On The Hulu Channel: Ingmar Bergman’s From The Life Of The Marionettes

“It was not liked but belongs among my best films, and opinion shared by few.” – Ingmar Bergman, 1987

Ingmar Bergman is not known for making the sunniest of films, but even so, From the Life of the Marionettes may catch even the most devoted fan somewhat off guard. Drenched not only in his trademark existential despair, but also the more immediate ugliness surrounding the unmotivated murder and subsequent rape (yes, in that order) of a prostitute by an upper-class businessman, this is somewhat more tactile territory for the notoriously heady filmmaker. What’s more, it’s told in a non-linear fashion, starting with the murder and then jumping to various moments on either side of the timeline to try to divine how this could have happened. And to take it a step further, the murderer and his wife are characters from a previous Bergman film, Scenes From a Marriage  – Peter and Katarina Egermann. I’ll let Bergman explain their role in that film:

“The main characters of  From the Life of the Marionettes, Peter and Katarina, appeared previously in  Scenes from a Marriage, in which they acted as counterpoints to Johan and Marianne in the first episode. In the earlier film, Peter and Katarina cannot live with each other or apart. They commit cruel acts of sabotage against each other, actions that only two individuals this close could invent. Their time together is a sophisticated and destructive dance of death. When they fight at the dinner table, they hurl the first assault on Johan’s and Marianne’s marital cardboard world, and Johan and Marianne first witness the purgatory of their every day.”

Like Scenes From a Marriage, From the Life of the Marionettes was produced for television (and, like Scenes From a Marriage, enjoyed a concurrent theatrical run), though this time in Germany rather than Sweden. Bergman was arrested for tax fraud in 1976, catapulting him into an especially depressive period and years of working abroad. In this case, it was especially fortuitous, emerging as it did from an unproduced screenplay about West German life (which was to be titled Love with No Lovers), and Germany’s apparently very friendly attitude towards onscreen nudity.

Despite being the archetype for European cinema, Bergman differs from the stereotype in one major way – he does not often portray nudity. When he does, it’s in a teasing, blink-and-you-miss-it manner (Summer with Monika  most notably) or so besides the context of scene that any arousing aspect is instantly quashed (Cries and Whispers). From the Life of the Marionettes is a major  break from this right from the start. Bergman is not shy about the world of prostitution he’s journeying into, certainly, but perhaps more notably he’s also examining a disintegrated marriage. His representation of nudity is certainly jarring, but it’s not inappropriate, and his deployment is in line with his characters. The prostitute is only revealed by force or her own desire (she covers herself, or Bergman frames her more closely, when intimidated), whereas Katarina only appears nude in a dream sequence.

“I am a voyeur,” Bergman admitted, referencing his penchant for close-ups but which belies quite a bit. “To look at somebody, to find out how the skin changes, the eyes, how all those muscles change the whole time – the lips – to me it’s always a drama.”

Though he made his first color picture in 1964 (All These Women, discussed here), Bergman did not return to that wonderful world again until 1969’s Passion of Anna, and continued to work with it for the next ten years. Though  From the Life of the Marionettes begins in color, in quickly dissolves into black and white, a decision made all the more controversial because it was produced for television. In fact, the color opening was designed to lure audiences in before they had the chance to quickly turn away, though Bergman ends up making a cohesive aesthetic statement by returning to it at the film’s end.

“It is a black and white film,” Bergman said in his defense. “I can’t explain why, but it is a black and white film.”

“Color is never true,” he noted in a separate interview. “Black and white is – strange to say – more true, because then your fantasy is created; you have created it yourself.”

I have to say, as fond as I am of the Bergman color films when it really works (Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander), I much prefer his monochrome pictures. The starkness  enhances  his isolation, heightening his particular brand of emotion and explicit coldness. Woody Allen used black-and-white in Manhattan because he thought it made people nostalgic for the present, but with Bergman it almost always makes his environment more threatening, which is key to the experience of From the Life of the Marionettes. Peter is undergoing some sort of traumatic psychological episode, and anyplace he is is a terror.

Bergman was quick to position the film within his own biography: “What was most important at the time was that I was going through a difficult patch. I was in a difficult situation far away from my home country to which I didn’t want to return. I had already tried to express this pain and suffering by making The Serpent’s Egg, but without success. In From the Life of the Marionettes, however, I found a way – a formula – a very definite and clear formula to which I could transfer and remodel my pain, my anguish, and all of my hardships to something concrete. To be honest, I really like that film.”

As for me, I found it a uniquely unpleasant film to watch, but the more I think on it, the more I find to admire. I’m not sure if Bergman completely found that “definite and clear formula” for his pain, as he had done so successfully so many times in the past. There gets to a point in the film wherein Katarina is loudly recounting the precise number of orgasms she had with her husband (though not necessarily by him), that it gets more than a little exhibitionist.

But when you get to scenes of Peter’s mother trying to figure out how to make it day-to-day or hinted issues of repressed homosexuality or especially the scene depicting the events immediately preceding the murder, Bergman really finds a way to mirror the relative mundanity of his scenario (examining psychological conflict without the existential element usually present) in his dramatics. When, in Through a Glass Darkly  or Cries and Whispers, Harriet Andersson screams and writhes in agony, it is as much a cry of the soul as it is of the body or mind, but here, Bergman takes a much more scientific, analytical approach, making inappropriate any similar performance gestures. That he still comes up with a collection of unsatisfying, inconclusive explanations for it all reveals the emptiness of such typical searches, transforming that mundanity into something quietly profound.

Presented on Hulu in standard definition, From the Life of the Marionettes  fares better than its low-res counterparts. The sequences in color possess striking contrast; the black-and-white images surprising radiance. It’s not great, mind you, but it’s better than I was expecting, and relatively free of the usual issues that plague streaming services (compression artifacts most notably). Bergman employs a lot of wide shots here, and detail remains crisp. In scenes requiring more darkness, the picture never really falls apart, and the dream sequence – bathed in whites – is even more compelling.

Of course those sequences, the latter one in particular, cry for a Blu-ray release. This being among Bergman’s favorites of his films (though who knows if his mind changed in the twenty more years he was to live), it’d be only right to give it a proper platform, and the surprisingly audacious aesthetic of the film (particularly for a TV movie) make it a perfect fit for high-definition. The intricacies of the film’s production would be of interest as a supplement, as well as a video essay about Bergman’s employment of dream sequences. It’d be especially great to have something about Bergman’s period in exile, as the only other film in The Criterion Collection from this period, Autumn Sonata, remains a fairly barebones release (though, having recently seen that on 35mm, I wouldn’t mind a Blu-ray there either; hell, Blu-rays for everyone!).

In his review for  Time Out, British film critic Tom Milne noted that “[From the Life of the Marionettes i  a trip through Bergman territory that we’ve all taken before,” but I’m not sure I’d draw the same conclusion, and certainly not so summarily. Bergman’s rigor in revealing the horror of existence is the same as ever, but by centering the film around a specific instance of violence, he seems here more concerned with analyzing the world around him than the world within. If that seems a minor distinction, one need only look at the simplicity of his prior scenarios (two women go to an island; a sister is dying; a marriage is falling apart) to see how deep he typically travels.

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