Daily Archives: June 17, 2015

Thirst (Törst)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Herbert Grevenius based on short stories by Birgit Tengroth
Sweden/1949
Svensk Filmindustri
First viewing/Hulu

[box] “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche[/box]

Man, oh man, this is dark.  Almost 90 minutes of torment and marital discord.  Since it’s Bergman, it has its moments.

Rut and Bertil, a young married couple, are traveling by train to Stockholm after a holiday in Italy.  Rut basically puts all his energy into staying calm and sane while Bertil pours out her misery and berates him.  We flash back to the events that got her to this place.

First, she became pregnant by a man who did not reveal his marriage until their affair had almost reached its natural conclusion.  She wanted the child but was forced to abort it. The abortion left her sterile.  The nurse told her to cheer up as she still had her glamorous career in the ballet but of course her knee gave out and ended that.  She takes all this out on Rut non-stop.  She also continually harps on his earlier failure to end an affair with Viola, a fellow ballerina with a bad heart, soon enough to suit her.

Throughout we also witness Viola’s sad story.  At some point she married.  Her husband is now dead and she is totally absorbed by grief.  Her emotional state is not improved by unwanted sexual advances by her obnoxious psychologist and her lesbian former ballerina colleague.  The ending holds out some shred of hope for Rut and Bertil but not so much for poor Viola.

This looks good and the acting is great.  I think the movie suffers from its script. It’s distressing without any pay off.  At least when Bergman writes this sort of thing, he generally has something to say about the human condition that makes the torment worthwhile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWW1a1bZ9Tc

Clip – by this time one’s sympathies are firmly on the side of the husband

The Inspector General
Directed by Henry Koster
Written by Philip Rapp and Harry Kurnitz based on the novel by Nikolai Gogol
1949/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] The Mayor: Your Excellency – he took bribes, he drank all my wine, he-he-he yelled out the windows, he even made love to my wife! How could… How could I doubt that he was an Inspector General?[/box]

Your reaction to this musical comedy will depend almost entirely on your appreciation of the multi-talented Danny Kaye.  I can sort of take him or leave him and overall I enjoyed the film but was not wowed by it.

This is the Gogol novel, for some reason moved from Russia to Hungary.  As the film opens, we attend a town council meeting headed by the mayor (Gene Lockhart).  This gang of crooks is very worried because there is an inspector general prowling around in their district rooting out corruption and punishing it severely.

Georgi (Kaye) is an illiterate stooge in the travelling show of Yakov (Walter Slezak), a gypsy. He is fired for being unable to sell an invalid peasant Yakov’s worthless patent medicine. He wanders, starving, through the country side and is finally unjustly arrested for stealing a horse.  He is carrying a scrap of paper, which he can’t read, that has been signed by Napoleon.  When he is brought in, the council believes he is the inspector general despite his rags.  They dress him in finery and treat him to a lavish banquet.

The rest of the movie is filled with comic incidents as the town attempts to bribe Georgi and later to attempt to assassinate him.  Justice and love triumphs in the end.  With Elsa Lanchester as the Mayor’s seductive wife and Alan Hale as a member of the council.

This has some clever lyrics and dialogue and is entertaining overall.  I’m immune to Kaye’s mugging but his singing and dancing is quite good.  He certainly puts 110% of his energy into everything he does.  The Warner Bros. supporting cast is sterling as always.  My enjoyment was not enhanced by the faded public domain print of the film available from Netflix.

Trailer