De fördömda kvinnornas dans (1976) - full transcript
The film shows four women moving in a crowded, closed room to the music of Monteverdi. They represent women living by passing on a role that is passed down to them for generations. Two of the dancers are damned souls that come to life, the third is death and the fourth a child born free, but forced into the other female roles.
A play without words,
so you might callThe Damned.
Donya Feuer and Ingmar Bergman
wanted to make a film in black and white
about four women in a closed room,
and to let that which happens between them
reflect itself in their faces,
skin, hands and glances.
Because, we do not only impart ourselves
on each other through words,
body language is also
extraordinarily evolved and rich,
and influences us
much stronger subconsciously.
For example,
many gestures means the same thing
in widely separated cultures,
and during different historical epochs.
We reveal our feelings and reactions
in a swift shifting, a fleeting shadow
across the face, one glance, one gesture.
And The Damned is
a choreographic composition
since it only uses
movement as means of expression.
So, it is not a ballet.
And the four roles:
It's The Dead, who is dressed in black,
and Three Sisters,
two that are adults, and one child.
This screening is also
jointed to a very simple experiment:
We show the film now first,
it takes about ten minutes,
then I come back and tell you
about the original thougths behind it.
After that you'll see it again,
and then it might happen
that you discover a lot of details
you didn't see the first time
or that you see the film in a new way.
The Damned was recorded
some months after The Magic Flute
and has a very clear connection
to that opera.
In The Magic Flute there are
scenes from the underworld
where the souls of the damned
are tormented in eternal agony.
The choreography for those scenes
was made by Donya Feuer
and during the actual shooting,
she and Ingmar Bergman played
with motives from the opera,
and out of that was cristallized eventually
drafts for a short choreographic film.
It would also be about the damned,
but not about dead souls in hell,
but about women who has suffered
another damnation, in life.
The room, with it's narrow walls,
within which these four women move,
it's that closed women's world
in which they are forced to live
and the confinement in this world
causes them also to suppress each other.
The elderly teach the young
to adapt to a petrified pattern of life
and the centuries-old conception
of how women should be and behave
is pushed on to the younger generation.
They fend it off, and the film
is about the power struggle
between the generations,
but it's also about the submission.
The dancer dressed in black,
one can see as a mother-figure
greedy for power, who attacks
the three sisters, one after another.
Freest of them all is the child,
who moves about completely self-evident
out in the light, in her own world,
immersed in her own games.
But eventually she is also
pulled into this older women's world.
The circle is completed,
and the suffocation is total.
This is anyway how Donya Feuer
and Ingmar Bergman pictured the plot
of The Damned, in broad strokes.
But we don't need to care
about that very much,
beacuse what's important
are the thoughts and feelings
that this film awakens in our selves.
Because the sole thing
that is really dull is indifference
and high admiration.
so you might callThe Damned.
Donya Feuer and Ingmar Bergman
wanted to make a film in black and white
about four women in a closed room,
and to let that which happens between them
reflect itself in their faces,
skin, hands and glances.
Because, we do not only impart ourselves
on each other through words,
body language is also
extraordinarily evolved and rich,
and influences us
much stronger subconsciously.
For example,
many gestures means the same thing
in widely separated cultures,
and during different historical epochs.
We reveal our feelings and reactions
in a swift shifting, a fleeting shadow
across the face, one glance, one gesture.
And The Damned is
a choreographic composition
since it only uses
movement as means of expression.
So, it is not a ballet.
And the four roles:
It's The Dead, who is dressed in black,
and Three Sisters,
two that are adults, and one child.
This screening is also
jointed to a very simple experiment:
We show the film now first,
it takes about ten minutes,
then I come back and tell you
about the original thougths behind it.
After that you'll see it again,
and then it might happen
that you discover a lot of details
you didn't see the first time
or that you see the film in a new way.
The Damned was recorded
some months after The Magic Flute
and has a very clear connection
to that opera.
In The Magic Flute there are
scenes from the underworld
where the souls of the damned
are tormented in eternal agony.
The choreography for those scenes
was made by Donya Feuer
and during the actual shooting,
she and Ingmar Bergman played
with motives from the opera,
and out of that was cristallized eventually
drafts for a short choreographic film.
It would also be about the damned,
but not about dead souls in hell,
but about women who has suffered
another damnation, in life.
The room, with it's narrow walls,
within which these four women move,
it's that closed women's world
in which they are forced to live
and the confinement in this world
causes them also to suppress each other.
The elderly teach the young
to adapt to a petrified pattern of life
and the centuries-old conception
of how women should be and behave
is pushed on to the younger generation.
They fend it off, and the film
is about the power struggle
between the generations,
but it's also about the submission.
The dancer dressed in black,
one can see as a mother-figure
greedy for power, who attacks
the three sisters, one after another.
Freest of them all is the child,
who moves about completely self-evident
out in the light, in her own world,
immersed in her own games.
But eventually she is also
pulled into this older women's world.
The circle is completed,
and the suffocation is total.
This is anyway how Donya Feuer
and Ingmar Bergman pictured the plot
of The Damned, in broad strokes.
But we don't need to care
about that very much,
beacuse what's important
are the thoughts and feelings
that this film awakens in our selves.
Because the sole thing
that is really dull is indifference
and high admiration.