Search - Sawdust and Tinsel - Criterion Collection on DVD

Daniel A. (Daniel) from EUGENE, OR
Reviewed on 2/8/2010...

Extremely well designed characters make Bergman's film work. Female underarm hair aside, this is one I could watch many times over.

INGMAR BERGMAN, OPUS 13

wdanthemanw | Geneva, Switzerland | 12/02/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"**** 1953. Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. A land circus owner comes back to the town he left his wife and his children in, three years before. Criterion presents here the uncut version of this film with scenes absent from the VHS and laserdisc editions of SAWDUST AND TINSEL. Among the bonus features, you'll find an introduction by Ingmar Bergman himself, shot in 2003, as well as a very edifying commentary by film scholar Peter Cowie. The theme of humiliation, sexual, physical or simply psychological, is the main theme of SAWDUST AND TINSEL and the underlying element of its most awesome scenes such as the flashback on the beach which is also an homage to Sergei Eisenstein and to other masters of the silent films period. A movie to watch several times."

Welcome Sven!

wdanthemanw | 01/25/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is one of my favorite early Bergman movies, if not just for the opening clown sequence, which is beautifully photographed. I think this is the first film in which Bergman collaborated with Sven Nykvist, perhaps the greatest film duo to ever come into being. Whether or not the critics loved or hated the film, or when or why they took either opinion, is of course of little consequence. Bergman himself seemed to have liked the film, or at least as much as he indicated in his autobiography: he notes, in particular, the successful blending of dream and reality that he so admired in Tarkovsky and that, he felt, he had failed to create in some of his later more ambitious projects.A circus owner (Gronberg) arrives in his former hometown after an absence of seven years, when he left behind his wife and his two little boys. He hasn't seen them since, and has taken up a new lover: a young, coquettish, simple-minded girl who performs in his circus (Anderson). When the the circus owner decides to pay a visit to his former family, Anderson becomes intensely jealous, thinking that he is leaving her to return to his family. "Fear becomes what is feared" when, sensing abandonment, Anderson allows herself to be seduced by a young actor. Likewise, thinking that his new lover has run off, Gronberg makes a desperate attempt to reconcile with his family. A morbid and most pathetically depressing emotional climax is reached when all the cards are laid on the table at the circus's performance.The acting/directing in this movie is Bergman at his finest; a 'spontaneous' (thoroughly coordinated) guttoral instinctiveness is pounded on like an out-of-tune piano chord: the emotional progress of the characters in the film is at once difficult to watch, for its ugliness, and strangely attractive. Thematically it probably falls into that category of films more finite in scope, examining love, marriage, and human relationships: but it shouldn't be discounted as small in its aims, for it is full of psychological insight, or at least interesting from that perspective.I tend to agree with those that find this film a milestone in Bergman's career: essential."

Caustic, Amazing. It leaves one breathless....

wdanthemanw | 12/16/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A new generation of Bergman viewers has begun to discover that many of the lesser-known films by the great Swedish director are among his very best, or, one should say, they speak to modern audiences in a more significant way than the "cannonical" Bergman films do. "Winter Light", "Hour of the Wolf", "Shame" and, yes, "Sawdust and Tinsel" are at LEAST as worth-watching as "Seventh Seal", "Cries and Whispers", etc. "Sawdust" is a harrowing film, even by Bergman's standards, and it's not for the faint hearted, but it is one of the most gripping films I have ever seen; it's filled with horror and humiliation (and more raw pain than a dozen other films) but it finally shows a sincere compassion for its characters, an attribute that ultimately makes it a true work of humanistic art."