The Cinematheque

“Night Games was my all-time favourite film for many years … Zetterling directs with a ludicrously melodramatic gothic sledgehammer to deal with this story of impotence, child masturbation, cross-dressing, porno flicks, and vomiting … A real masterpiece.”

John Waters

Mai Zetterling’s second feature, set in a memory-haunted mansion that wields a soul-crushing, incapacitating power over its occupants, was deemed such an extreme provocation that its Venice premiere screenings—and even its poster—were removed from public view. Its coolly casual depiction of childhood trauma is set in relief to a Fellini-esque carnival atmosphere, which earned ecstatically high marks from John Waters. But Zetterling’s most impressive contribution is the film’s confident interplay of past, present, and less easily identified versions of subjective time. Jan (Keve Hjelm) returns to his childhood home with fiancée Irene (Ingrid Thulin) as their wedding approaches. Every door, object, and room holds the potential for a collision with an uncontrollable riot of memory, which Zetterling transitions in and out of with controlled camera moves, sudden cuts, and impossible staging. Jörgen Lindström, the child actor from Bergman’s Persona, portrays the younger Jan.

In Swedish with English subtitles

“Loving Couples and Night Games are trenchant, violent, and authentically Strindbergian visions of sexual hypocrisy.”

David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film

“A compelling work of cinematic rigour … Described by some as ​‘pornographic,’ it is in fact one of the most intelligent and sincere studies of the agonies of puberty.”

Ehsan Khoshbakht, Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021