Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

 Ingmar Bergman's "Sawdust and Tinsel"

After watching Ingmar Bergman's 1953 film "Sawdust and Tinsel," I felt a sense of coldness and despair. That's not to say the film didn't have any comedic or light-hearted moments. However overall, the film is rather melancholic and restless in its own sense of desperate disillusionment. It's a slightly bleak film that never resolves anything or reaches any conclusions. Rather, the film is merely a feeling.

It centers on a group of travelling circus performances as they enter the hometown of its ringleader. There, our ringleader will go visit his separated wife, much to the chagrin of his current young lover. After the angry lover leaves to visit the local theater, she is raped by a theater performer she was being flirtatious with. At his separated wife's home, the ringleader is met with rejection as he begs to come back. When he leaves, he sees his lover coming out of the theater and confronts her back at the circus. There, he starts to go into a fit of rage and loses his head. At the nightly performances, he gets into a fight with the man who raped his lover and gets humiliated. Later that night, he contemplates suicide but instead kills the performing bear so his carnies can eat.

I feel a loss of words for the film. Its brimming with regret, desperation, and sadness. All of the carnies are facing economic woes, relationship woes, and philosophical/existential woes. These woes never go satiated and only get worse. However, there's no sense of relief. Rather, they must hit the road and keep going on to the next event/town. With this notion, "Sawdust and Tinsel" becomes Bergman's frustration with life itself. The film is like a continuous existential gnawing of life's depressing continuance. But there is nothing to do with that gnawing except continue to endure it. 

"Sawdust and Tinsel" is a very depressing and bleak film. It was Bergman starting to gear up for the types of philosophical and melancholic films he would come to be known for.