The Riding Brain
The film is not an expose on August Strindberg as a historical person. Much more, it investigates the Strindbergian phenomenon which has made the author an expert on woman - man relationships in this century and which stands for the irreconcilability of the sexes, for their anguish, jealousy, despair, the bleakness of their existence, their loneliness and urge.
The film arrives at results which are not quite the same as those which are presently commonly adhered to. The gap between the sexes has never really been wider for the person Strindberg than in his work as his point of view has always been constrained to his own as a man. The woman's perspective is left untouched. He utilized the female role - viewed as historically fixed - as a constant in order to more precisely and more clearly define the limits of his non existence.
Strindberg's life and work represent a confrontation with an unknown: with himself, the man - and not with two unknowns, with a man and a woman. Strindberg's accomplishment is to demolish the cliché of what is male, but at the expense of the woman.