Mysteries of Lisbon: The varieties of self-destruction

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

1 March

* Contains spoilers *

If I hadn't given the game away in the title, and you told me that you, as I did last night, went into a film for 6.40* and - including a 15-minute interval - did not come out until minutes before 11.30, I'd have asked if you had been watching the full version of Fanny and Alexander (1982).

Actually, not just because of the scale**, I had that film on my mind, and, in the interval between the parts, tried to engage one known from last year's Festival-going with that conceit. (Actually, I should have known better from having said, then, that I had taken my chance, when I could, to see The Seventh Seal on the big screen that it would not be a good thing to air it***.)

As with that earlier conversation, I was met with the notion that Bergman's films are chamber works (and so are just as perfectly seen at home), which The SS, waves pounding on the cliffs and beach, patently isn't. (And nor, for my money, is Fanny and Alexander, despite its domestic roots, but the suggestion was that the proper comparison was with The Forsyte Saga.)

Still, after the (welcome) interval, my belief that a debt is owed to Fanny and Alexander (its being set in a different century notwithstanding, and, really, nothing to do with what I felt that Bergman had demonstrated in that film) did not abate with continued viewing. As to the Galsworthy link, I do not see it myself, any more than I was really reminded of Buddenbrooks (2008) (of which I thought, as of a longer film, but then dismissed), because both are dynastic in a way that Mysteries of Lisbon truly is not.

What I did get put in mind of, momentarily, was The Leopard (1963) in the scenes of nobility in their finery, but, unlike in Visconti's film, I had the feeling that some extras in some scenes just did not move or look as if they belonged in their elaborate clothes, i.e. it seemed that they were not used either to the costumes, or to what those wearing them in that period would have done.

Mention was made, in the film (I forget where), of Ann Radcliffe, and (apart from its usefulness now) I still rue having been required to read her Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) - on the slender basis that it would inform Northanger Abbey. Sixty years later, Branco's novel, from which Mysteries of Lisbon derives, clearly took a cue from the title of Radcliffe's book.

However, although the film does yield answers, it casually replaces them with nearly as many mysteries (though some may be created by sheer fatigue in concentrating on a set of interconnecting stories for so long - as against two unrelated films of the same duration - and having to remember who everyone is): by contrast, the Austen text presents us with a world where, despite appearances to the contrary, an utterly rationalistic approach is capable of explaining everything, however spooky or sinister.

Not that Austen (in this and other books) is necessarily always meaning to show us what a nincompoop everyone but her narrator is, but one could be forgiven for thinking so. Father Dinis, for all that he delves into mysteries (as well as creating them), is, in this respect, more like Chesterton's Father Brown, having a healthy respect for others' capacity to set out to mystify him, but at the same time teasing out those things that can be caused to yield to the joint attack of persistence and intellect.

And I would be very interested to know, if I can look into the matter at some point, why I was so put in mind, by this Portuguese film, of the works of the late Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges (as well as struck by the beauty of at least two of the female members of the cast).


End-notes

* And still didn't manage to avoid these over-energized trailers that just leave you in the wrong state of mind to watch the film that you paid to see, let alone that incessant VW Ghostbusters [(1984)] mess about 'seeing films differently', as against seeing the same damn' thing every time!

** IMDb claims that FaA only clocks in at 188 mins, as compared to 266 mins for MoL, but I shall rummage for a better reckoning of its true intended length (even if a version may have been released at that duration of around three hours)...

Yes, according to the running times of the two DVDs on which it was released by Artificial Eye, it is 309 mins (i.e. 5 h, 9 mins).

*** It is almost a commonplace that Bergman is - is supposed to be - a director on the small scale, and thus that his films can conveniently be viewed from a DVD on a smaller screen: to me, that makes as little sense as suggesting that seeing / hearing / feeling string quartets played live adds nothing to one's appreciation, and that one might as well listen to one's favourite recording on CD instead.


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