When Ingmar Bergman fails, he does it not with a flump but a crash--a crash because his mastery of film technique is so complete that his movies consistently reach the heights of visual excellence. And from such heights, one can achieve a searing success or a crashing failure.

A prime example is The Silence, Bergman's latest failure. Looking only at the composition, and hearing only the natural sound effects, Bergman's virtuosity is awe-inspiring. The man plans every single element which enters the camera's field: nothing is superfluous. A horse cart moves slowly down a street and white-roofed cars pass it regularly, creating a subtle montage. Scene after scene of such frame making constitutes a first-class lesson in cinema as graphic art.

As for content, that's another story. Bergman fails because he requires his audience to analyze the welter of symbols; yet being the sum of the parts, the whole film comes close to being one big metaphor. Unfortunately, this string of symbols does not form an organic work. A tank rumbles through the empty streets at no time in particular. Does it suggest the militaristic, secular power which has supplanted the absolute comfort of religion? Or perhaps it represents the phallic preoccupation of the woman who watches. Either way, its indiscriminate placement seems to reflect the work of a Waring Blender rather than an artist.

Leaving everyone uninvolved, The Silence degenerates into a game, a sophisticated version of hide-and-go-seek. Because the experience is the opposite of. aesthetic, Bergman's talents seem much better after leaving the theatre. Once settled in his favorite coffee shop, the new critic will have fun exploring the film's cornucopian symbolism. Two sisters, Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Gunnel Lindbloom), and Anna's little boy, Johan (Jorgen Lindstrom), interrupt their railroad trip in a strange country where a strange language is spoken, because of Ester's strange coughing fits. They rent a room in a hotel with long corridors and no other guests (except for the midgets).

The weather too is unsettling. Heat and humidity stifle most activity save bathing and eroticism. It soon became clear that Ester's masturbation (long enough in the American version) is a poor substitute for the Lesbian feelings she has for Anna. Anna is not free from reciprocal impulses, but her hate finally triumphs over love in a heterosexual affair with a strange waiter. She taunts her sister with stories about her lover and, in the film's climax, flings open the door behind which she knows Ester is hiding. Cruelly, Anna continues her bed play to torture her watching sister.

In the meantime, young Johan has wandered through and urinated upon these striking corridors. He has lots of fun with the midgets (Refugees From Society) but fails to communicate with the elderly bellhop (The Older Generation). Young Johan doesn't miss a thing, though, watching mommie make love to the stranger. His eyes opening, his ego transferring, he discovers an affection for Ester, but abruptly departs the next day with his mother, leaving auntie dying in a strange land.

To play seek-the-symbol at this point obviously would ruin the game for others. Nevertheless, the silence blatantly is the silence between the young and the old, the loving and the loved, the individual and the nation, one country and another.

Perhaps more significant than the film's preoccupation with the problems of communication and concomitant alienation is the step it may mark in Bergman's intellectual development. For amidst all the silent anguish, there is no search for God, no solace in Bergman-style pseudo religion, as in Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light. Instead, Bergman now seems to suggest that man must stand alone, without the crutch of a religious vocabulary. It is unfortunate that neither this encouraging thematic advance nor Bergman's filmic mastery can hush the grating content which disrupts The Silence.