Bergaman's Misgivings, Fellini's, Memories

...Scenes says it should be Second, despite many extraordinary sequences, it is a high-class soap opera Bergman is unsure of his attitude toward ms subject and, so, gives us neither a portrait of a specific marriage nor insight into the institution He misses both the mundane and the metaphysical As m all of his films, the director speaks here (through Manane) about the tenuousness of communication, and marriage might indeed be a way of getting at this In no other life situation are we confronted as immediately and as frequently with the difficulties of combining privacy with closeness, of letting another remain silent without becoming frightened or angry But instead of exploring these issues, Bergman has his characters tell us about the pain of living in a world where values are imposed, about the need for creativity and the iron cage of order, about the fact that people and pleasures are imperfect, and how we miss the little that is in the quest for the more that isn't Well, we know all that What about marriage...

...Fascism, the dulling of intelligence, a conditioning which stifles the imagination, and any genuineness Because the film concerns a town, it is the history of a town, it is the metaphor of enclosure " In fact, Titta's remembrances are more enchanted than Fellini's account suggests, and Amarcord is often ravishing, though not resonant...

...Even the titles introducing the film's six sections reveal Bergman's uneasiness "The Art of Sweeping Under the Carpet" has the ring of a woman's magazine article, for example, yet the segment is about the tragic consequences of evasion "The Vale of Tears" suggests irony in its exaggeration, yet its story deals with suffering in the extreme Generally the titles serve to distance us from the action and to mock it, but the distancing serves no didactic purpose and there is nothing funny in what we see When the movie opens Manane and Johan, 35 and 42, respectively, are celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary He is a professor at the Psychotechnical Institute and she is a divorce lawyer (thus, Bergman heavily explains, he knows all about heads and she about hearts) Depicted as caring more for secuntv and comfort than for the mysteries of each other, they manage to avoid talking about anything unpleasant?like the fact that their sex life died long ago—by being too busy Already this portrayal of what's wrong with marriage, or with this marriage, is a cliche, and Bergman will have to work hard to save his Sim Unfortunately, his analysis never does surprise us, though Johan's behavior does Husband and wife are interviewed for a magazine article that will present them as the perfectly married couple The interviewer asks Johan to describe himself, and he answers that he is "intelligent, youthful, well-balanced, sexy," that he has a social conscience, is kind even toward people to whom it's difficult to be kind, is a good son, loves the royal family, is not religious, and is a splendid lover The recitation seems to be a self-conscious parody of the Swedish middle-class and we wait for Johan to chuckle with us But apparently he's serious Manane, in her turn, identifies herself simply as Johan's wife and the mother of their two daughters She adds—not sarcastically—that she doesn't have so high an opinion of herself We expect infidelity, but nothing we have seen of Johan prepares us for the brutality of its accomplishment Without warning, he announces that he has fallen in love with a young woman named Paula and is leaving with her in the morning for Paris He has taken a leave of absence from his work, he says, and will be gone at least six months From here the action moves to the hurt of separation and the discovery that the bonds of marriage were stronger than either partner knew, then the divorce, and finally the affair they initiate seven years after their breakup and after each of them has remarned The last sequence shows a humble Johan and a more self-assured Manane He is sadder, she is happier He looks for sense and meaning and cannot find them, she has come to trust her feelings and her experience It is Manane, however, who has a nightmare when they are in bed together Stretching out her arms to Johan and to their daughters, she discovers she has no hands and cannot touch them Why does one have these dreams, she wonders Perhaps, he answers, because in her well-ordered world there is "something she can't get at" "Are we all living in confusion, slipping downhill''" she asks "Yes...

...I think so," he replies "Is it already too late''" "Yes, but we mustn't say things like that " She tells him she is grieved because she feels she has never loved or been loved He comforts her They do love each other in their imperfect and selfish ways He doesn't know what his love looks like or how to describe it, and mostly he doesn't feel it But it's there and he's sure it will linger if they don't worry it too much Manane is quieted She wants to stay in his arms, just as they are, all night No, they can't, he says "My leg has gone to sleep, my shoulder's dislocated and my back is cold " If Bergman had stuck to this kind of detail, the movie would have been marvelous Legs do go to sleep at the wrong time and one often does have to settle for only a few minutes of what one would like to go on forever Instead, he falsely imputes a secret sense of futility to us all (his landscape has always been that of Winter Light), and confuses this with the real problems of intimacy But whatever the film's shortcomings, Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson are extraordinary actors who know the language of the body so well—as does Bergman—that they persuade us we are watching a relationship Manane's habitual way of plopping herself across Johan to set the alarm on his side of the bed perfectly expresses a familiarity lacking care When she discovers he is leaving, she articulates her pain in the way she walks from one room to the next The movie is full of such embodiments Yet there is a fatal gap between what is seen and what is said, with the result that one leaves the theater frustrated by a sense of having witnessed both too much and too little Bergman is not the only major European director now offering a new, and flawed, work to American audiences Amarcord ("I remember" in the dialect of Ro-magna) is the latest, and in many ways the loveliest, of Fellim's tributes to his native country Set m a small town on the Adriatic, it evokes Italy m the '30s?as recollected by Titta, a middle-aged man of our time—in a form so explicitly mythical it becomes our past, too The rhythm of the film is paced to the seasons, and its drama is simply the daily events of village life Spring comes with a flurry of dandelion cotton wheels that fly through the air like snow It is a cold, bright day—people are still wearing their winter coats—and everyone is seen running excitedly through the streets carrying pieces of wood and old furniture We discover they are building a bonfire to burn the effigy of winter—a large, sad doll that resembles Raggedy Ann The old men dance around the pyre like children, indeed, while the town has the usual distribution of young and not young, beneath their skins they are indistinguishable Amarcord remembers many miraculous moments The opening shower of spring "fluff-puffs" is matched by a later scene m which the local lord's peacock flies to the ground to spread its feathers in the first snowfall There is also a picnic in the country—the sound of cicadas, children slapping at flies, Titta's mad uncle Teo up in a tree screaming that he wants a woman—and a night when the entire village rows out to sea to watch an ocean liner go by Through the eye of Fellini's camera, it is a fabulous firmament Yet, to me, these moments, good as they are, do not add up to a film I get tired of Fellim's love of caricature, dear whores and wriggling bottoms, clowns and clowning To be sure, this is a confession of taste, not a criticism, but I do think Fellini has not made quite the movie he thinks he has In a letter to Gian Luidi Rondo of II Tempo, the director said of Amarcord "Here it is...

...On Screen BERGMAN'S MISGIVINGS FELLINI'S MEMORIES BY MARCIA CAVELL Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, which originally appeared on Scandinavian television in 1973 as six 50-minute installments, has now been condensed by its writer-director into a three-hour feature about a couple, Manane (Liv Ullman) and Johan (Erland Josephson), who talk a lot and do very little—mostly in close-up Still, the lines waiting to see the movie reach around the block I suspect there are two reasons for this First, marriage is currently out of fashion and, in effect...