Word: flashbacks
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...trying to betray the other. The film (whose original Swedish title means "The Clown's Evening") is Bergman's first masterpiece. Many people interpret it as being totally pessimistic, but its ending (the pair walking in silence alongside the caravan) and the memories of the clown, Frost (in the flashback near the beginning and when Frost relates a dream at the end) point to the life-giving power of resignation and companionship...
OTHERWISE, it's quite standard. The movie is a twice-removed flashback, with homage to the traditional modes of segueing into that flashback. The first scene, a shelf of books moves slowly back into an entire library. A patron seeks a certain book. There is a story behind the book. Our story. The head librarian becomes wistful, his voice wavy and echoed. We have a movie. From there, we descend once more, from a trial room, into a set of vignettes, each brought on by slow close-up of a portable tape recorder, as the dreamer's voice is raised...
TRUFFAUT must, for the sake of reconciling his complex plot with his use of the comic, fuse his pasts and presents. The flashback technique is phased out by removing the interview scenes, which finally involve Stanislas in the comic action of the film. The first two-thirds of the film are episodic, a series of connected vignettes...
Three Strange Loves. (1950) More Bergman, this time an early experiment with flashback techniques...
...Bergman is not this time adapting his vision to theatrical convention: the characters are conceived philosophically and each is given a flashback that shows them confronting the one thing they all share--loneliness. We interpret the characters' very limited present-tense actions with that information; and when each expresses an insufficient response toward Agnes's death, we realize it is because they have only the barest grip on life...