In 1950 the legendary studio Svensk Filmindustri released This Can’t Happen Here, a would-be Cold War spy thriller directed by Ingmar Bergman. Legend would hold that the film, largely unseen, was marred by a clumsy, even embarrassing anti-communist perspective—in the vein of some of the schlock being produced in America at the same time, as Hollywood, cowering in fear of McCarthyism, desperately tried to show its fealty to the American way with a combination of propaganda and blacklisting. This Can’t Happen Here, also known as High Tension, was later renounced by its director—in fact, he successfully had it withdrawn from circulation (though in recent years prints would occasionally surface for exclusive art-house screenings). Bergman would subsequently dismiss the effort as a job for hire – he did not develop the story or contribute to the screenplay – and one which he took on in the wake of completing Summer Interlude, which proved to be an exhausting shoot. Moreover, at thirty-two, recently divorced, with five children and not yet famous, he felt in need of a quick cash infusion. “Only once has it happened that I’ve made something I’d known from the beginning would be rubbish,” Bergman later recalled. And with the release of Summer Interlude the following year – arguably the first fully-formed Bergman film, and one which marked the start of an astonishing run of a dozen films in the 1950s – he would never have to make that sort of compromise again.
In his memoirs, Bergman was reliably wise (“a good example of how bad you can feel when you must do something you do not want to do”) and characteristically self-flagellating. After meeting some of the actors who were going to play imagined versions of themselves, that is, the Baltic refugee community (who in the movie are victims of dastardly communist conspirators and traitors from within), Bergman hated his new assignment even more. “Among these exiled actors I discovered such a richness of lives and experiences that the unevenly developed intrigue in This Can’t Happen Here seemed almost obscene.” Unable to wiggle out of the commitment, Bergman did what he often did under stress—fell ill, making the shoot an even more miserable experience.
Well, we weren’t buying any of this. After all, Bergman thought Shame, one of his staggering and perhaps most singular masterpiece, was a failure. So what does he know? And maybe it wasn’t his movie, but he did direct it, working alongside one of his most important creative partners of the 1950s, director of photography Gunnar Fischer (their fourth of a dozen collaborations), and featured actors with whom Bergman would work again. Perhaps he was embarrassed by the movie’s obtuse politics, or frustrated by his lack of control over the material. Nevertheless, our theory was that, if we ever got to see it, we would find a very fine early Bergman, distinguished by the great promise suggested in the slew of minor films he made in the late 1940s.
Well, we have finally seen it, and, um . . . no. It’s a bad movie. And it’s not due to the politics, which, as an envisioned American co-production, are indeed reliably clunky (though in fact several of the characters in the film make difficult, compromised choices, and those complexities are engaged, such as in the half-interesting scene when a traitor is exposed). It’s just that the movie is, uh . . . really bad—a weak story, poorly told (and with some silly twists), and it must be said, indifferently shot. Which is something of a revelation, as, up until now our position was that despite a legendarily prolific career, Bergman had never made a bad film, or at the very least one not worth seeing (and yes, that includes The Devil’s Eye and All These Women). It’s hard to make scores of films without a few stumbles (Hitchcock made several dismal movies, including Jamaica Inn and Torn Curtain, and Chabrol was responsible for some incomprehensible stinkers). Bergman is no longer the exception that proves the rule – though he still comes close. Oh well, these things happen. Still, now we’ve seen it—and you don’t have to.
Say, What’s this hypodermic doing in your purse?
Bergman Noir?
