"A Dark and Disturbing Psychological Movie"
If you like films "about the plague of the modern soul — the demons and doubts, secrets and lies that men and woman evaded but were forced to confront, to their peril"* then Bergman's for you.
(*Richard Corliss, TIME )
Poor Peter Ergerman has wife problems and mommy problems, and it all goes Noirsville, i.e. murder and necrophilia......
Directed and written by Ingmar Bergman during his exile from Sweden. The excellent crisp Black & White cinematography was by Sven Nykvist, and Music by Rolf A. Wilhelm.
The film stars Robert Atzorn as Peter Egermann, Christine Buchegger as Katarina Egermann, Martin Benrath as Professor Mogens Jensen, Rita Russek as Katarina Krafft, Lola Müthel as Cordelia Egermann, Walter Schmidinger as Tim Mandelbaum, and Heinz Bennent as Arthur Brenner.
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| Robert Atzorn as Peter Egermann |
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| Christine Buchegger as Katarina Egermann |
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| Martin Benrath as Professor Mogens Jensen |
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| Rita Russek as Katarina Krafft |
Peter Egerman (Robert Atzorn) goes to a Peepshow. He arranges to have sex with one of the live nude girls.
When the place closes down he stays with Ka (Rita Russek) who moolights also as a prostitute. He acts strange and tries to get out but he is locked in with her. He kills her and then the sick puppy commits necrophilia.
From this point on the film switching to Black & White flashes backwards and forwards in time randomly. The film also depicts dream sequences. All this is trying to examine Peters troubles. At a coroners inquest his wife and all of Peters friends are interrogated. Professor Jensen Peter's states that he was shocked by the murder. Later it's revealed that Peter had problems relating to his wife, Katarina and told Jensen that he started having fantasies about murdering her. Jansen determined that the fantasies were not serious but he told Katrina that she should leave town. Katarina is too busy with a fashion show.
Another sequence depicts Peter contemplating suicide. Another shows Katarina and Peter quarreling. Still another has Katarina revealing details of her and Peters sex life.
Tim a business partner of Katarina is a homosexual the interrogator questions if he ever had an affair with Peter. Tim hesitates and admits that he did have desires for Peter, and that he also has a guilty conscience because he introduced Peter to Ka to get back at Katarina for the difficulties he had with her business wise. He also confesses that he thought he could slowly lure Peter to him.
Other sequences are simply conversations, still others just musings.
Professor Jensen concludes that Peter killed Ka because she disrupted his daily routine, her sexual aggression towards him mimicked the aggression of both his mother and of his wife triggering the murder.
Noirsville
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| Après necrohilia |
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| The Dream Sequence |
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| Peepshow |
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| suicide attempt |
This film is not going to be for everyone. Being more visually oriented than most the seemingly endless conversations and monologues drag a bit for me. But of course some people just lap this kind of shit up.
As a frequent visitor to Times Square and its various adult venues in my youth back in the late 60s early 70s, I can honestly say that I found the sequences depicting the peepshow probably the most realistic of any I've seen to date, if you are not into psychological soul searching studies, watch it for that, lol. 6-7/10
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