Crisis

Ingmar Bergman making a movie called Crisis in the 1940s: gonna be beaten with a musical score and have a narrator tell me what’s going on because someone isnt coming off as confident with the format yet - some of the framing is great for the 40s. Now if there was an Ingmar Bergman film called Crisis released later on in his career, holy shit grab my inhaler this is harrowing. Slapping Crisis and another 40s Boogerman on the second disc of the Criterion set is the hurdle we must all face.

Bergman's first directorial effort and it shows. The music is overbearing, the narration is precious, some shots are out of focus, the acting is hammy. Dialogue chugs along like a freight train, without the meaningful pauses and facial expressions that would later characterize his deep understanding of human communication. And the ending of the film is terribly unsatisfying. There are some inventive shots, though. The highlight of the film is the noir-esque climax.

Bergman's proper debut is a standard melodrama with the occasional pretense of more, but would probably have been better if it had settled for just melodrama. There are hints of things to come both in themes and imagery, and a couple of quite nice scenes, but it never quite gels and apart from Sudden Monologues Out Of Nowhere you'd think these characters didn't have a care in the world.

I like seeing the glimpses of what Bergman will become. It feels like he's working with a bunch of ideas, but does not know to express them yet. The film also ends suddenly and melodramatically, and then there's another ten minutes after what should have been the final scene. Jack is one of cinema's sleaziest characters. The moustache and pin-striped suit is a recipe for sleaze.

Conventional little melodrama about the virtues of motherhood and small-town life (and the vices of licentiousness and big city living), based on an "appalling" play "written by a Danish hack" (Bergman's words). With a script written in 14 nights, it perhaps shows that, from the outset, Bergman was interested in women's experience and interactions between female characters, already with a faint taste of the existential dread that would take centre stage twenty years later in films like PERSONA.

A pretty pedestrian film. Super overdramatic with some really forced, cutesy narration and rather hammy acting. The only real redeeming feature is Bergman's decent camerawork.

The climax at the end is well shot. That's about all I have to say.

I just couldn't follow...this movie requires more attention than I gave it. Loud sound cues. Rewatch: typical small town girl gets corrupted by big city story. Melodrama. Fav scene: Jack getting tossed.

Bergman's feature debut is apparently no indication of the titan he would become later in his career. What a bland film, I only watched it this morning and I've already forgotten nearly all of it.

Fun to watch from a historiographical POV but it's arguably Bergie's least impressive (which is still better than a lot tbh) and we all know it.

I didn't find this as awful as some apparently did. The characters might be underdeveloped and it's not an overly strong narrative, but compelling enough and certainly strong for a debut. I think there is an intimation of what Bergman would become, however slight. And yes, as others have noted here, it is quite nicely shot.

Bergman dubbed the melodrama he was handed (to his dimsay) to work up into his first solo film "grandiose drivel", and told a nerve-wracking tale of a production suffering from inexperience on many heads, scuttled and restarted from scratch with the firm but patiently grounded advice of Victor Sjostrom to reign in some of his own excesses. For all that, he did ultimately dress up all the inherent creakiness in some interesting setups here and there.

This debut by Bergman gets a lot of flak. Undeservedly so, cause it's a very decent debut. The plot is a very simple moralistic tale, which is matched with surprisingly confident simple directing from Bergman, who already shows impressive skills for framing, long shots and camera movements. (Tho this might have been the influence of Sjöström, who consulted Bergman on this)

Star Rating: ★★★1/2

Bergman does a movie of the week.

53.500

Obviously Bergman's first; the narrator referencing the theatre like qualities of cinema alone stands out. Continues themes he introduced in his Torment screenplay.

Em honra do centenáio de Stig Olin (eu não sabia que ele era pai da Lena Olin). É uma estreia promissora para o Bergman, embora naos-luz do que ele se tornaria 10, 20, 30, anos depois. Coleção Ingmar Bergman Volume 8

Pleasant enough, but rather forgettable.

I prefer Contra

I really liked what Bergman did with the naive small-town-girl moving to the big city scenario. Starts out playful, almost as "a comedy", and then turns out anything as. Not sure I liked the combination of characters. While the dramatic portions had a lot of flair, Jack was a little too much, eating up most of the emotional impact before it hits one. But this was overall a well constructed film, more provoking than your average Swedish production at the time. Easy to see why Bergman stood-out.