shirley temple!
Can't beleive no one mentions that Shirley boycotted the Venice Film Festival because of this pornographic movie.
shareDon't let yourself be fooled by the above poster, or by Ms. Temple. It is not a pornographic film.
With that said, I don't think any film maker today would shoot scenes with a woman in bed with a young naked boy in the way Mai Zetterling did. I suppose Shirley Temple reacted partly as a former child actor, worried that the young actor was scarred for life.
I don't think he was, nor did I find the scene disturbing. My mind was busy with what the characters where thinking and feeling, how people back in 1966 reacted to what they saw, and how I would have reacted to lying next to Ingrid Thulin, the most beautiful actress ever.
I gather those were more innocent times. However, I doubt they were so innocent that a scene with an adult man and a young girl would have been acceptable. That scene would have been very disturbing to me, but this one wasn't. Is it because we always see even a young boy as someone with more power than a woman? Like when people make jokes about "13 year old boy seduced by teacher".
Hmm, I didn't really like the film much, but it seems that it did at least set my mind in motion. Therefore, I recommend it.
Your mind was busy with what the characters were thinking and feeling? Really? How would that be possible?
I think what you're describing is called a BOOK.
Unless there is voiceover film doesn't tell you what characters think and feel.
In that scene I was thinking about how inappropriate it is for a boy of that age to be nude and rubbed by his mother.
I also wondered why the actor (who was 14 at the time of the filming) had such a prepubescent body. I was going to say that he looked more like a 12 year old but I think most 12 year olds are actually more developed.
Although the film was released with an 'X' certificate in the UK in 1966, it may well, with it being a foreign language film with English subtitles, have taken a year or two for it to be released in the UK and US and it could well have been shot in 1965, or even 1964, making Jorgen Lindstrom a couple of years younger. Either that, or the date of his birth on the IMDb is wrong.
shareWhat I meant was that my mind was busy wondering about what the characters might be thinking and feeling at that moment.
Most filmmakers don't use voiceover and still do a fine job of telling the viewer what is going on in the head of the characters, when they choose to do so.
However, I do see why a scene like the one discussed is this thread could distract most viewers from being concerned with character motivations. So in that sense the scene is perhaps not very effective.
The deliberate nuances of an actor's facial expressions, body posture, and hand gestures can tell us what a character is thinking or feeling.
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