Sawdust and Tinsel (aka The Naked Night)

If I didn't already know that this was a Bergman film I could easily have mistaken it for an early Fellini film with some unusual trace amounts of Hitchcock. It's pretty bleak, even by Bergman standards. There doesn't seem to be hope for anyone here. Like Summer With Monika, this is Bergman before he matured as an artist and filmmaker and before he really began exploring the themes that seem to dominate his obsessions. Some critics call this his first real film, but I still think his real films were another couple of years off. Two scenes stick out in my mind, though -- an opening scene that feels like a dream in a Fellini film, and a fight scene that, despite it's clumsiness is painfully hard to watch. You can see Bergman beginning to emerge, but he's not quite there yet.