Καραβάνι

Frances Meh3.0

This would make a great date movie if you didn’t want to have sex that night.

Andre 19043.5

Sawdust and Tinsel is one of Ingmar Bergman’s early films. Set during a single day, the film follows the aging circus owner Albert and his mistress Anne as they try to reconnect with their pasts while their traveling troupe performs in a small Swedish town. What follows is a harsh, dreamlike story about embarrassment, lost hope, jealousy, and the desperate struggle to feel respected. The cinematography is gorgeous and expressionistic, turning the circus world into something both magical and grotesque and the performances feel painfully real. It’s a compact, merciless character study that already contains the themes Bergman would perfect later: the cruelty of relationships, the masks we wear, and the terror of aging. At just 93 minutes, it’s tighter and more accessible than many of Bergman’s later works, yet every bit as emotionally devastating. A bitter, beautiful little gem from one of cinema’s greatest artists.This film is included in my list of the 2500+ Best Films.

theriverjordan4.5

“Sawdust and Tinsel” is an early career taunt from Ingmar Bergman: Go ahead. Build yourself a mask to hide your face from the world. The very act of living will still manage to peel back the facade; desecrating what is hidden beneath. “Sawdust,” one of Bergman’s cruelest of works; gains even more malevolence in the timeline of his filmography. Between the corporeal odes to pleasure and physicality that are “Summer with Monika” and “Smiles of a Summer Night,” comes this demented voyage into sexual humiliation. Depicting the entanglements that occur during a stopover by a traveling circus in a small town, “Sawdust” was, like “Monika,” first released in America as a sexual exploitation flick labeled “The Naked Night.” Where “Monika” felt like it appropriated and owned its stateside re-edit and context - “Sawdust” perverts the manipulation. In its original form, it is, indeed, a film about sex. But Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist here do not even touch on titillation; as was done with the body of Harriet Anderson in “Monika.” The only pleasures here are for the most masochistic of consumers. “Sawdust” even could be viewed as an act of self-mutilation by Bergman himself; demeaning his heritage in the theatre - revealing it, and its practicers as cowards in costumes. Charlatans of the worst sort: those who do not admit that their performance is only a charade.