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JONATHAN BAUMBACH
divorce agreement, each as usual misrepresenting his feelings, the occasion
ends in a violent physical fight. The transient murderousness of Johan 's
rage is another surprising reversal of expectation. Each revelation of
character is undermined by the revelation to come. Each practiced decep–
tion is undermined by self-deception. The turnabouts of the characters
give the narrative a texture it otherwise lacks. Impending separation invites
passion: need provokes antagonism. Bergman is able to manipulate his
characters' destinies through psychological paradox.
Johan and Marianne achieve their greatest intimacy at the end as lovers
(divorced and each remarried) "in the middle of the night in a dark house
somewhere in the world ." The last scene is extremely touching.
Scenesfrom a
Marriage
is about the.resurrection oflove in a becalmed marriage through
the dramatized fantasy of separation and loss. Bergman's romantic notion
that love req uires tern porariness and clandestine circumstances to thrive is
nothing new. It is his authority as a filmmaker, the absolute assurance of his
touch, that permits
Scenes from a Marriage
to transcend its romantic
banalities. I like
Scenes
better than
Cries and Whispers-the
human Bergman
more attractive to me than the facile metaphysician-and if the new film is
not in a class with his best work, it is nevertheless a powerful and affecting
experience. See it, as the ads neglect to say, with someone you love or used
to.
3
The new Fellini film
Amarcord,
like the latest Bergman, arrives over–
burdened by extravagant praise. At the same time, much of the affecting
quality ofthe film comes from an uncharacteristic and disarming modesty.
To say one enjoyed
Amarcord
is to sound insufficiently enthusiastic.
An admirer of
The White Shieh, I Vitelloni, Nights of Cabiria,
some of
La
Strada
and much of
B/h,
I have found many of the later films, including
La
Dolce Vita, Juliet of the Spirits
and
Satyricon,
repellently over-inflated. In–
creasingly, I find myself in temperamental opposition to Fellini's new work,
put off by a vision which seemed to have exhausted itself in grandiose and
grotesque self-advertisements.
Amarcord
is a return
to
the concerns of
I Vitelloni,
although in Fellini's
later more flamboyant manner. This lyrical memoir, more essay than nar–
rative, covers the full turn of the seasons in a provincial seaside town in Italy
in the early days of Mussolini . The whole town is its subject, though it
focuses more or less on a group of irreverent teenaged schoolboys and one
in particular called Titta. The movie opens with a town rite, the burning of
