For viewers born decades after the end of the second worldwide conflict, it's hard to imagine anything but joy and optimism in the hearts of the younger population that went through what was probably the hardest (and certainly darkest) part of their lives. We've all basked in stories, real and fictional, that knighted those who fathered the baby-boomers with the title of the greatest generation, one whose youth was sacrificed at history's altar ... but that's overlooking their ordinariness, how modest their aims were and thus how poignantly relatable their lives could be outside the epic scope of war and other life-and-death situations.
When Ingmar Bergman "Port of Call" starts, war is way over and there's no any indication of life-threatening situations yet the film opens with a startling suicide attempt: a girl takes a big dive from a dock and many people come to rescue her, including a war veteran who just settled in the port town. From what it looks like, the two protagonists didn't benefit from the kind of existential canvases that invite for optimism: the man is a sailor back from war, disillusioned and hiding his easy-going nature behind a mask of cynicism, his name is Gösta (Bengt Eklund), the woman is a young factory girl, depressed and insecure, with the kind of troubled past that makes any romance doomed from the start, and whose roots are to be found within a tense relationship with her overbearing mother. She's Berit (Nine-Chrstine Jönsson).
Those were the neo-realism days in Europe and the noir era in the U.S.A, the film, maybe unconsciously driven by these two influences, doesn't intend to paint a glamorous romance of any kind but rather a life capsule in a small seaside working-class town, a sort of Swedish "On the Waterfront" where we follow the lives of two loners as they converged one night at a dance. It's an immediate and mutual appreciation that never feels forced nor contrived, it IS believable that the two would find oasis of serenity within each other. To use fitting metaphors, Gösta has nothing but dreams of stability, he's a boat that wants to set ashore someplace, drop the anchor once and for all, he just doesn't have a compass, Berit on the other hand is a raft drifting in the ocean of her own guilt-ridden past and has no rows whatsoever to move on.
In a way the film is more about Berit's attempt to come to term with that past of hers, it's not much a character study but a psychological journey into a mindset that made happiness as improbable as the sight of land for a boat without any guidance. Gösta is an active and passive observer who acts as a lookout sometimes and some others becomes a true rower on Berit's frail embarkation. He knows she's as tormented as he is, he doesn't care much about her past though he's clearly displeased by the constant harassment she gets from men, raising suspicions of the ugliest sorts. So, as the film moves on and their relationship thickens, more obstacles come across their journey to the promised harbor, divulgated through flashbacks, revealed secrets and a subplot involving Berit's friend Gertrud, Bibi Nelson.
The flashbacks on Berit's life are depressing and bleak: marital fights, scandals, life in reformatory school that borders on prostitution and debauchery, a difficult mother-and-daughter relationship, it's a cocktail of lurid negativity that darkens an already heavy-loaded movie and the irony is that the friend Gertrud got an even worse deal. The contrast between Berit and Gertrud is interesting on two levels: it highlights the fact that Berit is abler to fight her own demons and maybe her real tragedy is that she can't handle happiness even when served on a silver platter, as if it was a dish best served cold. The second level is that the film is a powerful social commentary on the tormented lives of women with a 'bad rep' in a system that often pose as a judge of morality, driving them to the most extreme and sometimes macabre corners.
Bergman, in one of his breakthrough movies, displays the kind of sensitivities that made he glorious days of European neo-realism, his "Port of Call" is as powerful and introspective as the Italian classics of the late 1940s through this portrayal of two lost souls who come to find a true meaning to their lives after many years of unhappiness and resentment. For that, the director shows a predisposition for lengthy intimate scenes where two faces are close to each other and one speak alone without looking at the other, as if the act of talking was individual and solitary in essence. But when Berit confesses her past to Gösta, it looks like she's talking to us; from either point of view, ours or Gösta's, you can feel the emergence of a cinematic talent and a unique ability to paint human emotions with consideration to the viewers.
The film is rather simple but it's made in such a way we feel like belonging to the screen... and that's Bergman's power, every once in a while, "Port of Call" ceases to be that gripping drama and reaches an unexpected summit of film-making showing the early signs of the genius, small moments where souls are confronted one to another, talking, deciding and acting. The tension is real and makes the few moments of relief only more rewarding. And that's an adjective I'd use to describe the ending, one that such a movie called for, after so many questioning about life, it was only fair that the two young protagonists, directed under a then-young director could find one reason to two to see the future in brighter colors, almost spoiled by the poster.
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