Sommarens Hitchcock

Joan Fontaine i permanent skräck.

Utanför vårt stora vardagsrumsfönster är träden i uppror. De kastar sig än hit, än dit, som om de uppförde en orolig dans, eller ålade sig undan en utlovad smärta. Eftersom vädret beter sig konstigt i år och blixten slog ned i en tall mitt emellan oss och grannen, och jag har ännu inte badat en endaste gång fast det redan är slutet av juli, ser jag på träden med viss oro. Sedan flyttar jag blicken tillbaka till teven, där en amerikansk serie om vänskap och kärlek - eller snarare den permanenta rädslan för bestående känslor och kärlek - pågår. Tryggare? Ja, faktiskt, det fejkade livet hos en grupp charmerande 30-plussare känns verkligare än min rädsla för att ett av de stora träden utanför vårt hus ska bestämma sig för att slå sig ner över oss.

Den irrationella rädslan är något jag känner igen sedan barndomen. Den fokuserades ofta i teverutan ute på somrarna på Karlsudd, hos mormor, där jag för första gången såg de flesta av Alfred Hitchcocks filmer. Men människan versus naturen var aldrig riktigt hans tema - det finns gott om andra filmskapare som ägnat sig åt det - förutom då Fåglarna. Fåglarna. Inte någon av mina favorit-Hitchcock direkt, mer som en pastisch över den egna stilen, med den fågelliknande Tippi Hedren som skärrad struttar genom det sömniga lilla kustsamhället Bodega Bay på sina eleganta höga klackar.

Fåglarna var den enda filmen som jag saknade på dvd och därför var det den enda filmen som jag köpte i butiken på British Film Institute i London, där det just nu pågår en stor retrospektiv av Hitchcocks alla filmer. Suck! Senare, när vi tittade på filmen hemma, i soffan framför det stora fönstret som många fåglar slagit emot, drabbades ingen i familjen av den välorkestrerade skräcken för irrationellt aggressiva fåglar. Det som slog mig mest var filmens serieliknande utseende och hur mycket av filmen som gick ut på att se Tippi Hedren stiga ut och in ur bilar, hus och så den famösa tagningen utanför skolan när hon sitter och röker medan kråkorna formerar sig till attack.

Så skräcken för att naturen slår tillbaka är inte riktigt gamle Hitchs melodi, tänker jag och fastnar istället för de mer intima landskapen som han var så mycket bättre på att demonisera. Som till exempel bilden av det lyckliga äktenskapet, den nygifta bruden som inser det ohyggliga, Joan Fontaines ansikte i stum skräck.

Jag läser lite på google och imdb om Joan Fontaine, som tydligen lever än, över 90 år gammal, någonstans i Kalifornien. För några år sedan hade hon en aktiv sida på Facebook där hon uppges ha svarat på brev från sina fans. Jag går genast dit bara för att upptäcka att rs Fontaine verkar ha lagt ner verksaheten. Lika bra det. Vad skulle jag ha skrivit? "I just love your work!" En sak vet jag ju sedan länge och det är att närkontakt med filmvärlden har aldrig bidragit positivt till min stora, omutbara och oföränderliga kärlek till film. Jag trivs bäst så här, bakom minst en skärm, med rätt att formulera min egna spegelbild. På andra sidan duken, eller skärmen, där jag sitter, blir Hitchcocks gåva till mig att alla hans skapelser blir mina.

Det är dock tydligt att Joan Fontaine verkar vara en ganska tröttsam person, lika oresonlig som sin syster, Olivia de Havilland, som jag ju också har ett livslångt förhållande till tack vare hennes roll som Melanie Hamilton i Borta med vinden. Olivia lever även hon, på närmare håll eftersom hon sedan 60 år är bosatt i Paris. För bara två år sedan fick hon motta en medalj från Nicholas Sarkozy och på en bild syns hennes oförstörda vackra profil, under en kaskad av sockervaddsvitt hår. Hennes syster närvarade inte. Jag läser ännu en gång den fascinerande historien om systrarna som aldrig kunde hålla sams. Jag vet att det är lite patetiskt, jag letar efter spår, ledtrådar och det finns ju faktiskt en, bortsett från den oresonliga skräck som vi delat både jag och Joan Fontaine: vi fyller nämligen år på samma dag.



Bergman's hidden demon

I have finally seen the movie that Ingmar Bergman didn't want us to see. During his life time, whenever there was a retrospectif of his films, this one was never shown. In Stockholm, there was a cinema called Fågel Blå where his films were screened continuously and in chronological order. But this partiular film from 1950 was never shown. In England it was called High Tension and in Germany the title was Menschenjagd. The Swedish title is much more to the point and its direct translation is: Stuff like that never happens here! What a ludicrous title for a film that has been denied its own existence.

Alf Kjellin, Ingmar Bergman and Signe Hasso.

It's a thriller about fugitives from the Baltic states being terrorised by Soviet agents and it features some of the best Swedish movie actors at the time: Ulf Palme, playing the evil spy Atkä Natas and Alf Kjellin as the heroic young police man, in love with the wrong woman. She in turn is played by Signe Hasso, one of the Swedish stars who left Sweden for an international career, and who was at the time living in Los Angeles and acting on the English stage.

The film has some of its most effective scenes in the streets of Stockholm: cars chasing up and down streets, harbours and peaceful suburbs. Especially the well known streets around Slussen and Mosebacke, where there is a beautiful old theatre and a famous out door elevator, Katarinahissen, are nicely used as dramatic scenery. There is a scene when Vera (Signe Hasso) goes to see her copariots who are having a secret meeting behind a movie screen where there is an animated feature being shown, with Donald Duck. The scene reminds me of a similar scene in Hitchcock's Sabotage, the one with the animated film about little Cock Robin being killed... And the creepy scene where Atkä Natas is chased into a corner, up on the bridge beteween the Katarinahissen and Mosebacke square, and jumps to his death, falling into a cluster of bikes on the ground at Slussen, reminds me also of Hitchcock.

There is even a rather amusing scene between Natas and the policeman Almkvist, where a gun travels between them, like a prize for the most eloquent, that reminds me of the constant balancing in Hitchcock's film between tragedy and comedy. It's no coincidence, of course. Bergman studied his competition closely and forged his own cinematography accordingly. High Tension - or "Stuff like that doesn't happen here" is not a bad movie. But it's not a typical Bergman movie either. It has its slow moments and perhaps rather weird twists in the story line - but it is a thriller, and gives a rather poignant picture of the lives of fugitives in neutral countries after the war. The end comes very close to Hitchcock's Notorious, with the woman who was bad being carried away to safety by the man who loves her.

Maybe Bergman thought that it wasn't original enough. He probably disliked it because it didn't live up to his expectations. But does it really matter what the film's director thought? The film works and has a life of its own - regardless of initial intentions and ambitions. I'm inclined to let High Tension live, and crawl out of the closet.

It's touching and it has its great visual moments, mostly due to the brilliant cinematography of Gunnar Fischer. And Ulf Palme is a great villain. It's amazing how Ulf Palme in just over one year would deliver three very different character portraits for the sceen: In Flicka och hyacinter by Hasse Ekman he plays a rather naive writer, trying to understand why a young woman has killed herself. In Fröken Julie by Alf Sjöberg, he acts out the battles between class and sex between Jean, the butler that he plays, and Julie, the high strung upper class lady played by Anita Björk. And in High Tension by Ingmar Bergman, he plays the spy and war criminal Atkä Natas (= Real Satan) who has come in from the cold and wants to surrender to the United States. Ulf Palme was a very sensitive actor who could play on his tenderness and beautiful melodic voice to appear threatening, or just plain weary of life. For his sake, at least, this movie should be seen.

Ulf Palme as Atkä Natas

Jane Eyre revisited, part 2

Mia Wasikowska as the 12th Jane.

There is no broken veil scene in Cary Fukunaga's version of Jane Eyre. On the extra material on the dvd, the scene is there, sure enough, beautiful and haunting, making a clear connection between the genre of the gothic novel that Jane Eyre both belongs to, and moves away from, and also showing us the first Mrs Rochester in all her despair: She was once too, a hopeful bride...

In the final film, we don't see her, the woman that Mr Rochester has hidden away in the attic, with the feeble excuse that at least, he didn't send her to an asylum (but is that place really any better?), until after the broken wedding, when it is made clear that Mr Rochester cannot marry Jane. Berta Mason Rochester is still a beautiful woman, but wild and dangerous, and that is why she has to be locked up and hidden from the world.

Does Jane realize, at that moment when she finally sees the first Mrs Rochester, that she could be treated the same way, if she doesn't behave? Or maybe, I hope, she thinks that she has already been there, and survived. She has spent eight years in a school for girls that was very much like a prison. Or a purgatory. And she survived it, making her strong enough to survive anything else that might be just as difficult.

The word "difficult" makes me stop for a moment. I heard it yesterday, in a very different kind of film, although it too was about women surviving in a man's world. (Ok, that was very broad - what film isn't?) The film was the Sarah Jessica Parker-movie called I don't know how she does it. It was a really sweet film about a career woman played by Parker who juggles career and private life with a sweet husband and two sweet kids, a boss who doesn't care about family, co-workers who either are trying hard to be dicks or robots, and a new collegue, played by Pierce Brosnan, who sees all the right possibilities in Parker's lovable and capable character. It's really a great little film for its focus on hope to all women out there in the audience: Yes, it is possible to love your work and love your family!

Sarah Jessica Parker gets friendly advice.

Well, there is a friend in there, who is a redhead and single mum, who talks to the camera, giving us the clues that we might not get if we were not told about them. And one of the things she says is that being "difficult" is something that has to be avoided at all costs, as being difficult is being everything that is not a "man". It's a bit corny but it works. I loved that movie.

Sadly but evidently, we are still much in the hands of the males controlling everything, and if we want to play with them, we have to make sure we appeal to them.

Jane makes an impression on the disturbed Mr Rochester because she is not afraid. She even says it, straight to his face, on one of their first encounters. (On their very first one, she shows it, when Mr Rochester nearly runs her over with his horse.) Still, everything about Mr Rochester is frightening, and she knows it. Why does she fall in love with him? That is something that has always intrigued me. In the now classic analysis of the gothic romance story, there is the idea of the woman saving the man with her love. But from what? And does he really deserve her love?

In this film, there is a moment when one almost hopes that things will take another turn, when the nice Mr St John asks Jane to follow him to India, as his wife. Her answer is almost fierce, as if she was mad at him for asking. She insists on calling him a brother, nothing else. He suggests love may not be between them but that it will come, after they're wed. This upsets her even more. Jane is really the faithful type, the one who gives her heart once, and never more. So she has to wait for Rochester and luckily for her, Bertha decides she has to end it all - to make way for Jane? And Rochester turns blind, which will probably milden his manner and make him a more humble husband to Jane.

Jane Eyre saying no.

As I said, this film eludes the famous veil scene, but in return does marvels with other unexpected things, that I haven't seen in other film versions. For instance, there is the scene by the window, which I don't remember from the book and might have the script writer Moira Buffini to thank for its existance. Jane is standing by one of Thornfield's windows, and Mrs Faifax comes to remind her that tea is ready:

”I am not in need of tea, thank you” says Jane, rather rudely. But Mrs Fairfax is not easily put off. Maybe she has even been there herself, staring out of the windows of Thornfield Hall. She is after all a relation to Mr Rochester.

The windows are large, small panes of glass inside heavy frames. Outside, the sun is setting. Mrs Fairfax says:

”It’s a quiet life here, isn’t it? … This isolated house. A still doom for a young woman."

Jane looks irritated, as if she doesn't agree. She answers her with quiet rebellion:

“I wish a woman could have action, like a man. It agitates me to pain that the skyline over there is over our limit. I long somtimes for a power of vision that would overpass it. If I could behold all I imagine… I’ve never seen a city. I’ve never spoken with men and I fear my whole life will pass.

Jane turns and faces Mrs Fairfax, who answers without malice:

"Now, exercise and fresh air…"

This scene comes directly after a series of pictures showing Jane tutoring Adèle. They are in a big library. Jane and Adéle in deep concentration, pressing flowers, bent over an atlas, discovering the world together. Then they sit together on the floor, bent over a large book with a magnifying glass. Jane is telling Adéle about some kind of demon in animal form. Adéle gets scared, and Jane, dead pan, just says "It's just a story". Then Adèle tells Jane a story: about the woman who lurks around the house after dark. She stands with her back to a large doll house, where we can clearly see a doll with black hair, staring out of one of the windows. Adèle is embellishing her story now, making the woman look like Snow White, a Snow White with fangs, like a vampire.

”What nonsense” says Jane, who, as we know, is not easily scared.

Then the camera pans delicately past a church yard. We're watching Thornfield Hall from a distance, from the home of the dead, crosses seen close up. Then we're back inside, with Jane, looking out at the vast and lonely landscape, and wondering how her life would have been, if she had been a man. And there is the scene with Mrs Fairfax.

A woman is doomed to a life inside houses. She can be a wife, a house keeper or a governess, but she will always have to live inside a house, like a prisoner. This scene also reminds me of other scenes where women are being trapped by window panes. One is Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession.  

But maybe I can offer a slightly different view: For the first time in her life, Jane is free to do what she likes inside a house. She can explore it, use its books, and she is being treated with kindness and respect. When she is ready, she is let out, to start exploring the world. That is when the scene with Mrs Fairfax appears in the film, and it is Mrs Fairfax who suggests that she takes a walk, taking the letters to the mail. And that is when she meets Mr Rochester for the first time. And Jane, who has been battling her fears all her life, finally stands in front of her life's biggest challenge: a man who frightens her but who loves her.

I think this film version of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is rather wonderful. Don't you? 

Judi Dench showing the way.

Jane Eyre revisited

Jane Eyre entering the tall, dark house.



"Last night I dreamed I was back at Manderley again..." That is such a great line, and  I've always wanted to use it. It draws on the memory of long lost houses, lost in the cobwebs of time, but still there, waiting, ready to haunt us... It's like a dream I had for many years, when I was constantly getting lost and finding myself in huge, dark  and dreary places. It's not very unusual. Don't we all know a house like Manderley, strange and frightening, and yet so intimate and familiar? Yes, of course, it's very Freudian. But I've always loved the way the way Joan Fontaine reads the line, in the beginning of Hitchcock's Rebecca, while the camera creeps through the shrubs and weeds of a forsaken garden, with her soft melodious voice. It's is both wonderful and scary.

Actually, I was going to write about Jane Eyre, and about the new film version of Charlotte Brontë's famous novel, which I fins very enchanting. The new film version has a script by Moira Buffini and is directed by Cary Fukunaga and Mia Wasikowska plays Jane Eyre to Michael Fessbender's Mr Rochester. The film also has a good part for Judi Dench, who plays an unusually interesting Mrs Fairfax, and there is a scene by the windows of Thornfield Hall,when she talks to Jane, that most certainly will haunt me for a long time. And there is a lot to be said about this beautiful film version as well. If you'll bear withe me, I'll get there.

Joan Fontaine och Laurence Olivier i Rebecca.

So why do I start with a line that has nothing to do with Jane Eyre? Well, Hitchcock's Rebecca was made after a novel by Daphne du Maurier, and it is a very obvious homage to Brontê's famous novel. The line from Rebecca just shows how Charlotte Brontë's heroine continue to live through the ages. She always seems to have something urgent to tell us, in our own time. And there are so many of us who keep coming back to Thornton Hall or Manderely, seeking for something tha we know is both lost and found. The spirit of Jane is always there, hovering over us with her clear "I". We need her and we can't get enough of her. That is why we by now can count to 12 film- or tv versions made from the novel about her. 

What is she telling us, this plain and young governess of 18 years, who survived both a cruel stepmother and a horrible institution like the Lowood school for young girls - only to fall in love with a man who is just as hard, brutal and commanding as the life she is trying so hard to leave behind? Here's my story.

The first time I met Jane Eyre was on the screen, in the early seventies. It was the film version with Susannah York as Jane Eyre and George C. Scott as Mr Rochester. I saw it in a cinema in Malta. I was nine. It was very scary and not surprisingly, it was the scene where Mr Rochester's first wife, Bertha, tore up Jane's bridal veil, that made the deepest impression on me. I was always scared of the dark as a child and I kept thinking that when I closed my eyes before going to sleep, strange creatures would appear to live around my bed, so if I suddenly opened them I'd see the most horrible things...

Mother should never have let me see that film. Later, I remember that Sister White, at our school, The Covent of the Sacred Heart, in S:t Julian's, was a bit surprised when mother announced that my sister and I were reading Jane Eyre. Were we not a little too young for that kind of novel, she asked? Mum assured her we weren't, but I think it was probably the Ladybug version that we actually read.

A few years later, my mother and I went to a book fair at Skansen, the out door museum in Stockholm, and I bought my most cherished copy of Jane Eyre. It was published in 1946 in USA to comemorate the centennial of the novel. With this edition came strange and beautiful illustrations by Nell Booker, an artist from North Carolina. Jane Eyre was her first comission as a book illustrator. She later did the illustrations for Wuthering Heights as well. The pictures were in color and in black and white, they looked as if they had just left the hand of the artist, there was something fleeting and swift about them, a clear spring breeze flew through them.

I remember very clearly that summer afternoon at Skansen when I got the book and I've loved it ever since, keeping it close through the years, showing it with pride to my daughters.
Today, I can see that Nell Booker's pictures recall the Hollywood film version with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. Yes, her again. She played both the second Mrs de Winter in Rebecca, and a few years later, Jane Eyre. Incidentally, she and I share the same birthday: October 22nd.

And that's a great line to end with. For now. But I'm sure I'll be back at Thornton Hall soon again.

Snow White's guilt

Is this girl really innocent?

Actually, it's in your face. If someone is called Snow White and everything about her is immaculate, pure and innocent, you must ask yourself what it is that she is hiding. I am not saying that everyone who boasts these characteristics is evil, but let's take a thorough look at Snow White. Who is she? Why does she have to leave the castle? What is she running away from? Who is she running away from? What has she done?

Disney's Snow White is the mosty boring heroine, even compared to later Disney princesses like Cinderella or Jasmin. Snow White was made out of soft and round pencil strokes and her movements were based on an actual dancer named Marge Champion who later also modeled for the characters of the Blue Fairy in Pinoccchio and one of the dancing hippos in Fantasia. (Marge Champion can later be seen in real life as a dancer in several MGM-musicals of the 50s). Her voice belonged to a young Italian singer called Adriana Caselotti who was kept on a very tight leach by Disney, in fact her career after Snow White was reduced to nil. 

Marge Champion as Snow White.

Disney's Snow White is a very controled character, a young girl who seems perfectly at ease inside the box (or the cell) that she has been assigned to live in. In fact, she never, not even during the nightmarish flight through the woods, steps out of line. She is the perfect picture of total submission, at her best when she teaches the dwarfs how to clean themselves and behave. And thus, as a character in a cartoon, the place where anyone can become anything, Snow White never transcends the paper doll.

This has always struck me as strange. The real magic behind Disney's Snow White has always seemed to me to be about soemthing else, something unseen, hidden behind all that perfection and smoothness. What about Snow White's guilt, for instance. What has she done? Why does she have to run away?

Well, of course, there is the Stepmother, the woman married to Snow White's father who is jealous of Snow White's beauty. The Stepmother apparently had a name in the Disney film: Grimhilde. And she looked evil enough, both before and after the potion called "Sleeping Death" that she so dramatically swallows, clearly inspired by the previous Hollywood versions of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Grimhilde turns into an evil old crow in order to trick Snow White to eat the poisonous apple. But will she, Grimhilde, ever be able to retreat back into her beautiful self again? The story never tells, and we will never know as Grimhilde tragically dies in the end. I've always felt a little sorry for her, the ugly old hag, who smiles so mischievously directly at us, as if wanting to make us her accomplice. Remember, she sacrifices her own beauty in order to kill Snow White. So, is the story really about who is the fairest of them all?

The brave witch?

In the two new film versions coming out this spring, the evil stepmother is played by Julia Roberts and Charlize Theron, two beautiful actresses in their prime. I am clearly not the only one puzzled by the motives of the "evil" stepmother. But is she really that bad? The Stepmother is a tough part to play, replacing Snow White's dead mother and literally stepping into her shoes, the Queen's shoes. And why doesn't the king ever step forward to save his own daughter? In the Grimm story, and the Disney film, the king is just not there, the third side of the love triangle, the elusive prize that both women are fighting for.

Julia Roberts and Charlize Theron facing a cruel fate.

Yes, that is what I am driving at: they are both fighting for the love of the king, Snow White and her stepmother Grimhilde. And why does Snow White has to be banished from the castle? Because of her love for her father, the kind of incestuous love that threatens the new marriage of the king. The king needs to rule and he needs a queen by his side who is strong and forceful, like Grimhilde. But he can't rule as long as he wants to marry his daughter, Snow White.

This incestuous motive in Snow White has been effectively quenched in the Disney version of the tale, and all subsequent versions as well. But like all fairy tales it survives in different stories, and in the French tale of Peau d'Ane (Donkey Skin), it is easy to recognize the story of Snow White in disguise: In the French story, she is a princess who is actually threatened by incest, her father being incapable of loving anyone else after the death of the queen. It will be up to a good fairy mother this time, to save the princess by hiding her underneath a donkey's skin, until the time is right to make her reappear again.

There is a wonderful and strange film version of this story as well, from 1970 by Jacques Démy. I am thinking of the film Peau d'Ane, of course, with the wonderfully perverse Catherine Deneuve in the title role. Delphine Seyrig plays the resourceful good fairy mother, who steers everyone away from catastrophy with both some magic and a good sense of humor. If only Snow White's poor stepmother could have done the same!

Stepmother telling off evil daughter in Peau d'Ane.

Skvallerbytta ...bing... bång

En melodi rinner genom mitt huvud. Den är vacker och rytmisk, men samtidigt skrämmande och repetitiv. Lockande - som en vårvind som för med sig doften av nyutslagna blommor och hopp och löften om en härlig, varm framtid. Men också  pockande och oundviklig som en vårflod. Inget kan stoppa den. Den måste fram.

Det är också en bild av skvaller och hur skvallret tar sig fram, som eld och vatten, förklädd till vårvind och sanning. Så här kan det se ut: en kvinna får ett brev, öppnar det och segnar ner. Innan hon dör hinner hon säga några ord, som om orden bokstavligen drog kraften ur kroppen på henne: "Här står det att..."

Så börjar Det sägs på stan, filmen som avslöjade så obehagliga sanningar och retade gallfeber på sin samtid att ingen ville se den. Och så blev det regissören Per Lindbergs sista film. Han dog några år senare vid 54 års ålder. Året var 1941, vårt grannland Tyskland hade tagit strupgrepp om Europa och vi visste inte om vi stod näst på tur. Skräcken var ett faktum, trots att vi försökte leva så normalt som möjligt, trots inkallelseordrar och ransoneringskort.

Nere i Frankrike förberedde sig den franske regissören Henri-Georges Clouzot för att göra film för det nazistiska filmbolaget Continental-Film, som på order av Goebbels hade startats i Frankrike. Ordern gick ut på att göra skräp och fluff för den franska publiken. Det märkvärdiga är att Continental-Film lyckades med bedriften att mitt under ockupationen göra några av den franska filmhistoriens vackraste filmer. En av dem är Clouzots Le Corbeau. Den spelades in i den lilla staden Montfort-l'Amaury, strax norr om Paris, och Pierre Fresnay och Ginette Leclerc speade huvudrollerna. Filmen handlade om hur staden attackeras av en anonym brevskrivare som under siognaturen "le corbeau" avslöjar sanningar och sprider lögner om invånarna i staden.

Stopp! säger ni nu. Det där låter ju precis som Per Lindbergs film, Det sägs på stan. Men Clouzots film gjordes 1943 och hans film hade inte svensk premiär förrän 1948. Omöjligt att Per Lindberg skulle ha känt till Clouzots film, även om manuset, av Louis Chavance, låg färdigt redan i slutet av 1930-talet. Och Clouzot? Hade han sett Lindbergs film? Föga troligt, filmen var ju ett fiasko och togs ner från biograferna redan efter ett par dagar.

Ändå är de så lika. Dessa två filmer handlar om exakt samma sak: en hemlig brevskrivare sprider panik i en småstad med hjälp av anonyma brev. Båda filmerna väljer att skildra ett kollektiv, det fins inga huvudpersoner - även om Pierre Fresnay, i rollen som den mystiske läkaren Dr Germain, och Arnold Sjöstrand, i rollen som den plågade läraren Martin Bilt båda ges en viss air av hjälte. Och i båda filmerna är det två kvinnor som får agera syndabock: den fula och korpliknande sjuksystern Marie i Clozots film, och den milda, lite naiva kokerskan Jeanette i Lindbergs film, utsökt spelad av Marianne Löfgren.

Båda filmerna använder sig av ett bildspråk djupt förankrat i verfremdungseffekt, sneda vinklar och skarpa skuggor, städernas ådlerdomliga arkitektur används för att skjuta bort, inte skydda - i den svenska filmen är det Nyköping. Arvet efter den tyska expressionismen och fotografer som Karl Freund, som exilerades till Hollywood och gjorde skräckfilm, väger tungt i Lindbergs och Clouzots film. De vill att vi ska uppleva, känna, hur skräcken sprider sig och slår rot i än den ena , än den andre, hur vi ska känna att vi är förföljda, bevakade, aldrig fria, och hur polisens fasta grepp på våra armar, när vi arresteras, kommer att kännas som en befrielse.

Skvallerbyttor. Olyckskorpar.  Sanning som dödar. Hur kan ord vara så farliga? I den svenska filmen kallar sig brevskrivaren för "Veritas", ett namn som om och om igen uttalas fel av människorna i staden, som ett slags motstånd mot den stormvind som orden utlöser, men som därmed också tycks ge Veritas vatten på sin kvarn: De är blott en obildad hop, knappt ens värda det bläck som Veritas ödslar på dem!

Än är inte sista ordet sagt om dessa två remarkabla filmer....

"Think of everything we've accomplished!"

Colin Firth as Tailor.

I didn't get much of what Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy was about. But there was one line that stuck to my mind. Close to the end of the movie, when everything is reveiled, Tailor says: "I am someone who has made his mark."

But what is that mark? What is the most important work that he has done - for Tailor is very clearly a professional. Private lives don't count in this world of men spending their lives in sound proof rooms, dull corridors and elaborate staircases. So when did he make that mark? He never seemed to work much, he seemed more like a bored school boy. I see a lot of women, though, shuffling paper and locking up files in safes. And one young man working hard to get them for on old man who spends his nights reading them.

It's really a terribly boring film. Am I supposed to be shocked at the lack of work done by some of the men who presume themselves to be the pillars of civilization? In the end, Smiley, a man who never smiles, sits down at the place where his former boss sat, in the middle of a sound proof room with a very irritating wall. Here is where the secrets are born, fed and killed. Here is where the men sit and shoot vicious looks at one another, while trying hard to pretend to do something vital for the realm. Did he get his bosses job? Will he chase all the shadows away, work as an honest spy boss? What side is he really on?

Gary Oldman as Smiley.

My husband reminds me that there is a better film about the dangerous spy games that men play, and get themselves entangled in. He's thinking of The Good Shepherd, Robert De Niro's fascinating film where Matt Damon plays a man who goes astray, thinking he is doing it all for the good of his country. It's a very moving film, filled with the sadness of hurt and loss that never will mend. Matt Damon is just as enigmatic as the men in Tailor, Tinker, Soldier, Spy. But the tragedy of that man is somewhat more understandable: How can he not love Angelina Jolie? He must be crazy.

Matt Damon as The Good Shepherd.

And then it dawns on me: what all these men are trying so hard to hide, what they are in fact accomplishing, is their secret gayness. Of course. None of them seem spurred by the things that drive most of us: love, doing something useful for others, getting into relationships, starting a family, having kids... Both Tailor and the Matt Damon-character are closet gays. I can see no other explanation for Matt Damon's sad spy. In the end he is left all alone because he has betrayed his family and he is also being held in contempt by his collegues, the very ones who lured him into the CIA in the first place. Do they despise him because what he does to his family? No, they despise him, and this took some figuring out for me, because he doesn't acknowledge his homosexuality and can't enjoy the privileges of his upper class life. His boss (played wonderfully by William Hurt) doesn't mind if his men are straight or gay. He has his own secrets but the difference is that he enjoys them.

So work is pointless to all these men who work so hard. I can still say that Alfredson's film leaves me cold. There's so much left unsaid or hidden away. It's the same with the Mikael Blomkvist character in the Millennium-films. He's such a cold hearted person, for all the good deeds he's supposed to be doing. At his best, he's like a Tintin character, someone who helps the others stand out, while being nothing special himself. Who is Tintin really? What does he want? Where does he come from? When does he ever write the stories he's supposed to write? 

Thanks to Milou, it is hard to get upset with Tintin. After all, Tintin loves Milou. But what about Smiley? Is Smiley just another Tintin? At the end of the film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley goes home to his apartment. When he's been there before, we noticed that he seemed to be afraid of the gloomy rooms, all locked up in shadows and memories. At the same time Smiley's home seemed to be awfylly easy to invade. There's always someone waiting for him, an unexpected guest.
So Smiley moves carefully into his home. He seems to loose his balance at one point, and hugs the staircase bannister. Then we see that someone is sitting in the far end of the apartment, in a brightly lit room. It's a woman, and probably it is Smiley's wife who has come back.

So he was human after all. And he managed to find the spy "at the top of the circus" because he was so unhappy that his wife had left him so he had to engulf himself in work. That's a rather grim perspective on the forces that make us achieve the work we do. Work is connected to betrayal, egoism, loneliness and isolation.

Suddenly this reminds me of poor Ani, in the Star Wars saga, who is trapped into the Darth Vader mask because he wanted to save the one he loved. Somhow Ani's transformation into Darth Vader seems much more believable than the men running the British spy-circus.

My husband, who put me on this trail in the first place, soothes me by telling me that perhaps the story of Smiley and the others simply need more time. That's why he prefers the TV-series with Alec Guinness.

Daniel Craig as Tintin - sorry - Mikael Blomkvist.