Mai Zetterling receives a beginner’s doorway
The BFI has published a guide to Mai Zetterling, helping newcomers approach a director whose bold, unruly films make the phrase “accessible starting point” sound like a handrail fitted to a thunderstorm.
It recommends beginning with Loving Couples, Zetterling’s 1964 debut feature as a director. This is the sensible front door. Further along the corridor waits The Moon Is a Blue Cheese, a title that appears to have escaped from a dream after stealing the dreamer’s bicycle.
The Council for Responsible Cinephilia advises beginners to watch one film at a time, form an honest response and never use the word “formally audacious” until they can identify what was audacious and where it occurred.
“A viewing guide prevents cultural altitude sickness,” said Imogen Sprocket, Curator of Intimidating Retrospectives. “Without one, people begin with the rarest experimental short, understand nothing and spend twenty years claiming that confusion was the director’s intention.”
Zetterling’s work challenged convention rather than waiting for convention to finish its drink and become reasonable. The guide maps recurring interests and creative risks without pretending the films should sit quietly while a beginner catches up.
That leaves only the essential preparation: dim the lights, silence your phone and accept that, by the time the blue cheese moon appears, your sensible front door may no longer lead outside.
Read the real story: BFI’s guide to the films of Mai Zetterling.
The guide reassures viewers that bafflement is not a failure, although it should not be used as proof of taste either. By the third film, newcomers may find themselves pausing a kettle to consider patriarchy, desire and whether the moon has always been looking at them like that. The BFI recommends a biscuit.
