To learn the secrets behind another's experience and perception is to become aware of the endless mystery of existence. It says something about Ingmar Bergman that one of his earlier, lesser films, 1952's Waiting Women (Kvinnors väntan), is so fascinating and profound.
The premise is pretty simple. It's an anthology film in which a group of women start to share stories of loneliness and epiphany. The first is told by Rakel (Anita Bjork) who tells a story about her affair with her childhood friend, Kaj (Jarl Kulle), and how it nearly destroyed her husband (Eugen).
I love how it begins, with a very long, single, unmoving shot of Rakel looking into a mirror. The scene plays out with Kaj appearing in the doorway reflected in the mirror, then Rakel standing up and going back to him, before she returns to her seat and Kaj sits beside her. The usual function of the mirror as symbolism for self-reflection deftly shows the place Kaj occupies in Rakel's heart and their movements relative to the mirror punctuate the dialogue and each stage of their evolving affair.
There are no cliches in this movie and the resolution of the first tale is deeply pathetic, yet it's one that seems to confer on Rakel some sense of serenity.
My favourite story is the second and it has very little dialogue, reminding me of Bergman's aptly titled later film, The Silence. Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) begins by talking about loneliness in the days leading up to the birth of her first child. Her husband is away, we don't learn why right away, all we know is this sweet young woman is drifting through the complex shadows of her home in a kind of drowsy anxiety.
There's a kitten, her only companion, and when she starts to feel contractions, she absently puts the kitten in her bag and heads to the hospital. One of the orderlies takes her kitten--something that visibly disconcerts her--and then she's left lying alone on the table, watching the erratic shadows of some foliage outside. This dissolves into a memory, an extraordinary sequence of cancan dancers, vigorously marching about a stage while topless women serenely stride about amongst them.
And then we see Marta at a table, looking slightly bored with a cigarette her mouth. She wins a contest by "holding two francs between her thighs"--Bergman doesn't show exactly how--and perhaps this sweet, innocent young woman isn't so inexperienced as we might have thought. She runs from her incensed boyfriend, back to her apartment, and then there follows a magnificently eerie sequence as another man flirts with her, unseen, asking her to open her door "just a crack".
The final story seems oddly trivial after the first two--Karin (Eva Dahlbeck) and her husband, Fredrik (Gunnar Bjornstrand), get trapped in an elevator after a party. They find the situation leads to some abnormally frank discussion. Again, it's fascinating how strangely their discussion of sex transpires, and yet how natural it also seems for her to laugh at and tease him about an affair she's known about. The scene also features a brilliantly sexy bit of business where she massages his sore leg and possibly something else.
Waiting Women is available on The Criterion Channel.
Twitter Sonnet #1445
The phantom hero saved a cage of birds.
The message beasts were sent by accident.
We built a castle waiting years for words.
The time elapsed with little incident.
The rainy pond obscures the speaking frog.
The hidden conf'rence chose a student's path.
Depending branches bloomed in violet fog.
Nocturnal floods erode a quiet bath.
The shaking stone adopts a sacred face.
Resounding chatter drifts from dying leaves.
The ancient snow remains in patterned lace.
The urgent ghost of evening rarely grieves.
In dusty halls a drum was nightly played.
Below the road, in soil, castles stayed.
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