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Miss Julie, 1951
Julie (Anita Bjork) is the daughter of a count, just coming off of a broken engagement to a well-to-do attorney. After dancing and flirting with the servant Jean (Ulf Palme), Julie catches some real feelings for him, and he seems to return at least some of the sentiment. Over the course of a wild Midsummer evening, hiding away from rowdy party-goers, the two confide in each other their childhood experiences.
There are certainly very few romances I've seen in film more obviously doomed than the one between Julie and Jean explored in this movie. It's an interesting, creatively shot film with a compelling momentum.
To start with, one of the great gifts of this film is that I had any shred of sympathy for Julie by the end of it all. The film begins with her humiliating Jean, forcing him to dance with her, drink with her, and then kiss her boot. In a flashback, we then watch her savagely beat her dog, force the dog to do tricks, and then act abusively toward her fiance. Later in the film, when she learns she can't take a pet with her on a trip, she has it killed. In short, she is the worst.
And yet through the flashbacks to her childhood, there is some sense of how Julie came to be such a warped person, and why she has such an unhealthy fixation with power and dominance. Her mother was a commoner who believed in equality, and marrying Julie's father, the count, was her doom. Her hysterical laughter as she realizes she's delivered a girl is a haunting, dark moment. The count's solution: to dress Julie as a boy and make her do the men's work, slaughtering calves and working a plow in the field. As Julie's mother slowly goes insane with confinement, Julie's care is given over to another woman who teaches Julie mistrust.
While Julie sets the bar pretty high in terms of difficulty to love, Jean is also kind of right there. With Jean, though, it is his background as a servant that has twisted his personality to the point where he will take delight in any humiliation or chance to think himself better than the people who employ him. He gloats over Julie's revelation of her mother being mentally ill. Jean has firmer ground to stand on, of course, pointing out that the "superiority" of Julie's family is basically down to some creative networking in the past.
In Julie and Jean, we see the way that any inherently prejudiced system does disservice to people on both sides. The fixation on social status and wealth poisons the lives of two people who could have otherwise been happy and healthy people.
The film looks great, and I loved moments where it plays with the staging of its sequences. In one scene, as Julie recounts a moment from her youth, the young Julie and her companion walk by in the background.
The only real downside for me was how little I liked either main character. Interesting? Yes. But I was pretty done with Julie in particular by the time the third act was in full swing.
Visually compelling and strongly acted throughout.
Miss Julie, 1951
Julie (Anita Bjork) is the daughter of a count, just coming off of a broken engagement to a well-to-do attorney. After dancing and flirting with the servant Jean (Ulf Palme), Julie catches some real feelings for him, and he seems to return at least some of the sentiment. Over the course of a wild Midsummer evening, hiding away from rowdy party-goers, the two confide in each other their childhood experiences.
There are certainly very few romances I've seen in film more obviously doomed than the one between Julie and Jean explored in this movie. It's an interesting, creatively shot film with a compelling momentum.
To start with, one of the great gifts of this film is that I had any shred of sympathy for Julie by the end of it all. The film begins with her humiliating Jean, forcing him to dance with her, drink with her, and then kiss her boot. In a flashback, we then watch her savagely beat her dog, force the dog to do tricks, and then act abusively toward her fiance. Later in the film, when she learns she can't take a pet with her on a trip, she has it killed. In short, she is the worst.
And yet through the flashbacks to her childhood, there is some sense of how Julie came to be such a warped person, and why she has such an unhealthy fixation with power and dominance. Her mother was a commoner who believed in equality, and marrying Julie's father, the count, was her doom. Her hysterical laughter as she realizes she's delivered a girl is a haunting, dark moment. The count's solution: to dress Julie as a boy and make her do the men's work, slaughtering calves and working a plow in the field. As Julie's mother slowly goes insane with confinement, Julie's care is given over to another woman who teaches Julie mistrust.
While Julie sets the bar pretty high in terms of difficulty to love, Jean is also kind of right there. With Jean, though, it is his background as a servant that has twisted his personality to the point where he will take delight in any humiliation or chance to think himself better than the people who employ him. He gloats over Julie's revelation of her mother being mentally ill. Jean has firmer ground to stand on, of course, pointing out that the "superiority" of Julie's family is basically down to some creative networking in the past.
In Julie and Jean, we see the way that any inherently prejudiced system does disservice to people on both sides. The fixation on social status and wealth poisons the lives of two people who could have otherwise been happy and healthy people.
The film looks great, and I loved moments where it plays with the staging of its sequences. In one scene, as Julie recounts a moment from her youth, the young Julie and her companion walk by in the background.
The only real downside for me was how little I liked either main character. Interesting? Yes. But I was pretty done with Julie in particular by the time the third act was in full swing.
Visually compelling and strongly acted throughout.