Sawdust and Tinsel

Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton, 1953) is an early Ingmar Bergman drama you can watch online on iFILM. A shabby traveling circus drags itself across turn-of-the-century Sweden while its owner aches to walk away from the whole rotten life.

Albert, the heavyset ringmaster, rolls into the town where he once abandoned his wife and son. His young mistress, bareback rider Anne, drifts toward a smug local stage actor in the meantime. Humiliation, jealousy and a clumsy grab at dignity all collapse into a single brutal day. Åke Grönberg and Harriet Andersson play two people pulled together and torn apart by shame.

Bergman shoots circus life as a rolling hell — the dreamlike beach prologue with Frost the clown and his wife is one of the cruelest, most haunting passages in his early work. Sven Nykvist and Hilding Bladh light it like a silent nightmare, years before Nykvist became the director's lifelong cameraman. Booed at its premiere, it now reads as a rough sketch for the masterpieces still to come. A real find if you want to see where Bergman started. Stream Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) online on iFILM.