MESSAGES of misery and foreboding were flashed by in this great picture that was shown to me, and suddenly the air of geniality that was wafted into my surrounding was chilled.
This feature was "Hunger," a Norwegian-Danish-Swedish film that depicts the miseries of a penniless would-be writer in Christiana, Norway, toward the end of the last century.
It might be classed as fascinating but definitely a painful tours de forc, the first reason because of its smashing simulation of catastrophic reality, and the second because of the tormented and poignant performance Per Oscarsson gives in the principal role.
"Hunger," based on the novel by Knut Hamsun, is a pictorial study in a thin dramatic form of the Old-World romantic eccentricities,, hallucinations and creeping despairs of a young author dying of starvation, which he is too proud and foolish to reveal.
It is brilliantly played by Mr. Oscarsson, who stretches so tightly the nerves and the muscular movements of this fellow that he communicates a racking, haunting sense of a misguided, hopeless romantic methodically choking himself. For this performance, he was given the best acting award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Gunnel Lindblom is shadowy but touching in the pathetically sketchy role of a genteel young woman who is also starving and joins the writer in one pitiful grab at love. Henning Carlsen's direction is appropriately mordant and gaunt.
This feature was "Hunger," a Norwegian-Danish-Swedish film that depicts the miseries of a penniless would-be writer in Christiana, Norway, toward the end of the last century.
It might be classed as fascinating but definitely a painful tours de forc, the first reason because of its smashing simulation of catastrophic reality, and the second because of the tormented and poignant performance Per Oscarsson gives in the principal role.
"Hunger," based on the novel by Knut Hamsun, is a pictorial study in a thin dramatic form of the Old-World romantic eccentricities,, hallucinations and creeping despairs of a young author dying of starvation, which he is too proud and foolish to reveal.
It is brilliantly played by Mr. Oscarsson, who stretches so tightly the nerves and the muscular movements of this fellow that he communicates a racking, haunting sense of a misguided, hopeless romantic methodically choking himself. For this performance, he was given the best acting award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Gunnel Lindblom is shadowy but touching in the pathetically sketchy role of a genteel young woman who is also starving and joins the writer in one pitiful grab at love. Henning Carlsen's direction is appropriately mordant and gaunt.