From the Life of the Marionettes (Aus dem Leben der Marionetten) is a 1980 horror film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, made in West Germany. Bergman shot it in German language engaging German actors and none of his regular cast.
The film explores the circumstances leading up to middle-class businessman Peter Egerman's seemingly unmotivated murder of a prostitute. After witnessing the act in the film's opening moments we follow a series of vignettes as Peter's friends and family give their perspective on his declining mental health in recent weeks, including his wife and mother. Bergman's only German language film, it was made during his self-imposed tax exile; originally aired exclusively on German TV, it remains one of the director's darkest and least-seen films.
Tropes
- Alliterative Name: Katharina Krafft aka Ka.
- Bookends: The film both starts and ends in colour. It is only several minutes in both cases. The bulk of the movie is monochrome.
- Continuity Nod: Peter and Katarina are the same people as the characters in Scenes from a Marriage played by Jan Malmsjö and Bibi Andersson.
- Dark and Troubled Past: A middle-class version. Peter Egermann was not abused but rather suppressed and disciplined by his domineering mother.
- Darker and Edgier//Hotter and Sexier: The film is much grittier than many of Bergman's other films, and includes many overtly horrific elements. Along with Hour of the Wolf and perhaps The Virgin Spring, it's one of his only horror movies.
- Defiled Forever: Tim thinks that if Peter sleeps with a prostitute, the guilt will forever warp his mind.
- Depraved Homosexual: Tim thinks that if he can convince Peter to have sex with a prostitute, the guilt will warp him so much that he'll "become" a homosexual, allowing them to have an affair. Oddly, Jensen, the psychiatrist, somewhat confirms that this scheme was not as zany as it might seem, although for different reasons: he feels that Peter is a repressed homosexual whose bourgeois background and middle-class lifestyle won't allow him to acknowledge his true sexuality.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Lampshaded by the first scene which is in color in its beginning.
- Disposable Sex Worker: The film opens with Peter murdering a hooker, maybe because she reminds him of his wife. Or maybe not. One of the narrative conceits of the film is that no one is ever sure.
- Dream Within a Dream: Peter has one.
- Fan Disservice: There's lots of attractive naked people throughout the movie. They're also constantly talking about death, abnormal sexual desires, or they're getting murdered.
- Flashback: The story is told through those by the relatives and friends of the couple.
- Freudian Excuse: One theory for the murder of Ka.
- I Love the Dead: Not shown on-screen, but it's stated that Peter sodomized Ka's body after strangling her.
- Lingerie Scene: For Ka the prostitute it is rather Shirtless Scene but it is said that this trope is male only. In any case Ka mostly walks onscreen without a bra, though she has her panties on.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Peter is shown in this way in his dream.
- Meaningful Name: Krafft (or rather Kraft) means "Force, Strength"
- One-Steve Limit: Subverted as the film features Katarina Egerman and Katharina Krafft aka Ka.
- Talking Down the Suicidal: Arthur practices it when Peter is suicidal.
- Villainous Breakdown Tim the Depraved Homosexual has something of a kind in front of the investigator because his conscience torments him as he let the future murderer know the future victim because of his own zany scheme.
- Visible Boom Mic: For one second 57 minutes into the film.
- Zany Scheme: Tim mentions to Peter about a (female) prostitute he knows (not in the biblical sense as Tim is a homosexual). He thinks that when Peter cheats on his wife with her he'll begin to distance from the spouse and then he might start shipping Tim himself. He actually is right to an extent, in that Peter indeed is a latent homosexual as per Jensen the psychiatrist.
