A Lesson In Love [1954] [DVD]

Bergman's comedy of marital infidelity and love is a brief entertainment between the more serious works by which he is known.Bjornstrand and Dahlbeck-having honed their comic chemistry in Waiting Women-play gynaecologist ,David Erneman and his wife Marianne, in this structurally audacious comedy.Dahlbeck especially is enchanting and elusive in the role of Bergman's ex-wife,Gun.A Lesson in Love is a lesson in film-making with it's commercial need to prove itself.Because of his growing confidence as a writer-director,a good portion of the flash-backs have elapsed before he has revealed that David and Marianne are married and more than merely strangers on a train.

After 15 years of marriage David is having a summer affair with Suzanne,he has grown apart from his family and children.Marianne is unhappy and leaves for Copenhagen to renew her friendship with Carl-Adam,the man she gave up at the altar to marry David.But David is tired of his mistress and wants nothing better than to return to his wife.He arranges to get on the same train as Marianne,while his chauffeur drives to Copenhagen.On the train a series of flashbacks reveal scenes of their life together.The trick is we don't immediately realize they are a
married couple and get drawn into their charade as he woos her like a lover.There is a cynical but light-hearted banter between the two like combatants of dry wit.

There is a beautiful scene between Bjornstrand and his rebellious daughter(Harriet Anderson) where subtle insights are expressed.The wittiness of the dialogue and the elegant jousting show the maturation of Bergman's approach to emotional conflict.David can lament a `woman only needs a man for procreation,otherwise he counts for nothing',while Marianne can joke that a`mature grown man is a rarity,so that one has to find the child that best suits her'.Bergman reinforces this observation that the ideal wife is both a lover and a mother by having Erneman's elderly father being brow-beaten by his spouse of 49 years into changing into log-johns before the family departs for his annual birthday picnic.Pitched between the rigours of Sawdust and Tinsel and the wiser
resonance of Smiles of a Summer's Night.

While it may be heresy, I think I like this better than Bergman's much better known and loved
follow up comedy "Smiles of a Summer Night".

"A Lesson in Love" has a wonderful mix of dry sophisticated wit, and much wilder almost
screwball comedy dancing together more smoothly than I would have thought possible, --
all the while dealing surprisingly explicitly with such usually unfunny subjects as infidelity
and the loss of passion in marriage.

Indeed, if you made a comedy, not a tragedy out of `Scenes from a Marriage" it might have
been a little like this.

Only in the third act does the film run out of steam a bit, starting to feel a bit forced in its
story twists. But I can't remember ever smiling, or laughing, so much at a Bergman film before.

The Tartan DVD is solid, if a little milky in the blacks. Not the best contrast I've
seen in their Bergman films, but a generally clean, sharp transfer.

"Witness this lesson in love with an indulgent smile" says voice over the title credits.

Well, i was prepared to smile for about 20 minutes. As long as luscious Yvonne Lombard was on screen as Gunnar Bjornstrand's minxy bit of fluff. "I've been having fantasies about you" she's saying all lush. "I'm just a little girl". (So go and jump on her Bjornstrad). "I'm at least a big a bore as your husband" says he. (He's pushing her out his surgery!) "I like it when you scold me" she says.

"I prefer my simple life with its vexations and petty joys. I prefer my slippers and the pleasantly bland log fire to your perfumed body" he's saying, trying to blow her off. His resistance is lame though. "I want to touch you, let your fire erase my inertia and boredom, pierce the grey refuse of routine"

That was a good start. Lets have more of that. Lets have more of the gorgeous Miss Lombard please - being lusted after.

But she's soon disappeared out the film.

It goes downhill after that.

Lurching into silly slapstick and unfunny farce.

"Why didn't we ever play with one another David?" says (Eva Dahlbeck) his wife. Have fun. Be light-hearted. Break themselves out of that grey refuse of routine she means. "What is love anyway? A strenuous grimace which ends in a yawn" says she cynically.

By the 2nd half of the film the farcical tone has become too blatant. Maybe Bergman was wanting to draw in the punters - the broad comedic brushstrokes aimed at pleasing a box office audience.

Kind of disappointing come the end.

More Yvonne Lombard being minxy would have kept me interested (she never acted in another Bergmann film either. I just looked at her profile on IMDB)