Thirst (1949)

Not rated, but this is a movie once again about cruelty in marriage.  A man forces the protagonist to get an abortion that leaves her sterile.  Also, there's an image of murder (I have to word it that way because it is too complicated to explain).   There's also a scene that really borders on sexual assault and taking advantage of a drunk woman.  It's a pretty pessmistic film that has lots of stuff that kids shouldn't see.  Still, tonally, it isn't too explicit.  It's only if you are paying attention that you realize how bleak the film really is.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

Oddly enough, despite being about infidelity once again, this one feels a little different?   The weird thing is that I've probably seen this one before, despite not remembering any of it. The good news is that, if I can knock this blog out, I might have two days before I have to write anything.   That brings me a little bit of comfort.  It's a weird productivity that doesn't need to exist.  Keeping all that in mind, I would like to say that getting a lot of views on the last blog in the first half-hour kind of made me have enough of a dopamine rush to finish out this streak of blogs.

One of the weirdest things about Thirst is that it borderline doesn't make sense.  It's not like Persona, which doesn't make sense because Bergman is being obtuse.  The plot of this story is so simple that when something doesn't make sense, it's baffling.  (I mean, I just defined "baffling" by saying "something doesn't make sense."  I'm not always a stellar writer.)   Here's what I'm trying to get here.  The story is about a married couple who give off just-past-newlywed vibes.  They are having problems because of his restlessness coupled with her traumatic history.  They go on a trip, bringing out both their affection and resentment of one another.  Very simple plot.  Every so often, we get a little context about why people act the way that they do through various flashbacks.  

But then the couple's story would be put on hiatus and we'd have this scene with this lady and her abusive therapist.  So I looked it up.  On Wikipedia.  Trust me, it tends to be my source for solving basic problems.  See, I pay attention to the movie better than most.  The treadmill kind of forces you to focus on the screen or else you are stuck focusing on how much time is left on the treadmill.  I don't have a phone in front of me.  Honestly, I recommend it a lot.  I mention all of this to stress that I give a lot of my brain power into unpacking movies.  And some things just stymie me enough to use Wikipedia.  And that's when I figured out that these minor characters were occasionally given a little extra cinematic real estate than I thought appropriate for tertiary characters.

Now, if I was reading this blog, I would be the first to argue that it's all one thing.  There are juxtaposing themes that might act as a foil to Ruth and Bertil's struggling marriage.  I bet that Bergman even justified some of his choices this way.  He was a young dude when he made this movie. It's one of his earlier films.  Sure, still a genius.  But those beats often didn't align.  That's when I found out that this was inspired by a book of short stories.  So much made sense when that puzzle piece was put into place.  Bergman is trying to adapt the best of the book, even if the book's individual elements didn't necessarily align with the film that he was trying to make.  The whole subplot with the abusive therapist leading into a homosexual encounter almost felt like it was its own side movie.  It shouldn't have mattered that Bertil knew her at one point.  That's all arbitrary.  Instead, we kind of have to make these logical leaps to moments.  In fact, I have to go as far as to say that I'm mostly going to be ignoring the Viola storyline because it seems wildly underdeveloped.  The only thing that I can really say is that it stresses the notion that women are often preyed upon and are expected to hold up unreasonable standards.  I mean, Viola's story ends in her suicide because of all of the horrible things that happen to her.

Actually, I do want to say one more thing about the Viola story. Valborg's seduction of Viola is meant to come across as predatory.  But here's the thing.  I want to apply a little historical queer theory to the film.  This is 1949.  Early Bergman.  Yeah, it's a little gross to assume that every lesbian out in the world is trying to trick heterosexuals into homosexual relationships.  But Valborg, as scary as she comes across in her final scene, isn't gross through the entire piece.  If anything, the scene comes across as "lonely."  (Note: I almost made a comparison to Port of Call, the other movie on this disc, because I forgot it was from a different film.  These are reasons that I have to push myself to get these blogs out because there is a line where information starts to blur.) Is this scene progressive?  I'm going to lean towards "no."  Is it impressive that it exists at all?  Maybe.  I don't know.  I do like that Valborg, for that final scene of manipulation, comes across more as sad than evil.  Also, Viola is no cup of tea, even if I do sympathize with her for most of the film.

Okay, back to the main story of Ruth.  Honestly, I don't care about Bertil.  I really don't.  Like, I'm going to talk about him in relationship to marriage.  But Ruth is the protagonist of this piece.  The funny thing is that I use Ruth's story as almost a cautionary tale against infidelity.  Don't get me wrong.  Bergman, for all of his justification for casual adultery in his later films, gives people heaps of misery.  But this is one of Bergman's early films.  I don't know if he's not the horndog that he'll be later in life or he's just playing the game.  After all, those early Bergmans all actually look more like Hollywood films than his later works.  Anyway, the movie starts out with Raoul coming across as an absolute demon when it comes to how he treats women.  He seduces Ruth, only to tell her that he's married once the deed is done.  When caught by his wife, he scolds both women for being so weak and then demands that Ruth get an abortion, which leaves her sterile.  

I mean, the very notion that Ruth comes across as simply ignorant of being the other woman in a relationship takes a lot of that responsibility off her shoulders.  Yes, she still deals with consequences for the events of the story. But Ruth also becomes someone with trauma that goes beyond what she caused.  On top of that, Raoul --despite kind of getting away with it --seems miserable in his relationship with his wife.  We don't really have such a clear indication of vice and subsequent punishment that we get in later films.  From a guy who is really annoyed by how mean people are in later Bergman films, there's something oddly refreshing seeing Bergman condemn something that he would champion later.  I have to be a prude because these are the things that get my gears working.

There is one thing that bugs me about the movie, shy of the confusing side plots.  This is a story about the slow poisoning of a marriage.  Neither one of the spouses is necessarily evil or at fault for the tension rising in the relationship.  But Bertil (I know, I said I didn't care about him) seems to want to save the marriage despite having some pretty crappy habits.  It's when we see him beat Ruth over the head with a bottle, trying to kill her, that it all kind of reads wrong.  Even worse, Bergman doesn't really stick with that image.  It's meant to be incredibly shocking, seeing him kill his wife in a fit of annoyance.   But then we have her resurrected (and teased in the dark) and it just feels like he wasn't allowed to do anything too shocking with his film.  It completely nerfs the film.  If the film is a grounded story about the slow growing cancer in the marriage, that moment seems to take a shortcut for something unearned.  The problem is that the film is stuck on a train.  A lot of stories intentionally take a small story --like a couple's train ride --and imbue it with life-or-death stakes.  In this case, Bergman wanted us to believe that a husband would kill his wife over a vacation.  It's just...I don't believe it.  It feels forced.  He wanted to earn it, but I don't see anything about his character that would explain that scene.  It would have felt important to purge it.  If he really wanted it, he needed to undo it immediately to let us not feel like it was a fakeout.  Instead, we have a scene in-between and explain it all away as a dream with a happy ending.

My biggest problem with Thirst is that it is a bit underdone.  Like, it's still an incredibly filmed movie.  But there's stuff that I would have avoided.  Hear that, Ingmar Bergman: one of the greatest directors of all time?  I would have done other things!