Ingmar Bergman

Broken Dreams: Sawdust and Tinsel, Journey into Autumn

55 Broken Dreams Sawdust and Tinsel, Journey into Autumn Sawdust and Tinsel and its immediate successor, A Lesson in Love, both have distinctive flavors unique in strength if not in kind in Bergman’s work; and they are at almost opposite poles. A Lesson in Love is arguably the warmest and funniest of all Bergman ’s films, characterized by an overall atmosphere of relaxed good nature. Sawdust and Tinsel has a tone of savage bitterness and rage that nowhere else in Bergman’s work erupts with such intensity or establishes itself so unequivocally as the central creative impulse. It is discernible elsewhere though, even, very muted, in the occasional tartness that serves to spice the prevailing good humor of A Lesson in Love. People often express surprise that Beethoven could have worked on his fifth and sixth symphonies simultaneously; if that is surprising, then the proximity in time of A Lesson in Love to Sawdust and Tinsel is hardly less so. But a little reflection on the complexities of an artist’s creative life, or even on the complexities of human life itself, should be sufficient to remind us that this proximity is not really so surprising. It should serve, however, as a valuable reminder 56 robin wood of how completely an artist Bergman at his best is. There is a tendency (and certain of his films encourage it) to read his films primarily as personal revelations, as the direct expression of a private anguish. His best films, on the contrary, achieve the autonomy of great works of art: they are the creations of an artist exploring and developing the possibilities of a given subject, related to his own personal attitudes and inner conflicts, certainly (what work of any value isn’t?), but not restricted to them in significance. Though his films are unmistakably products of the same personality, each has its own peculiar distinguishing character , its own particular artistic integrity. Sawdust and Tinsel expresses a view of life one can hardly find balanced or objective. Clearly, in a sense, Bergman “meant” it; but it must not be taken as absolute. Though it is not as narrow as first impressions and the introductory flashback might suggest, its peculiar intensity and narrowness limit Sawdust and Tinsel, but they also give it its distinctive character and hence its value as the expression of one aspect of the Bergman world. The whole film gives the impression of having been made by the artist in the sort of hypersensitive, “overwrought” condition D. H. Lawrence describes as Ursula Brangwen’s after the first round of her love battle with Skrebensky in The Rainbow: Her life was always only partial at this time, never did she live completely. There was the cold, unloving part of her. Yet she was madly sensitive. She could not bear herself. When a dirty, redeyed old woman came begging of her in the street, she started away as from an unclean thing. And then, when the old woman shouted acrid insults after her, she winced, her limbs palpitated Broken Dreams 57 with insane torment, she could not bear herself. Whenever she thought of the red-eyed old woman, a sort of madness ran in inflammation over her flesh and brain, she almost wanted to kill herself. And in this state, her sexual life flamed into a kind of disease within her. She was so overwrought and sensitive, that the mere touch of coarse wool seemed to tear her nerves.2 Except that an artist only in that state would be quite incapable of the sustained imaginative creation of a Sawdust and Tinsel. This intensely physical sensitivity informs Sawdust and Tinsel : there is a shot near the beginning of bent weeds that a cart wheel passes over and presses down as the first raindrops splash into an adjacent puddle. No other Bergman film, not even The Virgin Spring, which has a more detached presentation, evokes quite such intense and consistent physical empathy in the spectator : one is reminded of Bergman’s great admiration for Arthur Penn. This physical quality is established from the outset. Consider the opening shots: (1) Camera static; caravans silhouetted against the skyline, slowly moving. (2) Water; the reflection of a bridge, then of the caravans, inverted, moving across it. The camera tilts up slowly to frame the circus as it crosses. (3) Forward tracking shot of trees from below; rising...