Crisis

The seductions and disillusionments of city life play counterpoint to provincial goodness in this morality tale of a young daughter pulled between the worlds of her two mothers. The script itself is unremarkable; Bergman later disclaimed responsibility for the story by saying, “If someone had asked me to film the telephone catalogue I would have done so.” One can imagine that Bergman’s version of the phone book at this point in his career might have been the same fascinating jumble of cinematic styles that one can find in Crisis, where the French cinema of the thirties meets expressionistic lighting, an early attempt at a Bergmanian dream sequence, and introspective mirror shots. Most interesting is perhaps the arrogant and debonair seducer, Jack. Reportedly added surreptitiously to the script by Bergman just before shooting began, Jack is a foreign irritant in this otherwise banal narrative, as well as a harbinger of tortured characters to come in Bergman’s other early films.