Hedvig Jensen is a well-known ropewalker who uses the 'Stage
Name' Elvira Madigan. She meets Lieutenant Sixten Sparre (Thommy
Berggren), a Swedish officer who is married and has two children.
They both decide to run away, but since Sixten deserted the
army, he cannot find any job and the couple encounter many hardships.
Elvira is a young woman in love and on alienated from the circus
she has lived with all her life. One minute she has a high flying
career (literally), the next she is on a thorny journey of love.
She is struck down by poverty, pain and uncertainty.
Pia Degermark, winner of the Best Actress Award at the Cannes
International Film Festival in 1967 is a delight. As Elvira
Madigan (or Hedvig as she prefers to be known by her lover)
she is a beautiful goddess like woman, yet also naïve and
childlike.
The lovers have little money, and no home. They run from place
to place. Unfortunately they don’t find peace. They are
plagued by tragedy. Like so many they get beaten down by circumstance.
Elvira Madigan is sad story and there are no happy endings.
Fiction was defined as a story with a happy ending by some wit
but this particular fiction doesn't follow that. As Elvira puts
it to Sixteen: "don’t you understand what we have
to do? We must........"
I would thoroughly recommend this film, it is a classic example
of how Love as a passion takes over lives. It's a doomed romance
like Romeo and Juliet. Why are we fascinated by that? What Truth
attracts us to this theme? The film questions other forms of
passion such as seduction; temptation; lust and entrapment.
Sometimes they get confused and mistaken for love.
The whole fim poses the question: is love enough to keep it
all together? Or to put it in the traditional form: Can Love
conquer all?
