It would be a Shame to miss this Bergman standout

It may not be as renowned or heralded as some of Ingmar Bergman’s other classics like Persona, Wild Strawberries, or The Seventh Seal, but Shame (1968) remains a powerful examination of the human cost of war and the fragility of relationships, standing out as one of the most compelling anti-war films in cinema.

The story centers on Jan and Eva Rosenberg, a married couple and former musicians played by Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, who flee to a rural island to escape a civil war in an unnamed country. However, as the conflict reaches their refuge, they are forced to confront the brutal realities of war and the unraveling of their relationship.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Shame, conducted last week, click here.

Although Bergman claimed this was not a political commentary on the Vietnam War, the fact that this film was released at the height of that conflict makes comparisons unavoidable. While it’s true that this is an imaginary civil war within Sweden—not Vietnam—Shame seems to capture the zeitgeist of violence, discomfort, and unrest that permeated the late 1960s. Interestingly, the civil war itself is not explained or contextualized; we don’t know what each side stands for, although each side seems equally awful in its treatment of the civilians affected.

Cinematographer Sven Nykvist enhances the psychological tension of the film with stark black-and-white visuals that lend the island an eerie beauty, making it both a place of refuge and terror. The black-and-white canvas is fitting, creating a template more suitable for moral ambiguity and ethical shades of gray.

Bergman often prefers long takes where he lets the actors carry a scene, forcing the viewer to pay closer attention to small details as the camera often remains static, as demonstrated in the earlier picnic scene and the later kitchen table sequence with Jacobi.

The film doesn’t try to explain why characters do what they do. Per Roger Ebert: “Eva has sex with the colonel in charge…Does she do it to save them? Probably, but hard to say. Her own marriage is painfully uncertain. Later, Jan conceals money that could have bought the colonel’s freedom from the other side. Does he do it to punish their adultery? Hard to say if he has actually witnessed it.”

(SPOILERS AHEAD) The narrative ends abstrusely, with Eva and Jan likely facing death adrift on the ocean as she recalls a strange dream. There is no resolution here.

So what are we to make of Shame? It’s an obvious polemic on war’s corrosive effects on humanity, innocence, and civilians. Bergman explores how war erodes what makes us human, including our empathetic qualities and moral values. Eva and Jan, apolitical and initially detached and uninterested in the conflict, are drawn into the violence, illustrating how ordinary people can become enmeshed in cruelty. As their innocence is lost, their relationship begins to deteriorate, revealing underlying selfishness and betrayal.

Criterion Collection essayist Michael Sragow wrote: “As the sixties neared their end, even Bergman, the screen’s foremost investigator of private life, intimate behavior, and postreligious faith, felt the need to make a statement on that turbulent decade and the legacy of World War II. His vision of how sadism and paranoia fuel martial conflicts and spread from society’s fringes into middle-class living rooms (and bedrooms) permeates Shame, the only Bergman film that could be called primarily political or antiwar. The relentless, Kafkaesque backdrop of a never-ending war puts a troubled marriage into stark relief, dramatizing the end of fellow feeling and the dehumanization of death… Throughout, Bergman gets us to feel what it’s like to be a displaced person in one’s own homeland.”

True to its title, the film delves deeply into shame and culpability, which both Eva and Jan feel. Jan acts passively and cowardly earlier in the story, Eva gives in to Col. Jacobi sexually, Jan betrays Jacobi by keeping his money, and Jan kills a deserted soldier. These and other actions trigger guilt and disgrace, seriously impacting the couple’s relationship. As the narrative progresses, their need to survive leads them to abandon their principles, showing how desperation erodes personal integrity. The title of the film, posits Alternate Ending blogger Timothy Brayton, “can refer to Bergman's shame at dodging politics or Jan's shame at the same, God's shame at creating a violent world; humanity's shame at embracing war as a first resort; the same of being a bad and weak husband; and that's without even pausing to think about it.”

Bergman also confronts the fallacy of neutrality or remaining uninvolved during wartime. Jan and Eva’s efforts to remain apolitical and uninvolved—including living on an island amid a civil war—ultimately fail, as they are eventually embroiled in the very conflict they sought to avoid. Shame suggests that trying to remain neutral in a crisis is not only futile but can entangle individuals more deeply in the destructive forces of war. Yet the film also espouses that it doesn’t really matter which side you support: you’re likely to lose as a human being. “Bergman’s lack of specificity here comes to suggest that war is inevitable and circular and will eventually engulf most of us, who might be currently enjoying the sojourns of Shame’s opening passage,” according to Slant Magazine critic Chuck Bowen. “Bergman fillets his interests in this film, forging a vision of annihilation that is, understood, itself, to be yet another bourgeoisie toy. In one scene, Eva wonders if she’s in a dream, and if such a dreamer is capable of feeling shame. The film’s existence is her unattainable answer.”

Lastly, Shame examines how, as pressures increase, relationships suffer, causing each party to become more estranged from the other, making isolation and detachment a further thematic underpinning. The psychological strain of the conflict exposes the weakness in their marriage, which slowly falls apart under mistrust and the instinct to survive.

Similar works

• Hour of the Wolf and The Passion of Anna, two films that, respectively preceded and followed Shame and form a trilogy each featuring Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow as a similar type couple living under duress on a Swedish island
• Films depicting an imaginary civil war, including Children of Men, Civil War, The Rover, and Bushwick
• Come and See
• The Sacrifice
• The Painted Bird
• Lacombe, Lucien
• The Road

Other films by Ingmar Bergman

• The Seventh Seal
• Wild Strawberries
• The Silence
• Winter Light
• Through a Glass Darkly
• Persona
• Cries and Whispers
• Scenes from a Marriage
• Autumn Sonata
• Fanny and Alexander