Some of these women or others

I've mentioned a couple of times over the past few weeks that I seem to have a disproportionate number of silent movies and foreign films sitting on my DVR. One of the things this means is that I'll be doing a slightly greater proportion of posts on films from both of these genres than normal, since the one thing with the YouTube TV DVR is that stuff only stays on it for nine months. Thankfully, it looks like I've got foreign films in several different languages to do posts on, so it's not as if I'll be doing six Japanese films in a row. Having done Japanese and French films so far in August, it's time for one in Swedish: Ingmar Bergman's All These Women.

Jarl Kulle is the nominal star here, not the women; he plays Cornelius, a biographer and would-be composer. He had been hoping to do a biography of the famous cellist Felix (only seen from behind or from the neck down), but Felix screws up those plans by suddenly dropping dead. His body is laid out, and a bunch of women show up so that they can all comment on how Felix looks the same, and yet different.

Go back four days, as Cornelius shows up with a composition in hand that he hopes Felix can play, and hoping to get interviews with Felix to complete that biography he's been working on. Instead, he finds a bunch of women, all of whom seem to have had romantic dalliances with Felix at one point or another. Humlan (Bibi Andersson), the "Bumblebee" is Felix's mistress. Isolde (Harriet Andersson) is a maid at the estate. Adelaide (Eva Dahlbeck) is his wife; Mme. Tussaud (Karin Kavli) supports Felix financially; and Traviata is studying under Felix. The one other man in the movie is Jillker, who is Felix's agent and responsible for bookings and Felix's repertoire.

So, unable to talk to Felix, Cornelius tries to talk to everybody else, especially the women, to learn more about Felix. Cornelius has varying degrees of success, although things take a turn for the rather more dramatic when Humlan takes him to her bedroom, only for Traviata to show up and attack him for... reasons. It continues like this, with various errors for poor Cornelius as he tries to get that interview with Felix, until he's finally able to get Felix to play his piece at a chamber concert, only for Felix to drop dead just as he's about to start performing it.

As I was watching All These Women, I couldn't help but think of Citizen Kane. To me, somebody taking the idea of Citizen Kane in that a writer interviews the people who knew a famous man -- but then turning the movie into either a farce or a dark comedy -- is an idea that definitely has potential. Unfortunately, All These Women is not that movie. Several of the reviews I read seem to think that the reason All These Women doesn't work is that comedy was just not in Ingmar Bergman's wheelhouse, but I've seen Smiles of a Summer Night, and really enjoyed that one.

However, I do think Bergman's direction is part of the problem here. It feels almost as though he's directing kabuki theater, with the whole production way too stylized. I think it needed more of the stereotypical French sensibility of a man having a whole bunch of mistresses, but also to be filmed as something straightforward and, as much as this will probably tick some people, a more conventional filming and not arthouse.

All These Women had potential, but for whatever reason, Ingmar Bergman was not able to reach that potential.