Crimson Femininity

As the dominant element of the film’s cinematography, mise-en-scène, and editing structure, the brilliant use of red in Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972) evokes the complexities of various aspects of its tragic and implosive characters’ femininity, creating a fluid symbolism that viscerally combines motherhood, sensuality, innocence, and blood.

Cries and Whispers depicts the psychologically confrontational and infrequently compassionate relationships between four women in turn-of-the-century Sweden: Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is slowly dying from cancer; her ethically and emotionally unsavory sisters, Marie (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin); and Anna’s humble and affectionate maid, Anna (Kari Sylwan). As Agnes’ conditions worsens, eventually resulting in her excruciating death near the middle of the film, Marie and Karin engage in acidic arguments – about their withering sister, each other’s selfish motives, and their moral shortcomings – that end with half-hearted phony resolutions to become closer and more sensitive to one another. Throughout the claustrophobic psychodrama, which takes place almost entirely within the confines of the family’s 19th century mansion, Anna serves as a passive observer, selflessly dedicating herself to Agnes and complacently receiving Marie and Karin’s condescension – becoming Agnes’ replacement mother in a film otherwise bereft of empathy and love.


Richly photographed by longtime Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist (who would win the Best Cinematography Oscar for the film in 1973), the lush ruby colors of Cries and Whispers’ stunning sets and costumes are made overwhelming and shockingly vibrant – illustrating the importance of the film’s carefully crafted mise-en-scène when one is attempting to discern the film’s meaning and tone. Ravishing red hues can be found throughout the film, most noticeably in the interior design of the family’s mansion, which features bold scarlet walls and carpets, deep puce chairs and cushions, and crimson drapes, curtains, and bedding. The omnipresence of cardinal coloration pervades nearly every frame of Cries and Whispers.

Bergman explained his choice to emphasize red in the film by claiming that the film is “an exploration of the soul” and that he “imagined the soul to be a damp membrane in varying shades of red,” but the significance of the carmine colors extends past this generalized perspective once one realizes that Cries and Whispers is not about just anyone’s soul, but about the souls of four women – Agnes, Marie, Karin and Anna.

Throughout the film, men play a minimal role, popping up only to provide caustic critiques of Marie and Karin, as is the case with Marie’s occasional lover, David (Erland Josephson); Marie’s semi-suicidal husband, Joakim (Henning Moritzen); and Karin’s heartless and emotionally abusive husband, Fredrik (George Årlin). Barring its few moments of gender diversity, Cries and Whispers is solely about the interplay between its quartet of women – sisters, wives, mistresses, mothers, daughters, and rivals. In this miasma of femininity, Bergman’s enveloping reds come to suggest the motherly womb, the blood ties of family, the loss of virginity and innocence, and the stark rawness of passion (be it in love or hate).


Impressive sanguine tints haunt the women as they sleep in the blushed house (womb) of their mother; as they watch their sister writhe in pain under maroon blankets; as they spew vitriolic words at one another in front of sparse vermilion walls; as they reminisce about their long-dead mother reading her red-covered copy of Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers (1837); as Marie attempts to seduce David in her skimpy cerise lingerie; as Marie tends to her daughter, clad in a ruby dress; as Anna tenderly cradles Agnes’ corpse in a manner that echoes Michelangelo’s Pietà (1498-99) during a shot that is swallowed by an encroaching red fade; and as Karin slices her vagina with broken glass in a fit of melancholy desperation, eventually smearing the symbolically-menstrual blood onto her lips in one of the most disturbing scenes ever filmed.

Bergman’s women cannot escape the control that the swirling reds have over them, as the colors define most of the myriad aspects of their femininity. The editing of Cries and Whispers reinforces this, often fading into scenes from a red screen and allowing scenes to fade out through a collapse into bright rouge – including a series of intermittent straight-on close-ups of the women’s faces that inflame and burn out in rosy shades, populating the film with lyrical meditations on the links between the psyches (or souls) of Agnes, Marie, Karin, Anna. Nykvist’s mind-bogglingly pungent garnet-hued cinematography delves into the visually-represented core of womanhood that holds Cries and Whispers together. The women are encased in the red – locked within the reality of their femininity, which Bergman reveals to be both a gift and a burden in his fiercely challenging cinematic masterpiece.

by Brandon Colvin

***This article originally appeared in Rise Over Run Magazine.
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Work and Play in Fellini's "8 1/2"

Right out of the gate, Federico Fellini’s cinematic milestone, 8 ½ (1963), displays its surreal, tragicomic analysis of the dichotomy between responsibility and escapism – work and play – with iconic imagery and endless imagination. In the film’s famous opening scene, artistically frustrated and creatively drained film director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) sits in his car, locked in a traffic jam – inside of a dream. As Guido grows increasingly claustrophobic and as his breathing becomes heavier, he notices that he is being watched. Becoming frantic, Guido climbs out of his car’s window and stands on the roof. Spreading his arms to catch the wind, Guido begins to fly. While soaring through the sky, Guido notices a string is attached to his ankle, triggering his realization that he is being used as a kite by some condescending fellows on horseback, who are gallivanting on a beach. Guido’s tormentors then tug his string, causing him to crash into the ocean, resulting in his awakening from his fantasy, as he lies in bed, thrusting his outstretched hand into the air, full of desperation

In the dream sequence, the extent to which the pressure and strain of Guido’s job invade his life is expressed succinctly and clearly. Even in Guido’s fantasies – his supposed moments of liberation – he cannot escape the constricting demands of his overseers. Guido seeks freedom from the confines of his smothering work (his car) and when he is able to fly away, to experience the joy of escape and play, he is only made to realize that he is still the object of someone else’s playtime: he is a kite that forgets he is a slave to the whims of his controller. Guido’s recreation can never reach its idealized potential; the bonds of employment pull him down, sinking him in an abyss of drudgery and stress. As 8 ½’s narrative progresses, Guido continually slips into extravagant reveries, each combining humor and melancholy, during his charmingly destructive attempt to complete his current film amidst the chaos of his dissolving marriage, strained friendships, inconsolable sexual appetite, and Catholic guilt. Guido’s fantasies are always given dark, unusual facets, while upholding an unsentimental nostalgia for innocence and idealism – as in his imaginings of the perfect woman, Claudia (Claudia Cardinale), his visualized wish for an obnoxious critic/script doctor to hang himself, and, most notably, his hallucinatory harem of all of the women in his life, in which he dictatorially designates to them their places and responsibilities. During his fantasies, Guido adopts the role of the employer, doling out responsibilities and attaining the freedom that allows him to truly be at play; his desires do not illustrate a sympathetic portrait of the “working man,” but rather the cynical structure of power that even the subjugated and shat-on wish to sit on top of.
Making Guido’s situation even more ironic is the fact that he bosses so many others around, considering he is a film director, but can’t stand to be pushed around by anyone else. Guido’s attitude exemplifies a realistic and surprisingly endearing megalomania, which Fellini describes using an incredibly personal and honest script, milking Marcello Mastroianni’s irresistible warmth and intelligent masculinity. Guido’s ambitions to autonomy and power set-up a difficult problem – hinging on his lofty expectations – without an easy solution. In fact, the film’s solution to Guido’s struggle for freedom and recreation is perhaps one of the most thought provoking and ambiguous in film history.

As Guido’s film spirals out of control into a state of universal ridicule and artistic mire, the troubled director’s options seem limited and dismal. Failure looming, Guido caves in, deciding to crawl underneath a table during a hectic press conference for his film and shoot himself. Or does he? The film’s repeated fluid transitions between reality and fantasy make the scene hard to pin down as being Guido’s true fate or an imagined extension of his anxiety. What follows Guido’s “suicide” is the film’s ultimate dream (or afterlife) sequence, in which Guido plays a sort of ringleader, organizing basically every character in the film into a huge dancing line, full of cheer and gusto.

Tellingly, the carnivalesque finale is sparked by post-suicide Guido’s sight of his younger self as a marching flautist with a band of clown musicians. Guido can only attain control over his life and can only reach a state of contentment after witnessing himself as a playful child – forgetting the weariness of the world, his work, his romantic entanglements, and his guilt, by losing himself in the celebratory tunes created by his happier self. Following the raucous dancing extravaganza that ensues, the young Guido is left alone, marching in a circus ring; his fellow musicians gone and all of the lights out, except for one spotlight which follows the chipper boy as he marches off screen in the film’s last shot. Is Guido’s youthful incarnation victorious, marching to freedom beyond the limits of the screen and the pressures of work and responsibility, or are the fading lights intended to notify the audience of the fantasy’s inevitable end? Fellini doesn’t answer so that the audience must define the situation for itself. Work or play?

by Brandon Colvin

This article originally appeared in Rise Over Run Magazine.***

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Changing Space

Stanley Kubrick’s immensely influential and deservedly canonized science-fiction masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), is a film obsessed with and grounded in evolution: technological evolution, intellectual evolution, philosophical evolution, and spiritual evolution. Not only does the film concentrate on the presence of change and development, but also the lack of change and development that unifies the human narrative by providing a stable, constant, and extra-temporal reality. The film analyzes the core from which humanity has improvised, or at least encounters the illusion of such an fundamental essence. Kubrick’s film explodes the confines of its genre by probing for a metaphysical, philosophical course of advancement that will permit humanity to transcend the confines of time, space, science, and society. 2001 is a film about faith; faith in the possibility, perhaps the inevitability, of change and progress for the human race. Kubrick revels in this progress, and everyone wants progress, right? Well, everyone wants it until that progress means the proliferation of homicidal supercomputers.

2001’s exposition is synonymous with the exposition of humanity. Majestic space shots of the Earth rising over a still moon and the sun rising over the dwarfed Earth, livened by a Strauss’ "Also Sprach Zarathustra,” give way to sunburned frames of rocky landscapes, populated by a clan of humanoid apes. This is Earth at “The Dawn of Man,” as is denoted by the title card. The apes are depicted as bickering over water and resources with other clans, struggling for survival. Amidst their Darwinian travails, they are subject to a strange, assumedly extraterrestrial object: a giant black monolith, perfectly geometric, sleek and sharp, a haunting emblem of intelligence, cunning, and detached rationality. Immediately following the mysterious appearance of the monolith and the hesitantly curious response from the apes, comes the initial act of humanity, in the eyes of Kubrick.

An ape, seemingly enlightened by the monolith’s mysterious powers, lethargically smacks a large bone from a windswept animal skeleton against the ribs of the fleshless carcass. Intrigued by the destructive impact of his strike, the ape begins bashing the skeleton harder, eventually demolishing the animal’s skull in a shot which is visually rhymed with another shot, a flash forward, of the ape using the bone to crush the skull of a live animal, killing it and then proceeding to devour its flesh. The ape has learned to use a tool, perhaps the first spark of technology, the initial act of utility and innovation. Most importantly, the ape has learned to use the tool as a facilitator of dominance and control. This is the key advancement, the evolutionary move, which elevates the apes from their state of submission to nature to their dominance of nature – essentially the first large step toward humanity. It’s slightly depressing to define humans merely as apes that learned how to beat things with bones, but that’s Kubrick’s approach.

Soon after breaking in their tool, the apes apply their newfound conduit of dominance and violence to their social strife. In a gloriously ruthless scene, the bone-wielding ape, humanity’s pioneer, leads his clan against a rival clan to gain control of a watering hole – gaining access to the most essential resource. Full of rage, the bone-wielder attacks a member of the other ape clan, bludgeoning him to death with relentless intensity, verging on glee. Kubrick then employs perhaps the single greatest edit in the history of cinema. The murderous ape, revealed once again during his moment of violent discovery with the skeleton, is shown hurling his bone triumphantly in the air. The camera follows the flying bone in a close-up, admiring its strange grace. Suddenly, the shot is slammed into another, a perfect match cut of a space satellite, stunningly similar to the shape of the bone, floating serenely in a vast expanse of black space.

Perfectly utilizing the Eisensteinian technique of intellectual montage, Kubrick makes remarkable statements about evolution and humanity in this single edit, all grounded in the idea of humanity being defined by its use of tools for the purpose of dominance and survival. Bluntly, the cut suggests the parallel nature of the bone and the satellite: both are human tools, products of technological innovation. This is the constant, essential property of the human condition that 2001 expounds upon throughout its narrative, which continues with the second appearance of the black monolith on the Moon in the year 2001, which prompts an American space mission to Jupiter, where the monolith is emitting a signal, possibly a clue to discovering the nature of the alien intelligence assumed to be responsible for the creation of the monolith. 2001 utilizes a definition of humanity by its relationship to technology and dominance to question the nature of humanity and its value, and, most importantly, what might come after humanity.

The mission to Jupiter is undertaken by two astronauts, Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), along with a crew of three scientists, who spend their time on the ship, the Discovery One, in suspended animation. The final member of the mission crew is a supercomputer, capable of human reasoning and emotions, the HAL 9000 (voice by Douglas Rain), referred to as HAL by Dave and Frank. As the mission progresses, and the power of the black monolith seemingly invades HAL, he grows more aggressive, manipulative, and power-hungry. He begins to lie to Dave and Frank, violating the systematic perfection that the 9000 series is famous for. Dave and Frank grow suspicious and plan to disconnect HAL, feeling him no longer trustworthy.

HAL’s nasty attitude soon escalates to the point of homicide. HAL intentionally detaches Frank from the ship while he is fixing a problem on the hull that HAL intentionally creates, sending him careening into space in one of the most terrifying murder scenes on celluloid. During Dave’s rescue attempt, HAL reveals his rationale for killing Frank, stating, “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.” HAL has transformed from a tool, a technological device, to, by the film’s definition, a human, employing tools of his own to manipulate, dominate, and survive. This is blatantly revealed earlier when HAL explains the problem he manufactured on the hull, assessing that, “It can only be attributable to human error,” when, in fact, it is HAL’s fault, he commits the “error,” violating his own perfect programming. HAL transcends his limitations – he breaks the human monopoly on humanity, taking the step of the skull-bashing ape. Significantly, both HAL and the ape are inspired by the black monolith, a puzzling catalyst of change and development, perhaps a symbol of chance, fate, or God...maybe all three.


Upon Dave’s return to the ship, he proceeds to shut down HAL in a scene whose remarkable pathos is the definitive proof of HAL’s humanity. As Dave slowly deactivates HAL’s non-necessary functioning elements, those that allow his consciousness and human qualities, HAL poignantly pleads with him, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.” HAL’s slow death is incredibly moving. His fear of dying is tear-jerking, revealing a vulnerability that evokes sympathy, even for a murderous computer. Dave witnesses that the tool has become human. The bone has learned to think, to manipulate. The next step of Dave’s journey to Jupiter answers the seemingly imminent question: if the tools become human, what do the humans become? What is next in the evolution of humanity? How can humans, like HAL, transcend their confines, physically, temporally, and spiritually? What is the next step on the course of change?

Following the shut down of HAL, Dave enters into a strange vortex, traditionally referred to as a “Star Gate” (not like the Kurt Russell movie), which is apparently instigated by the presence of the black monolith, which elegantly glides through the void of space, aligning with Jupiter and its moons, ripping open the seam through space and time which Dave soon travels through. The visual wonder of the Star Gate sequence is unrivaled in cinema, and the transforming power of Dave’s journey through the laserlight, psychedelic rift in space/time results in Dave’s vision of himself in an oddly decorated and brightly lit room, aging. Prompted by the black monolith, once again, change erupts. Dave watches himself change, privy to the knowledge of development, advancement, and evolution that may have been previously only contained in the monolith. As Dave is seen on his deathbed, the monolith appears to him once more and he leans forward, grasping, attempting to embrace the physical manifestation of change. The result of Dave’s acceptance, even yearning, for the black monolith and its qualities of change, evolution, and survival, results in his own rebirth, an evolutionary reconfiguring. Dave appears as a giant, celestial fetus, creeping through space in an orb of bright light.

Deconstructed to his initial state, Dave is reconstituted in a new form, perhaps exceeding the restrictions of humanity, a post-human being – the next step forward. Dave submits to change and the irrational, rather than attempting to dominate it, as the ape did with his bone weapon. This is Kubrick’s hope, that through the irrational, the inconceivable, the unknown, humanity will exceed itself and make the next change, dropping the violent bone and the metal satellite. 2001 places the possibilities of change in the metaphysical, that which is beyond the grasp of humanity, like the monolith for the dying Dave. Without science, reason, or violence, humanity leaps forward by, in a sense, reaching back, being reborn. What is important, the film suggests, is the desire for rebirth, for evolution, the lunge toward the unknowable and the mysterious, the spiritual. A thrust forward, in the direction of the extra-human, is essential, like the glowing, radiant fetus, gazing at the Earth – the repetition of the cycle of change. The film ends with this stunning image of the reborn Dave, approaching Earth, full of untainted possibilities, completing its narrative just as the narrative of the next stage of humanity begins, a promising future for a species in desperate need of one.

by Brandon Colvin

Editor's Note: This review was originally published in "Rise Over Run Magazine."
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A Revolutionary Vision of Time

Alain Resnais’ iconoclastic, internationally acclaimed film, Last Year at Marienbad (1961), introduced a brand new conception of time, spatiality, and a narrative structure to the language of cinema. Last Year circumvented the generally accepted chronological nature of cinematic temporality, formulating instead a temporal system rooted in memories, impressions, and their imperfections: elements that leave time mutated and confused.

Last Year at Marienbad revolves around an encounter between an unnamed man, noted in the screenplay as X, and an unnamed woman, A, whom he believes he had an affair with one year earlier at the location of their encounter, a lavish and mysterious estate called Marienbad, where they are attending a bourgeois party.

The film begins with a beautiful collection of images from the architecture of the Marienbad estate. A haunting, poetic voice over, part of the immaculate screenplay written by prominent French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, describes the devastating montage from the past-tense point of view of X. The words attempt to illustrate with language the irreducible intensity of the images, which are far beyond the limitations of linguistics. X narrates, “corridors succeed endless corridors – silent deserted corridors overloaded with a dim, cold ornamentation of woodwork, stucco, moldings, marble, black mirrors, dark paintings, columns, heavy hangings – sculptured door frames, series of doorways, galleries – transverse corridors that open in turn on empty salons, rooms overloaded with an ornamentation from another century, silent halls . . . ”

Last Year at Marienbad maintains a lyrical tone throughout, weaving poetry, both visual and lingual, through a web-like framework of jumbled memories, frozen spaces, and half-remembered conversations as X tries to convince A that she promised to run away with him and leave her husband, who may or may not be the third primary character in the film, a strange man called M in Robbe-Grillet’s script. A three-character cinematic waltz sweeps gracefully across the screen, painted with equally graceful masterstrokes of Resnais’ nimble camera.


During many scenes, Last Year presents instances frozen in time that are placed in the midst of kinetic images, altering traditional conceptions of time and narrative. In one such scene, a group of guests at Marienbad watch a play in an auditorium-like room. The camera pans around and through the crowd – which is completely motionless, suspended in the timeless space of an impressionistic memory. The scene is visually breathtaking and it exudes as almost metaphysical, otherworldly atmosphere that looms over the entire film.In addition to the isolation of specific instances, Last Year manipulates time by repeating different moments over and over, often in direct succession. This occurs in one particularly effective scene in which X and A have a drink at the bar in Marienbad. A static shot of the two at the bar is repeatedly shown throughout the scene, which alternates between shots of A in an empty bedroom and A and X together in the same bedroom, as well as the static shot from the bar which is constantly intercut between the various images in the scene. Often times, repeated moments are shown with alternate endings or different consequences, reflecting the creative, destructive, and manipulative power of subjective memory when combined with strong emotions.

Resnais explored many of the themes surround time and memory that are present throughout Last Year in earlier films such as Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), which tracks the experiences of a French actress and a Japanese architect as they try to maintain a relationship in post-war Japan amidst the ghastly history of death and destruction. The film originated many of the editing techniques and temporal experiments that Resnais perfected in Last Year at Marienbad, including time-shifts that occur in mid-scene, as well as flash-forwards and flashbacks. Last Year is undoubtedly the artistic apex of Resnais’ trademark techniques of temporal manipulation, which he continued to utilize in films such as Muriel (1963), but later abandoned for more traditional narratives.

Confounding cinematic sensibilities of time with a more subjective, poetic temporal design, Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad changed the face of film by contorting that face into a fading memory. It is a film beyond chronology, yet time is its heart and soul.

by Brandon Colvin

*Editor's Notes: This review was originally published in "Rise Over Run" magazine. Also, for New York City residents, a new 35 mm print of Last Year in Marienbad is showing at Film Forum from January 18-31. Mark your calendars! Continue reading...