If you've ever returned to your family home as an adult after enduring a difficult childhood, you may identify with the memories that haunt a man as he makes his way through a now-abandoned mansion. Then again, it's not likely your childhood was messed up in the way his was, or at least, I hope it wasn't. The affections of this guy's wild, bohemian mother (Ingrid Thulin) ran hot and cold when he was a child. She pushed him away at times and would go off traveling without him, but also didn't have a clue about proper boundaries relative to his emerging sexual curiosity.
This brings us to the part of the film that caused such an uproar. It was viewed only in a private screening at the Venice Film Festival, and so offended Shirley Temple (then 38) that she resigned from the following San Francisco Film Festival. The scene is indeed cringe-worthy; after a bath, the mother tosses her naked 12-year-old boy (played by a 15-year-old actor) onto a bed, and begins tickling him. His whole body is visible, and we see him starting to get aroused. She takes a look and compliments him on his manhood and asks him if he knows what it's for. Then, while she reads the Song of Solomon to him, he begins masturbating under the blanket, and she's outraged, humiliating him as she yells at him. He is highly conflicted, feeling desperate for his mother's attention amidst all her socializing, and also wanting her sexually, things that carry over into adulthood. He can't make love to his fiancée without having the image of his mother float up into his head. So yes, ugh, it's a lot. There is honesty here and it took courage from director Mai Zetterling, but the explicitness of the scene on the bed probably wasn't necessary.
Meanwhile, after his mother dies, the boy is subject to the naked greed of her friends and relations, and watches his beloved aunt get hauled off to the insane asylum for trying to stand up for him. A lot of these memories have a surreal, carnival type of feeling to them, which I took to be how childhood memories are skewed and sometimes exaggerated in our minds. They're impressions. At times his visions of the people from the past and how he feels, like being stuck in a birdcage, seem forced, and at other times, they lag a bit. On the other hand, the film is beautifully shot, with wonderful framing and the use of reflections. It seems far too simplistic for him to "blow up" his past at the end (I mean gee, if only it were this easy), but there was something cathartic about it. Overall, it's not one I can say I love, but I admire the filmmaking, how daring it was, and how it tackled the topic of childhood trauma, even if it was inelegant at times.
Plot summary
Jan returns with his fiancée to his childhood home. While there he flashes back to his childhood, twenty years before when he lived an unfettered life watched over by a strange great-aunt and a hedonistic and often neglectful mother and father. In particular he remembers watching his mother give birth to a stillborn child after refusing to go to the hospital in the middle of a party and his sexual obsession with his mother which included being caught by her while he was masturbating while listening to her read a bedtime story. In the present, his relationship with his fiancée grows more strained as his past begins to affect the way he acts in the present.—Wiki
April 16, 2023 at 07:50 AM
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Daring but disturbing
a very good movie
Jan (Keve Hjelm) grooved up in an over class environment and with a strong attachment to his egocentric and cold-hearted mother Irene (Ingrid Thulin). After many years, he returns to his childhood environment, an old mansion that have stood empty for a long time, but the memories live on.
Angst and sexual repression in downbeat, risqué film
Jan (Keve Hjelm) fights impotence (literal and symbolic) and anguished childhood memories in a decadent Swedish castle where risqué parties and daring scenes defy 1960s' movie censorship, reaffirming the ground-breaking role of Swedish films in helping advance adult, sexually concerned themes in international cinema (q.v. Bergman's "Through a Glass Darkly", "The Silence" and "Persona", Vilgot Sjöman's "My Sister My Love/ Syskonbädd 1782" and "I am Curious Yellow", etc). "Night Games" includes a bold flashback scene of Jan as a child (sensitive Jörgen Lindström, who played the young boy in Bergman's "The Silence") caught masturbating.
Former Swedish star Mai Zetterling's third directorial effort is particularly interesting for atmosphere, decors and cast, but the film is heavily depressing and the rather obvious symbolisms have dated badly. Sphynx-like, marvelous Ingrid Thulin has a field day as the bitchy and sensuous mother; Keve Hjelm is engagingly honest in a role that requires bravado and emotional range. The film is influenced by Bergman's "angst" films but also has an expressionist touch to it, because of Rune Ericson's camera-work and experiments with different lenses.
If you like films with decadent-bourgeois flavor and angst-filled characters, this is for you. Of course, it's also a must for Ingrid Thulin fans, but it's probably a very difficult film to find these days. My vote: 6 out of 10.