From the Life of the Marionettes

Infobox Film
name = From the Life of the Marionettes


director = Ingmar Bergman
producer = Konrad Wendlandt
Horst Wendlandt
Ingmar Bergman
writer = Ingmar Bergman
starring = Robert Atzorn
Heinz Bennent
Martin Benrath
Toni Berger
Christine Buchegger
music = Rolf A. Wilhelm
cinematography = Sven Nykvist
editing = Petra von Oelffen
distributor =
released = November 3, 1980
runtime = 104 min
country = West Germany
Sweden
language = German
amg_id = 1:18769
imdb_id = 0080397

"Aus dem Leben der Marionetten" ("From the Life of the Marionettes") is a 1980 film directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film was produced in West Germany with a German language screenplay and soundtrack while Bergman was in "tax exile" from his native Sweden. It is filmed in black and white apart from two colour sequences at the beginning and end of the movie. It is set in Munich. The title is a quotation excerpted from a passage in The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi:

:"Most unfortunately in the lives of the Marionettes there is always a BUT that spoils everything".

Unlike Collodi's story, however, Bergman's is unremitting bleak in tone.

The film charts the disintegration of the relationship of Katarina and Peter Egermann, the feuding couple seen briefly in Bergman's earlier Scenes From a Marriage. As Katarina seeks other lovers, the emotionally repressed Peter descends into neuroses, eventually leading him to murder a stripper/prostitute (played by Rita Russek), with the same name as his wife, at a Munich peep show before sodomising her dead body. In the closing sequence he is incarcerated in a mental asylum. An odd counterpoint to the depressing tone of the film is the sprightly disco soundtrack over the end credits.

Cast

* Robert Atzorn - Peter Egermann
* Heinz Bennent - Arthur Brenner
* Martin Benrath - Mogens Jensen
* Toni Berger - The Guard
* Christine Buchegger - Katarina Egerman
* Gaby Dohm - Secretary
* Erwin Faber
* Lola Müthel - Cordelia Egermann
* Ruth Olafs - Nurse
* Karl-Heinz Pelser - The Interrogator
* Rita Russek - Ka
* Walter Schmidinger - Tim

External links

*Imdb title | id=0080397 | title=Aus dem Leben der Marionetten