From the Life of the Marionettes

This may be the closest Ingmar Bergman has ever come to making a genre film. It feels like a film noir, or a detective story, except the mystery isn't a whodunit, but a why-did-he-do-it. The film opens on an embrace with sexual vibe going on in the room, suddenly the man begins to choke the woman, kills her, and violates her. This stands out among Bergman films in that it was made in Germany and features no familiar faces in the cast. As a film it's about the mysteries of sex and the need for human connection. Yet intimacy is such a frail thing, and often self-motivated, while sex is an almost metaphysical act determined by very biological functions. Are not we all just slaves to our hormones and to our own selfish desires? That is the question Bergman poses here. He answers it, however, in very Freudian terms with a lot about repressed anger, dominant mothers, sexual misunderstandings, emotional confusion, and even a bit of latent homosexuality. It's an unusual film, even by Bergman standards, yet one which clearly seems to be attempting to shed light on the human soul.