FILM: Bergman's 'Shame'
By JOHN TIBBETTS
One leaves Ingmar Bergman's "Shame" with the memory of such a devastating series of final images that for a moment the disorientation is overwhelming. For a moment one is like the figure in the leading lady's dream, standing before ruins, trying to remember forgotten words that perhaps will comfort. Perhaps . . .
A quality of holocaust beyond redemption suffuses "Shame's" images of absurd war. It is seen in the characters of Eva and her husband, Jan, who once were artists, but who through the course of events become unfaithful, cruel and finally alienated from each other. It is etched perhaps most indelibly in the haunting features of Liv Ullmann as Eva (and if you haven't seen her previous work in "Persona" and "Hour of the Wolf," it is high time you did—her bearing in this film is one of the truly striking things about it.)
Jan (played by the old Bergman standby, Max von Sydow) and Eva are two former musicians hiding from war on a farm on an island. As in most Bergman films there is a study of the artist grown detached, isolated both from his craft and from his public. So far, it is like "Hour of the Wolf."
But here the disruptive influences are from external sources, not from the psyche. The war that is the real star of the film is seen only at its edges, in terms of a handful of soldiers, distant shots and flashing light, but it is hard to recall a more vivid effect in other "anti-war" films than is achieved here. What happens to Eva and Jan is happening everywhere in the film: the shattering, divisive effects of a totally absurd conflict (a conflict that remains blurred and confusing), and these effects constitute the entire fabric of the film.
I mention "Hour of the Wolf" not just because of a momentary surface similarity, but because the very differences between the two films point up a striking quality in "Shame": its spare economy. Gone are any diffuse "visions," mental projections and, to some, unnecessary ambiguities of "Wolf." "Shame" is straightforward and classically functional. There is purity in the images, a distillation of the forms, a strange, simple beauty in the treatment that reaches the viewer entirely unhampered. The fragile beauty in the little wine shop scene emerges with just as much clarity as the final terrible image of a boat wallowing through a sea of floating bodies. It is a marvel of uncluttered filmmaking that one feels Bergman has been working toward since the early erotic fantasies.
But above all, one must judge a film in its final cumulative impact, and that is why "Shame" must be seen, for its consummate ending, which so easily could have been a ludicrous cliche (particularly where Eva's dream is concerned), instead emerges vitally from all that has gone before it, and this final picture of isolation, what I have called the "holocaust beyond redemption," cannot fail to touch you deeply and with finality.
BOOKS:
WILLIAM JAMES, by Gay Wilson Allen (Viking Compass, $3.45)—Probably the definitive biography of the great American philosopher and psychologist. Allen previously had written biographical works on Walt Whitman; here he ventures into the life of the man most responsible for the spread of the philosophy of pragmatism, as well as for advancing modern-day psychological thought. In writing the biography Allen had access to many private papers of James, and he offers a long, detailed, and engrossing study, one that also provides insights into the background of James and James' famous brother, Henry.
DARWIN FOR TODAY, edited by Stanley Edgar Hyman (Viking Compass, $2.25)—A collection of the most significant writings of Charles Darwin. It includes part of "The Voyage of the Beagle," that famous work describing the adventure during which Darwin came to early formulation of later ideas; much of the "Origin of Species"; a brief autobiographical sketch, and selections from many writings, including the significant
including the significant "Descent of Man."
THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, by Morris L. West (Dell, 95 cents)-An absorbing novel of several years ago, out in a new edition. "The Devil's Advocate" deals with a priest dying of cancer who is sent to investigate the possibility of making a saint of a man executed by partisans in World War II. One of the better books of recent years.
FAIROAKS, by Frank Yerby (Dell, 75 cents)-More formula stuff from the author of so many successful books of the lusty-busty school. Swashbuckling hero, slaves, swords, a beautiful blond heroine, an old plantation house. You've read it already.
Apr. 11 1969 KANSAN 5
Kansan Arts Calendar
7 and 9:30 p.m.-SUA Films-“Come Back Africa,” “Black Girl” and “Barom Sarret” 303 Bailey
Today
7 and 9:30 p.m.—Popular Film—"The Silencers"-Dyche Auditorium
7:30 p.m.—Folk Dance
Club—173 Robinson
8:20 p.m.—Experimental Theatre—Two Japanese Folk Dramas
Saturday
7 and 9:30 p.m.—Popular Film—"The Silencers"—Dyche Auditorium
8:20 p.m.-Experimental Theatre-Two Japanese Folk Dramas
Sunday
1 p.m.—SUA Bus Trip to Nelson Art Gallery, Kansas City, Mo.
3 p. m. - Carillon
Recital—Albert Gerken
3 : 30 p. m. — Symphonic Band—University Theatre
7 and 9:30 p.m.-Popular Film-"The Silencers"-Dyche Auditorium
8 p.m. - Senior Recital - Caryne Dockery, French Horn - Swarthout Recital Hall
Mondav
Violence, sex mark TV
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) Probably the definitive judgment on violence, a subject which haunts television, was given by presidential candidate Pat Paulsen last year.
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)
"If we outlaw all firearms," he said at an 89-cent-a-plate spaghetti dinner in his honor, "how can we shoot anybody? Suppose a man goes home early and finds another man making love to his wife. What's he supposed to do ... poison him?"
No realist, of course, expects all of the dramatic blood and guts to be eliminated from the home medium any more than one expects it to disappear, as in a fairy tale, from the world around us. If art is in any way supposed to mirror life, it would be absurd to show it only as some kind of technicolor musical.
It is sex and violence, however, that have Congress, the networks and the public talking nowadays. The Smothers Brothers are off next season's CBS-TV schedule after a feud with the network, which is replacing them with a Leslie Uggams variety series.
And, by a coincidence, NBC-TV's top-rated, racy "Laugh-In" series will be pre-empted by specials for eight straight weeks, not returning until June 9.
So with "Laugh-In" temporarily gone, the Smothers Brothers show soon to be extinct, and ABC-TV's recent new satirical series "Turn-On" canceled after one performance, television is getting to be nice and quiet again, the way a certain part of the public wants it to be. It's the next best thing to rigor mortis.