MUBI

Just finished it, and I have to say I liked it a lot. Like some odd mix of classic Bergman, the Third Man and Eyes Wide Shut. The analysis at the end is spot on. Michael Mann spent ten years in libraries to come to the same conclusion over 1000 pages in his ‘Fascists’ and ‘The Dark Side of Democracy’. Just like Eyes Wide Shut, I enjoyed the lonely journeys, the cabaret and the surreal. Unlike it, there was some real commentary on history and modern society. To paraphrase Hans; the old world was built on an idea of human goodness. It will be replaced by a rational idea based on human possibilites and limitations. It is quite logical.

Altough Bergman said he was relieved when he realised there was no God, one always gets the feeling in his films that he is afraid that something may have been rationalised away in the process when collective (political) society came to that conclusion, too. It didn’t just happen in Germany in ’33.

One of Bergman’s darker films. I usually find some sunlight in most of them, but this was extremely bleak. Next up: Aus dem leben der Marionetten