What is the hell of urban life contrasted with the virtue of the provincial? More than a few movies on the topic have been made, including 1946's Crisis (Kris), the directorial debut of Ingmar Bergman. And trust Bergman like no other to plumb the depths of such a story.
I as expecting something far less interesting and psychological than his work beginning in the late '50s. And while it's not quite as interesting as Persona or Through a Glass Darkly or a dozen other of his masterpieces it's still by no means your run of the mill melodrama. It is, essentially, a film noir, fitting more neatly into a genre than Bergman's best known works.
18 year old Nelly (Inga Landgré) is beautiful and frustrated with life in her small town. She loves her foster mother, Ingeborg (Dagny Lind), but doesn't like how she forces her to spend time with Ulf (Allan Bohlin), a kind but dopey older man who rents a room from Ingeborg.
When Nelly's birth mother, Jenny (Marianne Löfgren), shows up and wants to take her back to live with her in the city, Nelly has to choose between the safe and quiet life and the excitement of the city.
Most other filmmakers would show the moral perils of the city as being excessive drinking, loose sex, gambling, etc. And Bergman nods to those things but he's much more interested in a difference in mentality. It's all explained succinctly by Jack (Stig Olin), Jenny's boyfriend whose affections start to drift to Nelly. Jack confides to Ingeborg that he doesn't love Nelly, exactly--he loves himself--but Nelly is more "real" than anyone he knows and he starts to feel less real in her presence and wonders at the worth of his "ghostly" life.
Are the people of the small village really morally superior? The gossiping neighbours? Ulf constantly trying to bargain for Nelly's love despite her exasperation? Even Ingeborg is shown at the beginning begging for money from her charwoman. Jenny may do indiscreet things like read Nelly's diary but she has an honest business in her beauty palour. But, like Jack, you can see in her what he means by "unreal". Her conversations with Ingeborg are almost exclusively made up of smiling manipulations, off-hand insinuations about how life with Jenny is better for Nelly than life with Ingeborg.
As the title suggests it comes to a crisis. But it's hard to say if the disaster leads to Nelly's salvation or condemns her to a comfortable prison.
Crisis is available on The Criterion Channel.
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