Ingmar Ernst Bergman
CRISI

CRISIS (Kris, 1946) A Dazzling Debut.

As the voiceover states, "(the story) ...I wouldn't call it a heartbreaking drama, rather an everyday drama. So it is almost a comedy." The story, very simple and straightforward, tells of an eighteen-year-old adopted girl who finds her mother, follows her to the city and, after a bitter disappointment, returns to the woman who raised her and ends up marrying the man who has always wanted her. In a small coastal village, without a railway, without industries, and without a port, inhabited by a conservative and gossip-prone community, life flows calmly. The only significant event of the day is the arrival of the bus. One day, Jenny (Marianne Lofgren), from the city, arrives in town, whom the people immediately identify as scandalous. Jenny is the biological mother of Nelly (Inga Landgré) who has been raised by the piano teacher Ingeborg Jhonson (Dagny Lind), a simple, lonely, and sick woman. She teaches children and, to supplement her income, hosts a veterinarian called Uffe (Allan Bohlin) informally. An event that is judged scandalous by the community and the offer from the mother to move with her to the city leads Nelly to leave. Nelly begins a new life, better. It is more brilliant, but with less humanity. One of the film's key scenes features the intense dialogue between Jack (Stig Olin) and Ingeborg, in the station waiting room, where the woman waits to take the train that will accompany her to the village after a brief visit to Jenny. The visit to the adopted daughter, the fear of loneliness, illness, and death, in the train, reopen new anxieties and ancient, unsuppressed memories in the woman's mind. Is the crisis the one that will strike Nelly at the height of the illness? Or is it the one provoked by the constant lack of money? Or is it that of Jack's "lunar conscience" who, in another key scene, shares with Kelly the secret of no longer being able to bear the burden of an alleged murder of his girlfriend. Jack intends to confess and pay. But the story might just be a ruse to make the women capitulate. The doubt is sown by Jenny in the newly seduced Nelly. Unmasked by Jenny, Jack goes out into the street and shoots himself. Nelly, lost and sorrowful, returns to the village, to her adoptive mother. She meets Ulf who declares himself to her. Nelly's return restores calm to Ingeborg and gives her the strength to face the illness. The film, which was a sensational flop, had the merit of introducing a young Bergman and attracting the producers' attention, who saw in him the germ of a meticulous professional. Certainly, "Crisis" is a film made of faces and expressions. The sick face and compassionate expression of Ingeborg; the naive face and sweet expression of Nelly; the false face and cunning expression of Jenny; the lunar face and lived expression of Jack; the serious face perpetually accompanied by the mature expression of Ulf. As a director, he finds a new way to edit scenes and depict fiction with a constant, meticulous, and practical work between "field" and "off-field." Many shots are flat on the actors, there is some dolly, panning, a few long shots, and naturally many close-ups. "Crisis" is a film about the difficulty of "sick" relationships between people; about the interpenetration between fiction and reality (a theme very dear to Bergman); about truth and falsehood (whether they are told to oneself and/or to others); about naivety and the art of deception (in which the treacherous Jack is a master).

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