Elvira Madigan

My fiance and I just watched Elvira Madigan on FLIX. It's up there with the best of love stories...Love Story, Forever Young & Romeo & Juliet. It's a great movie, and if you're in the mood for a good movie about true love, watch the 1967 Swedish version (with English subtitles) of Elvira Madigan.

One last thing, for those who didn't like this movie, just simply lost touch with what true love means to them.

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.

(This is NOT a spoiler coming up--it pops up before the opening credits). This takes place in Sweden in 1859. A Swedish army lieutenant named Sixten Sparre (Thommy Berggren) runs away with a famous tightrope walker Hedwig "Elvira" Madigan (Pia Degermark). They committed suicide in a forest in Denmark. This is their story. We meet them when they're already on the run. He abandoned a wife, two kids and his job. They're madly in love but have to keep on the run. They want to live away from society but find that suicide is the only possible way to be together forever.

I've wanted to see this for years. The only time I saw it was on TV ages ago. It was dubbed with a terrible print and so faded that it appeared the film was in black and white! I finally got the Korean DVD and it is GORGEOUS! The color is bright and strong and the cinematography takes your breath away. Seriously--I've seen hundreds of films and this has got to be the most beautiful ever. There's music by Mozart, the couple are both attractive people (Degermark especially is stunning). There's not much of a story but the scenery is so gorgeous you won't care. This also has a brief sex scene with no nudity but it still is very erotic. Also one sequence stands out--they have a fight and Sixten apologizes by floating an apology down a stream to her. I gotta admit--that scene got to me:) This has no rating but would easily get by with a G today.

This is a film for romantics only! Some people (mostly guys) will probably find it corny and/or boring but others (like me) will love it. This was a big hit with teenagers back in 1967 but seems to have faded away. Too bad - it's incredibly beautiful. Recommended highly!

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.

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.