When film is naturalistic and romance is fatal, one cannot help but fall in love with the most tragic stories. In 1967's "Elvira Madigan," second-generation Swedish director/writer Bo Widerberg presents us with a very early Dogme 95-style portrait of lovers tearing themselves away from the world only to have it catch up with them. Malmö born Widerberg is nothing like Fårö's Ingmar Bergman. Widerberg's camera darts around loses its subjects, shakes, follows too long, and literally breaks all the rules to make telling a conventional tale far more radical.
"Elvira Madigan" is first and foremost a film of beauty. Widerberg has his actors chasing butterflies, eating berries drenched in cream, paddling boats, and continuing to provide actions and reactions that rarely feel scripted (or even done more than once.) As the famous slackrope walker Elvira Madigan/Hedvig Jensen, Pia Dagermark radiates the light around her. What opens as lovers on the run mostly breathes during its pauses. When Hedvig and her lover, Count Sixten Sparre, who deserted the Swedish military and his family for her, stay at a remote country house. The woman minding it regularly discovers her clothesline missing. While we have already seen Hedvig either practicing or needing the love of walking on the line tied between two trees, Widerberg has the woman follow her into the woods, so we can see how Hedvig sets this up. The chase gives us just enough time to ratchet up the tension that the adventure has not yet begun.
As Sparre, Widerberg's lead Thommy Berggren has the hardest job. While it is not hard to think that this pair is truly enamored with each other, Sparre may have given up too much for this. On a regular basis, Widerberg lets us dwell on the margins of their romance. For example, they share a picnic of cheese, bread, and wine under a tree. The glorious score music of Mozart and Vivaldi plays. The bottle of wine tips over. The music stops. They simply watch the wine pour out until it stops on its own.
These are not star-crossed lovers. Their differences are shared. When they run out of money, Hedvig goes to "dance" for 25 crowns. Watching from outside the window, Sparre is joined by a drunken patron who speaks effusively and with vulgarity about Hedvig. In one unbroken shot, we see Sparre overreact. What follows is an outburst of suppressed rage that can only be expressed to Hedvig. The lovers are crestfallen. Separated at a creek bank, Sparre writes on a scrap of paper and puts it in the water to float down to Hedvig. It is a thing of beauty to visualize that love note floating into view.
Finally, when it turns tragic. "Elvira Madigan" has an ending that you know is coming (the opening scroll actually tells you,) but it resonates with you long after the film fades to black. As much as Warren Beatty's post-French New Wave vision of film is translated into a similar story around the same time in "Bonnie and Clyde" with total originality. I am willing to guess, he took in this beautiful tragedy while editing his own.
