Hägringen (The Mirage) (1959) Peter Weiss (eng sub)

In 1959, Peter Weiss made his first feature length film, “Hägringen“, with Staffan Lamm and Gunilla Palmstierna in leading roles. The skript to the rather experimental film is based on the novel “Document I“ which he had published in Swedish in 1949 on his own initiative. “Hägringen“ creates a real synthesis of both key elements of Weiss’ practice in working with film: the subjective and the documentary approach to reality. The film shows the encounter of a young man with a large city that is yet unknown to him. His passage, accompanied by often surrealistic and absurd impressions, turns into a tour-de-force through various urban milieus. He fails to get in touch with those he meets or to keep up with the dynamics of modern life that is set to the clock of automation. Finally, his journey ends where it has started: following a row of telephone poles he escapes towards the horizon. Karl Ekwall, film critic of the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet, writes in his review on “Hägringen“ from November 24th, 1959: “No one has yet seen the city in this way, but it is how it exists. Peter Weiss understands to alter your vision and to make you see things, that are there, but which you would have never discovered otherwise.“ Throughout the decades “Hägringen“ became a true historical document and work of remembrance since the film carefully depicts the atmosphere of the city of Stockholm as it existed before its major transformation in the 1960s and 70s.