Elvira Madigan

I saw this film when it came out in the 1960's. It is loosely based on a true story of two lovers, a beautiful tightrope dancer and a married Army Lieutenant, who run away together in the late 1800's. I was blown away by the sheer beauty of this film. There are no car chases or explosions. Instead, it brings you close to nature with the sights and sounds of the fields and trees, the wind, sumptuous berries, bird songs and crickets. Their love plays out within some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. It runs almost in real time, quietly moving their story along. This film left a lasting impression on me for decades. I loved it.

Remarkable sometimes impressionistic photo and some scenes are just so beautiful! Oh I wish I was in his place out on that meadow... After Goyokin this is the most beautiful film I've seen. The story is perhaps a little weak, especially in the need. Very few dialogues. The music is of course good since it's Mozart. 4 out of 5.

Finally I saw this film on a college campus viewing in 1969 and tried to have a discussion about it with a stranger....big mistake. This is no light-weight film.

Yes there is the storyline fact that he left his wife and children. Also the way they solved their problem is revolting to our western sensibilities who like to find living solutions to problems (with notable exceptions).

But consider the pace of the film, each second of life was dear and sweet, the music gave focus to the sunlight. She was beautiful in youth (the worshiped idol of the 60's and on). He was caught in his love for her, a grasp at life as with the one you love, trapped in the amber of film, forever.

The young couple were living without a plan for the future, not unusual when you're young. Their natural vitality gave a calm pleasure to each segment of dialog free film. A snippet of life savored. One wonders: Is old age our souls' goal?

Yes the audience is practical, steal a chicken, flee the country, do something. And if so how is their love and beauty made to stand before us? Tragedy is necessary.

Now, I'm much older, but still, once every so often I will see an Elvira walk by, I hold my breath and marvel and am pleased that the world still has room for more such Elviras. Grace and beauty.

Since that time, with the perspective from the artists' work I can see a world that would have been only guessed by me, perhaps in a dream; thanks to Elvira Madigan.

One of the simple pleasures of life is to sit in a darkened theater and have a film capture your soul, not as a single person, but as the whole sigh of the room. I saw this in 1967 in Boston, in a makeshift theater. This was at the height of the flower revolution, when Boston was the intellect of the emerging 'counter' culture.

This film found a hungry audience -- we and it fed each other. At the same time down the road were Hollywood projects on (what we though was) the same notion: passion before everything, and the purer the passion the clearer the beauty. Life matters less than living. 'Bonnie and Clyde,' and 'The Graduate' seemed slick and pale in comparison then and more so now.

For decades, I recalled many of the images:

-- the raspberries and cream (which she bought by selling her image)

-- her luminescence, her dainty vomit, the fish in her skirt, the attentive query about eggs

-- the fainting when she is discovered by innocence (which we ourselves did at the very beginning through the same child's eyes)

-- 'There are times when you don't question the cost'

and of course:

-- the release of the butterfly, and the reluctance of the filmmaker to let us release the image.

This film succeeds because it is so simple, but its simplicity is not accidental. The notion of equating Elvira with the music by bringing the musicians into the story shows extraordinary skill. I can think of no other case where a classic piece of music is renamed because of a film.

At the time, I recall great discussion of the book Sixten carried around. Like Hamlet's book, it 'mattered,' but I have forgotten its importance. I remember much in the underground press about the self-referential nature: the passion and beauty of the characters and so with the film: the simple commitment to no plan of both: and the accepting of the consequences by both for meditative obsession.

But another of the simple pleasures of life is to live long enough to see two of ourselves: the recalled initial engagement with the film and the current one. I wish this pleasure on all of you. Oh how we have all changed. (I strongly suspect that no person who was not there will find any traction with this film, but perhaps others like it.)

And watching this now, I discover I'm more of an 'In the Mood for Love' kind of guy. Same ethic. Same commitment to enter the unknown. But the passion if stronger is more diffuse and less selfish. I recommend seeing both films. Let me know.

I had the pleasure, and good fortune to see this film on the big screen. It exemplifies classic beauty, one is reminded of Renoir paintings. The film uses landscape to reveal inner emotions, a rarity these days. The structure reveals the final outcome in the beginning, leaving us with is an examination of a process so lovingly portrayed by Widerberg, a process so perfectly focused -- a delicate, lyrical love story -- quite an achievement.