Thirst (1949)

Another early work by Ingmar Bergman, Thirst has the distinct honor of being the first film in its illustrious director's career that could have been made by nobody else -- adaptation or no, this is a Bergman film, through and through. The tenuous, frustrated attempts at connection, the despairing spirituality and damaged sexuality, the crisp, grim poetry of the black and white compositions: It all comes together for the first time here in a way that would define much of it's director's subsequent work. This film, in particular, introduces a lot of material (a fateful train ride, a relentless heat wave, a lesbian subtext) that would inform The Silence (which I really, really need to see again). Thirst is a roundelay of emotional and sexual dissatisfaction that orbits around mentally fragile ex-dancer Rut and her husband Bertil. The dancer (the central character) is flighty, distractible and often childish, with a penchant for overindulgence in alcohol and mental cruelty; as such, her almost pathological inability to see beyond herself reflects in the various relationships Bergman shows us. There's a leering psychiatrist who wants his patient to admit that her whole life "has been one long mistake"; said patient later meets an old female classmate who attempts, very clumsily, to seduce her with bad results. The tension built up in the film's various threads erupt in a series of surreal climactic tableaux; the most striking of these (a chase down a smoke-and-fog-laden train corridor) seems informed by Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher, which is an interesting reminder that Bergman's mise-en-scene often creeps closer to full-on Expressionism than many are willing to allow. Bertil proclaims relationships to be "a sea of tears and misunderstandings," which is as close to a thesis statement as you'll get from this film. The title implies a longing, a desire for something missing. On the evidence here, Bergman's characters will forever be parched.

Grade: B