Riten (1969)

Riten is one of Bergman's lesser known film. The story is Kafkaesque: three acors are interviewed by by a judge. A multitude of conflicts mar the relationship among the actors. The crime they are accused of is having made an obscene play. Although this is a hodgepodge of Bergmanian themes - weird sexuality, the conflicts of matrimony, religious quandary, mental breakdowns - this is far from his most successful film. Bergman works with eerie angles, minimal sets, explicit sexual scenes and, you know, a general sense of the unhinged experimentation. In one sense Riten is fun to watch because it lacks the restrain and traditional we expect from Bergman. This is .... something else. For a while, I played with the idea that Bergman might have made a parody of the typical Bergman film. But then I was reminded that Bergman is perhaps the least person we expect to indulge in self-mocking. Bergman is rumoured to have called the film an act of fury directed at those critiquing his work - if we take this in mind, to say that the film is tongue-in-cheek is an understatement (what happens in the very last scene). We know that Bergman is quite capable of making comedies. If this is a comedy, it is a rather black one. The Rite explores the role of art in society. The main point seems to be that art always is an autonomous sphere, and that it has to be that way. When think about Bergman, and how Bergmand talked about art, the only thing this film does to me is to put a big grin on my face: it is so OVERBLOWN.