Cast: Jarl Kulle, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Eva Dahlbeck, Karin Kavil, Gertrud Fridh, Mona Malm, Barbro Hiort af Ornas Director: ...
Cast: Jarl Kulle, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Eva Dahlbeck, Karin Kavil, Gertrud Fridh, Mona Malm, Barbro Hiort af Ornas
Director: Ingmar Bergman
All These Women turns 60 today, and will never fail to make us laugh at its absurdity.
Made two years before one of Bergman’s
masterpieces, Persona (1966), the film clearly shows that Bergman was a master
of his craft; he could easily switch genres, while not compromising his voice
as a filmmaker. All These Women is a wildly funny film, almost resembling the
initial works of another master filmmaker, Woody Allen.
The characters are hyperbolic, and so
are the sets. The story is pretty quiet though, and this would’ve been a rather
depressing film if Bergman had opted for his usual mode of filmmaking.
Pretentious critic Cornelius is writing
a biography on a famous cellist and to do some research he stays in the
critic’s house for a few days. He doesn’t manage to get an interview with the
man, but by talking to all the women who live with him, he comes to learn a lot
about the musician’s private life nonetheless. Cornelius then decides to use
this information to blackmail the cellist into performing a composition that
he, Cornelius, has written.
All These Women was made when Bergman
was at the peak of his career (he made most of his beloved classics in the
60’s) and shows that he wasn’t scared to take a risk.
All These Women is a farce, full of pseudo-intellectual
characters. The film is extremely witty and sometimes quite slapstick.
Shot beautifully by Bergman’s
go-to-cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, each shot is literally a painting in this.
The screenplay is top-notch, and the performances are right on point. Everybody
works on the same wavelength and that makes this even better, for, if even a
single actor had a different idea of the story and had done things his own way,
this would’ve failed miserably.
The sets resemble the sets from Peter
Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. The choice of songs is
also excellent and makes this even funnier.
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