Mysteries

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Mysteries a 1978 Dutch film adapting Knut Hamsun’s novel. It stars Rutger Hauer, Sylvia Kristel, Rita Tushingham and David Rappaport. It was shot by the great Robbie Müller but unhappily the DVD is based on a poor quality print, the colors of which are all wrong, and is cropped. I also suspect it was heavily cut down since there are several very awkward edits. (On the other hand imdb.com lists the longest cut at 97 minutes, and the US cut at 93, which is roughly what I saw; I didn’t miss much.)

The story is set in the 1890s on a small coastal village (shot on the Isle of Man, but probably the novel is set in Norway). One day a young man commits suicide in the fields. The very next day a stranger, also a young man, comes to visit. He stays in the hotel for an indeterminate period and claims he is an agronomist and that his name is Johann Friedrich Nagel (Rutger Hauer).

There is a dwarf (David Rappaport) and all the town picks on him, and one of Nagel’s first kindnesses is to the midget, whose name is Grogard. Grogard in fact is the picture’s narrator, and his voiceover is used to help make sense of everything and carry us through the tale economically. You know these 19th century novels are long and dense. Hamsun also specialized in the psychological realism that was held to be the novel’s chief purpose in those times.

Nagel falls in love with two women. First there is the ‘frivolous’ Dany Kielland (Sylvia Kristel) who is engaged to a lieutenant serving elsewhere. She seems alternately drawn to and repulsed by Nagel, and Nagel falls helplessly under her spell. Then there is the poor woman with a past, Martha Gude (Rita Tushingham) whose hair has turned all white because of a grief in her past which the midget tells us, ‘It’s not for me to tell.’ So, we never find out.

Once in his sojourn Nagel is visited by a woman the midget tells us was Nagel’s former love. She calls him Simonsen and takes money from him and goes.

Nagel’s behavior grows ever more erratic as Dany scorns his offers of love. He stalks her and hangs around her house and poisons her dog. He turns to Martha and she accepts his marriage proposal, but on the next day rejects him and disappears. Nagel is sure that Dany has filled Martha’s mind with lies about him. So he takes 90% prussic acid, which he carries always in a vial in his pocket. But the midget has replaced the poison with water. Nagel stays in his hotel room, driving himself into nightmares, torturing himself, harming himself. At last he runs down the pier and dives into the water and drowns.

The midget feels he has to do something in memory of his friend, so he throws acid on the lovely face of Dany, scarring her. He is sent to prison for 3 years, but feels ‘not one moment of remorse.’ And the two women, Martha and Dany, are thereafter often seen about the town walking arm in arm, speaking of their memories of the enigmatic man.

Hamsun is said to be famous for his lyrical descriptions of nature, and the Isle of Man is so undeveloped it offers Müller a great place to shoot gorgeous landscapes as Nagel and company take long walks. But the print is so bad I can’t tell how nice these might have been, and the effect of those shots is therefore lost. At the same time the version I saw has been dubbed into English; not a great problem when it concerns Tushingham and Rappaport, who are English speakers, nor such a problem with Kristel, who was never a great actress. But Hauer’s performance is hard to tell, since we see him and hear another man’s voice. All I can say is that Hauer looks very much of the period. Clothes and styles are nicely done.

There is an odd power of the picture that does grow. Some traces of the psychological portrait glimmer through. And I do like these glimpses back into the peak of European civilization; it fills me with sadness to contemplate how far we have fallen in 120 years.

(25 April 2009)