the hell we have
by
Douglas Messerli
Herbert
Grevenius (screenplay, based on stories by Birgit Tengroth), Ingmar Bergman
(director) Törst (Thirst) / 1949
Bergman’s
1949 film Thirst, although not as
complexly plotted as many of his later works for which he provided the texts, is
a psychologically revealing and emotionally compelling film that matches some
of his best.
The tale consists basically of a long
train trip from Italy back to Sweden, where a married couple, Bertil (Birger
Malmsten) and Rut (Eva Henning), have been vacationing on a very low budget. The
time of this trip is crucial, occurring as it does soon after the devastation
of Europe by World War II, which helps create another layer of explanation for
the couple’s obvious angst, the key to their “hunger” and “thirst.”
Their hunger, in part, has to do with the
fact that they have so little money; yet they have been able to pack a rather
ample picnic basket to fill their stomachs during their voyage home. But even
before they set out, Rut rummages into the basket to sneak a slice of sausage,
almost as if she were starving.
Yet, once they are on their way, it is apparent
that her real problem is drinking to fulfill her thirst. At once point, when
they encounter an entire train station full of starving children and adults, Rut
readily hand out the basket’s contents to the post-war sufferers. It is wine,
beer, and cigarettes that she
most desperately needs to fuel her endless
battles with Bertil, seemingly a loving companion who often patiently puts up
with her bouts of abuse followed by sudden attempts to make up. Yet, he too is
not without his verbal assaults directed to her, and, often, he plays the
tormented saint, together the two of them reminding one of a tamer Martha and
George of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?
And
like Albee’s couple they have plenty of reasons to do battle with life. Rut, in
particular, has lost not only a child, aborted by a callous earlier boyfriend,
Raoul (Bengt Eklund), but in that process has become infertile, which has also
ended her previous dancing career. Unlike the American play, however, this
couple not only argue but toss out darkly witty observations a bit as if they
were simply playing darts—but aimed, of course, at each other’s heads.
The amazing thing about Bergman’s film, in
this case, is how quickly the action moves between a simple domestic comedy and
a darker drama, while also fluidly shifting from past to present, present to
past, all the while paralleling an early voyage between Switzerland and Sweden
(both neutral countries at the time) with Rut and Raoul.
Simultaneously, the director takes us
briefly through the lives of other friends of Rut, most notably her former
co-dancer Valborg (Mimi Nelson), who disgusted by the men in her life, turns to
lesbianism, attempting to seduce Viola (Birgit Tengroth, on whose stories this
film is based), who has been equally abused by her psychiatrist Dr. Rosengren
(Hasse Ekman).
In short, beneath the desperateness of what
appears to be nearly the entire European population, these more middle-class
survivors suffer the deprivations of love and career. At times, it’s hard to
know who’s better off, the hard-drinking, obviously guilt-ridden Swedes, or the
starving masses they encounter during their trip. Both may survive, but at what
cost?
In some respects this film calls up the
later Roberto Rossellini masterwork, Voyage
in Italy, wherein another couple (played by another Swede, Ingrid Bergman
and British actor George Sanders) who have a marital meltdown; or, in a kind a
comic twist, the “visit to Italy” from 1956, by Lucille
Ball in I Love Lucy who suffers over not being back
home for little Ricky’s 3rd birthday, determining to celebrate it
with a young shoeshine street boy, who brings all of his young friends to the
party claiming that it is their birthday as well. It is perhaps the closest
Ball ever came to a psychological meltdown in her entire series and is the least
wacky of the entire I Love Lucy shows.
Obviously postwar Europe, Italy in particular, not only attracted the tourists
because of its post-war inexpensiveness, but revealed other tensions in their
lives.
Thirst ends far more upbeat than it
might have, with Bertil finally admitting that “despite the hell we have,” he
would rather be with Rut than without her, rather be married than a lonely old
man. And perhaps they can mend their seemingly fraying relationship.
Bergman, fortunately, does not attempt to hint
at the future; they are quite apparently caught up now in their pasts. Whether
or not they free themselves to the future is undetermined. Perhaps none of us
ever have been completely able to. As an immediate postwar baby, child of a
father who’d been stationed during the war in Italy, I’m still haunted by the event
that serves as an important backdrop in Bergman’s movie.
Finally, what this film reveals is that
before he became the great director that we now know him to be, he was making
wonderful smaller films. Thirst was
certainly on of them, and ought be watched by a far larger audience.
Los Angeles, August
15, 2018
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