ELVIRA MADIGAN (1967)

This Swedish film by Bo Widerberg cut a swath through pop culture in its day, back when foreign language films were considered standard moviegoing experiences. For a few years in the 60s and 70s, the work of directors like Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Kurosawa and Wertmuller were welcomed not just by critics, but audiences. Often bordering on avant-garde, they may not have been blockbusters, but they got played in cities big and small, and were topics of learned and/or hip conversation. Every so often, an international film broke through with a bigger audience because of controversy (BLOW-UP), or because it had a star like Brigitte Bardot in it, or because of some sexual element. In the case of the French A MAN AND A WOMAN, the theme music became popular. That’s also the case with this film; a movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C minor, used throughout the film, became popularly known as the Elvira Madigan concerto. Another thing that helped this movie find a large audience is that it is not avant-garde or cutting edge—it's a beautifully filmed old-fashioned romantic melodrama, basically a Romeo and Juliet story which focuses almost exclusively on the two lovers—we learn very little about their backgrounds, families, or friends. 

In Denmark in 1889, Elvira Madigan (based on a real person of that name), a circus tightrope walker, falls in love with Army officer Sixten Sparre. To be together, she impulsively leaves her circus and he goes AWOL. The film follows them as they live a life that might be described as "on the run" from their previous existences, but it's a fairly slow run. They stay at country inns and spend hours lying in sun-dappled fields, until someone recognizes her or until they need to sell their belongings to pay for room and board. Kristoffer, a former comrade of Sixten's, recognizes him and we learn that Sixten has a family back in the "real world," and that his wife has tried to kill herself (though we're never sure if this is a fact or just something made up by Kristoffer to shame Sixten). We're told in the beginning how this turns out (a murder-suicide carried out at a picnic in the woods) so the finale is no surprise. The surprise, for me, was how little I actually cared about the fate of the lovers. I liked the film—if only for the sheer beauty of the color cinematography and the attractiveness of the actors, Pia Degermark as Elvira, Thommy Bergren as Sixten—but with so little narrative context, I couldn't work up much concern for the two leads. There doesn't seem to be any coherent philosophy expressed here except a rather blinkered romanticism, though Elvira expresses an anti-war sentiment when she tells Sixten, who has not actually been in battle, that "war is not parades, it's the smell of burning flesh." The look of the film has been unfairly compared to lush and hazy shampoo or perfume on TV, but I think the style works well (and I suspect that the ads borrowed the style from this movie and others). It's largely the reason I’d recommend this. [Criterion Channel]