Word: widerberg
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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ELVIRA MADIGAN is not the most beautiful film ever made. It is not "perfect," or "absolutely gorgeous," or "exquisite," or any of the other things Bosley Crowther and his friends said about it. Director Bo Widerberg presents us with an unconvincing, confusing story fraught with technical flaws. In spots, he is brilliant. Single frames seem like French Impressionist paintings...
...WIDERBERG is not sure where he is going. He introduces one conflict, then drops it. Sparre's soldier friend tries to shame Elvira into leaving Sparre by telling her that Sixten's deserted wife tried to commit suicide. Elvira runs away, but 30 seconds later Sparre catches her, tells her that his friend's story was a lie, and everything is fine again...
Another plot problem is the reason for the suicide. Certainly, there were other alternatives to starvation. If Denmark was not safe, the two could have fled somewhere else. The plot may not be so important. Prettiness may be what Widerberg wants to get across, but to the audience the major motivation in the film is reduced to incredibility and that is a sad situation...
...WOULD suggest that Widerberg completely missed the point of the fable. He touched on it once or twice, but, in the main, he missed it. Elvira Madigan is not a story about two lovers who reject society and then die for their own love. It is a story of two lovers, loving ideally in a perfect setting, who find that their kind of love--the butterflies and the daisies and the wine and cheese--is not enough...
ELVIRA MADIGAN. This elegiac pastorale, directed by Sweden's Bo Widerberg, based on the true story of a cavalry officer's hopeless love affair with a circus tightrope walker, is spare and elegant, with outstanding sensitivity of texture, color and light...