Crisis: How Ingmar Bergman’s career started at his worst

A Crisis of Unrefined Talent

Crisis | Directed by Ingmar Bergman | 1946 | 93 minutes

By Logan Schwindt

​With a career as long and prolific as Ingmar Bergman’s it is easy to overlook the early work in his filmography, especially as his first films tend to lack the defining elements of his later masterpieces. He is a director known for his precise cinematography, for his constant attempts to understand the relationship between mankind and faith, and above all else, for his piercing writing which exhibits the expansive lengths of vicious apathy that human beings are capable of at their meanest. However, all of that unmatched talent would not become obvious until later in his career. He was not a director that hit the ground running; it took him years of experience to hone his craft and to find the specific collaborators that elevated his direction and writing. This lack of experience is never more obvious than in his debut feature Crisis (1946), which is my least favourite of his films that I have seen.

Crisis, or Kris as it is titled in the original Swedish, is based on a Dannish radio play Moderhjertet by Leck Fischer. This original title was retained for the Danish release of the film and the literal English translation is A Mother’s Heart (also known as The Maternal Instinct or The Mother Animal depending on the translation). At the time Bergman was working as a script writer and a “script washer” , as he described his position at Svensk Filmindustri. For his first opportunity to direct a movie he was asked to adapt Moderhjertet into his own version of a 1940’s Hollywood romance. He was not particularly fond of the source material and did not feel much better about Crisis once he had completed it. These feelings are understandable as the sensibilities of Moderhjertet are more sentimental and wholesome than any of his later screenplays. In hindsight, Bergman was probably one of the worst people to ask to direct Crisis. It is the stylistic equivalent to asking Steven Spielberg to adapt Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Without access to the original radio play it is difficult to determine how much of the film’s writing is from Bergman himself however, in the midst of Crisis’s contrived tale of simple morals, there are brief bursts of intense cynicism and realism. These are indicative of a burgeoning young writer trying to escape the restricting confines of an unwanted plot and predominantly feature themes Bergman would return to regularly throughout his career, especially woman struggling with their independence and their mental health. Unfortunately, these themes are never given the time to be fully developed and instead exist as ethereal window dressing on the outskirts of a bland retread centerpiece.

Despite the uninspiring source material, a lot of the responsibility for the ineffectiveness of Crisis lies with Bergman himself. He lacked the writing ability to properly convert the radio play into a screenplay. He chooses to open the movie with unnecessary narration that spoon feeds the audience every piece of exposition over a montage of establishing shots. I had originally interpreted this decision as homage to the original radio play, but knowing Bergman’s disdain for the source material, it is more likely that he was attempting to incorporate elements of theatre into his screenplay. At the time he was known more for stage plays than for movies and he would continue to be a notable figure in the Swedish theatre industry for the rest of his career. Whatever the reason for including opening narration, it makes for a very clunky and heavy-handed introduction to a movie which is not nearly complicated enough to warrant such explanation. Where a stage play audience is expecting a prologue establishing the details of the setting, a movie is not given the same allowance, and Crisis is poorly paced through the first act as a result. Bergman did not yet have a handle on the specific nuances of cinema compared to other dramatic arts and he was unable to adjust his adaptation accordingly. The only redeeming factor of this introduction is it allowed Bergman to start Crisis with the opening of window blinds and the narrator mentioning the raising of a curtain. This is the first of many fourth wall breaks in Bergman’s career and there is no more suitable way for his career to begin than with an overt nod to theatre.

One of the things that makes cinema such a unique artform is that, unlike a painting or a novel, movies are created by a massive team of collaborators that all must work together to create a singular final work of art. Part of being a great director is being able to choose the right team of people to help shape and contribute to your final vision. It was not until Bergman mastered this skill and found a group of artists that resonated with his style that he was then able to make the most effective films of his career. Someone familiar with his most iconic work would also be very likely to recognize Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullman, Gunnar Björnstrand, or Max Von Sydow. These actors, and many others not mentioned, became synonymous with Bergman’s work and he had complete trustin their ability to do anything he asked of them. With the exception of Dagny Lind, who is able to convince us of the inner turmoil of Ingeborg Johnson through consistent dejected posture, the performances in Crisis lack believability and are monotonously hollow. The actors completely fail to convince the audience that anything serious is happening and only manage to entertain in small pockets of comic relief. The same level of craftsmanship can be attributed to the cinematography, which lacks polish and intention. Even from a purely technical perspective the camera struggles to keep the scene in focus and many of the shots are either under or over exposed. This is easily explained by the low budget and general low expectations for the film, but it is still indicative of a director who had not yet found the correct person for the job. The meticulous eye for lighting and composition of Sven Nykvist, Bergman’s long-time cinematographer, is severely missed in Crisis. The only notable contributor to Crisis that Bergman continued to work with later in his career is editor, Oscar Rosander. With this in mind, it should not come as a surprise that the editing of Crisis is one of the best technical aspects of the film. It manages to save the poorly paced scenes from dragging endlessly and very patiently lingers in the most effective moments of the movie, waiting for the last possible instant to cut. Most every other aspect of Crisis, from the music to the acting to the production design, is just not as cohesive as I have come to expect from Bergman’s films. While his own lack of experience certainly contributed to each of these factors, the lack of talent around him exacerbated the issue and highlighted his weaknesses.

With all this being said, Crisis is far from a complete failure and manages to be reasonably entertaining even on rewatch. There are undeniable shining glimpses of Bergman’s talent that are impossible to miss. One such talent, that became a defining trait of his later career, is the ability to block his actors and create moving compositions within a scene. He had actors enter and move through a scene with a fluidity that is remarkable for a first-time director. All the while retaining a fundamental understanding of negative space and where the audience’s eyes are going to naturally gravitate. This is best illustrated in the conclusion of the film, where multiple characters move throughout the scene and the camera holds still, capturing the delicate interactions of all three actors directly head on. Each movement in this scene is an expression of character, the intentionally nonchalant lighting of a cigarette is just as important as the immobility of embarrassment and shame. In this scene Bergman finally manages to align everyone involved and capture the full potential of his vision. It is unfortunate that he was not able to achieve the same level of quality for the ballroom sequences in the middle of the movie, as the scale and intention of these dances could have easily been the highlight of Crisis. The tracking shot following dance partners across a dance floor, while rather rudimentary in execution, reminds me of the remarkable dances from the later made The Earrings of Madame De (Max Ophüls, 1953), albeit for a much shorter span of time. These flashes of raw potential needed to be refined and made more consistent, which Bergman would steadily work at for the next few years of his life, but they are also impressive signposts of the immense natural ability that he possessed as a filmmaker. Crisis is an intriguing watch for any Bergman enthusiasts that want to track the massive improvements he made throughout his career and see the humble beginnings of a prolific titan of cinema.

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Photo:

​​​​​Inga Landgré and Marianne Löfgren in Crisis (1946), Svensk Filmindustri

Reference:

Smallwood, C. (2018). Bergman in the making. The Criterion Collection