Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) – I. Bergman

In the end, it’s the story of two unsatisfied people who look for other options but realise that instead they just need to muddle along the way they’ve been going and make the best of it (until other options come along, I guess).  Is that depressing? This _is_ an Ingmar Bergman film, after all.  Åke Grönberg is Albert, the leader of the circus, who has left his wife (when she inherited money and decided to leave the circus).  He has fallen in with young Anne (Harriet Andersson), the bareback rider, who is jealous of the wife, as she suspects (rightly, it turns out) that Albert would like to leave the circus too and settle down with his former family.  So, she takes an opportunity to cheat on him with an actor at a theatre in the town the circus has stopped at, dreaming that this will open a new chapter in her life – but it doesn’t.  When their options don’t pan out, the circus and the couple move on.  Bergman uses expressionistic lighting and sets and camera angles to good effect – and the acting is strong throughout.  I guess it’s ultimately a downer, but I feel somehow that perhaps Bergman wants these two to accept their plight and get on with living.  What we yearn for may be only a fantasy anyway. The problematic part in accepting what we have is getting past the cruelty and injustice that we seem to inevitably inflict on each other (especially when we are chasing these fantasies).