Sawdust and Tinsel

1953 - Ingmar Bergman
Nykvist's camera has such a great variety of tones, of greys, and yet the image is somehow, unlike the classic Hollywood low-contrast tradition, not at all soft. This film has complex images, shadows, pararphenalia and so on that struck (though photographed differently) of the sets of 'The Blue Angel'.
Bergman uses close shots, of course, and long takes, with a smoothly moving camera and some masterful blocking. It rather reminded me of 'The Last Picture Show', the head (or heads) quite close being the focii for a complex mis-en-scene.
Bergman shoots from a low angle. Why? My guess here is so that it is to add to the complexity and tonal differences on the faces. The is requires more thought. Perhaps it alows the shadows under the chin to come into play.
Bergman puts his characters wonderfully into a location, lovely, unhurried but quite fast, dissolve-montages of feet, puddles, animals, and the rackety old circus. But Bergman isn't perhaps interested primarily in the geography of where he has so masterfully (in this film especially; it is one of the Bergman's I have seen that I liked the most) placed his characters. His characters are spiritual ones; this film, though not explicit about it and perhaps the better for that (not that 'Winter Life' is not a fine work), are defined by their relationship to something that isn't there, but pervades all. That would be God.
The search for God is the same as Bergman's shot for the close-up without a shadow. Looking for the pure image, the pure action, but it is impossible, there are too many tones, the flesh can't come alive, money is thrown rather than placed on a table. The disaster of Bergman's world is that God has left, dissappeared, which means he was crucially once there. It is a world of empty cabinets, where once were treasures, but no trace can be found anymore. Notice the chandeliers and that complicated mis-en-scene.
In this film Bergman creates this world, rather than, at (on rare occasssions) his worst, shoving it down your throat.