ELVIRA MADIGAN

Sweden, 1967, 85 minutes, Colour.
Pia Degermark, Thommy Berggren.
Directed by Bo Widerberg.

Elvira Madigan has become one of the most famous romantic films. Written and directed by Swedish Bo Widerberg, who was to make such interesting films as Adalen 31 and The Ballad of Joe Hill (both socially conscious films), this film has been praised as being beautiful and criticised as being a continuous cigarette commercial-style romance. It certainly had box office and critical acclaim in its day. The photography is certainly very pretty and indeed beautiful The use of Mozart themes for the background popularised this music of Mozart and enhanced the film.

The lovers are played by Thommy Berggren, who was Joe Hill and appeared in a few American films such as The Adventurers, and Pia Degermark who had a short career with such films as Brief Season and The Looking Glass War, both with Christopher Jones. The film is about runaway lovers - she a tightrope walker in the circus and he a married soldier. The film shows the lyrical romance of honeymoon moving towards a greater poverty and finally desperation and suicide. The film relies on a number of symbols for its impact as well as the beauty of costumes, decor and countryside. It is clearly a variation on Romeo
and Juliet themes.

1. The classic status of the film? Its qualities - screenplay, acting, photography? Overall appeal? For Scandinavian audiences? Universal audiences? Its world popularity?

2. The technical qualities of the film: the colour photography, Scandinavian locations? Atmosphere?

3. The capturing of the 19th. century atmosphere? City, countryside, towns? Beauty? The accusation that the film was too pretty? The sadness in the beauty? The importance of the Mozart themes as background?

4. The appeal of the basic love story? The reality and unreality of the doomed lovers? How inevitable was their doom? The story as based on fact? The symbols used - nature, knives, guns, food? The audience's emotional response to the situation, to the personalities? To the impossible situation for fulfilment of the love?

5. The plausibility of the plot? Sixten and his leaving his family? His place as a soldier and his desertion? His status as a Count? The contrast with Elvira and her work in the circus? Her leaving her friends and the troupe? Their encounter, infatuation, love? Their need for each other? The idyllic and romantic background of the first weeks? Poverty? Death? Their going into a world of their own from which there seemed to be no escape but death?

6. The escape of the couple. the arrival at the hotel. the attention to detail in their arranging their room? The lyrical sequences of their walks, their lovemaking in the countryside, joy? The landlady, the child? Elvira walking on the clothesline for a tightrope?

7. The communication of information by the newspapers, the landlady and her knowledge? The pressures of publicity and the effect on the two? Posing as married? The fact that they were not married? Standards and expectations of the time?

8. Their having to move, their poverty, eating and being sick, fishing? The precarious existence? The devotion of the two and their suffering together?

9. The pursuit of the friend, his reminder of the past, the games played, the expensive meal and the paying for it? An interlude of peace? A false hope?

10. The growing desperation, Elvira and her dancing, Sixten and his jealousy, the new accommodation, the starvation and the mutual apologies?

11. The build-up of the doom: the bread, the eggs, the love and fidelity?

12. Their moving more and more away from the real world into the remote world of their love? The symbols-of knives., wine and blood, the guns? The build-up to the deaths? Each knowing what would happen? The attitude of each for death? The violence intruding in the beauty?

13. Within the viewpoint of the two lovers was death the only way out?

14. Themes of love, romance, marriage, the break-up of a marriage? The relationship of man and woman? The fullness of love. the consequences of such love? At what depth were these themes explored? How satisfying for a popular audience?