In the midst of a civil war, former violinists Jan and Eva Rosenberg, who have a tempestuous marriage, run a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, ... Read allIn the midst of a civil war, former violinists Jan and Eva Rosenberg, who have a tempestuous marriage, run a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.In the midst of a civil war, former violinists Jan and Eva Rosenberg, who have a tempestuous marriage, run a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.
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I chose "Skammen" because I saw it recently and because I think the message -although being a 1968 film- is still valid. The subject is quite simple: a couple is surprised by war, which changes forever the existence of the two people. We can discover their real feelings and their real values.
We can find shame in more levels.
First, husband's shame for not being able of giving a child to his woman. He's also an extremely coward man in the first half of the movie, he feels shame also for that.
Second, wife's shame for not being a mother -she feels frustrated. She's shameful also because she has betrayed her man with an important man of their country's army.
Third. They both feel shame because they pretend being friends of this man, who saves them from tortures and jail. (They're actually accused of being traitors, in expressing other political opinions.) As a compensation, that man come to their home whenever he wants and take advantage of his position for becoming a woman's lover. The husband lets things going like this, it's the price he pays for a kind of freedom...
Fourth. Shameful is of course war and life during it.
Bergman makes a flawless movie, he studies people as they are. Without big budgets and huge sets. A simple film, deep, superbly photographed in black and white.
Eva and Jan leave us under no illusion of how innocent people living ordinary lives the world over can change as they're drawn into the living nightmares of armed conflict. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman once again present us with characters from the imagination of Ingmar Bergman that exist in a world few of us would like to share, but the world of cinema lets us come close enough to get a feel.
Much has been written about the unsympathetic central characters, particularly von Sydow's. For me there are flashes of a good (if flawed) man early in the film, but one who copes badly with adversity. The flaws become all that is left as his humanity is gradually eroded by one horror after another.
I watched A Passion (Ullmann and von Sydow on their island again) soon after this, and was amazed to recognise many of the same locations. And then there's a dream sequence...
Did you know
- TriviaAlthough generally regarded as one of Ingmar Bergman's finest films, the director himself was largely unhappy with the film. In his book "Images: My Life in Film", Bergman wrote that he felt the script was uneven, resulting in a poor first half.
- GoofsConsidering the bomb explosions near the house and the greenhouse, it is odd that some many glass windows are still present later.
- Quotes
Eva Rosenberg: Sometimes everything seems just like a dream. It's not my dream, it's somebody else's. But I have to participate in it. How do you think someone who dreams about us would feel when he wakes up. Feeling ashamed?
- ConnectionsEdited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: Le contrôle de l'univers (1999)
- How long is Shame?Powered by Alexa
Details
Box office
- Budget
- SEK 2,800,000 (estimated)
- Gross worldwide
- $1,798
- Runtime
- 1h 43m(103 min)
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1