Product Details

• Actors: Åke Grönberg, Harriet Andersson, Hasse Ekman, Anders Ek, Gudrun Brost
• Format: Black & White, Subtitled, NTSC
• Subtitles: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Homevision
• VHS Release Date: June 16, 2000
• Run Time: 93 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302919568
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #307,334 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

This early film by Ingmar Bergman, made before his international hits Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal, was vilified by critics when it first came out (one referring to it as "a piece of vomit"), but with time has earned a reputation as one of the master filmmaker's first important works. Sawdust and Tinsel touches on many of Bergman's standard themes--vanishing love, godless existences, the redemptive power of theater--in its telling of a disillusioned circus owner (Åke Grönberg) and his young mistress (Harriet Andersson of Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly) as they set up for yet another performance in a small town. Both contemplate leaving the circus and each other, as Grönberg pays a visit to his now-independent wife (an exceptional Annika Tretow), and Andersson allows herself to be seduced by a local actor (Hasse Ekman), only to find herself used and humiliated. One can see traces of the melancholy Smiles of a Summer Night in the romantic roundelays that start out bright and end up bitter--the constructs may be farcical at times, but the emotions are raw and heartfelt. And stylistically, from the first frame the film evokes strong similarities to The Seventh Seal; in fact, this film marks the first collaboration of Bergman and his legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Despite some awkward dialogue and a static pace, Sawdust and Tinsel shows a young, assured Bergman finding his way to the themes and techniques that would define his later films. A must-see for Bergman aficionados. --Mark Englehart

Product Description

Bergman's powerful and pitiless essay on passion, jealousy, and betrayal unfolds against the backdrop of an impoverished traveling circus in turn-of-the-century Sweden. Sawdust and Tinsel is considered by many critics to be one of Bergman's finest films, and often favorably compared with such classic tragedies as The Blue Angel and La Strada. The disturbing story revolves around an aging circus owner, who suffers heartbreak and humiliation at the hands of his young mistress and her brutal lover. Harriet Andersson (Monika) exhibits the fierce sensuality for which she became known in her portrayal of the flirtatious mistress. Bergman uses stark black-and-white photography and inspired editing of sound and visuals to construct his haunting allegory of human weakness and spiritual despair.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars INGMAR BERGMAN, OPUS 13, December 2, 2007

By 

Daniel S. "Daniel" (Geneva, Switzerland) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sawdust and Tinsel (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

**** 1953. Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. A land circus owner comes back to the town he left his wife and his children in, three years before. Criterion presents here the uncut version of this film with scenes absent from the VHS and laserdisc editions of SAWDUST AND TINSEL. Among the bonus features, you'll find an introduction by Ingmar Bergman himself, shot in 2003, as well as a very edifying commentary by film scholar Peter Cowie. The theme of humiliation, sexual, physical or simply psychological, is the main theme of SAWDUST AND TINSEL and the underlying element of its most awesome scenes such as the flashback on the beach which is also an homage to Sergei Eisenstein and to other masters of the silent films period. A movie to watch several times.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Caustic, Amazing. It leaves one breathless...., December 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sawdust and Tinsel [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A new generation of Bergman viewers has begun to discover that many of the lesser-known films by the great Swedish director are among his very best, or, one should say, they speak to modern audiences in a more significant way than the "cannonical" Bergman films do. "Winter Light", "Hour of the Wolf", "Shame" and, yes, "Sawdust and Tinsel" are at LEAST as worth-watching as "Seventh Seal", "Cries and Whispers", etc. "Sawdust" is a harrowing film, even by Bergman's standards, and it's not for the faint hearted, but it is one of the most gripping films I have ever seen; it's filled with horror and humiliation (and more raw pain than a dozen other films) but it finally shows a sincere compassion for its characters, an attribute that ultimately makes it a true work of humanistic art.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome Sven!, January 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Sawdust and Tinsel [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is one of my favorite early Bergman movies, if not just for the opening clown sequence, which is beautifully photographed. I think this is the first film in which Bergman collaborated with Sven Nykvist, perhaps the greatest film duo to ever come into being. Whether or not the critics loved or hated the film, or when or why they took either opinion, is of course of little consequence. Bergman himself seemed to have liked the film, or at least as much as he indicated in his autobiography: he notes, in particular, the successful blending of dream and reality that he so admired in Tarkovsky and that, he felt, he had failed to create in some of his later more ambitious projects.

A circus owner (Gronberg) arrives in his former hometown after an absence of seven years, when he left behind his wife and his two little boys. He hasn't seen them since, and has taken up a new lover: a young, coquettish, simple-minded girl who performs in his circus (Anderson). When the the circus owner decides to pay a visit to his former family, Anderson becomes intensely jealous, thinking that he is leaving her to return to his family. "Fear becomes what is feared" when, sensing abandonment, Anderson allows herself to be seduced by a young actor. Likewise, thinking that his new lover has run off, Gronberg makes a desperate attempt to reconcile with his family. A morbid and most pathetically depressing emotional climax is reached when all the cards are laid on the table at the circus's performance.

The acting/directing in this movie is Bergman at his finest; a 'spontaneous' (thoroughly coordinated) guttoral instinctiveness is pounded on like an out-of-tune piano chord: the emotional progress of the characters in the film is at once difficult to watch, for its ugliness, and strangely attractive. Thematically it probably falls into that category of films more finite in scope, examining love, marriage, and human relationships: but it shouldn't be discounted as small in its aims, for it is full of psychological insight, or at least interesting from that perspective.

I tend to agree with those that find this film a milestone in Bergman's career: essential.