Doctor Glas (1968)

Its almost a guarantee that the work of an artist who’s ahead of their time won’t receive the attention and respect its due until years after. This is especially true as it relates to the work of Swedish actress turned director Mai Zetterling. Zetterling’s homeland of Sweden was at the forefront of cinema that transgressed and pushed censorship limits in terms of on screen sexuality, but before Vilgot Sjöman caused an uproar with his I am Curious films, Yellow (1967) and Blue (1968), and before the release of the sensational sex education films Language of Love (1969) and Love Play: That's How We Do It (1972) and the Christina Lindberg vehicles Exposed (1971), Anita: Swedish Nymphet (1973) and Wide Open (1974) just to name a few, Zetterling was already breaking taboos left and right, first with Loving Couples (1964) then with Night Games (1966), which sent many a moralist, most famously Shirley Temple, into a frenzy. It wasn’t until the 70’s when festivals dedicated to female directors began popping up did Zetterling’s films finally get their due, however it seems the recognition was short lived as Zetterling’s name still seems to be fairly low-key. Doctor Glas, Zetterling’s follow-up to Night Games and another unfortunately under the radar title, saw Zetterling take her fascination with sexually based neurosis to an even darker place resulting in one of Zetterling’s most challenging and perhaps greatest film.

Repulsed by her husband, Helga Gregorius, the wife of a reverend, makes a desperate plea to her physician Dr. Glas to lie about an illness to her husband in the hopes of it preventing him from taking advantage of, as Helga refers to it, his “marital rights”. Glas, who has long been harboring an obsession with Helga agrees, although the plan fails as Helga is back in his office soon after begging him to talk to her husband again. As Glas’ obsession with Helga intensifies, his grip on reality begins to slip as he becomes more desperate to aid Helga in the hopes of the two becoming lovers, eventually coming to the conclusion that the only way to help Helga is by murdering her husband.

Described by Zetterling as a story about “one man’s battle with himself”, Doctor Glas is a distressing and unusual psychological profile of a sexually frustrated sociopath. Although far from being a fast paced film, Zetterling nonetheless offers little to no breathing room in the sense that right from the opening credits Zetterling transports the audience into the fractured headspace of the titular character and stays there for the remainder of the film. Through voiceovers, Zetterling lets Glas’ disturbed thought process unfold and despite the character being completely unsympathetic, the film is always engrossing in the way Zetterling lets the evolution of Glas’ God complex unfold. The film is also one of Zetterling’s most visually accomplished and inventive with Zetterling crossing over into surreal territory several times via the use of deliberately out of focus imagery and morbid hallucinations representing just how rapid Glas’ grasp on the real world is slipping. Quite often these scenes employ quick cutting techniques and resemble the type of cut-aways Alain Robbe-Grillet would later utilize. Although short, the imagery in these scenes are rather unnerving and at times religious in nature which is another component of the film. Zetterling is none too subtle in her attacks on religious and moral hypocrisy. The most obvious example would be the character of the reverend but more interesting is Glas’ own hypocrisy in his deciding that he must kill the reverend while simultaneously refusing to perform abortions on several of his patients with his reasoning being his profession’s dedication to preserving life.

The film was based on a 1905 novel by Hjalmar Söderberg. In her autobiography All Those Tomorrows, Zetterling writes about immediately being attracted to the material with one passage from the book winning her over, “Why does one hate another human being? People who hate each other usually believe there are such big differences between them. But this isn’t so at all. Rather the opposite - they are so very much alike, always wanting the same thing. A bull hates another bull. He never hates a cockerel.” The film was scheduled to compete in the 1968 Cannes Film Festival however the festival was cancelled as a result of the student riots taking place so how the film would have been received remains a mystery. The film did make it to theaters in the States although it seemed to disappear almost as a fast as it was released. Doctor Glas was also released the same year as Zetterling’s take on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, The Girls (1968). While The Girls has gone on to become one of Zetterling’s most celebrated titles amongst those who know her films, Doctor Glas remains one of Zetterling’s more elusive films, even with some kind words written about it from longtime Zetterling admirer John Waters. Doctor Glas is an essential film for those interested in Zetterling’s work and especially for those who prefer to traverse the darker realms of human psychosexuality.