Laiva Intiaan

The Criterion Collection's Ingmar Bergman box set cleverly lures you in by starting off the Bergman "film festival" with Smiles of a Summer Night, an enjoyable film, before immediately proceeding to a disc containing both Crisis and A Ship to India, two of Bergman's earliest works. Crisis was a bad film. A Ship to India is even worse.

The plot, told almost entirely through a lengthy flashback, follows a rather maladjusted son who lives and works on a salvage ship with the frustrated crew, his abusive father, his defeated mother, and, shortly into the movie, his father's younger mistress, a pragmatic prostitute who sings in a variety show. A Ship to India is part coming-of-age movie, part dealing-with-old-age movie, and part (father-son-prostitute) love-triangle movie.

The film plods along through a melodramatic storyline, and along the way, the viewer is treated to a great deal of pretentious, implausible dialogue. There is, however, some interesting camerawork and, at one point, the movie seemed to be moving in a more interesting and thoughtful direction (briefly becoming a 5/10 before crashing down to a 3/10). Overall, though, it's a bad film that should be avoided unless you're watching it to see Bergman evolve as a director.