Controversial Swedish actress-turned filmmaker Mai Zetterling’s first three films—all shot in black-and-white—are compiled in this provocative collection focusing on sexuality and gender relations. Zetterling’s debut, the ironically titled Loving Couples (1964), centers on three pregnant women in a maternity ward, circa 1915, who reflect on their lives during labor, flashing back to their childhoods and the later circumstances that brought them to their current situations.
Hailing from an aristocratic background, her overly affectionate aunt Petra takes the orphaned Angela (Gio Petré) in (Anita Björk). As an adult, an older man who was a former lover of Petra’s impregnates Angela during a characteristically wild and carefree Midsummer festival.
Adèle (Gunnel Lindblom) is a bitter woman of limited means (the family struggled after the death of her father) who is married to the foreman at Petra’s estate. To say that Adèle’s outlook on life is bleak is a bit of an understatement—witness her statement on amour: “there isn’t any love; it’s just beds, filth, and slime.”
Agda’s (Harriet Andersson) relationship is the most interesting. After the perennially upbeat maid rolls in the hay with an upper-class military man, she enters a marriage of convenience with a gay character. This fake arrangement cynically suits all parties, especially since the officer agrees to pay an annual stipend to the in-name-only couple.
Based on a series of seven novels by the feminist writer Agnes von Krusenstjerna, Loving Couples is a beautifully lensed (by Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist), provocative film (featuring a then-shocking close-up shot of live birth) that serves up a caustic look at the matrimonial ties that bind, which in Angela’s decidedly negative opinion is “like falling asleep for the rest of your life.”
Zetterling’s second feature, Night Games (1966), carries the distinction of being trash maestro John Waters’ favorite film and was so controversial that it was not initially shown to the public but only privately screened for the jury during its premiere at the Venice Film Festival (another festival appearance in San Francisco caused Shirley Temple Black to resign from the festival board in protest).
The film opens with Jan (Keve Hjelm) bringing his fiancée Mariana (Lena Brundin) to the sprawling mansion where he grew up with his outrageously decadent mother Irene (Ingrid Thulin). Walking through the house, Jan experiences a near-waking dream as he enters various rooms and is immediately transported back to his childhood (the young Jan is played by Jörgen Lindström).
Before their untimely death in a car accident, Jan’s parents were hosts to a seemingly continuous bacchanal of costumed drunken sycophants playing cacophonous music in a Felliniesque nightmare scenario. In the introductory tableau, Irene gives birth to a dead baby while surrounded by this hellish entourage, noting that “all that comes out of them is vomit and compliments.”
As Jan admits, “this is a house with a past that’s not easy to live with.” In the film’s most outrageous sequence, the 12-year-old nude Jan cavorts with his scantily clad mother in bed before surreptitiously masturbating under the covers and being subsequently shamed by Irene. The adult Jan’s Oedipal baggage is heavy indeed and whether Mariana will overcome it and find marital peace/bliss with her husband-to-be remains a question right up to the end.
The Girls (1968) is Zetterling’s most noted film. Universally panned (by male critics) upon its initial release, it is the tamest of this trio, which says more about how the times have changed than the film itself. As in “Loving Couples,” the narrative follows three women—Liz (Bibi Andersson), Marianne (Harriet Andersson), and Gunilla (Gunnel Lindblom). The “girls” are on a road trip across Sweden, acting in a stage production of Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata.” The premise of this classic Greek play is simple: tired of the war between Athens and Sparta, the Athenian woman delivers an ultimatum to their warrior husbands: abandon war or go without nookie (the play also served as inspiration for Spike Lee’s 2015 film “Chi-Raq”).
Again, Zetterling employs multiple perspectives—interspersing scenes from the play with interactions between the women and their would-be domineering male partners—to explore relations between the sexes. Although considered somewhat outrageous back in 1968, the viewpoints espoused by the women here would become foundational in the next decade as the feminist movement came to the fore of social politics.
Presented with new 2K digital restorations, extras include an interview with author Alicia Malone, the 1989 documentary Maybe I Really Am a Sorceress (on Zetterling, featuring interviews with Zetterling; her co-screenwriter, David Hughes; and actors Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, and Gunnel Lindblom), the 1996 documentary Lines from the Heart (reuniting The Girls actors Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, and Lindblom), a 1984 interview with Zetterling on Loving Couples and The Girls, Swedish television footage from 1966 that was filmed on location during the production of Night Games and at the film’s premiere, and a booklet with an essay by film scholar Mariah Larsson.
Over half a century later, Zetterling’s ‘60s films continue to be both disturbing and thought-provoking, full of acidic dialogue and fearless dissection of the psychological divide separating men and women, while occasionally allowing bridges to be built between these “loving” couples. Recommended for larger public libraries and cinema studies collections.