Schiff nach Indialand

Two men on a ship are fighting for the affections of a woman. In 1962 Roman Polanski had a breakthrough with this in the film "Knife in the water". In 1947 however Bergman was still learning and the quality of "A ship bound for India" in no way justified a breakthrough.

In "A ship bound for India" the two men are father and son, and by Bergman this signals an autobiographical element, the more so when the father is very authoritarian. The son resists the authority of his father and the woman "only" is a catalyst of this resistance. "Only" is however put a little too mildly because the woman gives the boy the needed self confidence to change his silent resistance into explicit resistance.

The film has some weak points. In the first place the father is too much the bad guy and the son too mucht the good guy. Secondly the father is authoritarian in a fysical way, in other words he is violent. I think the film would have been more interesting had the father been authoritarian in a spiritual way and the fight of the son was not to become as strong as his father but to develop his own personality.

In one scene Bergman shows his potential as the great director he would become. The diving scene, working magnificently with shadwos, is pure expressionism.