Obscene Reflections

Inflexible moral authority proves a treacherous tool for a judge interrogating actors about their profane performances. Ingmar Bergman's 1969 film The Rite feels like a followup to his 1958 film The Magician, once more exploring the tormented lives of artists versus the destructive ignorance of those who try to regulate them. The Rite is a quiet, simple character study that becomes progressively, fascinatingly nightmarish.

Much of the film consists of Judge Abrahamson (Erik Hell) interviewing the three actors, first together and then separately. His interest in their crimes and the nature of their performances often detours into their personal lives and, at times, it's difficult to distinguish his interest in their potential malevolence from his prurient interest in celebrity gossip.

The actors are two men and a woman. Ingrid Thulin plays Thea, an extremely nervous, thin skinned woman whose psychological vulnerability and compulsive sexual appetite meet with Abrahamson's simultaneous condemnation and lust, of course. Anders Ek plays Sebastian Fisher, one of the actors, and Thea's lover. He's irresponsible with his money and petulantly tries to throw Abrahamson's ignorance back in his face only for Abrahamson to cunningly reverse Fisher's presumptions. Gunnar Bjornstrand plays Hans Winkelmann, Thea's husband and the other actor, whose detachment and confessed lack of sympathy for his wife and comrade are balanced by a real understanding of them and effort to work with and compensate for their personal failings.

Abrahamson seems satisfied with the inferiority of the actors and secure in his moral right and imperative to abuse them and yet, when finally witnessing their performance, the hints of self-loathing seen throughout the film are finally drawn out of him in painful fullness. It's an emotionally raw film altogether, not quite as subtle or as strong as The Magician, but still pretty great.

The Rite is available on The Criterion Channel.

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