the gumption because he treats sex like a power grab.  He dominates women because that is whom he is able to manipulate.  He's a weak dude who likes playing sexual games because he gets off not on the act itself, but on the humiliation that comes along with that.  Albert, however, has been on the road for three years.  He's built like a cement truck and has probably fought his way out of more than one scrap.  He's pissed and this is his house.  You would think that a guy like that would completely destroy someone like Frans.  Still, we have this moment.

Before I forget, I don't know what it was about Sawdust and Tinsel, but it reminded me more of a Kurosawa movie, like Rashomon, than another Bergman movie.  Oddly enough, it was the clown Frost and that despondent look in his face that reminded me of that movie.  Okay, moving on.

The funny thing about this movie, once again about cruelty, is that none of the characters are all that likable.  The movie starts off with the humilation of Frost.  Frost is our most likable character and he's a wet mop throughout the movie.  He's threatened by an insane Albert, who is willing to take Frost's life at the end almost as a suicide pact between performers. But Albert acts like Frost and he are friends who are willing to die for one another.  But we have to remember that the film starts off with the other circus performers getting the giggles knowing that Frost's wife is unfaithful to him and likes to seduce soldiers by the shore.  I have to imagine that Bergman is commenting on the myth of the found family.  Sure, these people stick together at the end of the movie and continue their travels together, even sticking together during the fight between Albert and Frans.  But they all still derive joy from Frost's lowest moment.  In fact, we see Albert guffawing in the flashback to their saddest time together. They find joy in the fact that Frost, who never really seems to do anyone harm, is the most overwhelmed by life's constant sadness.  It should also be pointed out that, as much as the circus folk stick together during the fight in tent, none of them really try breaking it up.  Even beyond that thought is the notion that the audience for the fight seemed to glean more joy out of a fight between a cast member and a member of the audience.  Bergman thinks very little about the integrity of humanity. 

Sawdust and Tinsel is pretty great.  I don't quite know why.  I think when Bergman gives us characters that are a little bit more esoteric, there's something about the storytelling that becomes fascinating.  Had this been one of my first Bergmans, I think I would have enjoyed it more.  I am very tired of the notion of cruel infidelity as a casual act. The next movie I'm writing, also a Bergman, does the same thing and it's just depressing.  But he does what he does and I guess I can't complain about that too much.