If you've ever returned to your family home as an adult after enduring a difficult childhood, you may identify with the memories that haunt a man as he makes his way through a now-abandoned mansion. Then again, it's not likely your childhood was messed up in the way his was, or at least, I hope it wasn't. The affections of this guy's wild, bohemian mother (Ingrid Thulin) ran hot and cold when he was a child. She pushed him away at times and would go off traveling without him, but also didn't have a clue about proper boundaries relative to his emerging sexual curiosity.

This brings us to the part of the film that caused such an uproar. It was viewed only in a private screening at the Venice Film Festival, and so offended Shirley Temple (then 38) that she resigned from the following San Francisco Film Festival. The scene is indeed cringe-worthy; after a bath, the mother tosses her naked 12-year-old boy (played by a 15-year-old actor) onto a bed, and begins tickling him. His whole body is visible, and we see him starting to get aroused. She takes a look and compliments him on his manhood and asks him if he knows what it's for. Then, while she reads the Song of Solomon to him, he begins masturbating under the blanket, and she's outraged, humiliating him as she yells at him. He is highly conflicted, feeling desperate for his mother's attention amidst all her socializing, and also wanting her sexually, things that carry over into adulthood. He can't make love to his fiancée without having the image of his mother float up into his head. So yes, ugh, it's a lot. There is honesty here and it took courage from director Mai Zetterling, but the explicitness of the scene on the bed probably wasn't necessary.

Meanwhile, after his mother dies, the boy is subject to the naked greed of her friends and relations, and watches his beloved aunt get hauled off to the insane asylum for trying to stand up for him. A lot of these memories have a surreal, carnival type of feeling to them, which I took to be how childhood memories are skewed and sometimes exaggerated in our minds. They're impressions. At times his visions of the people from the past and how he feels, like being stuck in a birdcage, seem forced, and at other times, they lag a bit. On the other hand, the film is beautifully shot, with wonderful framing and the use of reflections. It seems far too simplistic for him to "blow up" his past at the end (I mean gee, if only it were this easy), but there was something cathartic about it. Overall, it's not one I can say I love, but I admire the filmmaking, how daring it was, and how it tackled the topic of childhood trauma, even if it was inelegant at times.