War is a disease that will infect everything it touches. In Shame, Ingmar Bergman creates a fictional Swedish civil war, one that is as data-less as the false conflicts of 1984, because he chooses to focus on the personal. A couple - Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow, it doesn't get any better than that - musicians who have retired to the countryside and consider themselves apolitical nevertheless will not be spared its horrors. A cue is given early on when Ullman, in her first scene, walks around with her shirt open. A domestic scene, but the first of several that showcases her vulnerability. We'll often get scenes that play on her face, never cutting to the reverse shot. She is exposed. Von Sydow, the weaker person of the two, prefers to hide, to run, to bend, and eventually to break. There are some harrowing moments - loyalist forces headquartering in a primary school and conducting torture there, for example, and the glut of bodies at the end - but the focus is always drawn back to the relationship, how two ordinary enough people are affected by the event, as it grows ever closer to being the "new normal". The shame of the title is at first thrown on the devisers of the situation, but we quickly understand that whether one took a side or refused to, there will be opportunities to expose one's ugly side - ruthlessness, cowardice, etc. - and plenty of shame to go around. One might survive, but not as the same person.
Why this is never mentioned in the same breath as Persona or The Seventh Seal or Fanny and Alexander or Wild Strawberries is beyond me. (But god, the man could make great films.)
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kaculler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLY_MCh6A5YSiskoid
War is a disease that will infect everything it touches. In Shame, Ingmar Bergman creates a fictional Swedish civil war, one that is as data-less as the false conflicts of 1984, because he chooses to focus on the personal. A couple - Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow, it doesn't get any better than that - musicians who have retired to the countryside and consider themselves apolitical nevertheless will not be spared its horrors. A cue is given early on when Ullman, in her first scene, walks around with her shirt open. A domestic scene, but the first of several that showcases her vulnerability. We'll often get scenes that play on her face, never cutting to the reverse shot. She is exposed. Von Sydow, the weaker person of the two, prefers to hide, to run, to bend, and eventually to break. There are some harrowing moments - loyalist forces headquartering in a primary school and conducting torture there, for example, and the glut of bodies at the end - but the focus is always drawn back to the relationship, how two ordinary enough people are affected by the event, as it grows ever closer to being the "new normal". The shame of the title is at first thrown on the devisers of the situation, but we quickly understand that whether one took a side or refused to, there will be opportunities to expose one's ugly side - ruthlessness, cowardice, etc. - and plenty of shame to go around. One might survive, but not as the same person.Bowtiepunk
https://archive.org/details/shame.-1968.1080pWindill
A little known masterpiece showing a couple trying to survive and keep their humanity in violent wartime.Limbesdautomne
The only courage is the kind that makes you live with someone else. Peace, it's a war we gave up, together.Read more in French on La Saveur des goûts amers.
Yousef Mousa
You can't neglect this film if you were interested in Bergman's Filmographynicolaskrizan
Apocalypse, now – on Fårö!http://1001movies.posterous.com/976
jdjudge
Why this is never mentioned in the same breath as Persona or The Seventh Seal or Fanny and Alexander or Wild Strawberries is beyond me. (But god, the man could make great films.)Jonathan_Hutchings
Brilliant film! Definitely an underrated Bergman gem.