Eva Sweden 1948 Director: Gustaf Molander Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman and Gustaf Molander
Cast: Birger Malmsten, Eva Stiberg, Eva Dahlbeck, Stig Olin
Rating: 4 out of 5
This is an early Ingmar Bergman. But it's not he who has directed it, that was made by another giant in the swedish film history, Gustaf Molander.
It's WW2 and the sailor Bo is returning home to meet his parents for the first time in two years. His father works as a station manager at the railway and when train passes a certain place he remembers what happened on the same place when he was 12 years old.
The train drivers had always let him see the engine, blowing the whistle or test-drive the locomotives. But one night a group of travelling musicians stopped in the neighbourhood for the night and Bo met a girl in his age. She was blind but to show off he stole one of the train engines and off they went. Being inexperienced he caused a trainwreck and the blind girl died without ever knowing what hit her. Ever since then, Bo has had feelings of guilt, and his faith in God has disappeared. Visiting his neighbours, he tells Eva, a girl he falls in love with, of his fear of death: "There is something called the closeness of the death: Can your feel it? It's awful, awful!" and "Death is like a giant shadow who catches hold of everything and destroys it. There is nothing alive that won't die!"
Pretty heavy stuff. Speaking for myself, I can't imagine somebody in Bo's age talking about his fear of death to a girl he wants to date.
Anyone who has seen a few of Bergman's works from the 1940s and 1950s understands that this is obviously his writing: the religous doubts of a man, the feelings of guilt for the lack of faith and the envy for those who have it since this means a solution to all problems.
Bo's fear of death is a theme that is repeated through the movie: Back in Stockholm, he shares an apartment with his best friend Göran and Göran's flirtatious wife Susanne. She is obviously sexually interested in Göran and one night he has a nightmare that he and Susanne kills Göran. He wakes up screaming: once again he has caused the death of someone.
The third time, Eva and Bo has married and moved to an isolated island off the coast. Eva is pregnant in the eight month when it is time to give birth. Being on an island, Bo has to row like an Olympic Games champion across the sound to get her to the midwife. During this his nightmares returns: Will it be the third time he kills somebody, this time his wife?
This was also a pleasant surprise coming from director Gustaf Molander. He is mostly known for his silly upper-class comedies or heavy drama. This shows the importance of a good writer having the benefit of a good director and vice versa. And for the actors, Birger Malmsten is certainly impressing as Bo. And Eva Dahlbeck, here making her first of her eleven Ingmar Bergman movies also gives a convincing performance as the sexually starved but flirtatious wife.
Copyright Mattias Thuresson 1997
E-mail: mattias.thuresson@mbox300.swipnet.se
Hey! Don't forget my A Star is Born page:
http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-18501/Bilder/Star/sib.htm
971001
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