Music in Darkness (1948)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Film Review

With three films under his belt, Ingmar Bergman's prospects as a film director were not looking all that promising.  The failure of his first film Crisis (1946) had lost him the confidence of his first backer, Svensk Filmindustri.  Two further flops for independent film producer Lorens Marmstedt and Bergman was definitely heading for the door marked "exit".   Fortunately, Marmstedt wasn't ready to give up on his protégé just yet and gave him one more chance to prove his worth.  However, strings were attached...

Insistent that the next film should be a commercial success, Marmstedt coerced Bergman into making an adaptation of Dagmar Edqvist's popular novel "Music in Darkness".   Whilst Bergman had little sympathy with the subject, he agreed to collaborate with Edqvist on the screenplay.  He also had to put up with no end of interference from Marmstedt whilst making the film, suffering constant reminders that his job was to make money, which meant giving the Swedish public what they wanted. Bergman may not have enjoyed the experience but the film was a great success.  Marmstedt had a shrewd idea of the kind of film that would attract an audience, and Music in Darkness was made to a recipe which would virtually guarantee a healthy return.  Not much place for the auteur in this scheme of things.

Today, when one considers the whole body of Bergman's film work, Music in Darkness stands apart as a pretty flagrant departure into populist movie making.  From the opening scene, which looks like All Quiet on the Western Front remade as an advertisement for a well-known brand of lavatory paper, it's obvious that what the audience is about to be offered is lowbrow schmaltz, of the kind that would embarrass many a Hollywood film producer.

But Bergman is never this straightforward, even when his paymaster is holding a gun to his head and saying "make it sell".   The fluffy puppy dog intro is immediately followed by one of the most incredible sequences of any of Bergman's films - a stunning series of surreal images making up a bizarre Dali-esque dream.  Of course, it's the mother-of-all comedowns when these remarkable images fade away and we end up back in pack-in-the-crowds melodrama for the remainder of the film.

Music in Darkness is certainly not Bergman's greatest hour but the young filmmaker does put in some touches of brilliance, even though it's painfully obvious he's not really enthused by what he's doing (compare this with the sustained intensity and poetry of his subsequent films).  Occasionally, the contrived melodrama does give way to genuine pathos as Bengt (played very convincingly by Birger Malmsten) struggles against not just the disability of his blindness but also the prejudice and malice of those he encounters.

Stylistically, the film resembles the French poetic realist films of the 1930s (which Bergman admired greatly and frequently emulated in his early films), with a number of scenes which pay obvious homage to Marcel Carné et al.   After the dream sequence at the start of the film, the highpoint is the long sequence at the end of the film where the solitary Bengt falls deeper and deeper into the mire of despair and hopelessness.  This is the one part of the film where Bergman appears to be genuinely inspired by his subject, and the sequence is so intense, so bleak, that it is almost too painful to watch.  Of course, what follows - the crowd-pleasing ending - is as predictable as day following night, and feels like a dollop of tomato ketchup has just landed on your favourite Cordon Bleu dish.

The popularity of Music in Darkness made Ingmar Bergman a far more attractive proposition for Svensk Filmindustri, who immediately commissioned him to direct Port of Call (1948).   In later years, Bergman recognised the immense debt he owed Lorens Marmstedt, without whose moral and financial support his filmmaking career would most probably have been strangled at birth.

Film Synopsis

Whilst attempting to rescue a puppy, Bengt, a young army cadet, gets himself shot on a rifle range.  Awaking from a coma, he discovers that he is blind.  Rejected by his fiancée, he finds comfort in the friendship of a peasant girl, Ingrid.   Bengt's hopes for a career as a musician are shattered when he fails to enter the Royal Music Academy.  Instead, he finds work as a pianist in a cheap restaurant, which he gives up when he realises he is being swindled by his boy helper.  As Bengt's fortunes decline, Ingrid's take a turn for the better.  When they next meet, Bengt has a poorly paid job in a school for the blind, whilst Ingrid is about to start a career as a schoolmistress.   By this time, Bengt realises that he is hopelessly in love with Ingrid, but it is too late.  She has another man in her life, and he is not about to let her go...