I thought I couldn't get through the film a second time, but it was surprisingly enjoyable - and relevant - maybe, because we live in the year of the fulfillment: From
Casablanca to
Electric Dreams 42 years had passed and since
Electric Dreams another 42 have.
Let me start this off then with a comparison of Ingrid Bergman with the Virginia in Virgin Films' production (the Harpo playing Groucho Marx will have to make do with these words).
I stated before that Ingrid Bergman shows an unrivaled enjoyment of slipping into roles (
I'm a school teacher from a small town in Sweden... in the otherwise forgettable collaboration with Gregory Peck), but while that is true as far as Hollywood stars are concerned, it is just as much a generational thing: What went through Myrna Loy's head, for instance, was clearly:
You mean, I can play a lady from high society?
This behaviour in the face of technological innovation (
A microphone! Let me try this: The Charles Atlas course will turn you into... a beast of a man!) is childish, yes, but when you look at Virginia Madsen, you'll find this dialectic unsatisfactory.
She exhibits a very peculiar combination of traits in this film, strict on the one hand and impressionable on the other. It raises the question, what a strict person would want to be impressionable for.
Well, another thing I stated before is that she's too much of a fisherman's daughter here, reminding me in an uncomplimentary fashion of one of my cousins and for sure: The root of this peculiar combination is primitive, namely to assume that people are of different sorts like playing cards, and the purpose of the impressionability then is to draw people out so that you may take a peek at what's underneath.
By the way, if you don't know the film, it's flying in the face of everything that actors and writers are being taught about their jobs, so bear with me.
Having dealt with this individual irritation, it becomes possible to establish the true meaning of the generational difference: For Ingrid Bergman her role in life as an actress was everything, whereas for Virginia Madsen it's just a rung on the ladder towards economic independence, something that women of Bergman's generation probably didn't think about that much. Whereas Madsen hopes
to have it made, Bergman and Loy were concerned with what they'd be remembered for, the former plotting her career, the latter ones weighing ideals.
And that is the entire appeal of the film: Since nobody's doing his job, the actors don't pretend, the writers don't seek to convince, everybody's just having fun on set, commenting on life, the universe and everything, it becomes a window into the forces that shape reality - the vendor, who wants to know nothing about the products she sells, the suit, who commissions a computer to furnish him with a heart, the malcontent, who uses (and is) said computer to get back at the world, the duped traditionalist, who gets transplanted - and really the closest thing to a view of Plato's ideas - and it's predictions are precise: By now computers
do compose music and point out misattributions of quotes and errors of release dates, just check Edgar out at
google.com.
Labels: 44, charaktere, filmkritik, formalisierung, geschichte, gesetze, institutionen, rezension, sehhilfen, wahrnehmungen, zeitgeschichte, ἰδέα, φιλοσοφία