Media gallery for
Sawdust and Tinsel

Anna (Harriet Andersson) and Albert (Åke Grönberg).

Costume design by Mago.

Sawdust and Tinsel was the beginning of a long partnership with costume designer Mago.

The circus company’s parade through the city ends as a fiasco, as they are stopped by the police, who confiscate the horses.

The white clown (Anders Ek).

Albert (Åke Grönberg) brings along his beautiful young mistress Anna (Harriet Andersson), when he tries to convince the city’s theatre manager Sjuberg (Gunnar Björnstrand), to let the circus company borrow costumes from the theatre.

Albert (Åke Grönberg) in front of the mirror, following the total humiliation in the circus arena.

The Frost spouses (Anders Ek and Gudrun Brost). Ek reaped great success on stage with Bergman during the Gothenburg years in the late 1940s. He would later appear in four of Bergman’s films.

At the theatre, Anna (Harriet Andersson) meets the actor Frans (Hasse Ekman), a cynical womanizer who specializes in romantic lovers on stage.

’The drama had it’s origin in a dream. I depicted the dream in the flashback about Frost and Alma[...] To express it in musical terms, one could say the main theme is the episode with Frost and Alma. There follows, within an undivided time frame, a number of tematic variations of erotics and humiliation in ever-changing combination’

Props from the film.

Agda (Annika Tretow) shows no interest when Albert (Åke Grönberg) suggests that they reassume their relationship. She has had enough of the dirt and humuliation of the circus life.

Åke Grönberg, Gunnar Björnstrand, and others during of the set of Sawdust and Tinsel. The film marked the beginning for many of Bergman’s longstanding collaborations, including those with Sven Nykvist and production manager Lars-Owe Carlberg.

Page from Bergman’s shooting script.

Page from Bergman’s shooting script.

Handwritten page from Bergman’s shooting script.