SAWDUST AND TINSEL Movie Review

The Naked Night
Sunset of a Clown
Gycklarnas Afton

This somber 1953 Ingmar Bergman film details the grisly and humiliating experiences of a second-rate traveling circus as it rolls across a barren, desolate Swedish countryside. One of Bergman's darkest and most pessimistic films is built around the central story of the circus's owner (Ake Grönberg) and his relationship with his mistress Anne (Harriet Andersson), whom he tries to dump in order to return to the wife he originally abandoned for a life with the circus. The images in Sawdust and Tinsel (also known in the U.S. as The Naked Night) are haunting, disturbing, and nightmarish; clowns and a tawdry theatrical milieu have rarely been depicted with such leering dread. The movie's distinctive look was the result of the first of many collaborations between Bergman and Sven Nykvist, who was called in to work on the picture when Bergman's regular cinematographer was unavailable.

NEXT STOP … Torment, Through a Glass Darkly, The Silence

1953 87m/B SW Harriet Andersson, Ake Gronberg; D: Ingmar Bergman; W: Ingmar Bergman. VHS, LV HMV, NLC, FCT