Awareness of one's own inadequacy is not sufficient to transcend it. Ingmar Bergman's 1953 film Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton "Evening of the Jesters") is about Hell on earth but not really a strange Hell. This accentuates its cruelty but also elevates it above exploitation. Still, its argument about the dissolute lives of circus performers omits the value their work has for the people they entertain and in this way The Magician, a later Bergman film ruminating on some of the same ideas, is superior. But Sawdust and Tinsel is memorable in its own right for the piece of life's cruel puzzle it so successfully portrays.
The premise kind of reminded me of Ozu's Floating Weeds, enough to make me wonder if Bergman had seen the silent version of that film. Ozu's story about a kabuki performer who has a wife in his troupe and another one in a small town with his child leaves its characters much more dignity and solace. Bergman's film about a travelling circus gives us a ringmaster, Albert (Åke Grönberg), and his girlfriend, Anne (Harriet Anderson), who both want to escape the crushing spiritual void of their livelihood but tragically lack the personal qualities necessary to do so.
To show this, Bergman takes the story to the point of grotesque, beginning with a sort of prologue, a vignette about a clown (Anders Ek) who finds his wife (Gudrun Brost) swimming naked with a regiment of soldiers. Described by a heartless narrator--the story is told by a bored low level performer at the circus to a dozing Albert--as beautiful but a little past her prime, the clown's wife had been delighted enough by the soldier's attentions to strip for them only to find their appreciation was less lustful and more sadistic once her husband's shown up. Then follows the sad spectacle of the clown ineffectually trying to carry his naked wife back to the circus.
This provides a sort of thumbnail for the main drama. The circus loses a lot of costumes in a storm and Albert decides to ask a local theatre troupe to lend them some wardrobe. The theatre director (Gunnar Björnstrand) undisguisedly mocks the circus performers, fully aware that his is the higher artform despite the fact that both groups are more or less equally derided by the authorities and general populace. Anne finds herself attracted to the effeminate star of the theatre troupe, Frans (Hasse Ekman), and goes to visit him when she figures out Albert has a wife in town (Annika Tretow). Each one comes face to face with the fact that their preferred lovers see in them only brief, disposable value.
The fantasy ending would be to show Albert and Anne having some kind of quiet moral or professional victory over Frans or Albert's wife but Bergman never gives us that respite, instead piling humiliation on humiliation while Albert and Anne are shown as intelligent enough to have real awareness of their nightmare but lacking the capacity to reason past their wounded pride. The only consolation they have is each other but considering part of their problem is the desire to escape each other it's a somewhat sickly solace. Personally, I'd be happy to be saddled with Harriet Andersson any day.
Sawdust and Tinsel is available on The Criterion Channel.
Twitter Sonnet #1451
The ancient tomb is waiting past the trees.
With time, we walked again among the bugs.
The heat precedes a fleet of drowsy bees.
The grass would braid itself to make the rugs.
The varied tea awaits in gauzy bags.
The faces crack on dusty clocks at home.
The rusty iron hand of ev'ning sags.
Between the seconds hours slowly roam.
The sand was soft beneath the fire blue.
A weapon's glow was dimmed beside the cuff.
To amber light the crimson paint was due.
The scales of screens display its visions rough.
Invested grain produced a crop of sand.
The ear of corn resembled Vader's hand.
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