Word: bergmans
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Unfortunately, this week at the Brattle Theater, it is stuck next to the real thing--Bergman's The Passion of Anna. Ingmar Bergman is one of Sontag's very favorite directors, and that judgment is much to her credit. But if you happen to see both films in the double bill, you will quickly understand the difference between the original artist and derivative craftsman...
...thief, it's simply that she's a critic. She has seen so many films and thought so long and hard about them, that her own look like a composite of all those things she's praised in others. Duet for Cannibals was made out of Bresson and Bergman and Godard in equal measures, one ingredient at a time. It substituted confusion for narrative and vagueness for thought. It was the type of film that gave the avant garde a bad name...
Brother Carl takes at least a dozen steps in the right direction. That leaves it still some distance short, but it is certainly a beginning. Sontag has reduced her influences to Bergman alone here. She has made concessions to coherence of plot and plausibility of character. She has this time made a film that can be sat through...
Personna. One of Bergman's greatest if not his most difficult films. The theme of doubling is played out formally, and as a psychological crisis of being between two women. The film defies meaning. At bottom it is an exploration into how deeply something can be known, and an assertion that total knowing in the end means self-destruction. The personnae, to survive, need to preserve the integrity of their masks. Because on the other side of the masks lies absolute cruelty. Brattle Theatre...
...finest actresses around. Their major roles include many of the recent years' more sensitively handled women's leads, so it's more than disappointing to see them choosing these roles. More so with Ullmann, because she's just arrived in Hollywood, the first of Ingmar Bergman's leading actresses to work in this country. She can't handle a minor character: she tries to infuse her role with all the drama of Persona, but it can't stand the strain, and all she achieves is incongruity. Jackson, on the other hand, proves to be a nimble and quick-witted comedienne...