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Three Strange Loves
1949 Drama / Romance
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Credits
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Director: Ingmar Bergman
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Script: Herbert Grevenius, Birgit Tengroth (novel)
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Photo: Gunnar Fischer
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Music: Erik Nordgren
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Cast: Eva Henning (Rut),
Birger Malmsten (Bertil),
Birgit Tengroth (Viola),
Hasse Ekman (Dr. Rosengren),
Mimi Nelson (Valborg),
Bengt Eklund (Raoul),
Gaby Stenberg (Astrid),
Naima Wifstrand (Miss Henriksson)
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Country: Sweden
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Language: Swedish
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Runtime: 83 min; B&W
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Aka: Törst; Thirst; Three Strange Loves
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Summary
In a hotel room, Rut looks back on her life whilst her husband Bertil sleeps. She
recalls the time she had with Raoul, a young officer. It was a happy romance, until
she discovered he had a wife and learnt she was pregnant. After an abortion which
left her sterile and ended her career as a dancer, Rut married Bertil, an impoverished
art historian. The passion has long gone out of their marriage but they stay together,
quietly tormenting one another...
Review
It wasn’t until he directed Three Strange Loves,
aka Thirst, that Ingmar Bergman revealed something
of the genius for cinematic art and deep understanding of the human psyche for which
he is now revered. It was his seventh film, coming after a number of uninspired
melodramas and poorly received experimental works. Three
Strange Loves isn’t a particularly great film but it is, significantly, the first
film which is recognisably Bergman-esque, in terms of both style and content.
In the film’s uncompromising depiction of a faltering marriage, there are pointers
to some of Bergman’s later films, notably
A Lesson in Love (1954) and
Scenes from a Marriage (1973).
As in many of Bergman’s subsequent films, the narrative is told primarily from the point
of view of the women characters. Here, Rut is the more familiar Bergman heroine
- the victim who, in the course of a life marked by tragedy, has acquired an extraordinary
resilience. Viola (the former mistress of Rut’s husband) is Rut’s more vulnerable
counterpart; her experiences weigh on her, drive her towards mental collapse and ultimately
destroy her. Together, Rut and Viola form a classic Bergman pairing of opposites,
the former personifying hope and life, the latter despair and death.
Three
Strange Loves was adapted from a collection of short stories by Birgit Tengroth.
The screenplay was written by Herbert Grevenius, a theatre critic who previously worked
with Bergman on It Rains on Our Love (1946).
Birgit Tengroth appears in the film in the role of Viola. The male lead was played
by Birger Malmsten, the star of Bergman’s earlier film,
Music in Darkness (1948).
With Three
Strange Loves, Ingmar Bergman is far more adventurous and assured in his narrative
construction and cinematographic technique than previously. With its elliptical
narrative and convincing characterisation, it is a much more brooding and mature kind
of film than anything Bergman had previously directed. The one flaw is that the
various strands of the film don’t come together as a satisfying whole. The transition
from the Rut-Bertil story to the Viola story feels so clumsy that it looks as if two short
films have been haphazardly edited together.
Whilst the Viola story has one or
two moments of brilliance, it lacks substance - partly because the lesbian aspect of the
story had to be toned down to get past the censor. Far more memorable is the segment
in which Rut and her husband are taking a train journey through a war-scarred Germany
- the bleakness of what they see providing a stark counterpoint to the state of their
dwindling marriage, perhaps opening their eyes to the devastation which separation would
mean.
As in many of his later films, Bergman draws on his own experiences - and
no other filmmaker had a private life that was as messy and as turbulent as his.
The final snatches of dialogue between Bertil and Rut succinctly sums up the relationship
between the sexes. Husband and wife may be forever separated by an ocean of tears,
but a life together is a kind of Hell that is more preferable to the Hell that is a life
apart. This is Ingmar Bergman looking on the bright side, with just two failed marriages
behind him.
© James Travers 2007
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