Face to Face (1976)

Face to Face

1976 // Sweden // Ingmar Bergman

 

Finally I got the chance to watch the complete TV version, the 176-minute Face to Face in theater, since I have only watched the theatrical version once several years ago. I remember I liked the film well enough then, but this time sitting at the theater through all three hours becomes a torture to me. One way or another I know it would be a painful watch since, from the second half of the film onward, we have to witness the magnificent Liv Ullmann descends into hollow madness and some perplexing dreams repeatedly that, at times recall Bergman’s preceding works while arousing a nauseating nuisance that Bergman has overplayed this time.

The TV version is divided into four installments, each is assigned with a title. The first episode “The Separation” begins with Dr. Jenny Isaksson (Liv Ullmann), a psychiatrist, moving in to live with her grandparents (Aino Taube played The Grandmother and Gunnar Björnstrand played The Grandfather) temporarily while her new home is under refurbishment. Meanwhile her husband Erik (Sven Lindberg) is away on business trip and their teenage daughter Anna (Helene Friberg) is in summer camp.

“The Border” charts the newly formed relationship between Jenny and Dr. Tomas Jacobi (Erland Josephson), and the beginning of her nightmarish vision, particularly invoked by a rape attempt from two men sneaked into her house with one of her patient. The second episode ends with her recording a suicide note for her husband in tape.

“The Twilight Land” and “The Return” constitutes the second half of the film, mainly focusing on Jenny’s suicide attempt, her subsequent dreams under the drug’s influence and episodes of nervous breakdown in the hospital. The dreams, each seemingly triggered by the various visitors she had, are imbued with Freudian symbols and reflection of Bergman’s own fear and guilt more than Jenny’s own past.

Jenny’s incapability to love, much like Karin’s retreat from her family’s love in Through a Glass Darkly (1961), makes her feeling like “a puppet, reacting more or less to external demands and stimuli”; her fear of death, echoing the same fear in her feeble grandfather and the homosexual actor Mikael (Gösta Ekman) she met in a house party, is a direct descendant from knight Antonius in The Seventh Seal (1957), as well as the suicidal parishioner Jonas in Winter Light (1963); her guilt complex and the traumatic terror of being locked in a wardrobe recalls the haunting childhood memory of Johan in Hour of the Wolf (1968), which is unmistakably a personal reflection of Bergman himself.

With a three-hour screening time, the context underlying Jenny’s psychosis becomes an utter contrivance. Unlike Professor Isak in Wild Strawberries (1957) whose dreams and memories juxtapose his present life journey (a road trip narratively), Jenny’s introspective, psychotic manifestation is at most some amateurish illustrations of a psychology textbook. Even her professionalism in psychiatry is portrayed unconvincingly and becomes merely an excuse for a self-scrutiny of the filmmaker himself. Even Liv Ullmann’s previous role as the divorce attorney Marianne in Scenes from a Marriage (1974) had a better “counselling” scene with her client, an old lady filing for divorce from a loveless marriage after her family obligation of raising the children was finally over.

I haven’t gone back and rewatched the shorter theatrical version this time. Their differences are not my main interest here, but as far as I remember, I definitely feel more positive towards the trimmed one. Liv Ullmann gave a well-rounded performance, swinging back and forth between calmness and neurosis, tenderness and menace effortlessly. She received a nomination for Academy Awards for Best Actress, while Bergman received one for Best Director as well. Face to Face is a “difficult” watch, and not as rewarding as Bergman’s other psychosis-centric films, still I would recommend the theatrical version for its direction and performance alone.