From The Life Of The Marionettes
(1980)
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Filmed in Germany during the director's exile from Sweden after being charged with tax evasion, FROM THE LIFE OF THE MARIONETTES is an unusually raw and explicit Ingmar Bergman drama, featuring two supporting characters from SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. Peter Egermann (Robert Atzorn), outwardly stable and well adjusted, suffers from depression, feelings of sexual inadequacy, and barely suppressed rage toward his wife, Katarina (Christine Buchegger), the latter eventually leading to the brutal rape and murder of a prostitute. Events are not presented in chronological order, but the film consists mainly of a number of scenes preceding the crime that painfully illustrate the Egermanns' marital discord, and a series of subsequent police interrogations involving psychiatrist Mogens Jensen (Martin Benrath), a friend of the Egermanns'; Katarina's business partner, Tim (Walter Schmidinger); and Peter's devastated mother (Lola Muthel). |
Ingmar Bergman's second film made during his tax exile in Germany is superior to the misconceived The Serpent's Egg (1977). Opening with the murder of a prostitute in a blood-red room, most of the film is shot in stark monochrome with an intense whiteness in the dream sequences. Balanced between the distancing device of Brechtian titles and the use of large closeups, Bergman created a tightly controlled case history in the German idiom. Many of the thoughts of the characters are delivered via speeches, most notably a depressing monologue by an ageing gay man, a rarity in Bergman's female-dominated oeuvre.
