Sawdust and Tinsel

Synopsis

A rundown travelling circus arrives in a southern Swedish provincial town where the beleaguered circus owner attempts a pathetic reconciliation with the respectable bourgeois wife he abandoned, while his young equestrienne mistress retaliates by sleeping with a vain theatrical actor for a fake emerald amulet, ending in a humiliating mud fight in the circus ring. Ingmar Bergman's breakthrough expressionistic masterpiece featuring Sven Nykvist's overexposed silent clown prologue.