Intermezzo

When I read a movie synopsis that suggests a young piano teacher runs off with her student's dad, I expect them to, you know, go somewhere.

Here I am nearly an hour into my nap - I mean, this movie - and they don't appear to have gone anywhere. Just a bunch of talk, talk, talk. Who cares. It's all so stagebound and inert, set to a repetitive violin soundtrack.

As for the principals. Bergman was still stuck in Sweden, which is to say she hadn't been glammed up by Hollywood yet. That's fine. She got better looking the older she got, but she's not exactly an ugly duckling as a younger woman, either. But holy h3ll, the guy she runs off with is a mess. Gosta Ekman has sickly dark circles around his eyes, and it's not due to the makeup department. He was a cokehead who was knocking on death's door, as it turned out. The makers of this movie might have been better off had they exploited that look and made this a gothic horror film.

As released, it's a talky, dull melodrama that offers little dramatic tension and even less insight. It survives today as a curiousity piece within the Bergman ouevre.