the same but different
by
Douglas Messerli
Ingmar
Bergman and Erland
Josephson (screenplay), Ingmar Bergman (director) För att inte tala om alla
dessa kvinnor (All These Women) / 1964
Film
critics, for the most part, did not take to Ingmar Bergman’s first color film
and one of his few outright comedies, All These Women from 1964. The
New York Times critic, A. H. Weiler wrote:
The director, who also collaborated
on the script, is labyrinthine
in his approach to his story and
his initial use of color. A
tongue-in-cheek subtitle states
that "any resemblance between this
film and reality must be a
mistake." But it is abundantly clear that
it is Mr. Bergman's intention to be
serious about the occasionally
elusive points he is making. At the
outset, his bizarre tale, unfolded
in black-and-white footage, reveals
the body of a top cellist attended
not only by his widow but also by
the varied but happy harem who
surrounded him in life.
Roger
Ebert described it as Bergman’s worst film. And, I might add, that the first
time I saw this film, decades ago, I also did not at all comprehend why he
would want to make it. But then I was a prude in those decades, loving
Bergman’s black-and-white films of angst and despair only. I do still love most
of those films, but I now absolutely enjoyed the satiric slashes against
high-minded art mixed with Feydeau-like back-room shenanigans.
After a brief funeral scene, where each
member of celloist, Felix’s seraglio, repeats the phrase “He looks the same,
but so different”—flat on his back, one presumes, but not, in death, quite so
lively.
The film actually begins with the arrival
at Villa Tremolo of a pompous music critic, Cornelius (Jarl Kulle), come to
write the definitive biography of the musician. Fortunately, this self-centered
young man—whose hidden goal is the get the master to play a song which he
himself has written—never gets the opportunity to meet Felix (and neither we
do), as Bergman’s film, in Tom Jones-style keeps taking us back to “two
days earlier,” all the while accompanying the zany activities of these
oversexed women with the 1920s ditty “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” They’re clearly
hungry.
The foolish Cornelius begins by mistaking
the chauffeur, Tristan (Georg Funkquist) for the maestro, and is soon, quite
pleasantly overwhelmed the harem of Felix’s lovers, all of whom have been given
nicknames such as “Bumblebee” (Bibi Andersson), “Isolde” (Harriet Andersson), “Madame
Tussaud” (Karin Kavli), “Traviata” (Gertrude Fridh), “Cecilia,” “Beatrica,”
etc. Only Felix’s somewhat suffering real wife, retains her name, Adelaide (Eva
Dahlbeck).
Some of “all these women” try to bed even
the unattractive Cornelius, while another enters his chamber to shoot at him,
presumably because she thinks Cornelius is having sex, as Felix, out of turn.
In short, the very entry into their world by the would-be biographer causes a
flurry of sexual chaos.
Some critics have stated that Bergman’s
satiric target was Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ wherein the much-beleaguered
film director at the center of this tale is haunted by women present and past. But,
since Bergman had also bedded his share of women, some of them even in this
film, so I’d suggest it’s also a kind self-satire as well. Actually, it sounds
very close to the goings-on in the Maud Cunard—wife of the great shipping
tycoon—mansion with writer George Moore and conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who
daily sang songs through the windows, after their nightly affairs, from Wagner
and other opera favorites.
In a sense, it doesn’t matter, we all know that such wild activities did go on with numerous “great figures” in both the musical and cinema worlds…and dance, and literary, and art. You “look the same, but so different.”
True, this is not Bergman’s greatest
film. Even in its satiric gestures, it’s a somewhat moribund and morose version
of the comedy he is clearly trying to create. Bergman was, at times, highly
comedic, but even the young son of his most brilliant comedic work, Smiles
of a Summer Night was a celloist who played several sad songs before
running away, delightfully, with his father’s virgin wife.
Yet, I did laugh, quite openly, this time
around. And I wished the dark director of those many tortured souls might have
had far more opportunities to explore his comedic self. Yet, in a sense, all of
those other angst-ridden figures were clownish exaggerations. You need only
visit films such as The Magician, Fanny and Alexander, and
strangely even Through a Glass Darkly to perceive this. If Bergman often
glowered over his characters, he also forgave them, even laughed at them. This
film now seems to me to be almost a glowing tribute to the farces of the French
theater and of the early 1920s. I’m happy I revisited it.
Los
Angeles, October 30, 2019
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (October 2019).
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