David O'ConnellBrink of Life
April 13th 2010 04:52
Ingmar Bergman’s Brink of Life opens with a view of figures moving behind an opaque glass door. As a nurse allows us access we’re shown inside a maternity ward where a distressed woman, Cecilia (Ingrid Thulin), is in the throes of a personal tragedy. Bleeding and in pain, she is slowly losing the child inside her whilst her husband Anders (Erland Josephson) meekly offers words of comfort.
The inevitable miscarriage causes anguished emotions to swell inside Cecilia; she vents them in a kind of cathartic release, cleansing anxieties and deep-rooted fears from her tormented mind. As she’s sedated we’re introduced to the other main characters: two pregnant young women with contrary attitudes to their own upcoming births. Stina (Eva Dahlbeck) is a typically doting, deliriously happy mother-to-be, impatient for her overdue baby to be born. Hjordis (Bibi Andersson) is a different matter altogether, her unplanned pregnancy the cause of grief and profound dread of a unimaginable future. She’s too afraid to tell her mother of her physical condition, has little money and the father of her child wants nothing to do with her.
Slowly we watch the contrasting fortunes of these women’s lives unfold over a couple of days. As is typical of Bergman, he hones in on the psychological torment of his protagonists - so often women, as in masterpieces like Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972) and Autumn Sonata (1978). His trademark close-ups are used to maximum effect, as a tool for the most intense scrutiny of nuanced changes in the emotional reactions of the women; almost as if proximity is relative to a measure of internal conflict.
Exemplary performances are a given in Bergman films and this is no exception with many of his regular collaborators leading lights in Brink of Life. The magnificent Ingrid Thulin can express the tumult of a churning, tortured psyche like few other actresses, and this ranks alongside her best work for Bergman such as Winter Light (1962). Her monologue to the nurse upon first comprehension of her unborn child’s fate is a standout moment, conveying the horror and depth of her internal conflicts with a power that chills and brings the amorphous duality of life and death into sharper focus. Dahlbeck and a young Andersson (later to astound in Persona) are both heartbreaking in their own ways, whilst more familiar figures from Bergman’s canon in Josephson and Max von Sydow as fathers-to-be with very different outlooks, round out a first-rate cast.
It’s fascinating to view Brink of Life in the context of Bergman’s career. It’s a lesser known film but from an era when his mastery of the medium and reputation were on a rapid incline. Made in 1958, it followed in the wake of a memorable trio in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries (both 1957). A year later, Bergman would begin another sequence of remarkable films with The Magician (1958) and The Virgin Spring (1960) that continued through the following decade.
Against a backdrop of such cinematic landmarks, Brink of Life has seemingly vanished from view. But this is no minor, trivial work. Presented in an almost documentary-like fashion that astounded audiences of its time with its frank depiction of the mechanics of birth, Brink of Life is another compelling dramatic footnote in the career of one of world cinema’s giants.
Perhaps seemingly limited, superficially, by its restricted settings, Brink of Life still resonates with the rising and falling emotions of its trio of complex female characters, from abject despair to tentative hope, from devastation to the cold, faint allure of salvation.
* © 1958 Nordisk Tonefilm. All Rights Reserved
Brink of Life has been released on DVD by Madman.
| 110 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
