From the Life of the Marionettes Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

From the Life of the Marionettes Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 25, 2023

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of Criterion's Ingmar Bergman's Cinema set.

It understandably may be well nigh impossible to choose an "all time greatest filmmaker" of the 20th century, if for no other reason than that personal tastes differ, but I can't imagine any "devoted cineaste" not having Ingmar Bergman at least near the top of their own aggregation. Criterion has been feting some iconic creative forces with expansive box set compendia of films, including Essential Fellini and The Complete Films of Agnès Varda, but in terms of overall offerings and packaging extras, Ingmar Bergman's Cinema may itself be sitting atop a list of finest Blu-ray collection offerings. Some of the films in this impressive collection have in fact had prior releases by Criterion, as should probably be expected, but there are a fair number making their Blu-ray debuts. As tends to be the case with Criterion releases, technical merits are also generally excellent, and the supplements can be very appealing.

Rather hilariously Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film If.... was met with some "insightful" critical commentary back in the day deigning to "reveal" the supposed meaning between the film's use of black and white and color stock, when somewhat later Anderson himself went on record as stating that the use of both black and white and color was due simply to budgeting constraints, not in service of any perceived "higher meaning". One doubts that Ingmar Bergman encountered any major budgeting issues shooting this kind of odd tale which premiered on German television when Bergman was in so-called "tax exile" from his native Sweden, but one way or the other From the Life of the Marionettes offers bookending sequences in color with the bulk of the story told in black and white, and I for one am not about to try to assume any real "meaning" behind this choice.

The very title of this film would seem to suggest someone or something is "pulling the strings", as it were, and in this case it may be either the vagaries of the Id or in fact a kind of quasi-interrogator who questions several people after a murder, and who may rather ironically be a fill in for a Freudian therapist involved in what is often called a "talking cure". There's no question as to whom the murderer is, and instead the film seeks to explore the why of the situation, which ultimately is indeed Freudian in its very nature. The fact that Bergman often posits his characters speaking more or less directly to the camera might argue that stylistically the legendary director was trying to draw the audience into the "talking cure", but the result may ultimately be more in psychobabble territory.

From the Life of the Marionettes Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

From the Life of the Marionettes is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. Criterion's kind of overwhelming insert book offers nice summations of each film's transfer attributes, and the relevant data points for this film are as follows:

Picture element: 35 mm original camera negative
Scanner: Scanity
Transfer resolution: 2K
Sound element: 35 mm optical track
Picture and sound restoration: Swedish Film Institute

Additionally, a brief text card at the beginning of this presentation offers a bit of additional information in that the digital restoration was accomplished in 2017. From the Life of the Marionettes lacks some of the florid stylistic touches that adorn other, more celebrated, Bergman efforts, though some of Bergman's mise en scène is of course always interesting, and there are a few isolated moments that definitely recall some of Bergman's downright legendary efforts (see screenshot 5, which to my eyes looks like it could have been used in at least one of the montages in Persona). As can be seen in some of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, the film has a surplus of facial close-ups where the characters come pretty close to directly addressing the camera, even if it's contextually implied they're speaking to another character out of frame. That choice results in some excellent fine detail levels on facial features and even whatever clothing makes it into the shot (and without joking too much, there's at least a hint of nudity in the film). The relatively brief color bookending sequences offer nice densities and appealingly natural hues, while the lush black and white imagery offers secure contrast, good black levels and nicely modulated gray scale. I would argue that clarity and sharpness are somewhat more apparent in the monochrome sequences than in the color, for whatever reason. Grain resolves naturally throughout.

From the Life of the Marionettes Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

From the Life of the Marionettes features an LPCM Mono track in the original German. This is a pretty relentlessly talky affair, though the film does venture around at least a little bit, getting outside for at least one semi-climactic moment. Ambient environmental effects aren't particularly numerous, but resonate realistically, and all dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout.

From the Life of the Marionettes Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Bergman's efforts often flirted with psychoanalytical concepts, and indeed his imagery often seemed to be culled from either Jungian or Freudian ideas, but From the Life of the Marionettes may take it all too literally for its own good. My hunch is more jaded types may find the purported "analysis" offered here to be seriously questionable, but the film has its own weird, almost hypnotic, power. Technical merits are solid, though this is one of the films in Ingmar Bergman's Cinema not be granted any supplemental material. With caveats noted, Recommended.