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B I RG I T TA S T E E N E
INGMAR BERGMAN A REFERENCE GUIDE Amsterdam University Press
Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide
Ingmar Bergman, the Director. From the filming of The Magic Flute, 1975 (Courtesy: SFI/Cinematograph)
Ingmar Bergman A Reference Guide
Birgitta Steene
Amsterdam University Press
This book has been published with support from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). Research assistant: Per Olov Qvist
Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Lay-out: japes, Amsterdam
isbn 90 5356 406 3 nur 670
© Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2005 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Content Acknowledgements
9
Preface
11
Chapter I Life and Work
23 23 33 37 38 39 41 43 44 45
The Family Setting Debut and Formative Years Artistic Breakthrough at Home and Abroad Religious Crisis Discovery of Fårö The Critical Sixties: The Artist Syndrome Discovery of Television Exile Return to Sweden and Closure
Chapter II The Writer Ingmar Bergman: Cinéma d’auteur The Young Playwright The Writer of Prose Fiction Post-filmmaking Prose
49 49 58 63 64
List of Bergman’s Written Work
66
Chapter III The Filmmaker Enter the Magician Swedish Filmmaking during Bergman’s Formative Years Ingmar Bergman: Filmmaking Credo Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production
Chapter IV Filmography
131 132 133 137 141 155
Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record
155
Foreign Titles of Ingmar Bergman Films
353
Ingmar Bergman as Film Producer
369
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Content Chapter V Ingmar Bergman and the Media
371
Radio Productions
371
Television Works
407
Chapter VI Ingmar Bergman in the Theatre
455
Part I An Overview
456
Part II Stage Productions by Ingmar Bergman Mäster Olofsgården, 1938-40 Stockholm Student Theatre, 1940-43 North Latin School, 1941-1942 Civic Centre & Sago Theatre, 1941-42 Open Air Theatre (Folkparksteatern), 1943 The Dramatists Studio (Dramatikerstudion), 1943-44 The Boulevard Theatre, 1944 Hälsingborg City Theatre, 1944-46 Göteborg City Theatre, 1946-50 Intima Theatre, Stockholm, 1950-51 Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten), 1951 Folksparkteatern, 1951 Norrköping-Linköping City Theatre, 1951 Malmö City Theatre, 1952-58 Dramaten, 1961-1976 Head of Dramaten, 1963-1966 Munich Residenztheater, 1977-1984 Return to Dramaten, 1984-2003
473 473 485 493 495 505 506 511 513 530 549 552 554 555 556 596 599 650 668
Opera/Ballet
763
Chapter VII Theatre and Media Bibliography, 1940-2004
773
Chart over Bergman’s Theatre, Opera, TV, and Radio Productions
816
Chapter VIII Interviews with Ingmar Bergman
827
Chapter IX Works on Ingmar Bergman
879
Chapter X Varia
1031
Media Documentaries on Ingmar Bergman
1031
Stage and Screen Performances by Ingmar Bergman
1035
Awards and Tributes
1038 1045
Awards for individual Films
6
Content Archival Sources Ingmar Ingmar Ingmar Ingmar
Bergman’s Bergman’s Bergman’s Bergman’s
Writings Films Radio Play Productions and TV Work Theatre Productions
1049 1049 1049 1052 1053
Indexes Subject Index
1055
Subject Index Supplement: Literature on Bergman
1071
Title Index
1077
Name Index
1105
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Acknowledgements The following organizations and institutions, listed in alphabetical order, have helped support this Reference Guide, either financially or by offering research assistance: AFI (American Film Institute); SALB (Statens arkiv för ljud och bild, Stockholm); AMPA (Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles); BFI (British Film Institute); Cinecitta Film Library in Rome; Cinématèque Française; Danish Film Museum; Swedish Theatre Museum Library; Dramaten (Royal Dramatic Theatre) Library; Dutch Film Library in Amsterdam; Filmoteca nacional, Montevideo; Holger and Thyra Lauritzen Foundation, Stockholm; Göteborg City Museum (theatre section), HSFR (Humanistiska samhällsvetenskapliga forskningsrådet); Malmö Musikteater Museum; MOMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York); Museum of Television and Radio, New York; Museo de film, Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paolo; Nationaltheatret, Oslo; NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities); NFI (Norwegian Film Institute); New York Library for the Performing Arts; Stiftung Deutsche Kinematek in Berlin; SFI (Swedish Film Institute); Sveriges Radio-TV (SR-SVT) Library and Archives; Theatre Record, London; TIN (Dutch Theatre library); University of Washington Library; Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Science Council). A very special thanks is due to film scholar Dr. Per Olov Qvist in Uppsala for his research assistance in the film and media sections of the guide and for his unfailing patience in checking and helping locate some of the material for this Reference Guide to Ingmar Bergman. With his knowledgeable background, trustworthy and meticulous scrutiny, and many good suggestions, Per Olov Qvist has been an invaluable resource. The following persons have facilitated my search for specific items in the Guide: Kerstin Alfredsson, SR/SVT; Tatjana Beznik, Humboldt University, Berlin; Magnus Blomqvist and Ursula Schlesser at the Swedish Theatre Library; Margaretha Brundin at the Royal Library in Stockholm; Brita Carlsson at Göteborg City Theatre Library; Else Barratt-Due at NRK (Norsk Rikskringkasting); Lone Erritzöe, Bergman researcher in Copenhagen; Barbro Everfjärd and Elisabeth Helge at the SFI Film Library; Dag Kronlund and Vera Govenius at Dramaten Library; Elzbieta Lejczak and Hans Lind at Malmö Music Theatre Archive; Jens K. Nielsen and Virpi Zuck at the University of Oregon; Henrik Sjögren who has generously exchanged information about Ingmar Bergman’s work in the theatre; Agneta Sjöborg at Statens Arkiv för ljud och bild (SALB); Egil Törnqvist, professor emeritus at the University of Amsterdam and himself a Bergman scholar; Gurli Woods, Carleton University, Canada. In the final stages of the manuscript, Associate Professor and Bergman scholar Maaret Koskinen
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Acknowledgement shared information about material from Bergman’s Fårö library, now deposited at the Swedish Film Institute. Maria Karlsson, Uppsala University, Tytti Soila, Stockholm University, Kerstin Petterson, Amsterdam, and Adolfas Vecerskis, Vilnius, have helped with some informational and organizational questions and Anna Karin Fredmer with technical assistance. Dag Nordmark’s meticulous reading of the final manuscript helped correct a few discrepancies. Rochelle Wright and Aleksander Kwiatkowski assisted with some translation and linguistic transcription problems. And of course a special thanks to Ingmar Bergman himself for his unique artistic contribution.
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Preface This Reference Guide to Ingmar Bergman offers a critical overview and annotated record of the artistic career of a very productive filmmaker, stage director, and author. Born in 1918 and still active in his mid-eighties, Bergman has made some 50 feature films, directed more than 120 theatre presentations, a number of radio and television productions, and has authored numerous scripts, plays, and prose works. Possessing a great visual and narrative talent, combined with musical sensitivity and psychological perspicacity, Bergman has projected a moral vision formed since childhood by the values of his Lutheran family background and by a Swedish bourgeois lifestyle. But his artistic production not only reflects the world he knew during his formative years; it also constitutes a serious examination of it. In addition to its personal roots, Bergman’s art has drawn creative stimulation from a still young and expanding film medium and from a dynamic and challenging period in the Swedish theatre, including opera, television, and radio drama. His deep sense of belonging to a native tradition in film and drama with such names as Victor Sjöström and August Strindberg as portal figures does not preclude an equally strong interest in the classical European theatre and international cinema. Bergman has today achieved a world reputation like few other Swedish artists before him. A sign of this is the vast critical response that his work has elicited both in his native country and abroad, manifesting itself in many hundreds of books, articles, and dissertations. Bergman’s achievement has also been recognized in numerous film and theatre awards and in tributes ranging from honorary doctorates to special symposia and Bergman festivals. There are even poems published that testify to his impact on viewers and audiences. To assemble the critical record pertaining to Ingmar Bergman’s œuvre is no small task and poses several questions. The first but not least is a general question: What is the purpose of a Reference Guide? The immediate answer is simple: to provide existing information to interested readers and scholars in a given field. That is, a reference guide is to serve as a cumulative checkpoint where it becomes possible to search and familiarize oneself with existing material on the subject. The second question follows almost automatically: What should be the selective process behind the presentation of the material? Metaphorically speaking, an editor of a Reference Guide might be assumed to spread out a map of the entire territory covered by the artist and his commentators, with roads that point in many different directions so that all corners of the referenced subject’s territory become visible and accessible. But in order for a map to be legible and useful, it must not only record but also describe and define the objects found within its chosen boundaries. And it must also set up
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Preface limits for the amount of information to be provided. This is especially necessary with a prolific artist like Ingmar Bergman whose work (and the critical response to it) spans more than half a century. A Reference Guide like this one is by definition a source book about things already done, and an editor’s task is to track those who have already entered the Bergman territory. But an editor, like a cartographer, must have a vision and must strive to avoid getting caught and ensnared in too much underbrush. A great deal of trivial material exists on Ingmar Bergman. Not all of it has been ignored here, for it too is part of the response that his work has elicited. But serious efforts to examine Bergman’s work have naturally taken precedence over ephemeral treatments. Furthermore, it has also been the editor’s intention to transmit an overview of Ingmar Bergman’s career. For that reason the annotated bibliographical information in the Guide is complemented by surveys of Bergman’s life and work and of his creative activity in different art forms. Much of the published response to Ingmar Bergman’s work, especially his filmmaking, has come from outside his native Sweden. In that material there is often more valuable criticism than Swedish examiners have recognized. But at the same time, foreign studies of Bergman often reveal unfamiliarity with the language and culture that have shaped his work. Both these factors are dealt with indirectly in the Guide. The aim has been to make the volume internationally representative, but there has also been an effort to select and annotate a great deal of Swedish material in order to make non-Swedish students of Bergman aware of the response of his native culture. Ingmar Bergman allegedly grew up with an equally strong interest in puppet theatre and magic lantern experiments, which laid the foundation for a career as a theatre and film director. In his late teens, before engaging in stagecraft in public, he drafted a great many dramatic and prose vignettes, some of which were later developed into film ideas. In the early 1940s he gained a certain reputation as an up-andcoming stage director in Stockholm and in 1944 he experienced a combined debut as a writer, theatre man, and would-be filmmaker: he landed his first contract as a stage director (and administrative head) at the Helsingborg City Theatre in southern Sweden; his film script to ‘Hets’ (Torment, Frenzy) catapulted him into notoriety as an angry young man and social iconoclast; and his first piece of writing was published in the Swedish avant-garde literary magazine 40-tal. Ingmar Bergman was to pursue the areas of theatre, film, and literature throughout his creative life. To these artistic activities he soon added work in radio and television. During specific periods in his life, one or another of these areas may have dominated, but on the whole they have remained interrelated or interdependent and, above all, must be viewed as equally important to Bergman’s artistic persona. However, Bergman’s multifaceted production poses a special organizational challenge to a bibliographer. The standard chronological set-up used in most registrations of an artistic output is maintained in this Guide within the individual chapters, but the chapter division in itself signals Bergman’s different creative fields and prevents an ongoing sequential overview of his total oeuvre. Each individual chapter must start anew with its own consecutive time line. To present Bergman’s entire artistic output as a single continuous production might have had the advantage of suggesting more clearly the interconnection between, for instance, his stage work and his filmmaking. But the approach would make it difficult for a Bergman scholar to follow and assess his
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Preface development within a specific medium, especially in view of the sheer volume and long time span behind each of Bergman’s artistic endeavors, be it in film, theatre, television, radio, or writing. To Bergman’s manifold creative activity one must also add the fact that a film, a stage production, or a media transmission by him may have a multi-genre or multimedia aspect to it, so that different versions of a given Bergman work may exist. Thus, several of Bergman’s TV films, for instance, Scener ur ett äktenskap/Scenes from a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander, have also been edited by him for circulation in the commercial cinema, while some of his stage productions have been adapted for television. Another multi-version example is that of Backanterna/The Bachae from the 1990s, which was first presented as an opera, then as a television performance, and finally as a stage production. Furthermore, the dialogue scripts in a film and television production involving Bergman’s name are seldom identical with the published scripts, which are sometimes referred to as novels rather than screenplays by Bergman himself. Thus, a chapter-by-chapter genre or media presentation of Bergman’s oeuvre still carries its own built-in problems, necessitating a system of cross-listings between film, theatre, media, and interview chapters. An item may thus be listed in several different chapters but is usually only annotated in one place. If, for instance, a given work has been produced as a TV film but has also been shown as a feature film in the cinema, it is listed in both the Filmography and Media chapters but with its accompanying reference and reception record selected accordingly. For instance, the media impact in Sweden of Scener ur ett äktenskap/Scenes from a Marriage is only recorded in the Media Chapter, while the reception for the international film version appears in the Filmography. Bergman himself does not seem to regard multi-versions of a given work as a problem (as long as he had control of the procedure). In an interview with Elisabeth Sörenson, he once said apropos of this matter: ‘Thus I have two different manuscripts – but the film version is incorporated into the TV version. It is the very steel pillar. [—] This is no more strange than when a composer makes an orchestra version and a string quartet (of the same composition)’. [Sålunda har jag två olika manuskript – men filmversionen finns inbakad i TV-versionen. Den är själva stålpelaren... Det är inte egendomligare än när en kompositör gör en orkesterversion och en (version för) stråkkvartett]. On another occasion he looks upon his mixing of artistic areas and choice of performance medium as a playful prerogative: ‘I think it is fun to make a real witches’ brew of TV, theatre, film and music’ (Björkman, Cahiers du cinéma, May 1978). Opting for separate chapter divisions for Bergman’s various areas of creative expression raises the issue of their internal placement in the Guide. Since the incentives for Bergman’s film, theatre, and writing activities are rooted in experiences connected with his childhood and youth and since they have more or less run their continuous course throughout his career, it becomes almost a moot point to try to decide which one of these creative outputs should be listed first in a chapter by chapter presentation. However, there is good reason to begin this Guide – after an initial survey of Bergman’s Life and Work – with an annotation of his penmanship, since it includes material to subsequent chapters: Ingmar Bergman as a filmmaker (Chapters III and IV), Ingmar Bergman as a media director (Chapter V), and Ingmar Bergman as a contributor to theatre art (Chapter VI). Bergman established himself early on as an internationally acknowledged auteur du cinéma whose screenplays formed the basis
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Preface for the majority of his films. After announcing his retirement from filmmaking with the making of Fanny and Alexander (1982), he was to write several TV plays, screenplays, novels, and memoirs. Both his own scriptwriting and his adaptations of theatre texts testify to a link between his literary penmanship and his visual directorial talent operating in different performative contexts. Since the Guide addresses itself to an international and not just a native Swedish audience, it has seemed logical to present the material dealing with Bergman’s contribution to the cinema before presenting his work as a theatre director. Internationally speaking, his filmmaking forms the basis of his standing abroad, whereas his stagecraft has been less known to foreign audiences and limited to a handful of productions presented during guest performances throughout the world or during his eight years of voluntary exile (1976-1984) when he worked as a director at Munich’s Residenztheater. In terms of his impact on Swedish culture, Bergman’s theatre work might be seen as the most crucial part of his career. After declaring his withdrawal from the world of commercial filmmaking in 1984 (but not from media work), he continued for almost twenty years as a prominent stage director, stating again and again his great love and need for the world of theatre. In fact, almost from the beginning of his career in the theatre, Bergman’s stage productions have elicited a critical enthusiasm at home quite comparable to the jubilant foreign reception of many of his films. The rationale for placing the media chapter (V) right after the Filmography (Chapter IV) is that its television section can be seen as an extension of Bergman’s work in the cinema. At the same time, the radio section in the media chapter may serve as a transition to the subsequent theatre chapter, for it includes many broadcast adaptations of Bergman’s own plays and of productions first directed by him on different theatre stages. The following outline identifies the chapter-by-chapter content of this Reference Guide to Ingmar Bergman: Chapter I: Life and Work. This chapter is designed as a comprehensive juxtaposition of biographical data and professional output. Here it is wise to keep in mind that over the years, the real person bearing the name of Ernst Ingmar Bergman has ‘fabricated’ a legend of his own, where family history and personal experiences have undergone fictional transformations. At the same time, however, in presenting an artist who possesses such a strong personal vision as Ingmar Bergman, it is difficult not to link closely his private and public worlds. Bergman has not always lived the life of a recluse on his island of Fårö but has, in fact, been a highly visible person in Swedish culture from the very beginning of his career. Furthermore, he has, by his own account, drawn his subject-matter both from his own background and from his circle of friends and colleagues, including his close relationships with women, many of whom have been active in his professional work. A Life and Letters account of Ingmar Bergman becomes therefore both a personal life story and the artistic metamorphosis of an individual existence. Chapter II: The Writer. The chapter begins with an overview of Bergman’s penmanship, followed by an annotated chronological listing of all his authored material, from his early unpublished prose works in the late 1930s to his late television plays, novels, and memoirs in the 1980s and on. Also included are scripts and articles that Bergman wrote
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Preface under the name of Buntel Eriksson (with Erland Josephson), Ernest Riffe, and other pseudonyms. The annotated material comprises scripts, plays, prose fiction, essays, program notes, and newspaper statements such as open letters (but not cited interview material). Also listed are some items from Bergman’s private Fårö library now deposited at the Swedish Film Institute (SFI), where drafts, notebooks, and the director’s copies of scripts and plays have been organized. All items are annotated under their Swedish title, but wherever applicable each entry also includes a list of published translations. Each item is given an entry number, beginning with number 1. The numbering of entries continues sequentially throughout the Reference Guide. When an entry number is referred to elsewhere in the Guide, it is preceded by the symbol Ø. Chapter III: The Filmmaker. An account of the personal motivations and historical circumstances behind Bergman’s filmmaking is followed by a comprehensive overview of his entire film production. As an organizing principle, Bergman’s films are presented in six major groups following a chronological and thematic outline: (1) early films focussing on the young couple; (2) early family and marriage films, often with women in central roles; (3) religious and existential quest films, often with a male protagonist; (4) films portraying the role of the artist; (5) films focusing on a haunting past, many of them depicting women in crisis; (6) the Bergman family saga. This grouping is to be seen as practical rather than absolute, providing a structural overview of Bergman’s film production but with the implied understanding that many films could in fact be placed in more than one category. Chapter IV: Filmography. Each individual item is presented with a plot synopsis, a detailed credit list, reviews, and commentaries on the film’s reception. The filmography lists all films that were authored and/or directed by Bergman, including some documentaries and a set of soap commercials, as well as works originally made for television but later released in the cinema. The total number of items in the Filmography comprises some 60 entries, or more than one film for every year that Ingmar Bergman was active in the field. At the end of the Filmography is a list of films by other directors which were produced by Ingmar Bergman and his company Cinematograph. Also appearing at the end of the Filmography is a list of foreign distribution titles of Ingmar Bergman’s films. Note that distribution titles are not always identical with titles appearing in foreign translations of his screenplays. Chapter V: The Media Director. Bergman began quite early to direct works for radio, and he became an enthusiastic supporter and contributor to the TV medium soon after its inception in Sweden in the 1950s. The media chapter discusses and annotates his many productions on radio and television, with credits, notes, commentaries, and review references. The chapter comprises: (1) productions of plays by other authors, either originally designed for radio or television or adapted by Bergman for the media; (2) media works authored or adapted by Bergman and originally conceived for radio or television, such as Staden (1950, The City) and Riten (1969, The Ritual); and (3) works authored by Bergman where separate film and TV versions were made, such as Scener ur ett äktenskap/ Scenes from a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander. Chapter VI: The Theatre Director. The theatre chapter consists of two sections. The first provides a chronological survey of Ingmar Bergman’s career as a theatre director; the second gives an annotated listing of his entire work on stage, with credits, commentaries, selective reviews, and guest performances for each item. In-
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Preface cluded at the end of the chapter are Bergman’s opera productions. As in the Filmography and media chapters, the commentary sections to the individual productions in the theatre chapter aim at giving background information while the Reception sections report on debates and other responses. Commentaries may vary in length. An early radio production by Ingmar Bergman from the 1940s may not have elicited much critical reaction, while his stage productions at the Royal Dramatic Theatre after his return from exile in 1984 almost invariably resulted in substantial press coverage. Items causing media debates tend to have longer commentaries (and reception segments). Such information may reflect both the aesthetic assessment by reviewers and the cultural impact of a Bergman production. Productions of Bergman’s own plays are included, whether directed by the author himself or by someone else. Note, however, that Bergman’s playwriting is discussed in the introductory part of Chapter II. Chapter VII: Theatre and Media Bibliography. This chapter includes an annotated list of bibliographical material pertaining to Bergman’s contribution to the theatre and to media arts. However, critical items referring to specific stage productions are listed under the individual production entries in Chapter VI, section 2. Note also that interviews that include references to theatre and media work appear in Chapter VIII (Interviews). At the end of Chapter VII is a chart showing Bergman’s stage and media productions in chronological order. Chapter VIII: Interviews. Over the years, Ingmar Bergman has given innumerable interviews and press conferences. A good many of these are referenced in the commentary section of the individual entries in Chapters IV (Filmography), V (Media), VI (Theatre), or theatre/media bibliography (VII). In this chapter the focus is on interviews that cover several creative areas or pertain to Bergman’s lifestyle or thoughts on his craftsmanship and artistic vision. Chapter IX: Writings on Ingmar Bergman. This chapter consists of an annotated bibliography listing in chronological order a major bulk of critical writings on Ingmar Bergman. This material includes books, dissertations, special journal issues, and articles. As in Chapter VII (Theatre and Media Bibliography), some of the bibliographical items are grouped together according to subject matter. Such group items might include frequently considered topics in the critical Bergman canon, such as his portrayal of women (Ø 975), religious approaches to his films (Ø 997), or literary references to his works (Ø 989). In addition, single events in Bergman’s life and career that have elicited extensive press coverage, such as the tax debacle in 1976 and his subsequent voluntary exile, are annotated as group items. All group items appear as the initial entry in the year when an event occurred or when a group subject was first discussed. An alphabetical list of the group items can be found at the beginning of the Title Index. The editorial approach in selecting material for Chapter IX has been to include critical material pertaining to all of Bergman’s various artistic activities but to be comprehensive rather than all-inclusive. In the selection of the critical material, the following general guidelines have been used: 1. Longer informative and analytical essays, book length studies, and dissertations have been given priority over shorter news items or general presentations of Bergman’s oeuvre.
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Preface 2. A balance has been sought between well-known, oft-quoted articles or books and items that seem representative of a given critic or group of critics; of a particular national assessment of Bergman, or of a specific period in the reception of his works. 3. Special focus has been given to Swedish archival sources, simply because this is where most Bergman material is to be found. At the same time, however, an equally important goal has been to present the student with a fair international sampling of critical writings on Bergman and to indicate how Bergman’s work has been received in different (selective) parts of the world. 4. Critical material pertaining to single works by Ingmar Bergman has been listed in the review or commentary sections following the individual credit listings in Chapters II (The Writer), IV (Filmography), V (Media productions), and VI (Theatre Director). Thus, critical items addressing, for instance, his play Trämålning/Wood Painting, his screenplay Fanny and Alexander, his stage production of Hamlet, or his radio play Staden (The City) will be found under these entry names in the respective chapters. Exceptions are made for longer analytical studies of single works if they include important historical background, comparison with other artists, or discuss inter-arts or inter-media issues. In such cases the items are cross-listed in Chapter IX. Finally, a special effort has been made to include items in the Bibliography that deserve attention but may have appeared in publications with limited circulation and do not always show up in databases. In fact, in scanning such electronic library resources, it becomes clear that a discrepancy often exists between an item’s listing frequency and its actual relevance in the Bergman critical canon. Repeated visibility is not always tantamount to quality or importance; database bibliographical material is unfortunately often the result of authorial self-promotion. Chapter X Varia. This heading covers the following items: A. Media documentaries on Ingmar Bergman. B. Stage and screen performances by Ingmar Bergman (including film voice-overs), most of them from the early part of his career. C. A listing of awards, prizes, and other honors received by Bergman, including items pertaining to his entire contribution to film and theatre or to his overall status as an artist. This list is followed by a list of awards for individual Bergman films. Similar information, including awards to members of Bergman’s film or stage teams, can also be found at the end of film or stage entries in the Filmography (Chapter IV) or Theatre chapter (VI). D. Archival Sources. A list of addresses of archives and libraries holding Bergman material, such as prints of his films, stills, scripts, and clipping files as well as information about his theatre and media productions. All quotations of Swedish origin have been translated into English by the editor (unless a published translation title is noted). The translation is followed in brackets by the original Swedish text. All other quotations regardless of language origin appear only in English.
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Preface Newspaper and Magazine Sources The following Swedish newspapers were checked (abbreviations used in the text are listed in parenthesis and follow normal Swedish praxis): STOCKHOLM PRESS: Aftonbladet (AB), Aftontidningen (AT), Arbetaren,, Dagens Nyheter (DN), Expressen (Expr.), Morgontidningen Social-Demokraten (MT), Ny Tid, Stockholms-Tidningen (ST), Svenska Dagbladet (SvD). GÖTEBORG PRESS: Göteborgs-Posten (GP), Göteborgs-Tidningen (GT), Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning (GHT), Göteborgs Morgonpost (GMP). MALMÖ (and vicinity) PRESS: Arbetet (Arb), Hälsingborgs Dagblad (Hbg), KvällsPosten (KvP), Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten (SDS). OTHER (spot-checked): Bohusläningen, Hallandsposten, Hufvudstadsbladet (Helsinki), Lidingö Tidning, Nerikes Allehanda, Skånska Dagbladet, Upsala Nya Tidning (UNT), Wermlands-Tidningen, Östersunds-Posten, Östgöta-Correspondenten. The following Swedish magazines and trade journals were checked: Biografbladet, Bonniers litterära magasin (BLM), Chaplin, Dramat, Entré, Film in Sweden, Filmhäftet, Filmjournalen, Filmnyheter, Film och bio, Filmrutan, Films in Sweden, Idun, Månads-Journalen, Perspektiv, Röster i Radio/TV, Scen och salong, Skådebanan, Teatern, Teaterronden, Vecko-Journalen, Vi. The following non-Swedish newspapers and magazines were checked: AMERICAN and CANADIAN: America, Atlantic, Christian Century, Cinema (Kansas City), Cinema (Toronto), Cinema Journal, Commonweal, Comparative Drama, Drama Review, Film Comment, Film Criticism, Film Heritage, Film Quarterly, Films in Review, Filmfacts, Hollywood Quarterly, Hudson Review, Jump Cut, Literature/ Film Quarterly, Modern Drama, Movietone News (Seattle), Nation, New Leader, New York Magazine, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times (NYT), New Yorker, Newsweek, New Republic, Saturday Review, Take One, Time, Theater, Theatre Quarterly, Tulane Drama Review, Variety, Village Voice, Wide Angle. BELGIAN: Amis du film et de la télévision, Film en Televisie. BRITISH: Films and Filming, Monthly Film Bulletin, Motion, Movie, New Statesman, Sight and Sound, Spectator, Times (London). DANISH: Berlingske Tidende, Information Jyllands-Posten, Kosmorama, MacGuffin, Politiken. DUTCH: Skoop, Skrien. FRENCH: Arts, L’Avant-scène du cinéma, Cahiers du cinéma, Cinéma, Ecran, Etudes cinématographiques, Image et son, Le monde, Positif, Télé-Ciné. GERMAN: Die Deutsche Bühne, Filmkritik, Film, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Der Spiegel, Theater heute, Die Welt, Die Zeit. ITALIAN: Bianco e nero, Cineforum, Cinema nuovo, Dramma, Filmcritica. NORWEGIAN: Aftenposten, Fant, Morgenbladet, Verldens Gang, Z. SPANISH: Cinema novo, Film Ideal. OTHER (spot-checked): Chicago Times, Cine cubano, Cinéaste (Canada), La cinématographie française, Critisch film bulletin (Netherlands), Die Asta (Denmark), Ecran (France), Ekran (Poland), FIB (Folket i Bild, Sweden), Le Figaro, Film a doba (Czechoslovakia), Film Journal (Melbourne), Hollywood Reporter, Horizon (USA), Jeune cinéma, Listener, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Los Angeles Times,
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Preface Manchester Guardian, Le Monde, Motion Picture Herald (Los Angeles), Observer, Reporter (USA). Clippings and/or printed programs were used from the following archives: American Motion Picture Academy (AMPA), Los Angeles Amsterdam Theatre Museum British Film Institute (BFI) Cinecitta Library, Rome Cinemateca uruguaya (Montevideo) Cinemateco do museo de arte moderna (Rio de Janeiro) Cinemateco do museo de arte moderna (Sao Paolo) Cinématèque française Det danske filmmuseum (Danish Film Museum) Dramaten (Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm) Film Museum Amsterdam Filmmuseum Berlin – Deutsche Kinemathek Museum of Modern Art (Film Section), New York New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Suomen elokuvaarkisto (Helsinki) Svenska Filminstitutet (SFI) Sveriges Teatermuseum (formerly: Drottningholms Teatermuseum) Press reviews or reportages from Bergman’s first decades in film, theatre, and media were occasionally unsigned or reviewers used a signature only. The following signatures have been identified: A. A-l A.Fbg/Fbg. AGE Allegro Armand Corinna Don José E.An. Elle E. T. E.v.Z. E.W.O/Eveo. Fale Bure Gvs. Hjorvard Håge Höken I.H. I. O-e Jerome J.L. Jolanta
Alvar Asterdahl Allan Fagerberg Anders Elsberg Olle Halling Olle Olsson Greta Bolin Josef Oliv Elis Andersson Lisa Genell Harrie (?) Ella Taube Eva von Zweigbeck Erik Wilhelm Olsson Henning Olsson Herbert Grevenius Gustav Johansson Herbert Gylling Marianne Höök Ivar Harrie Ingvar Orre Göran Trauung John Landquist Margaretha Sjögren
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Preface Kei -ki/Koski Lucia M. S-g O. R-t Pavane Peo Perpetua P.E.W. PGP Pilo S. Btl S. G-d S. S-r. S. T-d Tell. Tom -yer
Einar Nilsson Hartvig Kusoffsky Louise Gräslund Martin Strömberg Oscar Rydqvist Gerd Osten Sixten Ahrenberg Barbro Hähnel Per-Erik Wahlund P.G. Pettersson Ragnar Ehrling Sven Barthel Sten Guldbrand Sten Selander Stig Tornehed Thorleif Hellbom Åke Thomson Nils Beyer
Ingmar Bergman’s conception of what it means to be an artist is complex. First, he has always emphasized the creative act as a source of pleasure and joy, an emotional state of mind reminiscent of his childhood nursery games with a puppet theatre and a laterna magica. Second, his artistic approach conveys a strong sense of absolute commitment to his work, and a keen sensitivity to both performers and audiences. Third, he combines an intuitive ‘radar’ feel for what is right and essential in a production with a very conscious sense of craftsmanship, resulting in a firm esthetic control of his material. He has always maintained that his directorial persona can only function under self-discipline, careful preparation of a task and a sense of mutual loyalty between himself and his ensembles. In this way he has been able to ward off the personal chaos in his own psyche. Artistic creativity has then worked for him as a form of self-therapy. Over the years Bergman’s public image has undergone marked changes. In his youth he was seen as a gadfly and iconoclast; in the 1960s he was viewed as an obsolete artist and bourgeois traditionalist; in the 1980s he became an icon and master. Some have termed him ‘demonic’ and dominant; some have talked about him as a ruthless presence. But almost everyone who has worked closely with him has testified to his ability to create a sense of comfort and security. By the same token, Bergman’s artistic work has elicited a very divided response among his commentators. On one hand, there has been a recognition of his indisputable talent and an almost jubilant sense of experiencing a unique artist at work; on the other hand, one can notice a sense of irritation at his ‘excessive’ temperament or a resentful feeling of being ‘manipulated’ by his controlling persona. The critical material on Ingmar Bergman also shows a distinct difference between foreign commentators, who have tended to evaluate his work in terms of its metaphysical and psychological thought content, and Swedish reviewers who have often judged his contribution within a current ideological context but who have also been more sensitive both to his theatre aesthetics and to his filmmaking style.
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Preface Relatively few studies of Bergman’s work have focussed on matters of form and structure. There is an explanation for this: A major part of Bergman’s creative material emerges as an example of what Isiah Berlin once termed ‘hedgehog’ authorship; i.e., the work of an artist who is fixed on a relatively limited range of subject matters and who seldom deviates from that personal vision. After half a century of amazing ‘hedgehog’ productivity, Bergman has created a cohesive universe of his own making, a personal mythos where his commentators can ‘feel at home’ and can easily identify such central Bergman subjects as: (1) an existential probing manifesting itself in questioning a silent god figure who seems to have withdrawn from human life; (2) an often ruthless unmasking process that discloses the lies and dead conventions that control human beings and relationships and where language can easily be a deceptive tool; (3) a deterministic portrayal of people as helpless and despondent marionettes, yet so full of vitality that most of Bergman’s works leave some trace of hope behind; (4) a portrayal of Woman as archetype – as the embodiment of strength and survivability; and (5) an exposure of the modern (usually male) artist as a self-centered and destructive individual, often frustrated in his metier and haunted by demons. These themes continued to be explored by Bergman also after he left filmmaking, and they constitute an essential part of his writing legacy. Bergman’s visibility in the film and theatre world during the second half of the 20th century has been considerable from the start. However, what the material collected for this Reference Guide suggests is that Ingmar Bergman has been much more than a media celebrity. He has in fact accomplished a cultural feat that no other Swedish artist before him has realized to quite the same extent: bridging the gap between the forms and expressions of high bourgeois culture and popular art. In the theatre his productions have ranged from operettas like The Merry Widow to Shakespeare’s King Lear or Goethe’s Ur-Faust. In the cinema he has created comedies like Smiles of a Summer Night and The Devil’s Eye as well as somber existential quest dramas like The Seventh Seal and harrowing psychological studies like Persona and Cries and Whispers. And regardless of what Bergman’s own countrymen have thought of his international reputation in the first half of his career, he indisputably came to play an extraordinary role as directeur de conscience for many generations of filmgoers outside of Sweden. Ingmar Bergman has definitely written himself into the annals of film and theatre history. Today there is still a strong interest in his artistic contribution among students of film, theatre, and literature. And despite the large output of Bergman scholarship to date, the subject is rich and much remains to be done. It is hoped that this research guide will help facilitate such future studies about Ingmar Bergman. Stockholm, June 2005 Birgitta Steene
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Childhood toys become artistic emblems: the puppet theatre and the laterna magica
In Bergman’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) in 1994, the boy Mamillius (Anna Björk) carried on stage a miniature puppet theatre as if to reinforce Bergman’s vision of the play – as fantastic make-believe and playacting. (Photo: Bengt Wanselius. Courtesy: Dramaten)
In Bergman’s film Fanny and Alexancer from 1982, the magic lantern plays an important role for the Ekdahl children, especially young Alexander (Bertil Guve). (Photo: Arne Carlsson. Courtesy: Cinematograph/SFI)
Chapter I Life and Work
The Family Setting Some dates of birth seem auspicious from the start. Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born on Sunday, July 14, 1918. According to Swedish folklore, a child born on Sunday is gifted with second sight, whereas July 14 – Bastille Day – is one of those historical dates that have forever taken on symbolic meaning, signifying rebellion and protest. No astrological prediction could have been more appropriate in Bergman’s case. When he burst onto the Swedish theatre and film scene in the early 1940s, two things became immediately clear: He was a remarkably intense and gifted young man drawn both to the stage and the screen, and he also had a vision aimed at penetrating beneath surface reality to reveal a world of metaphysical and depth-psychological dimensions. Above all, he was a rebel spirit who challenged established social and professional conventions. In youthful defiance he once declared: It entails a great risk [...] to stare yourself blind at the limits set up by the public and the critics, limits I do not recognize and that are not mine. [...] I am glad I am not born with equal part reason and guts. [...] Who says you can’t make noise, tear down barriers, fight with windmills, send rockets to the moon, be shaken by visions, play with dynamite and cut morsels of flesh out of yourself and others? (‘Det att göra film/What is Filmmaking,’ 1954) [Det medför en stor risk [...] att stirra sig blind på de gränser som sätts upp av publiken och kritikerna, gränser jag inte erkänner och som inte är mina. [...] Jag är glad att jag inte är född med lika delar förnuft och inälvor. [...] Vem säger att man inte kan föra oväsen, riva ner barriärer, slåss mot väderkvarnar, skicka raketer till månen, skakas av visioner, leka med dynamit och skära bitar ur en själv och andra?]
Such a self-confident outburst belies, however, the fact that Ingmar Bergman’s start in life was rather problematic. The middle child in a bourgeois clerical family, he was a sickly boy whose arrival in the world was overshadowed by a crisis in his parents’ marriage. His mother Karin had fallen out of love with her husband, Lutheran pastor Erik Bergman, who showed signs of a nervous condition, which affected family life.
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Chapter I Life and Work Erik was also ill with the Spanish flue, the epidemic that claimed many lives during World War I. In her diary quoted by Ingmar Bergman in his memoirs Laterna magica (1987), Karin Bergman reveals the unhappy and desperate mood of her family at the time of Ingmar’s birth: Our son was born Sunday morning, July 14. He had a high fever and severe diarrhea at once. He looks like a little skeleton with a big fiery red nose. He stubbornly refuses to open his eyes. After a few days I had no milk because of my illness. He was quickly christened here in the hospital. His name is Ernst Ingmar. Ma [Karin’s mother] has taken him to Våroms [family summer place] where she has found a wet nurse. Ma is upset at Erik’s inability to solve our practical problems. Erik is upset at Ma’s interference in our private life. I lie here powerless and miserable. Sometimes when I am alone I cry. Should the boy die, Ma says she will take care of Dag [eldest son], and I should return to my job [nurse]. She wants Erik and me to get a divorce as soon as possible ‘before he has hit upon some new madness in his crazy hatred.’ I do not believe I have the right to leave Erik. He is totally overworked and has had nervous problems all spring. Ma says that he is play-acting, but I don’t think so. I pray to God without hope. (The Magic Lantern, p. 289-90). [Vår son föddes söndag morgon den fjortonde juli. Han fick genast hög feber och svåra diarréer. Han ser ut som ett litet benrangel med en stor eldröd näsa. Han vägrar envist att öppna ögonen. Efter några dagar hade jag ingen mjölk på grund av sjukdomen. Då blev han nöddöpt här på sjukhuset. Han heter Ernst Ingmar. Ma har tagit honom till Våroms, där hon funnit en amma. Ma är förbittrad över Eriks oförmåga att lösa våra praktiska problem. Erik är förbittrad över Ma’s ingrepp i vårt privatliv. Jag ligger här maktlös och eländig. Ibland då jag är ensam gråter jag. Om gossen dör, säger Ma att hon tar hand om Dag och att jag ska ta upp mitt yrke. Hon vill att Erik och jag skall skiljas så snart som möjligt ‘innan han med sitt tokiga hat funnit på någon ny galenskap’. Jag tror inte jag har rätt att lämna Erik. Han är alldeles överansträngd och har varit klen i nerverna hela våren. Ma säger att han gör sig till, men det tror jag inte. Jag ber till Gud utan förtröstan.] (Laterna magica, p. 337).
The Bergman marriage, though once founded on love, was somewhat of a social mismatch. Karin Bergman, née Åkerblom, came from a comfortable bourgeois class of engineers and educators. Erik Bergman’s origin was far more humble; his father, an apothecary, died relatively young and his mother had to make sacrifices and rely on moneyed relatives to give her son a university education. But despite the social gap between Erik Bergman and the Åkerblom family, Karin was determined to marry Erik. Her parents disapproved. Their reservations were not based solely on Erik’s modest background; they were also worried about the genetic consequences of the fact that Erik Bergman and Karin Åkerblom were distant cousins in families with a record of mental illness. At the time of their son Ingmar’s birth, the Bergmans had just moved from a small country parish in the province of Gästrikland to the prestigious Östermalm section of Stockholm, where Erik held a position as junior pastor in the Lutheran state church. As such he was both a congregational shepherd and civil servant, by tradition respected occupations in Swedish society. He was well liked by his parishioners, and Karin Bergman fulfilled her duties as a vicar’s wife so well that she later received a medal for her voluntary work in the community. It added to the family status that Erik Bergman was sometimes called on to serve as chaplain at the Swedish Royal
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The Family Setting Court and as spiritual adviser to the Queen. Such connections were not unimportant to Ingmar Bergman’s parents, for both were socially ambitious people. Hence, it was a foregone conclusion that their children would pursue professional careers. The eldest son Dag, though a defiant boy, complied, read Law at Uppsala and became a diplomat. The daughter Margareta, Ingmar’s younger sister, also took a university degree and became a librarian. She too showed signs of a rebellious and high-strung spirit, became pregnant out of wedlock and had an abortion, which caused her parents both worry and chagrin. The middle child Ingmar never completed a university degree or any other formal education beyond the gymnasium. In reading Karin Bergman’s diaries, one perceives a sense of sad resignation at her younger son’s choice of an artistic career and a lifestyle that, from her point of view, seemed bohemian and disorderly. (See Linton-Malmfors, Ø 1526.) But Ingmar Bergman had his goal set by the time he finished high school: I have never as far back as I can remember hesitated on this point of becoming a theater and film director. I think my parents experienced this with a certain amount of anxiety. At first they thought it would calm down, once I started at the university. But it did not. (Donner, Three Scenes with Ingmar Bergman, 1975) [Jag har aldrig så långt tillbaka jag kan minnas tvekat på denna punkt att bli teater och filmregissör. Jag tror mina föräldrar upplevde detta med viss oro. I början trodde de att det skulle lugna ner sig när jag väl började på universitetet. Men det gjorde det inte.]
The public duties of a clergyman’s household meant that the family was under much scrutiny; theirs was a relatively small world, and what people said was not unimportant. Maintaining a proper and well-disciplined front became part of the lifestyle. In later years Ingmar Bergman would compare this situation to a stage performance where he, his parents and his siblings were assigned certain preconceived roles by the community in which they lived: A pastor’s family lives as if on a tray, unprotected from other eyes. The parsonage must always be open. The congregation’s critique and commentary are constant. Both Father and Mother were perfectionists who sagged under this unreasonable pressure. Their working day was open-ended, their marriage difficult, their self-discipline iron-hard. Their two sons reflected characteristics they unremittingly punished in themselves. (The Magic Lantern, p. 9) [En prästfamilj lever som på en bricka, oskyddad för insyn. Huset måste alltid stå öppet. Församlingens kritik och kommentar är konstant. Både far och mor var perfektionister som helt säkert sviktade under detta orimliga tryck. Deras arbetsdag var obegränsad, deras äktenskap svårmanövrerat, deras självdisciplin järnhård. De båda sönerna speglade karaktärsdrag som de oavlåtligt tuktade hos sig själva.] (Laterna magica, p. 15)
Bergman’s earliest biographer, Marianne Höök, once stated that Ingmar Bergman had grown up on a cultural reservation. With this she implied that he carried with him a world whose moral and religious concerns were no longer part of mainstream Swedish society. The emerging secularized folkhem (pre-welfare state) had more pressing issues to deal with than questions of faith and doubt, and already Strindberg had concluded, in his famous preface to Fröken Julie (1887, Miss Julie), that mankind had
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Chapter I Life and Work eradicated conscience (guilt) together with the idea of a godhead. Höök suggested that to most of his contemporaries, Bergman’s religious background and its moral outlook placed him in an older grandparent generation. Marianne Höök’s assessment of Ingmar Bergman’s obsolete status in Swedish culture was colored however by her own times and failed to acknowledge the social and cultural climate in Sweden during Ingmar Bergman’s childhood. When he grew up, Sweden was still a fairly remote and provincial corner of Northern Europe, a homogeneous society rooted in a Lutheran culture. The social structure was hierarchic and class-divided. To all three of the Bergman children, it seemed that life was regulated by a whole set of authoritative rules dictated by parents, teachers, government officials, and by God himself. It was a world in which most children were still expected to be quiet, silent, and obedient. They were taught self-castigation and learned to look upon themselves as guilt-ridden creatures. Even though the Bergman brood may have received a greater dose of the Lutheran ethos than other Swedish children at the time, it is worth remembering that the last edition of a fundamentalist Swedish explication of Luther’s catechism by Henrik Schartau was printed as late as 1925 and was used as compulsory religious instruction of the young. Its rigorous Protestant moralism with its emphasis on obedience before authority is echoed by Ingmar Bergman in his assessment, as an adult, of his own upbringing: To humiliate and be humiliated, I think, is a crucial element in our whole social structure. [...] If I’ve objected strongly to Christianity, it has been because Christianity is deeply branded by a very virulent humiliation motif. One of its main tenets is ‘I, a miserable sinner, born in sin, who have sinned all my days, etc.’ Our way of living and behaving under this punishment is completely atavistic. I could go on talking about this humiliation business for ever. It’s one of the big basic experiences. (Bergman on Bergman, p. 81) [Att förödmjuka och att vara förödmjukad tycker jag är en vital beståndsdel i hela vår samhällskonstruktion. [...] En stor del av min mycket starka protest emot kristendomen är att där finns ett starkt och inbränt förödmjukelsemotiv. En av huvudpunkterna är ‘jag fattig, syndig människa, jämväl i synd född, som i alla mina livsdagar haver syndat’. Detta straff lever vi under och handlar under rent atavistiskt. Det här med förödmjukelse skulle jag kunna tala om praktiskt talat hur länge som helst. Det är en av de stora grundupplevelserna.] (Sw. ed., p. 86)
Central in such a culture was teaching a child never to lie. But Ingmar Bergman, being an imaginative youngster, had some difficulty distinguishing between truthfulness and make-believe. He would concoct stories at school about joining a circus, stories which in a more modern, psychologically sensitive context would seem like compensatory daydreams, but which were punished as lies. As Bishop Vergerus explains to his stepson Alexander Ekdahl in Bergman’s film Fanny and Alexander, the use of a lively imagination was reserved by God for great artists. Children on the other hand had to learn to tell the truth, or they sinned against God’s purpose: Imagination, you understand, is something splendid, a mighty force, a gift from God. It is held in trust for us by the great artists, writers, and musicians. [...] I don’t know what you imagine, Alexander. Do you believe that you can lie and shuffle without any consequences and without punishment?
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The Family Setting
[Fantasin förstår du är något storslaget, en ofantlig kraft, en gåva från Gud. Den bevakas för oss av de stora konstnärerna, diktarna, musikerna. [...] Jag vet inte vad du väntar dig, Alexander. Tror du att du kan ljuga och vrida dig utan konsekvenser och utan straff?]
The 11-year old Alexander’s defiance of his stepfather, the Lutheran bishop, mirrors Bergman’s confrontations with his parents’ values and methods of child rearing. In fact, the film Fanny och Alexander (1982) might be called Bergman’s resurrection of his childhood. It is a story set about ten years before his own birth in the university town of Uppsala, where he spent periods of time as a child visiting his maternal grandmother. Alexander’s life oscillates between two families, the histrionic and fun-loving Ekdahls and the stern Vergeruses, headed by his stepfather. These are two contrasting milieus that represent much of the social contours and mindscape of Ingmar Bergman’s own background. With its rigid moralism the Vergerus world bears a certain resemblance to the Bergman home at Storgatan in Stockholm, facing the imposing Hedvig Eleonora Church. The family dwelt literally in the shadow of its high cupola. In his teens Ingmar Bergman came to feel increasingly alienated from this milieu. In an interview from the 1970s he describes his feelings of estrangement after visits to his parental home: When I used to return to my parents [...] on Storgatan in Stockholm where I had grown up, and saw how everything was the same, everything stood in the same place, I experienced a petrified world that I no longer had any contact with. [...] It was just something dim and infinitely sad, but nothing stimulating or challenging. (Bergman on Bergman, p. 147). [När jag kom hem till mina föräldrar [...] på Storgatan i Stockholm, där jag hade vuxit upp och allting var på samma sätt, allting stod på samma ställe, då upplevde jag att det var en stelnad värld, något som jag inte längre hade någon kontakt med. [...] Det var bara något skymmande och någonting oändligt vemodigt, men inte något stimulerande eller eggande.] (Bergman om Bergman, p. 158). Cf this to quote in NYT, 17 October 1976, p. 15 (‘Bergman in Exile’): ‘When I was in my 30s I never thought I would ever have any contact [with my parents]. We made polite conversation. It was as if they were from another planet. We were absolutely strange to each other.’
Ingmar Bergman only lived at the Storgatan address in his teens, but he turned it into a metaphor for his own troubled adolescence. The Storgatan apartment became a contrast to the yellow wooden vicarage in the Lilljans Forest where he had spent most of his early childhood. The house stood next to the Sofia Hospital, a private dispensary situated in a park-like setting, beyond which was the open countryside: ‘Even on the ground floor’, Bergman once told an early biographer, ‘the blinds never had to be drawn in the dark winter evenings; in Mother’s window there was a lamp with a pink lampshade, which served as a beacon when we ran home in the evenings through the windy, black park’. [Även på bottenvåningen behövde gardinerna aldrig dras för under de mörka vinterkvällarna; i mors fönster fanns en en lampa med en skär lampskärm, som tjänstgjorde som en fyr när vi sprang hem på kvällen genom den blåsiga svarta parken]. (Höök, 1962, p. 22) With time Ingmar Bergman was to become more tolerant about his parents and acknowledge that life in the vicarage did also include moments of festivity and joy.
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Chapter I Life and Work The fact is that neither Erik nor Karin Bergman were fundamentalist in their views on the theatre and the cinema, but actually encouraged their children to engage in dramatic activity, such as puppetry. Erik Bergman was somewhat of a pioneer in using visual aids in his religious instruction of the young. He once arranged a visit for his younger son to the Råsunda Studios, popularly referred to as the Film City on the outskirts of Stockholm. Family gatherings at Christmas time included not only Bible readings but also magic lantern shows and storytelling. Karin Bergman, in particular, carried with her a cultivated interest in literature and theatre. Ingmar Bergman made his debut on stage as a chanterelle mushroom in a children’s pageant based on a popular text by classical Swedish writer and artist of children’s books, Elsa Beskow. Still, Bergman’s first visit to the real theatre proved a minor disaster. Watching a dramatization of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf on stage frightened him so much that he allegedly had to be carried home screaming. A few years later however he watched with fascination a production at the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Gustaf af Gejerstam’s dramatization of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale ‘Big Claus and Little Claus’. The memory of this event lived on in sharp detail, and even at an old age Bergman would point out the very seat where he experienced his first visit to the Royal Dramatic, Sweden’s imposing Jugend-style national stage, whose head he would one day become. Another reason for his recollection of the event might be that the production was staged by Alf Sjöberg (1903-1980) who would direct Bergman’s first screenplay, Hets (1944, Torment/Frenzy) and would become his colleague at the Royal Dramatic. In retrospect Ingmar Bergman would, for many years, associate his happy recollections of the past not with his parental home but with his maternal grandmother’s huge apartment in Uppsala which he often visited as a child. Karin Bergman reminisces in her diary about the special rapport that existed between her son and her mother, Anna Åkerblom: It seems to me at times as if Grandma’s Uppsala were the only protected world he possesses and one he withdrew to like an oasis. Everything connected with the times he could stay with Grandma in Uppsala has a shimmer to it. I believe it is immensely important to Ingmar that Grandma treated him like an equal in many respects. [...] Ingmar was allowed to stay up to talk in quiet with Grandma. They went to the movies together, and they had tea when they came back home. She let him wander around on his own long before he was let loose in Stockholm. – And he, he accepted her as she was, old-fashioned strict and in her own way demanding but at the same time childishly playful and humorous. [...] And pious in an old-fashioned way with morning prayers and evening prayers with Christian principles in all her actions. And he still accepts her just like that, and in some of the things he has written, Grandma or moods from her world crop up. [Det verkar ibland på mig, som om Mormors Uppsala vore den enda hägnade värld han äger, och som han drog sig tillbaka till som till en oas. Allt som hörde samman med de tider då han fick vara hos Mormor i Uppsala har ett skimmer omkring sig. Jag tror att det betyder oerhört mycket för Ingmar, att Mormor behandlade honom som en jämnårig i många sammanhang. [...] Ingmar fick sitta uppe och språka i ro med Mormor.
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The Family Setting De gingo på bio tillsammans, och de drucko té vid hemkomsten. Hon lät honom göra vandringar på egen hand långt innan han släpptes lös i Stockholm. – Och han, han accepterade henne, som hon var, gammaldags sträng och på sitt sätt fordrande men samtidigt barnsligt lekfull och humoristisk. [...] Och gammaldags from med morgonbön och aftonbön med Kristna principer i allt sitt handlande. Och han accepterar henne ännu just sådan, och i somliga saker som han skrivit, så dyker Mormor upp eller tongångar från hennes värld.] (Karin Bergman. Åldrandets tid, p. 81). See Linton-Malmfors, Ø 1526)
Anna Åkerblom was a widow and matriarch who lived alone with her old housekeeper. She was surrounded by the same furniture as when she moved into her patrician apartment as a young bride. Hers was an obsolete world, but to Ingmar Bergman it seemed not faded so much as suspended in time, a place where people and objects had never been young and yet never aged. Like Alexander in the opening sequence of Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman used to hide under his grandmother’s huge dining room table to eavesdrop on the adults or simply to follow the traveling sunlight on the walls: It is a wintry day in early spring, and he is sitting under the dining room table at his grandmother’s. He has on an apron with a pocket in front, and he has just had the measles. The sunlight is streaming through the high windows, and the beams are moving all the time. They even have a strange buzzing sound, like extraterrestial machines. On the wall there is a painting of Venice, and when the sunlight travels across the picture, the water in the canals begins to flow. The pigeons lift from the square, and the people in the streets turn to each other and begin to carry on whispering conversations. They are real and yet unreal; they can be heard and yet remain silent. [Det är en vinterdag tidigt om våren och han sitter under matsalsbordet hos mormor. Han har ett förkläde på sig med en ficka där fram och han har just haft mässlingen. Solljuset strömmar genom de höga fönstren och strålarna rör sig hela tiden. De har till och med ett egendomligt surrande ljud, som utomjordiska maskiner. På väggen hänger en tavla av Venedig och när solljuset färdas över bilden börjar vattnet i kanalerna flyta. Duvorna lyfter från torget och människorna på gatan vänder sig mot varandra och börjar föra viskande samtal. De är verkliga och ändå overkliga; de kan höras och förblir ändå tysta.] (‘I mormors hus’, Ø 47, Chapter II)
To young Bergman his aging grandmother and her housekeeper took on mythic proportions. As such they were to lend their features to many clever and wise old crones in his works, pointing most obviously to the granny in the two plays Staden (1950, The City) and Mig till skräck (1948, Unto My Fear), as well as to the half allegorized figure of Mrs. Åström in Dagen slutar tidigt (1948, Early Ends the Day). But they also lent their features to such portraits as the witty old Mrs. Armfeldt in Sommarnattens leende (1955, Smiles of a Summer Night), Isak Borg’s old mother in Smultronstället (1957, Wild Strawberries) who refuses to die; and the herb-collecting granny in the Vogler entourage in Ansiktet, (1958, The Magician/The Face) whose rapport with the innocent young Sanna takes on a fairy tale quality; and finally as the wise and sensitive grandmother Helena Ekdahl and her grumpy old cook and housekeeper Siri in Fanny och Alexander.
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Chapter I Life and Work Childhood memories seem to dictate Bergman’s narrative approach – a form of Proustian journey into the past, using flashbacks as a structural tool. In an early script like Eva (1948) and in such films as Sommarlek (1951, Illicit/Summer Interlude) and Smultronstället (1957, Wild Strawberries), repressed memories and subconscious fantasies are unveiled with both painful and healing consequences. By reliving her youth, the ballet dancer Mari in Sommarlek can finally come to terms with the loss of her lover many years earlier; and in Smultronstället, the aging professor Isak Borg, whose initials are the same as Ingmar Bergman’s, finds both peace of mind and self-recognition through visualized recollections of his youth and unhappy marriage. The very genesis of the film is related by Bergman to an episode (later denied by Bergman) when he stopped at his grandmother’s house long after she was gone. As he opened the gate in the early morning hour, childhood memories flooded his mind: It was autumn and a faint sun had begun to fall on the cathedral as the clock was striking five. I went into the little cobblestone yard. Then I went up into the house and took hold of the door knob to the kitchen door, which still had its colored glass pattern; and a feeling ran quickly through me: suppose I open it? Suppose old Lalla (our old cook, she was) is standing inside there in her big apron, making porridge for breakfast as she did so many times when I was little. Suppose I could suddenly walk into my childhood? [...] Then it struck me: Supposing I make a film of someone coming along, perfectly realistically, and suddenly opening the door and walking into his childhood? And then opening another door and walking out into reality again? And then walking round the corner of the street and coming into some other period of his life, and everything still alive and going on as before? (Bergman on Bergman, p. 132-33) [Det var på hösten och det började komma litet sol på domkyrkan och klockan slog just fem. Jag gick in på den lilla gården som var kullerstensbelagd. Så gick jag upp i huset och tog i dörrlåset till köksdörren, som fortfarande hade det där kulörta glasmönstret, och då gick det en ilande känsla igenom mig – tänk om jag öppnar nu och gamla Lalla, alltså den gamla kokerskan, står där inne i sitt stora köksförkläde och lagar frukostgröten, så som hon hade gjort så många gånger när jag var liten. Att jag plötsligt bara kunde stiga in i min barndom. [...] Så slog det mig – tänk om man skulle göra en film om det här att man bara kommer alldeles realistiskt och plötsligt öppnar en dörr, och så går man in i sin barndom, och så öppnar man en annan dörr och kommer ut i verkligheten, och sen svänger man om ett gathörn och kommer in i någon annan period av sin tillvaro, och allting pågår, lever.] (Bergman om Bergman, s. 139-41)
But the sensuous recollections of the past are perhaps captured most fully in later Bergman films like Viskningar och rop (1972, Cries and Whispers) and Fanny och Alexander (1982). These two films begin by letting the camera into rooms breathing with old objets d’art, ticking clocks and faint, whispering voices. What is projected is a luscious world of images and evocative sounds. Like ghosts these projections have no clearly spoken language. In Cries and Whispers their spell is broken when the characters awaken to a day of pain and are ushered into everyday reality. Glimpses of the past lives of four women – three sisters and a housekeeper – are revealed in flashbacks that are signaled by red fade-outs, a shade that Bergman associates with the color of the soul – and with the realm of childhood. In Fanny and Alexander, Alexander’s wandering through his grandmother’s apartment – opening creaking doors, breathing
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The Family Setting on the frozen windowpane, calling out the names of family members, and willing dead objects to life – becomes an invocation to enter the world of childhood, which is both distant and absolutely present. Childhood may have provided the adult artist Ingmar Bergman with major motifs and a fundamental mindscape. But it also offered him the first rudimentary instruments for his theatre work and filmmaking. Being a rather shy, somewhat stuttering and withdrawn child, young Bergman found an outlet for his imagination in puppetry and film projection. The puppet theatre began as a simple play activity together with his sister and two friends, using a sheet and a table as props. Ingmar was the director and prime mover. Puppetry developed into a serious hobby lasting throughout his teens and became crucial not only in teaching him the first steps in stagecraft but in shaping his earliest notions of the human condition. His experience as an amateur puppeteer whose performers were manipulated marionettes may have served as a metaphor for an early deterministic view of life. In his plays for the theatre, Bergman would often cast his characters as doomed creatures governed by forces beyond their control. Dagen slutar tidigt is structured like a morality play in which all the dramatis personae are predestined to die shortly. In Jack hos skådespelarna (1946, Jack Among the Actors), which Bergman unsuccessfully submitted as a radio play, the characters are in the hands of a satanic director who claims he has created a cosmos of his own for a few people who have to obey him: ‘Now I sit here and pull my strings. Pull, pull, jerk, jerk!’ [Nu sitter jag här och drar i trådarna. Drag, drag, ryck, ryck.] The puppeteer/marionette concept, harboring one of the central motifs in Ingmar Bergman’s works – the humiliation theme – is closely related to the clown motif, which had been explored earlier by one of Bergman’s admired authors, Hjalmar Bergman (no kin; 1883-1931), whose novel Clownen Jack portrays a performer, Jack Trabac, as a humiliated buffoon until he revolts and turns the tables on the audience (see Forslund, Ø 992). The most obvious analogy in Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre is the film Gycklarnas afton (1953, The Naked Night), sharing with Hjalmar Bergman’s novel both the circus setting and a clown’s humiliation, but the theme survives in different forms in many later works, for instance Ansiktet (1958, The Magician/The Face) and Vargtimmen (1967, Hour of the Wolf). Towards the very end of his film career the puppet/humiliation theme even provides the title of his German-produced screen work, Aus dem Leben des Marionetten (1980, From the Life of the Marionettes), in which ‘the protocol’ of a murderer, Peter Egerman, suggests his mental collapse as the inevitable result of a lifelong series of human betrayals. Here friends and family provide a psychologically motivated form of determinism, in contrast to the rather abstracted concept of the demonic director in Jack hos skådespelarna. In varying transformations, however, the diabolic puppeteer as well as the humiliated ‘clown’ figure keep returning in Bergman’s artistic vision as an essential force of evil, thus supporting a statement he made in an interview in 1971: What I believed in [...] was the existence of a virulent evil, in no way dependent on environmental or hereditary factors. Call it original sin or whatever you like – anyway an active evil on which man alone, unlike the animals, has the monopoly. [...] As a materialization of this virulent, indestructable and – to us – incomprehensable and inexplicable evil I manufactured a personage possessing the diabolic features of a medieval morality figure. [...] His evil was one of the springs in the clockwork. (Bergman on Bergman, p. 40)
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Chapter I Life and Work
[Vad jag har trott på [...] var att det existerar en virulent ondska som inte på något sätt är beroende av miljö eller arvsfaktorer. Vi kan kalla den arvsynden eller vad som helst – en aktiv ondska, som människan till skillnad från djuren är alldeles ensam om. [...] Som materialisation av denna virulenta, ständigt existerande och obegripliga, för oss ofattbara ondska tillverkade jag en person som hade den medeltida moralitetens djävulsdrag. [...] Hans ondska var en fjäder i urverket]. (Bergman om Bergman, p. 43]
Moved to a metaphysical level, the representation of an omnipotent puppeteer director finds its counterpart in the silent god figure who gains such a hold over many of Bergman’s characters. It is an invisible and distant god who takes possession of the knight Antonius Block in Det sjunde inseglet (1956, The Seventh Seal) and turns him into a fanatic quester, compelling him to leave his wife to participate in a futile tenyear crusade. It is a similar power, imagined as a rapist god, who separates Karin, the schizophrenic young woman in Såsom i en spegel (1961, Through a Glass Darkly) from her husband. It is the same demonic force that emerges as ‘the spider god’ in the mind of Pastor Tomas in Nattvardsgästerna (1962, Winter Light/The Communicants) and leads him to fail his congregation. The different ramifications of the puppeteer/marionette concept in Bergman’s works might be juxtaposed to the significance of the magic lantern, the other important toy in his childhood. Around the age of ten he became the excited owner of a kerosene-lit projector. It was a Christmas present from a rich aunt and actually meant for his older brother, but Ingmar quickly obtained it in exchange for an army of tin soldiers. Soon all his pocket money went to the purchase of film strips that were on sale in local stores. Simultaneous with his earliest attempts at constructing film sequences, Ingmar Bergman began to frequent the cinema on a regular basis. There were several small movie houses in the vicinity of his home, which had matinee showings on weekends. He went there together with his older brother Dag. But also his grandmother in Uppsala proved a faithful companion to the movies. Though she had the embarrassing habit of rubbing her boots in screeching disapproval of any love scenes, her visits to the cinema with her grandson were highlights in Bergman’s childhood. Within the same magical aura dwelt the machinist in the projection booth, who seemed like a magician in a world next door to heaven, with young Ingmar totally oblivious to the projectionist’s pedophile leanings. The seeds of his future filmmaking were now planted. In his memoir book, fittingly titled Laterna magic (1987, The Magic Lantern) Bergman still remembers his excitement of turning on the projector and seeing images beginning to move on the nursery room wall: I turned the lever and the girl awakened, sat up, moved slowly, stretched out her arms, swung around and disappeared to the right. If I continued to turn the lever, she lay there again and went through exactly the same movements again. She moved. (The Magic Lantern, p. 16) [Jag rörde veven och flickan vaknade, satte sig upp, reste sig långsamt, sträckte ut armarna, svängde runt och försvann till höger. Om jag fortsatte veva, låg hon där igen och gjorde sedan om precis samma rörelser.
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Debut and Formative Years
Hon rörde sig.] (Laterna magica, p. 23)
Ingmar Bergman kept his magic lantern in a nursery closet, a space similar to the one where he is said to have been locked up as a form of punishment when he was a child and told that nasty goblins lived there, who chewed off the toes of naughty children. Karin Bergman relates in a letter to her mother how she felt compelled to put her older son Dag in the closet because of his defiant disobedience. It came to represent a Bergman childhood trauma, while the presence of the magic lantern in the same space constitutes a creative way of dealing with that trauma. The magic machine could transform dark demons into dancing light beams. Film projection became in fact an act of exorcism through which the frightening shadows of early childhood could be controlled. The closet trauma appears as a central psychological reference in a number of Bergman films: Fängelse (1949, Prison), Vargtimmen (1967, The Hour of the Wolf), Ansikte mot ansikte (1975, Face to Face). For Ingmar Bergman as for his alter ego Alexander Ekdahl in Fanny and Alexander, the fearful darkness was dispelled by the hand that sets the projector in motion and by the mind that designs the images. It is no exaggeration to claim that, thanks to his film apparatus, the frightened child Ingmar was rescued by the creative artist and directorial ‘magician’ Bergman.
Debut and Formative Years Ingmar Bergman’s school years were not very happy. He attended a local school run by the Swedish Mission Society and seems to have been a fairly compliant student. But he was picked on by his English teacher, a notorious classroom terror nicknamed ‘Kusken’ (the Coachman), who was later depicted as the sadistic instructor Caligula in Bergman’s film script to Hets (1944, Torment, Frenzy). An older classmate, Gunnar Lindblad, who became one of his early set designers, has described Bergman during his high school years as socially rather reticent and more absorbed in finding technical solutions to his puppet theatre than participating in extra-curricular school activities. The puppet theatre had by then grown from child’s play to an adolescent passion. But a rebellion was brewing. The most explicit sign came in the late 1930s when Bergman left home under dramatic circumstances, after having knocked down his father and insulted his mother. Soon thereafter – and after completing compulsory military service – Bergman assumed his first assignment as a stage director at the amateur theatre section of Mäster Olofsgården, a Christian settlement house in Stockholm’s Old City, at that time a poor section of town. He moved in with the newly married manager of the settlement’s youth activities, Sven Hansson, who in turn kept up a telephone communication with Bergman’s parents and received monetary compensation for son Ingmar’s room and board. Soon Sven Hansson also had to solve conflicts that arose at the settlement center as Bergman shocked the board members with his foul language, his rehearsals on Sundays during morning service, and his rigorous and long training sessions. All the same, Ingmar Bergman was chosen, a year later, as the most valuable volunteer in the settlement’s youth work. While at Mäster Olofsgården, Ingmar Bergman was also enrolled at Stockholm University as a student of literature. Though never completing an academic degree, he
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Chapter I Life and Work attended the lectures of Professor Martin Lamm, a prominent Strindberg scholar, and wrote a seminar paper on Strindberg’s fairy play, Himmelrikets nycklar (1884, The Keys of Heaven), which he had staged in his puppet theatre at home. The paper reads like a prompt copy for a production; it is clear that it was the live theatre that attracted Ingmar Bergman more than any academic pursuits. Soon he became involved with the Student Theatre, which at this time was a lively organization that included a number of future authors and actors. In neutral but hemmed-in Sweden the theatre stage played an important role during World War II as an emotional and intellectual outlet. For Bergman the early 1940s became a crucial apprenticeship period when he set up plays on a number of different stages in Stockholm. Some of his productions were political dramas by contemporary Scandinavian playwrights, but his main motivation was artistic. He would always refer to himself as a non-political person and cites his own youthful unawareness of rising Nazism in Germany as a sign of his political ignorance, despite his stay with a German family for a couple of summers in the mid-1930s. Bergman’s family expressed a sense of cultural affinity with Germany, the country of Martin Luther, rather than loyalty to Nazi ideology. Had the latter been the case, they would hardly have taken in a teenage Jewish refugee as their houseguest, a young man who arrived in 1940 at age 17 and stayed with the Bergmans for seven years. There is no trace of the contemporary political situation in Bergman’s own plays which were performed at the Student Theatre in 1942 and 1943. ‘Kaspers död’ (Death of Punch) and ‘Tivolit’ are projections of his metaphysical and eschatological concerns. ‘Kaspers död’ attracted the attention of Stina Bergman, widow of author Hjalmar Bergman and head of the manuscript department at Svensk Filmindustri (SF). She hired him as a reader and ‘manuscript washer’ but also encouraged him to work on scripts of his own. Only one of these was filmed, Hets (1944, Torment/ Frenzy), but it turned the spotlight on Ingmar Bergman. A year later, the head of SF, Carl Anders Dymling, offered him the opportunity to shoot his first film, Kris (1945). Bergman felt like ‘a kitten in a ball of yarn’ [en kattunge i ett garnnystan] (Från A till Ö, 1973, Ø 154). At first he tried to cover up his novice status and sense of insecurity with an overconfident attitude that alienated many of the studio workers who had been in the profession for a long time. Feeling snubbed and ridiculed, Bergman decided after shooting Kris that he would learn all the technical aspects of filmmaking and master the film medium as a good craftsman. While still engaged in the Student Theatre, Ingmar Bergman had become involved in a stormy liaison with a would-be actress and poet, Karin Lannby, whose modern lifestyle and experiences were light years removed from his own protected bourgeois background. Karin Lannby was older than Bergman, had published a collection of poetry and was rumored to have lived a fast life, married to a sheik and active in the Spanish Civil War. Bergman alludes to her in his portrait of Rut in the script to ‘En kvinnas ansikte’ [A woman’s face]. (See ‘Puzzlet föreställer Eros’, Ø 42, Chapter II). The relationship was of short duration, and the femme fatale was replaced by waiflike Else Fisher, a choreographer whom Bergman married in 1944. Else had created and staged a successful children’s ballet and was considered very promising in her field. The two collaborated on several productions at the Sago Theatre in the newly built Citizens Hall (Medborgarhuset) in Stockholm. Even long after the marriage was dissolved, Else Fisher would contribute to Bergman’s work, for instance in Det sjunde
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Debut and Formative Years inseglet (The Seventh Seal), where she composed the dance performed by the acting troupe (Jof, Mia and Skat) outside the tavern, just prior to the arrival of the train of flagellants. Bergman’s directorial activity continued at an intense pace. It included several productions at a newly founded professional stage, the Dramatists Studio, whose prime mover, an eccentric woman by the name of Brita von Horn, recognized Bergman’s talents. Then, at age 26, he was offered the post as head of the City Theatre in Hälsingborg in southern Sweden. Else Fisher was now pregnant with daughter Lena but also ill with TB and staying in a sanatorium. Within a year after Bergman’s assumption of his new post, the marriage was dissolved. Soon thereafter he married choreographer Ellen Lundström, whom he had met in Hälsingborg. This marriage lasted for some five years. Four children were born, among them a set of twins. Three of them – Jan, Mats and Eva Bergman – were to pursue careers in the theatre, Jan and Eva as directors, Mats as an actor. When Ingmar Bergman arrived in Hälsingborg, its theatre was in financial straits. However, within a 2-year period, he had turned the tide and had gained considerable local support for his undertaking. He assembled a young and energetic ensemble that lived on a shoe-string budget and were totally committed to their theatre work. He designed a repertory of considerable variety, ranging from Shakespeare and Strindberg to New Year’s cabarets. But despite his intense work schedule in Hälsingborg, Bergman’s ties to Svensk Filmindustri were not severed. He came to follow an established pattern within Swedish filmmaking by shooting films in the summer time when the theatres were closed, and actors and directors could be contracted by the film industry on an ad hoc basis. His oft-quoted statement that the cinema has been his mistress and the theatre his faithful wife reflects this situation, where the stage became his home base and filmmaking a less regulated form of involvement. Over the years, he was to remain loyal to both his ‘mistress’ and ‘his wife’, setting up, in fact, a mutually inspiring menage-à-trois. A study of his professional engagements in the theatre reveals a rich thematic and stylistic interchange between his stage productions and his work for the screen (see Törnqvist, Between Stage and Screen, 1995, and Koskinen, ‘Allting föreställer, ingenting är’, 2002). The symbiotic relationship between theatre and film may have dictated his tendency to concentrate the lighting on an actor on stage as a variation of a filmic close-up, or conversely to build his cinematic style on long acting scenes reminiscent of a stage performance. After two years with the Hälsingborg City Theatre, Bergman moved in the fall season of 1946 with his family to Göteborg. Its City Theatre had achieved a remarkable reputation during the war years as Sweden’s leading political theatre and introducer of modern American drama. Bergman now faced a new situation with an already established ensemble that had worked together for many years. The theatre was administered firmly by an elderly director, Torsten Hammarén. Bergman worked under someone who was more knowledgeable and strong-willed than he was. Throughout the rest of his career in the theatre, he would refer to the advice and work style of Torsten Hammarén as a model to follow. Together with scriptwriter and playwright Herbert Grevenius, Hammarén was an incorruptible mentor: ‘When I was green and uninformed, Torsten Hammarén and Herbert Grevenius stand like two stern angels not to be bribed.’ (Magic Lantern, p. 156) [Vid min begynnelse står Torsten Hammarén och Herbert Grevenius som omutligt stränga änglar.] (Laterna
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Chapter I Life and Work magica, p. 185). From Hammarén, Bergman learned the simple, yet difficult basics of working with actors: that some are to be encouraged to stay, others are to be asked to leave. (See Sjögren interview with Bergman, titled ‘Dialog med Ingmar Bergman’, in Ingmar Bergman på teatern 1968, pp. 291-316). Through his own staging of two of his morality plays, Mig till skräck (Unto My Fear) and Dagen slutar tidigt (Early Ends the Day) Bergman’s Göteborg experience also gave him publicity as a playwright. Neither drama text received much critical acclaim, however. Clearly, reviewers preferred Bergman as a director of works authored by others, and Bergman himself soon became skeptical about his role as an instructor of his own plays. Once he had established himself as a scriptwriter, he would stop writing stage plays. Some time after his move to Göteborg in 1946, Bergman’s second marriage was already in trouble: ‘Our home was boiling over with baby cries, drying diapers, whining women and furious scenes of jealousy’. [Hemmet kokade av barnskrik, blöjor på tork, gråtande kvinnor och rasande svartsjukescener.] (Laterna magica, s. 182/Magic Lantern, p. 154). A few years later Bergman met a journalist by the name of Gun Hagberg (Grut), who was married and had two small sons. Leaving her children with a Finnish nurse, she joined Bergman in Paris for three months in the spring of 1949, where he had been sent by Svensk Filmindustri to serve as manuscript adviser for would-be filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman. (See Sjöman, Mitt personregister. Urval 98, 1998, pp. 56-91.) Gun was to report to her magazine editor from the fashion shows. Their passionate relationship led to two painful divorces. In Scener ur ett äktenskap (1973, Scenes from a Marriage) Bergman was to transfer to the screen the awkward moment when he had to reveal his liaison to his wife Ellen (third scene in the film). Gun’s divorce proceedings were ugly and drawn out in court because of the custody issue over her children. This ordeal undermined the relationship. Soon after the birth of a son, Ingmar, in April 1951, the couple separated. Later Bergman would refer to Gun as strong, intelligent, and pragmatic, and used her as a model for the type of women whom actress Eva Dahlbeck would impersonate as Karin Lobelius in Kvinnors väntan (1952, Secrets of Women/Waiting Women), Desirée Armfeldt in Sommarnattens leende (1955, Smiles of a Summer Night), and Stina in Nära livet (1958, Brink of Life/Close to Life). Gun later took a doctorate degree and became a lecturer in Slavic Languages at Uppsala University. She was killed in an automobile accident in Yugoslavia. (See Laterna magica, p. 201; English ed. p. 170.) Memories of their troubled situation and ensuing guilt feelings would live on in Bergman for a long time and resurface in his script to the film Trolösa (2000, Faithless). Bergman’s last production in Göteborg took place in 1948. Moving back to Stockholm after his sojourn in Paris, he made two films: Fängelse (1949, The Devil’s Wanton/Prison), the first film he both scripted and directed, and Till glädje (1950, To Joy). Neither was a box office success. To make matters worse, major film companies in Sweden shut down their studios in 1950-51 in protest over the high entertainment tax. This lockout crisis came at a time when Ingmar Bergman was still searching for his footing as a filmmaker. To help support himself and his sizeable brood, he had to borrow money from SF against a contract, stipulating that he would later make five films for the company at two-thirds of his usual pay. He also wrote and produced a series of commercials for Bris, a deodorant soap manufactured by the Sunlight Corporation. It marked his first contact with teenager Bibi Andersson who
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Artistic Breakthruogh at home and Abroad was to become part of his acting stable both on film and in the theatre, and with whom he was to establish a Higgins-Eliza relationship, a Pygmalian liaison that the actress eventually would withdraw from. Though the Bris commercials were full of clever humor and wit, and were characterized by a Bergman sense of timing, they also signified a very low point in his career. The rescue seemed to come in 1950 when producer Lorens Marmstedt, for whom Bergman had made the film Fängelse in 1949, opened the Intima Theatre, a private stage in Stockholm (not to be confused with Strindberg’s stage of the same name), Marmstedt was a glamorous figure in the city’s cultural life but also a hardnosed businessman. Bergman was invited as a director and his come-back to the Swedish capital was much anticipated after his very successful time as a stage director in Hälsingborg and Göteborg. But his production of Brecht’s Three Penny Opera at the Intima Theatre, his only Brecht production ever, was no public success. He also accepted a directorial assignment to stage Tennessee Williams’, The Rose Tatoo at the Norrköping-Linköping City Theatre and directed a relatively new play by Swedish author Björn-Erik Höijer, Det lyser i kåken (Light in the Shack) at the Royal Dramatic Theatre. In vain, Bergman hoped for a permanent engagement at Dramaten. Instead, it was a provincial stage that would offer him a contract. In 1952 he left Stockholm again, this time to assume the artistic directorship at the Malmö City Theatre in southern Sweden. He now lived with actress Harriet Andersson, whom he had fallen in love with during the shooting of Sommaren med Monika (1952, Summer with Monica). His marriage to Gun Grut was not dissolved until several years later, but their separation was final.
Artistic Breakthrough at Home and Abroad Bergman was to stay in Malmö for six years, during which time the tide turned for him both in terms of his filmmaking and his stage work. He became one of Sweden’s leading stage directors with productions of Goethe’s Faust, Molière’s Don Juan and The Misanthrope, Strindberg’s Spöksonaten/Ghost Sonata, Kronbruden/The Crown Bride and Eric XIV, Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Shakespeare is the only one missing from Bergman’s Malmö repertory among those playwrights who have been central to him as a stage director. It was also in Malmö that he solidified his group of actors, welded together by a director who far outpaced the head of the theatre that had hired him, Lars Levi Læstadius. Many of the names to be associated with Bergman’s filmmaking in the mid-Fifties – Max von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Åke Fridell – were actors at the Malmö City Theatre under his tutelage. Bergman’s Malmö period coincides with his major breakthrough as a filmmaker. In Sweden he now gained a reputation as a maker of women’s films; besides Sommarlek and Sommaren med Monika he wrote and directed Kvinnors väntan (1952, Secrets of Women/Waiting Women), En lektion i kärlek (1954, A Lesson in Love), Kvinnodröm (1955, Dreams) and Sommarnattens leende (1955, Smiles of a Summer Night). Many of these films belong to Bergman’s ‘rose’ period, i.e., they project a tone of sophisticated humor and erotic badinage in the tradition of such filmmakers as Mauritz Stiller (1883-1928) and Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947). It was a genre that attracted viewers and
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Chapter I Life and Work pleased Bergman’s major producer, Svensk Filmindustri. After the international recognition of Sommarnattens leende at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, Bergman’s repeated request to realize Det sjunde inseglet (1956, The Seventh Seal) was finally granted. With its success abroad, Bergman’s financial and creative freedom was secured. By the late 1950s, Bergman film classics were shown all over the world, films like Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1956), Wild Strawberries (1957), and The Magician (1958). He had become the epitome of an auteur du cinema (see Chapter III) and his films were part of the international circuit, receiving prizes at Cannes, Berlin, Los Angeles and elsewhere (see Varia Chapter). Internationally, it was a period when, in the words of Time magazine, ‘Bergmania ruled the waves’ (14 March 1960, p. 60).
Religious Crisis Sjunde inseglet/The Seventh Seal also signaled an oncoming crisis, in which Bergman would dramatize his attempts to free himself from his religious heritage. One can follow the process by juxtaposing the film to his play Trämålning (Wood Painting) from 1954 on which The Seventh Seal is based. In the play the basic polarity of the two travelling companions, the Knight and his Squire, expresses the intellectual dichotomy in Bergman's vision. The Squire's cynical humor in the face of death forms a counterpart to the Knight's desperate search for divine certainty. A speech by the latter that was cut from the subsequent screenplay clarifies the Knight's oscillation between faith and doubt: Each morning and evening I stretch my arms toward the Saints, toward God. [...] Again and again I am shaken with absolute certainty. Through the mists of spiritual listlessness God's nearness strikes me, like the strokes of a huge bell. Suddenly my emptiness is filled with music, almost without a key but as if carried by innumerable voices. Then I cry out through my darkness, and my cry is like a whisper: ‘To your glory, oh God! To your glory I live! To your glory!’ So I cry in the dark. Then the dreadful thing strikes all my nerves. My certainty dies as if someone had blown it out. The huge bell is silent [...] [Varje morgon och afton sträcker jag mina armar mot Helgonen, mot Gud. [...] Gång på gång skakas jag av en fullständig visshet. Genom dimmor av andlig slöhet drabbar mig Guds närhet likt slag av en väldig klocka. Plötsligt är min tomhet fylld av musik, nästan utan toner men liksom buren av tallösa röster. Då ropar jag genom alla mina mörker och mitt rop är som en viskning: Till din ära, o Gud! Till din ära lever jag. Till din ära! Så ropar jag i mörkret. Då händer det genom alla mina nerver fasansfulla... Vissheten slocknar som om någon blåste ut den. Den stora klockan tystnar, ...]
The existential and metaphysical questioning reflected in Bergman’s major screen works from The Seventh Seal (1956) to Tystnaden (1962, The Silence) could be called, with a reference to Strindberg’s mental upheaval in the mid-1890s, an inverted ‘inferno crisis’. While Strindberg emerged from his ordeal with a newborn religious faith, Bergman liberated himself from his Lutheran background, though still recognizing the presence of spiritual realities, which was confirmed as late as in a TV interview
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Discovery of Fårö with Ingmar Bergman and Erland Josephson on 4 April 2000, Swedish TV Channel 4, (See Interviews, Ø 950). Inspired in part by Strindberg’s historical drama Folkungasagan (1899, The Saga of the Folkungs), set in the Middle Ages, The Seventh Seal is structured like a medieval morality play in which an Everyman figure, the Knight Antonius Block, returns from the holy crusades to his native Sweden. Travelling with his skeptical Squire, the Knight’s quest seems more modern than medieval, however, and the central idea is closer to postwar existentialist thinking than to a 14th-century religious crusade. Antonius Block’s strong, desperate, and defiant figure re-emerges as the medieval farmer Töre in Jungfrukällan (1960, The Virgin Spring), whose young and beautiful daughter is raped and murdered on her journey to church to offer candles to the Virgin Mary. Unlike The Seventh Seal, which seems to end in futile prayer as Antonius Block speaks for his entourage while facing the figure of Death who has come to claim them all, Töre in The Virgin Spring expresses a quia absurdum est, telling God that he cannot understand His cruelty, yet vows to build a church in His honor on the spot of his daughter’s murder. In both The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring, God is a taunting and distant God. In the subsequent so-called trilogy Såsom i en spegel (1961, Through a Glass Darkly), Nattvardsgästerna (1962, Winter Light/The Communicants), and Tystnaden (1963, The Silence), this godhead emerges as an usurping ‘spider god’ who spreads anguish among those who seek him and leaves behind a psychological and metaphysical void. The three films tell their separate stories, but what they have in common is the progression of the theme of God’s silence. In a motto, printed in the published screenplays, Bergman suggests that ‘These three films deal with a reduction. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY – conquered certainty. WINTER LIGHT – disclosed certainty. THE SILENCE – God’s Silence – the negative imprint’. [Dessa tre filmer handlar om en reducering. SÅSOM I EN SPEGEL – erövrad visshet. NATTVARDSGÄSTERNA – genomskådad visshet. TYSTNADEN –Guds tystnad – det negativa avtrycket.] The setting of each film reflects this movement towards nihilism. Today Bergman denies that the films form a trilogy. Nevertheless, they depict a spiritual development that he himself experienced during this time in his life, as he moved towards a position of agnosticism. It was also a process that freed him from his earlier fear of death and God’s punishment. Death now became associated with the blank moments of unconciousness he had gone through while in a coma during surgery.
Discovery of Fårö In 1958 Bergman turned forty. His six-year contract at Malmö was up. Leaving the city and his relationship with actress Harriet Andersson behind, Bergman returned alone to Stockholm. For the next three years he was engaged in filmmaking. He also turned his attention to the opera and in 1961 presented a much-acclaimed production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. It was an old dream come true, and the composer himself came to Stockholm and gave his blessing. The production was later revived (in 1966-67) and presented abroad, at the Montreal World’s Fair. In interviews Bergman talked about taking a year-long sabbatical leave to study Bach. The idea never materialized, but it was nurtured for a while by his new love Käbi Laretei, an inter-
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Chapter I Life and Work nationally recognized pianist. Käbi’s marriage to a music conductor was dissolved and she and Bergman married in 1959. He dedicated his 1961 film Såsom i en spegel/ Through a Glass Darkly to her, writing the script for it on the island of Torö in the Stockholm archipelago. Bergman was about to discover his Baltic landscape. It was while looking for a location to shoot Through a Glass Darkly that he was advised by his cinematographer Sven Nykvist to take a look at Fårö (Sheep Island). In part a military reserve characterized by moorlands and strangely formed limestone rocks called raukar, Fårö quickly became both a real and a symbolic place to Ingmar Bergman. Though he lived in the wealthy Stockholm suburb of Djursholm during his marriage with Käbi, in which a son, Daniel Sebastian, was born in 1963, he made Fårö his permanent home after their divorce in 1965. At the edge of the Baltic Sea on an isolated part of the island, he built a compound, including a private screening room and some technical facilities. He would only return to Stockholm for professional reasons. Fårö is a sparsely populated outpost in a modern welfare state. In 1969 Bergman tried to draw political attention to the island with a realistic TV film, Fårödokument (Fårö Document). But Fårö functions also as the symbolic setting for a number of screen works that could be called Bergman’s ‘island films’. Besides Through a Glass Darkly they comprise Persona (1966), Vargtimmen (1967, The Hour of the Wolf), Skammen (1968, Shame), En passion (1969, The Passion of Anna) and Beröringen (1970, The Touch). These ‘island’ films depict haunted characters trapped in various psychological crises. The mood, which is often despairing and nihilistic, is reflected in Bergman’s essay from the mid-Sixties, ‘Ormskinnet’ (The Snakeskin). If one juxtaposes this essay to an earlier one from 1954, ‘Det att göra film’ (What is Filmmaking?), one can see how Bergman’s conception of the function of art changed over a ten-year period. In ‘Det att göra film’ he formulates an image of the artist as an anonymous worker sharing in the rebuilding of a great cathedral. When the medieval dome at Chartres burned down, all the artisans in the neighborhood came together to restore it to its former glory. They did so motivated by a common desire to honor God and to work together, taking great pride in their craftsmanship. In ‘The Snakeskin’ essay Bergman also refers to a collective form of artistic activity, now represented by the busy bodyness of thousands of little ants moving about inside the skin of a dead snake. No more church spires are being built; no religious faith unites the artist and his collective of workers to a common goal; life has become like a hollow snakeskin, and the ants moving inside it have no other raison d’etre than sustaining their own existence. It is no longer the artist’s function to be a moral voice or uphold the spiritual comfort of the human soul. God’s silence means that the artist is placed not among the divinely inspired but ‘in a brotherhood which exists [...] in a selfish fellowship on the warm and dirty earth, under a cold and empty sky’. [i ett brödraskap som existerar [...] i självisk gemenskap på den varma, smutsiga jorden under en kall och tom himmel.] The disillusionment represented by ‘The Snakeskin’ essay is epitomized in the cynical figure of the architect Vergerus in A Passion of Anna, who is not a builder of a cathedral of communal worship but reveals himself to be a constructor of ‘a cultural mausoleum’ for people whom he despises. Thus one might suggest that Fårö, while becoming Bergman’s personal retreat and his ‘smultronställe’ in life, also inspires, through its isolation, both the stark form and stern vision of Bergman’s film work in the Sixties.
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The Critical Sixties: The Artist Syndrome The Critical Sixties: The Artist Syndrome Bergman’s life with Käbi Laretei, an artist whom he admired and respected greatly, and with whom he was to maintain a lifelong friendship and professional contact, was nevertheless a life together with a person totally committed to a field – musical performance – where Bergman played second fiddle. But his own acceptance of the post as head of Dramaten in 1963 was equally time-absorbing. Käbi predicted rightly that his new task would spell the end of their marriage. After a few years, the island of Fårö and the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann loomed on the horizon. Ullmann became Bergman’s leading actress in such films as Persona, Vargtimmen, Skammen, En passion, Viskningar och rop, Scener ur ett äktenskap, Ansikte mot ansikte (1976, Face to Face), Ormens ägg (1977, The Serpent’s Egg) and Höstsonat (1978, Autumn Sonata). A daughter, Linn, was born to the couple in 1967. Liv Ullmann describes the relationship in her book Forændringen (Changing). She disliked the isolation on Fårö, and by 1971 she and Bergman had separated. As in so many cases with Bergman’s former wives and liaisons, Ullmann too would continue her professional relationship with him. In the 1990s, having turned from acting to filmmaking, she would direct Bergman’s TV plays Enskilda samtal (1995, Private Conversations/Private Confessions) and Trolösa (2000, Faithless). It was of course a triumph for Bergman to be invited to administer Dramaten, the very stage that had been like a sacred place to him in his youth and Sweden’s national theatre forum. What he did not realize at the time, however, was that Sweden in 1963 was at the beginning of a cultural revolution that was to question various forms of elitist art, among them the role of the prestigious national stage. Bergman soon found himself embroiled with government officials who failed to meet his demands for increased subsidies. He also faced a new radical cadre of actors and other co-workers, as well as long-term traditionalists, some of whom were forced to retire, among them the directorial icon Olof Molander and the star actor Lars Hanson. Bergman’s tenure as head of the Royal Dramatic Theatre was brief – only three years, which he later referred to as ‘the worst brine bath in my life’ [mitt livs värsta eklut]. It resulted in improved conditions for the staff but was marred by infighting. The politicized cultural climate began to dominate the public media in Sweden and was to involve much more than Bergman’s position at Dramaten (see Laterna magica, pp. 231-32). But he became particularly disenchanted with the idealogical thrust of a new generation in the Swedish theatre, to the point where he actually left the country to direct a play in Oslo (see Ø 537, Chapter VII). As a filmmaker he encountered the same atmosphere. Already in 1962, filmdirector Bo Widerberg had questioned Bergman’s approach to art. In a series of newspaper articles later pushlished as Visionen i svensk film (Vision in the Swedish cinema), he advocated a social-conscious ‘horizontal’ cinema, as opposed to Bergman’s inner-directed and ‘vertical’ filmmaking. In the contemporary world, so the reasoning went among Swedish intellectuals, an artist could no longer play the exclusive visionary role he once held during the Romantic Age. His task was to engage himself in the service of his society and become committed to the political issues of the day. At the premiere of Bergman’s Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf), the film about the haunted painter Johan Borg who withdraws to a desolate island, one critic asked: ‘Will Ingmar Bergman ever let go of his view of the artist, which is both martyrlike and aristocratic, and has more in common with
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Chapter I Life and Work Werther or Lord Byron than with our Sixties’. [Skall Ingmar Bergman någonsin släppa sin syn på konstnären, vilken är både martyrlik och aristokratisk, och har mer gemensamt med Werther och Lord Byron än med sextiotalet.] (Schildt, AB, 20 February 1968). None of the new generation of filmmakers and theatre workers who emerged in Sweden in the 1960s followed in Bergman’s wake. He was a highly visible but isolated phenomenon. His screen portrayal of the artist as a defeatist individual racked by inner demons suggests not only a private dilemma but reflects his dislike of the rigid intellectual climate in Sweden at the time. His international standing was not threatened, but trends in the European cinema, represented foremost by French filmmaker Jean Luc Godard, had a far more decisive impact on a younger generation of Swedish filmmakers than Bergman’s contribution to the medium. In his native cinema, Bergman was often viewed as an outdated artist who had lost touch with his public. Rather typical of the critical reception of him is the following excerpt from a Swedish review of Nattvardsgästerna/Winter Light: Ingmar Bergman has reached the unique position that he can make exactly the films he wants to make, and it only remains for the public to receive them as a kind of postcard greetings from his private study. For those for whom his personal set of problems is of current concern, Winter Light is perhaps a word on the way, but for the rest of us it appears, to say the least, as an impressive proof of artistic isolation. [Ingmar Bergman har uppnått den unika positionen att han gör precis de filmer han vill och det återstår bara för publiken att ta emot dem som ett slags vykortshälsningar från hans privata studerkammare. För dem som har hans personliga problematik aktuell är kanske Nattvardsgästerna ett ord på vägen, för oss andra framstår den väl, mildast sagt, som ett imponerande bevis på konstnärlig isolering.] (Öhrn, Ny Dag, 13 February 1962)
Thus, within twenty years Bergman’s profile as an artist had changed from that of an angry young man who challenged authority (Hets, 1944) to a filmmaker whose vision was considered passé and irrelevant. Bergman’s decision to retire as head of Dramaten began to take root in 1964-65 after he fell ill with pneumonia and suffered from an ear infection that affected his sense of balance. While hospitalized at the Sophia dispensary, Bergman could look out over the same grounds where he once lived as a child. He began to fantasize that he was a small boy ‘who’d died, yet wasn’t allowed to be really dead, because he kept on being woken up by telephone signals from the Royal Dramatic Theatre’. [som var död och som inte riktigt fick vara död ändå därför att han hela tiden väcktes av telefonsignaler från Dramaten]. (See Bergman om Bergman, p. 219; Eng. ed. p. 199.) Out of this fantasy grew Persona (1966) or what Bergman has called ‘a film poem’ about a boy who, after waking up in what seems to be a hospital morgue, sets a film narrative in motion about two women. One is the hospitalized actress Elisabet Vogler, who has withdrawn from the theatre and her family, and the other is her naïve and flattered nurse Alma who by feeding Elisabet her own life story revitalizes and challenges the actress but also runs the risk of becoming an unsuspecting and humiliated prey for having revealed her innermost self. The psychological tug-of-war between the two women is implied in the ‘Snakeskin’ essay from the same time, where Bergman likens his own role as an artist to that of an insect who captures food from his surroundings,
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Discovery of Television a parasite who feeds on others for his own amusement. But what is also mirrored in the film is the mutual vulnerability of an artist and his ‘public’. Bergman has repeatedly addressed his combined need and fear of the audience: ‘I hate the public, I fear it and I love it. [...] In everything I do, these thousands of eyes, brains and bodies are present. In embittered tenderness I give what I have’. [Jag hatar publiken, jag fruktar den och älskar den. [...] I allt jag gör, är dessa tusende ögon, hjärnor och kroppar närvarande. I bitter ömhet ger jag vad jag har.] (‘Det att göra film’, 1954). The vulnerability of the artist is implied in Bergman’s reaction to the critical response of his work: ‘One of the wounds that has been toughest for me in my adult life has been the fear of being humiliated. Every time I read a review for example – no matter whether it be a favorable one or not – that feeling is brought out in me’. [Ett av de sår som jag haft svårast med i mitt vuxna liv, det är rädslan att bli förödmjukad. Varje gång jag läser en recension till exempel – oavsett om den är berömmande eller inte – lockas den där känslan fram.] (Bergman om Bergman, p. 86; Eng. ed. p. 81.) But Bergman’s creativity is founded on an equally strong belief in the artist’s function as a therapeutic stand-in for his public: ‘Thus, we [the artists] shall exist to mirror human complications, behavior and happenings and serve as some sort of support to other people or some kind of enlightenment or self-examination or what have you’. [Vi (konstnärer) ska alltså vara till för att spegla mänskliga komplikationer, företeelser och skeenden och vara andra människor till någon sorts stöd eller uppbyggelse eller självprövning eller vad du vill.] (Sundgren interview, Röster i Radio/TV, no. 12, 1968).
Discovery of Television In the mid-Fifties while working at the Malmö City Theatre, television had come to nearby Denmark but not yet to Sweden. Television sets were on display in Malmö, however, since it was possible for Swedes living across the Sound from Copenhagen to watch Danish TV programs. One day Ingmar Bergman passed a store in Malmö where a televised concert program was on display. He could not hear the sound from the TV set but watched a pianist on the screen with great fascination. What appeared was a mutilated human being – now a head, now a couple of hands touching a keyboard, now a grimacing face. Bergman had used close-ups in his early films, so much so, in fact, that one of his producers had bawled him out for presenting human beings like so many pieces of meat in a butcher shop (Steene, Focus on the Seventh Seal, p. 43). But what he discovered on that day in Malmö was the intimacy of the television medium and the closeness between viewer and screen figures. As soon as the new medium established itself in Sweden, Bergman began to adapt play productions for television, the first ones being sent live from a studio in Stockholm with actors from Bergman’s Malmö ensemble. Before long, reviewers hailed him as a remarkable television director and predicted that with his visionary power he was predestined to become Sweden’s foremost contributor to TV drama. In 1969 Bergman presented his first authored television script, Riten (The Ritual), a dramatization of an emotional duel between artist and public. Dealing with a trio of actors who are interrogated by a local judge on charges of indecency, the legal questioning becomes a cruel sacrificial rite during which the judge collapses and dies. The
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Chapter I Life and Work film did not win much public acclaim among Swedish television viewers. In 1974, however, Ingmar Bergman took Swedish spectators by surprise when he presented Scener ur ett äktenskap (1974, Scenes from a Marriage), a realistic soap opera, serialized in six Wednesday night episodes on prime time television. Visits to family counseling agencies by Swedish married couples are said to have doubled as the series wore on, and marriage handbooks based on Bergman’s television story were written both in Sweden and Germany. He himself was taken by surprise at the popular response, though it is clear from a reception survey of his entire production that Swedish audiences have always favored his realistic relationship films and have only rarely been flocking to see his more symbolic and metaphysical films. Despite the Swedish success of Scener från ett äktenskap, Bergman could not rest on his laurels. When he directed an elaborate TV version of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute in the following year (1975), he was publicly criticized for using up too much of SVT’s public service budget. Funds, it was felt by some, should have been disbursed among several artists and used to produce less exclusive or ‘elitist’ art. (See Commentary, Magic Flute, Ø 247, 326). But The Magic Flute became an international success and its production cost was regained. In the following year Bergman wrote and directed Ansikte mot ansikte (Face to Face) for Swedish public television.
Exile It may seem strange that someone with Ingmar Bergman’s international reputation would have difficulty, as was the case in the early 1970s, to come up with financial support for a film. He had founded his own film production company, Cinematograph, in 1969. In making Viskningar och rop (Cries and Whispers) in 1971, he tapped into his own personal funds, while the actors invested their salaries in the film, and the SFI provided support money of half a million Swedish kronor. It was this latter source that again created a public controversy, since many commentators felt that Bergman had a big enough name to be able to find financing for his film elsewhere. In the U.S. every major studio turned down offers to distribute Cries and Whispers – even though Bergman reportedly asked for only $75,000 in down payment. The project threatened to become a financial liability for Bergman. In the end it was Roger Corman’s newly founded independent production company New World Films that came to Bergman’s rescue. Cries and Whispers became a great critical success in the U. S. and received both the National Society of Film Critics award and the New York Film Critics award as well as an Oscar for best photography. But it was not until 197576 that Bergman secured a co-production contract between an American company and his own Cinematograph. His plan was to begin production of quality films directed by filmmakers other than himself. His departure from Sweden in April 1976 put an end to this project. In 1971 Bergman’s liaison with Liv Ullmann was over, and he was soon to marry an earlier love, Ingrid von Rosen, who left behind a comfortable bourgeois marriage and a number of children, one of whom was a daughter conceived by Bergman in 1959. For the next 24 years, Ingrid would become the secure center in Bergman’s life. She was his mother’s look-alike, a home-maker, and a very competent administrator. She arranged for a reunion between Ingmar Bergman and his many children, but above all
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Return to Sweden and Closure she handled his practical affairs and his correspondence with great skill and tact. She became his comfort at home and his shield to the world. When she died of cancer in 1995, it was a grave blow to Ingmar Bergman; three years later, during an interview on his eightieth birthday, he testified to his lasting sense of loss (Donner, 14 July 1998, SVT, Channel 1). Ingrid was particularly important to Bergman in early 1976 when he was suddenly arraigned by the police during rehearsals of Strindberg’s Dödsdansen (1901, The Dance of Death) at the Royal Dramatic Theatre and was charged with tax evasion. The tax authorities were particularly interested in a Swiss holding company, Personafilm, into which money had been channeled from such film productions as Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage, and The Magic Flute. A prolonged and complex legal process began. (See Chapter IX, entry Ø 1272.) Ingmar Bergman’s arrest was an event that looked like a symbol. It could have been an episode in one of his own films. Powerful bureaucrats were goaded by a legal system that tempted them to pursue a well-known cultural figure to the point where public exposure caused him the kind of humiliation he had often depicted in his own works. Bergman had to endure virtually libelous attacks by part of the Swedish press (especially from the Social-Democratic paper Aftonbladet) and felt haunted by visions from his authoritarian childhood. Strindberg, his old mentor in the theatre, once wrote in a letter during a period of inner turmoil that he felt like a somnambulist in broad daylight, a sleepwalker dreaming and awake at the same time. Bergman experienced a similar sense of surreal forces overtaking reality, as if he were in Kafka’s world of unapproachable civil servants. The final blow to his equilibrium came when his passport was confiscated. His world collapsed, and he ended up in the psychiatric ward at Stockholm’s Karolinska Hospital. Ingmar Bergman was eventually acquitted on the initial charges of tax evasion, but by that time, he had decided to leave Sweden. After publishing an open farewell letter to a Stockholm daily (Ø 163), Bergman left for Paris and then for Los Angeles. But he departed from both places in a hurry and eventually chose to settle in Munich where his next film, Das Schlangenei (1978, Ormens ägg/The Serpent’s Egg), was going to be shot. During the next several years Munich would remain Bergman’s domicile, where he worked as a director at the city’s Residenztheater. The administrative set-up at the Residenztheater was quite conservative. Bergman’s attempt to introduce more democratic procedures and involve the staff in discussions and decision-making backfired. Infighting ensued, and Bergman’s relations with the head of the theatre grew tense. In 1981 he was asked to leave, and his production in progress was cancelled. But the final outcome of the palaver was that a new head of the theatre was appointed, and Bergman was invited back. He stayed under contract for another two years, despite the fact that the German critical corps who reviewed his stage productions continued to be rather harsh in their judgment.
Return to Sweden and Closure All his life Ingmar Bergman was to feel secure only in familiar surroundings. He hated to travel, and it is said that during one of his rare visits abroad, to Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1977, he spent his entire time outside the seminar room cooped
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Chapter I Life and Work up in his hotel, watching television. Oversensitive to sharp sunlight, he has preferred the misty climate of Fårö. Even during his exile, he arranged to return to Fårö in the summer time. In fact, his exile cannot be considered absolute; rather it was an exile in professional terms only, and even that must be modified since he continued to work with his Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist and several other members of his Swedish staff, including stage designer Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss. When Bergman returned to the Swedish stage in 1984, an official governmental apology had been issued. His re-entry marked the beginning of a truly remarkable period in his creative life. Again, there is a curious parallel to the career of Strindberg, who upon his return home in 1898 after many years abroad embarked on his most productive period in life. Bergman’s career after his exile culminated at the Royal Dramatic Theatre with a cycle of Shakespeare productions. It began with King Lear in 1984. On opening night Bergman made one of his rare appearances on stage. He was met with standing ovations, and the actor Jarl Kulle, who played Lear, greeted him with the words ‘Welcome Home’. Even 20 years later Bergman would remember this moment with gratitude (see Interview Chapter, Nyreröd, Ø 948). He was back at Dramaten, in the ‘Father House’ and for the next 20 years would stage, on an average, one play per year. Apart from Shakespeare dramas like Hamlet and The Winter’s Tale he returned to such old favorites as Molière (The Misanthrope), Ibsen (A Doll’s House and Ghosts), and Strindberg (Miss Julie, A Dreamplay, and The Ghost Sonata). A number of his Dramaten productions from this time went on an international circuit tour, providing opportunities for non-Swedish audiences to become familiar with Bergman’s stagecraft. He also directed a new opera (with music by Daniel Börtz), based on Euripides’ The Bacchae, and as late as 2004 he expressed a wish that he could set up an old opera project of his: The Tales of Hoffmann, which he had discussed doing for the Hamburg Opera before his exile. Bergman’s filmmaking days, on the other hand, seemed to be over with the making of Fanny and Alexander (1982). He declared that big studio and on location productions were simply too taxing and cumbersome at his age. But he would continue to make several TV films, most notably Efter repetitionen (1984, After the Rehearsal), Larmar och gör sig till (1997, lit. ‘Struts and Frets’ but translated as In the Presence of a Clown), and Saraband (2003). Each of these can be seen as a dramatization and commentary on his life as a creative artist. In Efter repetitionen his alter ego, an old theatre director, ruminates on his relationship to the stage. In Larmar och gör sig till, his persona, Uncle Carl Åkerblom, reenacts his passion for the cinema. In Saraband, the action harks back to Scener ur ett äktenskap, his breakthrough on television. In addition, during the same period of time, Bergman also wrote his memoirs Laterna magica (1987, The Magic Lantern) and Bilder (1990, Images. My Life in Film), as well as ‘script novels’ that were made into films or TV productions, directed by other directors: Den goda viljan (1992, The Best Intentions); Söndagsbarn (1993, Sunday’s Child); and Enskilda samtal (1994, Private Conversations). Much of his focus in these works was on his own parental background – so much so that he made a special point of announcing his script to Trolösa (2000, Faithless) as a piece that would not deal with his family. (See report from press conference, SvD, 10 May 1998, p. 14.) Today, the only area in which he has worked lately is radio. A production of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman was broadcast in 2001, and in the following year he directed Strindberg’s Pelikanen and Toteninsel (The Isle of the Dead). But a planned broadcast
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Return to Sweden and Closure of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm was cancelled. About the same time Bergman sold his apartment in Stockholm and today rarely leaves his Fårö domicile. Much of Bergman’s creative work after his homecoming forms an artistic and psychological closure, constituting a final peace-making with the ghosts of his childhood and, in Trolösa (Faithless), with a painful episode in his adult life. In keeping with such psychological house cleaning, Bergman also arranged to have his private archive transferred to a foundation administered at the Swedish Film Institute (SFI). In the novel Söndagsbarn (1991), which was made into a film in 1993 by his son Daniel, Ingmar Bergman acknowledges a more forgiving view of his parentage: ‘I began to look into my parents’ early life, my father’s childhood and upbringing and I saw a recurring pattern of pathetic efforts and humiliating adversity. I also saw care, concern, and deep confusion’. [Jag började forska i mina föräldrars tidiga liv, i min fars barndom och uppväxt och jag såg ett återkommande mönster av patetisk ansträngning och förödmjukande motgång. Jag såg också omtanke, ömhet och djup förvirring.] The statement confirms Ingmar Bergman’s deep attachment to his roots and their central importance in his long creative life, but also speaks of his greater understanding of his parentage.
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Above: Handwritten text by Ingmar Bergman to an early manuscript of a short story titled ‘One of Jack the Ripper’s early childhood memories’. The somewhat difficult handwriting reads in English translation: One day Jack the Ripper died. Everyone in the theatre thought it was very sad and collected money for a wreath and got ready to go to the funeral in top hat and rented tuxedo, black shoes and white scarf and black stockings. But Jack lay at home in his bed, covered with a white sheet and was sour and cold. For his soul had not gone away but lingered at the intractable man, yet lived such a thing physical life that no one noticed it any longer and everyone, including the doctor, thought that Jack was dead. But Jack heard and saw everything though not the way Kasper or the Whore or the Manager did but more like a small, small child or a flower or something.
Chapter II The Writer Bergman’s writing encompasses his entire creative life. His earliest pieces were jotted down in notebooks, some of them to be developed later into plays, film scripts, and short pieces of fiction. The original drafts are deposited in a special Bergman archive at the Swedish Film Institute, where the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, constituted in 2002, will administer, preserve and convey knowledge about Bergman’s collected artistic work. A special database is being developed. Maaret Koskinen has recorded and discussed some of this material in her book I begynnelsen var ordet. Ingmar Bergman och hans tidiga författarskap (2002). Some early stage plays by Bergman were published, and a few pieces of short fiction appeared in literary journals – all of it in the 1940s and early 1950s. But the main part of his writing consists of published and unpublished screenplays. Copies of scripts (not to be confused with the deposited Fårö material) are kept in SFI’s library (see introduction to Filmography). Some scripts may require Bergman’s permission to use. Chapter II lists not only Bergman’s fiction but also his program notes, prefaces, essays, radio talks, and open letters. Bergman’s own plays are registered here, while specific stage productions of these plays are recorded in the Theatre chapter (VI).
Ingmar Bergman: Cinéma d’auteur During Ingmar Bergman’s lifetime, the concept of authorship has become more tenuous. Traditionally, it signified a writer whose texts were autonomous enough to be read and experienced as such, without requiring any other art form in order to appear complete. But Ingmar Bergman’s authorship is usually not of this kind, for most of his writing falls within the categories of stage plays and film scripts; i.e., written works that presuppose a theatrical or cinematic medium to become fully realized. Bergman himself has suggested as much, referring to a dramatic or filmic text as a musical score, as notes to be played on by a director and by an ‘orchestrated’ ensemble. For that reason, says one of his commentators, ‘Bergman’s scripts should not be judged by criteria appropriate to more explicitly literary works. A Bergman text is only a sketch for another and quite different creation...’ (Mosley, The Cinema as
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Chapter II The Writer Mistress 1981, p. 19). Nevertheless, Bergman’s written texts must be seen as a very vital part of an ongoing creative process. Acknowledging the subjective basis of his output, he has described the process from initial impulse to manuscript writing as originating deep down in his own subconscious. In the 1959 essay ‘Each film is my last’ [‘Varje film är min sista film’] which is Bergman’s most complete statement on his own scriptwriting, he describes the birth of a script in both biological and psychological terms: it begins as ‘vague and indefinite fetal movements’ [vaga och obestämda fosterrörelser] or as ‘a brightly colored thread sticking out of the dark sack of consciousness’ [en skarpt färgad tråd som sticker ut ur medvetandets mörka säck]. The moment of inspiration is no more than a visual impression or a bar of notes; it may be a particular light illuminating a street scene or a face. It is like a fleeting dream that may evaporate or come back to him ‘as fruitful associations and images’ [som fruktbara associationer och bilder]. The original motif seems to contain its own rhythm which determines the sequential pattern of the film in the making (‘Varje film...’, p. 2). This early stage in the creative process is an emotional state expressing itself in visuals. Bergman distinguishes this from a later intellectual and cognitive stage when the material is shaped into words. The first phase is characterized by the pleasurable discovery of raw material for a film, while the actual shaping of that material into words is a laborious process. In Bilder/Images. My Life in Film, his memoir book about his filmmaking, he defines it as ‘a matter of arriving at how you should organize the Epilogue’ [Det gäller att komma fram till hur man ska organisera Epilogen]. In the earlier essay from the 1950s, he outlines the writing process as more complex and difficult: So I have decided to make a certain film. Now begins a complicated work, difficult to control: to transfer rhythms, moods, atmosphere, tensions, [...] pitches and smells to words and sentences in a readable or at least decipherable manuscript. It is difficult, if not impossible. The only thing that can be provisionally materialized is the dialogue, but even a dialogue is a sensitive matter that can offer resistance. (‘Each Film is...’, p. 2) [Jag har alltså beslutat mig för att göra en viss film och nu vidtar ett komplicerat och svårbemästrat arbete: att överföra rytmer, stämningar, atmosfärer, spänningar, [...] tonarter och dofter till ord och meningar i ett läsbart eller åtminstone tydbart manuskript. Detta är svårt för att inte säga omöjligt. Det enda som till nöds låter sig materialiseras är dialogen men även en dialog är en känslig tingest, som kan erbjuda motstånd.] (‘Varje film...’, pp. 2-3)
In interviews Bergman has dated the beginning of his authorship to 1941 though his first notebook goes back to 1937-38. It was, however, during a sickleave from mandatory military service in 1941 that he began to write, having withdrawn to his grandmother’s summer house in Dalecarlia: As a pure diversion I began to write a play, and it felt immensely encouraging and stimulating. So I wrote one more play and still another, and suddenly I had written twelve plays in the course of four months. That’s how it began. [...] Everything happened very suddenly and was unplanned. I don't know why, but it was pure pleasure. It was a completely new feeling that I had not experienced before, this business of just sitting down and writing in longhand and seeing the words emerge. I liked it a lot. [...] It was just an enormous [...] comfort (tröst). [...] Something opened up for me...
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Ingmar Bergman: Cinéma d’auteur
[Som ren förströelse började jag skriva en teaterpjäs och det kändes oerhört uppmuntrande och stimulerande. Så skrev jag en pjäs till och ännu en, och plötsligt hade jag inom loppet av fyra månader skrivit tolv pjäser. Det var så det började. [...] Allt skedde mycket plötsligt och oplanerat. Jag vet inte varför, men det var bara ett nöje. Det var en helt ny känsla som jag inte hade upplevt tidigare, detta att bara sätta mig ner och skriva för hand och se orden komma fram. Jag tyckte mycket om det. [...] Det var bara en enorm [...] tröst. [...] Någonting öppnades för mig [...] (Assayas-Björkman. Tre dagar med Bergman, 1992, pp.12-13).
Bergman’s statement points to the therapeutic function that the creative act would come to have for him. The transformation of a subjective world into artistic form, be it as a play, a script, a piece for television, or a novel, was to become a continuing form of psychological purgation, without which he says he probably would have gone mad. At the same time, his quoted remarks above suggest his joy in writing, its aspect of a diversion, almost like a playful game. A lifetime later he would repeat his sense of pleasure at formulating himself in words. In his memoir book Bilder/Images. My Life in Film he writes (p. 228/216): ‘At the writing-desk I am [...] pleasantly entertained. I write for my own pleasure, not for eternity’. [Vid skrivbordet är jag [...] angenämt förströdd. Jag skriver för mitt nöjes skull, inte under evighetens synvinkel.] Though many of his earliest writing efforts remained incomplete and/or unpublished, Bergman had ambitions to be recognized as a literary author. In the early 1940s, concurrent with his debut as a stage director and his work as a reader of screenplays at Svensk Filmindustri (SF), he brought out a couple of short pieces of prose fiction in prestigious literary journals such as BLM and 40-tal. Later, Sweden’s leading publishing firm Bonniers accepted a collection of his plays (Moraliteter, 1948); other plays were published by Radiotjänst (Swedish Public Radio). But Bonniers turned down a second volume of plays, giving as a reason the economic risk in publishing works in this genre. Bergman would later recall how this rejection stunned him and put a stop to his attempts to make a name for himself as a literary author: ‘It really bruised me, for I felt like an outsider in literature and in my own generation’. [det sved ordentligt i skinnet, därför att jag kände mig stå utanför litteraturen och min egen generation] (see Hammer, Ø 699, Interviews). His way of dealing with the disappointment was to deny that he had ever had any literary ambitions at all. Soon he stopped writing plays and began to call attention to himself as a filmmaker. In his essay ‘Det att göra film’ (1954), he writes somewhat defensively: ‘I myself have never had any ambition to be an author. I do not want to write novels, short stories, essays, biographies, or even plays for the theatre. I only want to make films. [...] I am a filmmaker, not an author’. [Själv har jag aldrig haft någon ambition att vara författare. Jag vill inte skriva romaner, noveller, essäer, biografier eller ens teaterpjäser. Jag vill bara göra film. [...] Jag är en filmskapare, inte en författare.] More than 15 years later, he still found it necessary to downplay the importance of the verbal aspect of filmmaking; in a note to the published script of Beröringen (1970, The Touch), he says: ‘The words can never express what the finished film wants to convey [...] at any rate, the manuscript is always a halfbaked-product, a pale and diffuse reflection’. [Orden kan ju aldrig uttrycka det den färdiga filmen vill förmedla [...] under alla förhållanden är manuskriptet alltid ett halvfabrikat, en blek och osäker spegelbild.] Bergman’s defensive attitude about his writing also resulted in his refusal for a long time to have his screenplays published in Sweden, claiming that there was no real
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Chapter II The Writer tradition in his country for bringing out film scripts in print (see Jungstedt, Ø 736, Interviews) and that the published film texts by his predecessor Hjalmar Bergman (1889-1930) did not read very well. However, an American edition of four of his screenplays from the 1950s was published in 1960. These scripts immediately achieved a separate ‘print’ status; they were presented not as prompt copies or shooting scripts but as texts to be read, and constituted what the American film critic Pauline Kael once called ‘a hybrid genre’, part drama, part novel. In other words, Ingmar Bergman began early on to evolve his own form of screenplays in which he dealt with the subjects and themes that were of personal importance to him. Differing a great deal from the standard technical shooting scripts developed by the film industry, they usually included ‘non-cinematic’ features, such as references to color (in intended B/ W films) and smell. More significantly, they used metaphors and similes that give literary significance to the text but were hardly transposable to the screen unless transformed into a piece of visual surrealism. An example is the opening lines to Det sjunde inseglet (1956, The Seventh Seal): ‘The knight [...] stares directly into the morning sun which wallows up from the misty sea like some bloated, dying fish. The sky is gray and immobile, a dome of lead’. [Riddaren [...] stirrar rakt in i morgonsolen som väller upp ur det disiga havet som en uppsvälld döende fisk. Himlen är grå och orörlig, en dom av bly.] Bergman began his career in the cinema at a time when literary authorship had a much higher cultural status in Sweden than filmmaking, especially in the solid bourgeois circles where he grew up. In a concerted effort to find not only good stories to transpose to the screen but also to raise the status of the cinema by aligning it to a literary canon, Swedish film producers nurtured a nostalgic wish to resurrect the native cinema’s old literary penmanship, which had lent prestige to the industry in the silent era when Victor Sjöström, Mauritz Stiller, and Gustaf Molander had based their most important films on the novels and stories by Selma Lagerlöf. In the early 1940s Swedish film producers voiced the view, like a mantra, that the key to recapturing the international scene was to locate a golden boy with a talent for good scriptwriting. Hence, the emergence of Ingmar Bergman as one of the world’s foremost cinéma d’auteurs is the story of a personal talent encountering the right cultural circumstances during his formative years. Also from an international perspective, Bergman’s screen authorship was an undertaking whose time had come. In 1948, Alexandre Astruc launched a new concept for filmmaking based on literary features, which he called ‘le caméra stylo’. The cinema, argued Astruc, was no longer a fairground attraction or an offshoot of the boulevard theatre. It was becoming ‘a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts [...] or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel.’ (See Alexandre Astruc, ‘The Birth of a New Avant-garde: “le caméra stylo”, in Peter Graham, ed., The New Wave. London: Secker & Warburg, 1968, pp. 17-23. First published in Ecran français, no. 144, 1948). Astruc’s ideas form the basis of the concept of the ‘cinéma d’auteur’ as launched in Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s under the editorship of such critics and filmmakers as François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, JeanPhilippe Comolli, and Jean-Luc Godard. Soon ‘auteurism’ became a prominent feature in the British film magazine Movie and was also advocated in the U.S. by film critic Andrew Sarris. Sarris was co-editor of an English edition of Cahiers and was to be instrumental in introducing Bergman’s films to American audiences.
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Ingmar Bergman: Cinéma d’auteur ‘Auteurship’ was not, however, tantamount to providing literary scripts to the film industry. The concept coexisted with the demands by cinema purists to stress the difference between word and image as artistic expressions and to refer to the one as a literary (non-cinematic) instrument and to the other as the essence of filmmaking. Ingmar Bergman came to reflect this dichotomous view on filmmaking as both a literary-based tradition and a field whose serious practitioners emphasized the visual hegemony of the medium. Bergman would for instance claim that ‘since long I have felt a certain disinclination to tell stories on film. [...] I consider an attachment to epic and drama one of the curses of the cinema.’ [jag har sedan länge haft en viss olust att berätta historier på film. [...] jag anser att en av filmens förbannelser är bundenheten till epik och dramatik]. Yet, at the same time he would dismiss the idea that storytelling – usually associated with literary practice – would be detrimental to the film medium: ‘I do not find storytelling itself objectionable’. [jag finner [inte] själva berättandet förkastligt.] (‘Varje film är min sista film’, p. 4) In the end and despite his ‘literary disclaimers’, what would be unique about Bergman as a filmmaker was the extent to which he passed on a literary story-telling tradition to the screen, combining it with the role of an image maker. Or as the Danish critic Jesper Tang once noted apropos of Bergman’s screenplays: ‘Ingmar Bergman is – there is no doubt – first and foremost the master of images and visual rhythm, but on the other hand he makes use of the written word in his filmmaking in a skillful way that is rare among directors.’ (Tang, Kosmorama, 24, no. 137, 1978, p. 39). Clearly, Bergman needed, at least up to the writing of Persona (1966), to set down his theme and vision not only in a minimal verbal way in order to clarify his cinematic intention, but also in such a fashion that the printed text achieved its own autonomy of being. It is not surprising therefore to find certain discrepancies between Bergman’s screen dialogue and the printed (written) text. By the mid-1950s Bergman had established himself as both the author and director of films possessing an unmistakable personal voice. Few of his films after Gycklarnas afton (The Naked Night) in 1953 were to be authored by writers other than himself. Bergman could now be seen as a filmmaker whose personality could be traced in the thematic consistency of his works for the screen. Eventually, his auteurship would also result in a distinct Bergman film style with the close and sensitive registering of the human face as a particular trademark. Bergman has always been an astute psychological observer and narrator, focused on the inner turmoil of characters close to his own psyche and life experience. Bergman’s screenplays bear little resemblance to dialogue scripts (FIAF-designated Script IV). What is clear however is that the writing stage for him is not the final stage, for it is followed by the encounter between text and writer on the one hand and director, performers and cinematographer on the other. In its last, practical moment in the creative process, the Bergman script may undergo noticeable changes; however, these are usually related to the respective medium of expression (cinema, radio, television) and do not mean that the basic theme and personal vision differ when transposed from script to realized performance. Bergman’s comments in a 1987 radio program, ‘Vägen till Hamlet’ [The road to Hamlet], (SR, Channel 1, 17 April 1987), suggest a similar process in his theatre work from original directorial interpretation and early blocking of a play to his rehearsal encounter with the actors, which may affect details in a production but not his basic conception of the play.
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Chapter II The Writer Soon after his 1959 essay ‘Varje film är min sista film’, Bergman’s filmmaking began to proceed much more unequivocally from the visual, with an increasing emphasis on the human face. The final scene in Tystnaden/The Silence (1962) can serve as emblematic in this context: The camera registers the face of a child (Johan) whose lips move to test some words in an unknown language. The words have been handed to him on a piece of paper by his dying aunt who is a translator by profession, an interpreter of words. But while the camera moves closer and closer to the boy’s face, the words on paper remain inaudible when read by Johan. The ending of The Silence becomes a clear statement of image superceding word as a communicative tool. Persona from the mid-Sixties is the logical extension of this attempt to tell a story visually rather than verbally. The opening ‘prologue’ to that film consists of a cavalcade of images, of seemingly unrelated visual impressions that impact emotionally on the viewer but ‘make sense’ only when articulated intellectually. These images, loaded with symbolic references to both film history and Bergman’s earlier screen works, apparently took shape as the film was being shot. At any rate, they are not specified in the script, where the images on the film strip are described as mutable nature images of trees, clouds, moon landscapes, and mountains, while murmuring words ‘begin to surface like shadows of fish in steep and deep waters’ [börjar dyka fram likt skuggor av fiskar i ett bråddjupt vatten]. A comparison between Persona’s script and the finished screen product conveys in fact an ongoing process of a script being transformed into a motion picture. Bergman named the original script to Persona ‘Kinematografi’, thus indicating that he viewed the manuscript as part of a filmic process and not as a selfcontained verbal/literary product. And yet, in a prefatory note to the script, he addresses both readers and viewers (while talking about ‘Kinematografi’ as a musical score to be realized in collaboration with his cast and crew): I have not accomplished a film script in the ordinary sense. What I have written seems to me more like a melody [melodistämma] that I think I can instrumentalize with the help of my collaborators in the course of the shooting. I am uncertain on several points and, in at least one instance, I know nothing at all. For I discovered that the subject I had chosen was very big and that what I wrote or included in the final film (what a terrible thought!) had to be very arbitrary. Therefore, I invite the reader’s or viewer’s imagination to freely use the material that I have placed at their disposal. [Jag har inte åstadkommit ett filmmanuskript i vanlig bemärkelse. Vad jag har skrivit tycks mig närmast likna en melodistämma, som jag tror, att jag med mina medarbetares hjälp ska instrumentera under inspelningens gång. På många punkter är jag osäker och på åtminstone ett ställe vet jag ingenting alls. Jag upptäckte nämligen, att det ämne jag valt var mycket stort och att vad jag skrev eller vad jag tog med i den slutliga filmen (ruskiga tanke!) måste bli ytterligt godtyckligt. Därför inbjuder jag läsarens eller åskådarens fantasi, att fritt förfoga över det material, som jag ställt till förfogande.]
Bergman’s ‘uncertainty’ about the outcome of the Persona project is built into the script and is still reflected in the final film version with its enigmatic, unresolved ending. What ‘Kinematografi’ clearly suggests, however, and the film Persona confirms, is Bergman’s abandonment of the traditional narrative of his earlier films in which he would always prepare the reader/viewer for any shift in time or place through the
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Ingmar Bergman: Cinéma d’auteur explicit use of dreams or clearly stated flashbacks. A prime example is Smultronstället/ Wild Strawberries, structured as a life journey on both conscious and subconscious levels, where the aging protagonist’s nightmares and reminiscences are announced through his own first person narrative. There is a cohesiveness and completeness to Bergman’s written scripts from the 1950s that will change by the time he constructs Persona. Descriptive passages become increasingly rare in the script, the dialogue more cryptic or modernistic in its structure. There are also more marked differences between the script and the final film. In Viskningar och rop/Cries and Whispers the script is ‘no more’ than a ‘dear friends’ letter addressed to the film’s actresses. Here it is as much the presumed response of his cast as Bergman’s sparse presentation in the epistular text that constitutes the ‘script’. Bergman’s development as a screenwriter describes in fact a textual pruning process that culminates with the script for Cries and Whispers (1972). This process is analogous to his development of the chamber film concept, beginning with Såsom i en spegel (1960, Through a Glass Darkly), using only a handful of characters, a stark island or closed-room setting, and music rather than words as fleeting moments of communication between people. These ‘chamber film scripts’ are verbally frugal, suggesting that the writer Bergman now worked in closer collusion with the image-maker Bergman who sees the finished film in his mind but also seeks closer collaboration with his performers. However, a reversal of sorts takes place in the mid-1970s, beginning with the script to Scener ur ett äktenskap (1973, Scenes from a Marriage). Like the later scripts to Ormens ägg (1977, The Serpent’s Egg) and Höstsonat (1978, Autumn Sonata), the published screenplay to Scenes is a complete dialogue script but also retains a feature that characterized the scripts to both Persona and Cries and Whispers: Bergman’s own voice and commentary. The published volume of Scenes from a Marriage contains a preface, an explanatory message from the author to his readers: To prevent the constrained reader from getting lost in the text, I believe – contrary to my habit – I should write a commentary on the six scenes. Those who are offended by such guidance should skip the following lines. First scene: Johan and Marianne are conventional and set in their ways and believe in material security. They have never found their middle-class way of life oppressive or false. They have conformed to a pattern which they are prepared to pass on ... etc. [För att den nödtvungne läsaren inte ska gå vilse i texten tror jag att jag mot min vana bör ge en kommentar till de sex scenerna. Den som upplever ett sådant dirigerande som en förolämpning bör hoppa över följande rader. Första scenen: Johan och Marianne är barn av fasta normer och den materiella trygghetens ideologi. De har aldrig upplevt sin borgerliga livsföring som tryckande eller osann. De har inordnat sig i ett mönster som de är beredda att föra vidare... etc.] (p. 5)
This ‘intrusion’ of the author’s persona serves the function of providing the uninitiated reader with information similar to the ‘Dear friends’ letter in Cries and Whispers. The opening passage in the preface to Scenes is formulated like a polite invitation, somewhat punctilious in its fear of seeming imposing. But the rest of the preface is a synopsis and, above all, an interpretation of the plot, as if the author
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Chapter II The Writer Bergman distrusted his own screenplay as a self-contained story. In that sense it is still a scriptwriter cum filmmaker at work, reasoning that without the screen, the reader should at least have access to the guiding voice of the author. The preface might also have been dictated by the fact that Scenes from a Marriage was Bergman’s first venture into a new medium, a serialized television story, where he was still somewhat hesitant about his ability to communicate. And communication has always been at the heart of Bergman’s creativity. As a young man he once said in a radio interview (2 January 1947) that he had no interest in ‘closet writing’ produced for a select few. His artistic output was always to be viewed as part of a communicative process where no creative effort of his would be considered complete until performed and presented to a responsive audience. In yet another radio interview (25 February 1950), he declared his artistic goal to be ‘to speak simply about simple matters so that everyone will be able to understand and grasp what I mean and perhaps think about it and about what I perhaps have to contribute’ [att få tala enkelt om enkla saker, så att alla ska kunna förstå och begripa vad jag menar och kanske fundera på det och på det jag möjligen har att komma med]. It is probably this anxious desire to reach a reading or viewing audience that resulted in the use of what might be called Bergman’s intercepting voice: The narrator arresting his own narrative is an increasingly self-conscious feature in his writing. An explicit example occurs in the published version of Enskilda samtal (1996, Private Conversations), the fictional story of his mother’s marital crisis and love affair with a young theologian. At a most critical moment when Anna Bergman sits ‘straight and still with folded hands and a dry, wide-open look towards a dawn that never comes’ [rak och stilla med knäppta händer och en torr vidöppen blick mot en gryning som aldrig kommer], the narrator interrupts his own account, hesitant about how to proceed: It is most necessary that I break off at exactly this moment to think over the situation. Where do the waters well forth? What does truth look like? – Not the way it was in reality, that is uninteresting. Rather, this one thing: how is truth shaped or – how do the main actors’ thoughts, feelings, their anxious disposition shift, form and deform, and so on ad infinitum. I must stop and become careful: You give me a deadly blow. I give you a deadly blow. The main characters’ mental landscape is exposed to a violent quake – like a natural catastrophe. Is that at all possible to depict, and most importantly: is it not the long-term consequences in bodies, souls, minds and facial features that become visible little by little, perhaps a long time after the collapse? Is an anticipated dispute of this kind particularly verbalized? Rather, is it not fumbling, desperate and confused [...]? How do I depict the poisoning that imperceptibly fills the home like a nerve gas and that eats away everybody’s mind during a long time, perhaps the whole life? How do I depict partisan positions that of necessity become blurred and vacillating since the other players never have the possibility of sharing a factual truth? No one knows – everyone sees. [Det är i högsta grad nödvändigt att jag hejdar mig just i detta ögonblick och tänker över situationen. Var går källådrorna fram? Hur ser sanningen ut? – Inte hur det var i verkligheten, det är ointressant. Utan detta enda: hur gestaltar sig sanningen eller – hur förskjuts och formeras, deformeras huvudaktörernas tankar, känslor, deras ångestbenägenhet och så vidare i all oändlighet. Jag måste hejda mig och bli varsam: Du tillfogar mig ett dödligt hugg.
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Ingmar Bergman: Cinéma d’auteur Jag tillfogar dig ett dödligt hugg. Huvudpersonernas själsliga landskap utsätts för en våldsam skakning – som en naturkatastrof. Går detta överhuvudtaget att skildra, och viktigast: är det inte de långsiktiga konsekvenserna i kroppar, själar, sinnen och anletsdrag som blir synliga så småningom, kanske långt efter själva sammanbrottet? Är en uppgörelse av den art som nu förestår så särskilt verbaliserad? Blir den inte snarare fumlig, desperat och förvirrad...? Hur beskriver jag den förgiftning som omärkligt fyller hemmet som en nervgas och som fräter allas sinnen under lång tid, kanske hela livet? Hur skildrar jag ställningstaganden och partiskheter som nödvändigtvis blir suddiga och osäkra eftersom de medspelande i andra planet aldrig har möjlighet att ta del av en faktiskt sanning? Ingen vet – alla ser.] (printed text based on Script I, pp. 61-62)
Here ‘the intercepting voice’ is different from the author’s address to the reader/ viewer in ‘Kinematografi’ which was an invitation to participate in the creative process. In the instance just quoted, on the other hand, the author/narrator questions his (and everybody else’s) ability to formulate a mental and psychological crisis. It is an approach clearly associated with Bergman’s undertaking to depict his parents’ life. In fact, Bergman’s authorial presence in his scripts begins to take a different turn when he, after the making of Fanny and Alexander, abdicates his role as director in the cinema (but not on stage or in the media) and turns over to others – Bille August, Daniel Bergman, Liv Ullmann – the task of filming his own scripts. What was a voice commentary or a direct address to performers and readers in Persona, Cries and Whispers, and Scenes from a Marriage becomes in Den goda viljan (1992, Best Intentions) and Enskilda samtal (1996, Private Conversations) the voyeuristic presence of an aging son recreating his parents’ story with far more realism than when he projected himself as Fanny and Alexander’s young title figure in a fantasy of his childhood. In Trolösa (2000, Faithless), based on the memories of a painful event in his own adult life, Bergman is both author and narrator, both inside and outside of his story. In the script he decamouflages his narrative self by calling him Ingmar Bergman, but this too is part fiction since it is understood that this figure named Ingmar Bergman will be enacted by a professional actor, Erland Josephson. Given these convoluted authorial/narrative positions, so similar to modernistic meta-experimentations in contemporary fiction, it comes as no surprise that Ingmar Bergman begins to look upon his scriptwriting as the work of a modern novelist – he refers for instance to Den goda viljan/Best Intentions as a novel. It is a long and yet clearly staked road that Ingmar Bergman, the filmmaker/writer, has travelled since his early insistence to have his film scripts recognized as both narrative outlines and musical scores to be completed in the film studio. Relatively little has been written on Ingmar Bergman as a writer of scripts. See the following items annotated in Chapter IX (Writings on Ingmar Bergman): Alpert, Hollis. ‘Bergman as Writer’. Saturday Review, 27 August 1960, pp. 22-23; Benedyktowicz, Zbigniew. ‘Obraz i słowo. O scenariuszach Bergmana’. Tygodnik Powszechny, no. 4, 1974; Ingemansson, Birgitta. ‘The Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman: Personification and Olefactory Detail’. Literature/Film Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1984): 27-33; Koskinen, Maaret. I begynnelsen var ordet. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 2002, passim;
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Chapter II The Writer Ohlin, Peter. ‘Through a Glass Darkly: Figurative Language in Ingmar Bergman’s Script’. Scandinavian Canadian Studies/Etudes Scandinaves au Canada 3, 1988, pp. 73-88; Scott, James. Film: The Medium and the Maker. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975, pp. 11-13, 167-68, 179-83, and 211-14; Tang, Jesper. ‘Bergman som scriptforfatter’ [Bergman as scriptwriter]. Kosmorama 24, no. 137 (Spring 1978): 39; Törnqvist, Egil. Bergman’s Muses. Æsthetic Versatility in Film, Theatre, Television and Radio. Jefferson, N.C. & London, 2003. Chapter 3, titled ‘From Screenplay to Film: Bergman’s The Communicants’, pp. 46-64. Viswanathan, Jacqueline. ‘Ciné-romans: le livre du film’. Cinéma IX, no. 2-3 (Spring 1999): 1336; Welsh, James. ‘Symposium on Published Scripts: Bergman and Anderson for Sophomores’. Cinema Journal 11, no. 1 (Fall) 1971: 52-57. Winston, D. in his The Screenplay as Literature. London: The Tantivy Press, 1973, pp. 96-115 (on script to Smutronstället/Wild Strawberries).
The Young Playwright As a young artist in the making, Ingmar Bergman wrote both fiction and, above all, drama. In fact, most of his earliest artistic ventures were those of a would-be playwright. Few of Bergman’s early dramatic efforts were ever published, but some of them exist in handwritten drafts or typed manuscript form in SFI’s Ingmar Bergman Archive. They have titles like ‘Reskamrater’ (Travel Companions, an adaptation of a tale by H.C. Andersen), ‘Stationen’ (The Station), ‘De ensamma’ (The Lonely Ones), ‘Kaspers död’ (Death of Punch), ‘Tivolit’ (The Fun Fair), ‘Fullmånen’ (The Full Moon), ‘Dimman’ (The Fog), ‘Om en mördare’ (About a Murderer). Of these ‘Tivolit’ and ‘Kaspers död’ were staged by Bergman in the early 1940s at the Stockholm Student Theatre. When performed there in 1943, ‘Kaspers död’ was advertised as a play that ‘breaks with all currently acceptable literature and theatre conventions’ [bryter med alla för tillfället vedertagna litteratur- och teaterkonventioner]. (See program note titled ‘Möte med Kasper’, Ø 13). Contemporary reviews, though short, suggested however an affinity with expressionistic Schrei-dramen of the 1920s; for that reason, some critics found the play passé. Bergman responded by subtitling his next work – ‘Tivolit’ – ‘ett teaterstycke från tjugotalet’ [a theatre piece of the Twenties]. Actually, these early plays from Bergman’s Sturm und Drang period adhere to a mindscape in modern Swedish drama which began with Strindberg's post-Inferno production and was revived in 1918 by the playwright and novelist Pär Lagerkvist, in a series of one-act dramas called Den svåra stunden (The Difficult Hour). Lagerkvist’s desperate, expressionistic cry for meaning in a world where God remains silent certainly reverberates in Bergman’s early play production. A program note to one of his stagings from the Forties – a dramatization of contemporary Swedish novelist Olle Hedberg's work Bekänna färg (Show your cards) – suggests that Bergman was well aware of Lagerkvist's metaphysical stance. Hedberg, says Bergman, did not even have ‘the belief in Pär Lagerkvist’s blind and dead God who sits frozen in his heaven’ [tron på Pär Lagerkvists blinde och döde gud som sitter frusen i himlen]. However, in a volte face move at the end of ‘Kaspers död’, Bergman lets his title figure face not a stern, silent god but a kind judge who proclaims the existence of
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The Young Playwright human love. What is depicted in ‘Kaspers död’ is a split image: ‘a god frozen in his heaven’ and a providential force. Eventually the cold, satanic god figure would become the dominant one in Bergman's metaphysical probing and emerge as the possessive ‘spider god’ and ‘the god of silence’ in such films as Såsom i en spegel (Through a Glass Darkly), Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light), and Tystnaden (The Silence). In the mid-1940s Bergman submitted a play titled Jack bland skådespelarna (Jack Among the Actors) to the theatre section at the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation. It was refused but later published by Bonniers (1946). Jack bland skådespelarna can be seen as a sequel to ‘Kaspers död’, as suggested by the name of its central character, Jack Kasparsson. A corporal in the army, Jack joins a provincial theatre group, led by a director he has never met. The plot evolves like a Pirandellean game of identities until the Director, still invisible, decides to dissolve the troupe. In the end he appears before Jack and reveals his true ‘bergmanian’ nature: he is both god figure and devil. Bergman's collection of three plays, published two years later (1948) under the common title Moraliteter (Morality Plays), maintains the metaphysical probing of his earlier works for the stage. His implied definition of a morality play suggests a work that is a moral fable but not a religious allegory in the medieval sense of the term. Bergman's ‘moralities’ do not have the abstracted juxtaposition of salvation and damnation as do their generic Christian prototypes, such as Everyman and The Castle of Perseverance. Rather, his Moraliteter are modern dramas where conflicts may be unraveled in terms of profane psychology. This is especially true of the first play in the collection, Rakel och biografvaktmästaren (Rachel and the Cinema Doorman), a conventional melodrama about a tempting lover, a suicidal impotent husband, a protective wife (Rakel), and a childlike woman (Mia) who is shot and killed accidentally. In a later screen version of Rakel och biografvaktmästaren that appears as one of the episodes in Kvinnors väntan (1952, Secrets of Women), Bergman omitted Mia. But Mia (Maria) surfaces again as the juggler Jof 's wife in Det sjunde inseglet. (1956, The Seventh Seal). The second dramatic work in the same volume, Dagen slutar tidigt (Early Ends the Day), maintains a more explicit morality play pattern by using allegorized characters and binary moral opposites typical of the genre. With its oscillation between worldly decadence, clairvoyance, and metaphysical despair, Dagen slutar tidigt becomes a dramatic hybrid, part mental thriller, part metaphysical fantasy. Again, an absolute and invisible power determines human life. An old woman, Mrs. Åström, has heard a voice ordering her to tell five different people that they are going to die the following day. She is to accompany them on their journey, and as such she becomes an early version of the figure of Death in Det sjunde inseglet. The play also bears a certain resemblance to Sutton Vane’s drama Outward Bound, the first stage work to be directed by Ingmar Bergman back in 1938 (see Ø 344). The last of Bergman's three morality plays, Mig till skräck (Unto My Fear) raises a question that was possibly provoked by his increasing involvement in the filmmaking industry in the late Forties: To what a degree can an artist concede to popular demand or production pressure without losing his creative integrity? Paul, the main character in Mig till skräck, is a young writer of metaphysical novels who gives in to his publisher’s wish that he change the religious ending of his book. This has fatal consequences for Paul’s sense of self-respect. Soon betrayals and lies jeopardize the
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Chapter II The Writer future of his marriage and his relationship with other people. In a scene anticipating the film Fanny och Alexander, made some 40 years later, an old Jew by the name of Isak, who is a friend of Paul's grandmother, explains why Paul's artistic compromise was unforgivable: ‘You went into futility with open eyes. Others don't see it. But you chose it in full awareness and in clear possession of your senses’ [Du gick in i meningslösheten med öppna ögon. Andra ser det inte. Men du valde det i fullt medvetande och i klar besittning av dina sinnen]. It is a measure of Bergman's growth as a dramatic artist that this rather simplistic moral exhortation in Mig till skräck would, in Fanny and Alexander, develop into a complex encounter between the young imaginative child Alexander – a potential artist – and the visionary Isak (and his locked-up relative Ishmael). Isak shows his young protégé the profound power of conviction, which can bring about miracles like self-illuminating mummies and inexplicable rescues of imprisoned children. From a dramaturgical point of view, Mig till skräck is still an apprentice work in which Bergman tries to telescope a lifetime into Paul's conflict with his publisher. When compared to a later confessional life journey by Bergman, undertaken by the aging Isak Borg in Smultronstället (1957, Wild Strawberries), Paul’s situation in Mig till skräck seems static, and he himself experiences no inner conflict but only a prolonged sense of self-pity. However, the play contains a storehouse of Bergman role figures that will appear in his later production. Two of the most colorful ones are Paul's grandmother and her housekeeper, Mean, old women who perform the roles of evil and good fairies (Mean’s name has no connection to the English word ‘mean’). During his formative years as a writer and director, Ingmar Bergman was also active in the radio theatre, by tradition a strong dramatic medium in Sweden. In 1951 he submitted and published Staden (The City), the same year Pär Lagerkvist received the Nobel Prize in literature. Bergman’s play shares with Lagerkvist’s works the central concept of ‘utplånande’ or ‘being wiped out/annihilated’. The main character in Staden is a failing artist with the symbolic name of Joakim (Jack) Naked. The figure of Joakim Naken, whose name might be seen as an alternative to Jack Kasparsson (Jack Clownson) appears in a number of unpublished manuscript fragments from the late 1940s. A complete manuscript dated 1949 and titled ‘Joakim Naken eller Självmordet. Melodram i tre akter’ [Joakim Naked or the Suicide. Melodrama in three acts] was submitted to Bonniers for publication but was refused. See (Ø 61). In a radio interview in 1966, when Staden was rebroadcast, Bergman told his listeners that the play was written after a crisis in his life. He had been ‘kicked out’ from Svensk Filmindustri, he had left the Göteborg City Theatre, his affiliation with the Intimate Theatre in Stockholm as a guest director was unhappy, and his private life was in shambles after a second divorce. When he finally began to work his way out of his depression, he felt a need to transform his experiences into a play. Writing as therapy functioned as a valid principle for Bergman. As in a number of Ingmar Bergman's early works for the stage and the screen, which are structured as explorations of the past, Staden too is a psychological journey back to the city of childhood and youth. Its protagonist, Joakim Naken, travels into the surreal landscape of the subconscious. The contours of the city take on the grotesque features of a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. Joakim encounters a pastor who insists that life be regarded as a correctional institution; he runs into a former mistress who has been through a painful divorce; he is confronted with his wife who
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The Young Playwright is condemned to death for killing three of their children. Allegorical figures appear, such as Oliver Mortis or ‘Döden i din ande’ [Death in your spirit]. A strange old man named ‘The Pump’ makes predictions of a natural calamity that will destroy the city. Spiritually bankrupt, Joakim learns however that a new city will be built on the ruins of the one to be destroyed. His grandmother provides him with encouragement and hope: ‘You must believe in a sense of fellowship, in the keen expectations of tomorrow, in your own possibilities’ [Du måste tro på en sorts gemenskap, på morgondagens starka förväntningar, på dina egna möjligheter]. But as in Mig till skräck, Staden ends on a note of optimism that is not really motivated by the dramatic context. A comparison with Ibsen's Peer Gynt comes to mind. Like Peer, Joakim Naked is a self without integrity, who comes to realize the futility of his life, only to be saved by a representative of womankind. In a speech reminiscent of Peer Gynt's famous onion metaphor, where the peeling of one layer after another only reveals the lack of a core, Joakim Naked admits: ‘Now I have stripped to the skin [...] and the same thing happened to me as to a person I saw in a film. When he undressed and took the bandages off his face and hands, there was neither body nor face nor hands. There was nothing’. [Nu har jag klätt av mig in på bara skinnet [...] och samma sak hände mig som en person jag såg i en film. När han klädde av sig och tog bandaget från ansiktet och händerna, fanns det varken kropp eller ansikte eller händer. Där fanns ingenting.] The most obvious literary incentive for Staden is not Ibsen's play, however, but Strindberg's drama Till Damaskus (1898, To Damascus). The second half of Bergman’s play takes place at the house of Joakim Naked's grandmother where he runs into all the people he has met earlier, though his first encounter with them took place in a nightmare. There is a certain structural similarity here between Staden and Strindberg’s Till Damaskus, which is also conceived as a circular confessional journey. The protagonists in both plays oscillate between self-accusation and reluctant penitence, and both are engaged in a spiritual quest that starts at a low point in their lives. The two works are station dramas with the dramatic action composed as a series of crucial stops and encounters with people who serve as catalysts in a self-centered conflict. Joakim Naked's excessively emotional attitude towards women and his mood swings between strong hate and nostalgic love seem also quite Strindbergian in origin. Bergman himself has readily admitted his young dependence on Strindberg’s work, which he deliberately copied: The first time I came in contact with Strindberg, I was twelve. It was an enormous experience, and I believe my first plays... I quite simply copied Strindberg. I tried to write like him, dialogues, scenes, everything. Beyond all comparison Strindberg was my idol. His vitality, his anger, I felt it inside me. And I believe I wrote quite a few Strindberg-inspired plays. [Första gången jag kom i kontakt med Strindberg var jag tolv år. Det var en enorm upplevelse, och jag tror att mina första pjäser... jag kopierade Strindberg helt enkelt. Jag försökte skriva som honom, dialoger, scener, allt. Utan jämförelse var Strindberg min idol. Hans vitalitet, hans vrede, den kände jag inom mig. Och jag tror att jag skrev en hel del Strindbergsinspirerade pjäser.] (Tre dagar med Bergman, Ø 919, p. 14)
Bergman began his stage career with several remarkable productions of Strindbergian dramas: Lycko-Pers resa (Lucky Per's Journey) in 1939; Pelikanen (The Pelican) and
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Chapter II The Writer Svarta handsken (The Black Glove) in 1940; Fadren (The Father) and Spöksonaten (The Ghost Sonata) in 1941. From Strindberg's naturalistic dramas he learnt the rapid, highstrung repartees in an emotional duel between man and woman. From Strindberg the expressionist he absorbed both a modernist dramatic form and a revival of the medieval morality play with its abstracted characters and Christian ethos. From Strindberg the writer of history plays Bergman borrowed plot elements and took similar liberties with historical events; an example is the play Trämålning (1954, Wood Painting). Here Bergman telescopes history into a 14th-century setting that includes references to the Crusades, the bubonic plague and witch burning, events which in reality took place over several centuries. As with Strindberg in his medieval play Folkungasagan (1898, Saga of the Folkungs), Bergman allowed dramatic expediency to overrule historical fact. A key word in the critical assessment of Bergman’s early stage plays is ‘excess’. This becomes particularly apparent in his dark drama Mordet i Barjärna (Murder at Barjärna), which he presented at the Malmö City Theatre in 1952. This highly theatrical production provoked a very harsh response from reviewers, many of whom felt that Bergman’s grotesque spectacle about a 19th century murderer and priest could not be redeemed by his virtuoso stagecraft. Members in the audience reportedly walked out on opening night, a rare phenomenon in the Swedish theatre world. Though sometimes performed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bergman’s early stage plays have not been part of the theatre repertory since then. Bergman himself has repeatedly announced his own lack of interest in reviving them: I haven't staged my own plays very often. I am not particularly fond of them, so I am not all that happy about having others stage them either. They are not very good. A few, two or three are not so bad. But to stage your own works becomes a kind of unbearable masturbation. [Jag har inte särskilt ofta satt upp mina egna pjäser. Jag är inte särskilt förtjust i dem, så jag ser inte gärna att andra sätter upp dom heller. Dom är inte särskilt bra, tycker jag. Ett fåtal, två eller tre, är inte så dåliga. Men att sätta upp sina egna verk blir en sorts outhärdlig masturbation.] (Tre dagar med Bergman, p. 17)
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The Writer of Prose Fiction Bergman’s early stage plays comprise the following titles (not including unpublished drafts; for these, check the bibliographical record of Bergman’s writing after this introduction): Kaspers död (1940) Tivolit (1941) Reskamraten (1942) Jack hos skådespelarna (1946) Moraliteter (1948; includes Rakel hos biografvaktmästaren, Dagen slutar tidigt, and Mig till skräck) Kamma noll (1948) Staden (1950) Mordet i Barjärna (1952) Trämålning (1954) Apart from reviews, relatively little has been written on young Ingmar Bergman as a playwright. See the following items: Gado, Frank. The Passion of Ingmar Bergman. Durham: Duke UP, 1986, pp. 19-36; Himmelstrand, Ulf. ‘Ingmar Bergman och döden’ [IB and death]. SvD, July 7, 1952, p. 4. (On Dagen slutar tidigt); Koskinen, Maaret. Ingmar Bergman: Allting föreställer, ingenting är. Stockholm: Nya Doxa, 2000, pp. 24-29, and I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, pp. 157-172, 249-262. Læstadius, Lars-Levi. ‘Kamma noll’. Röster i Radio, no. 28 (10-16 July) 1949, p. 6. Ring, Lars. ‘Tidiga pjäser låter oss kika in i Bergmans verkstad’ [Early plays let us look into B’s workshop]. SvD, 13 February 1998, p. 19-20. Steene, Birgitta. ‘Ingmar Bergman as a Playwright’, in Ingmar Bergman. New York: Twayne, 1968, pp. 25-37. Wallqvist, Örjan. ‘Puritanen och Kasperteatern’. AT, 6 September 1949, p. 2-3.
The Writer of Prose Fiction Bergman’s earliest writing, both published and unpublished, is often composed as short stories or fictional vignettes. In fact, many of his first film ‘scripts’ were subtitled ‘short stories for film’ and were conceived as prose narratives rather than screen dramas. This is especially the case prior to his international breakthrough as a filmmaker in 1956. Many of these fragments and vignettes also suggest that some of his early authorial figures, Kasper and Jack, first emerged in narrative prose form. One work, ‘Kaspernoveller’ (1942, Punch stories) includes a fragment that appeared in the modernistic magazine 40-tal. Titled ‘En kortare berättelse om ett av Jack Uppskärarens tidigaste barndomsminnen’ [A shorter tale about one of Jack the Ripper’s earliest childhood memories], the piece is, like much of Bergman’s initial fiction, written in a somewhat burlesque style, while revealing its roots in a personal world and functioning as a kind of urtext that embodies familiar Bergman conflicts: eschatological fears and strident parent-child or man-woman relations. (See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet. Ingmar Bergman och hans tidiga författarskap 2002). The rhetorical pitch in this early work is excessive and hysterical, the depicted world often nightmarish and expressionistic. In that sense a story like ‘Jack Uppskäraren’ shares the tone of Berg-
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Chapter II The Writer man’s early plays for the stage: there is a strong resemblance between Jack’s adult memory of a nightmarish, sexually ambivalent encounter as a 3-year-old with a miniature girl who turns out to be a boy he later murders, and the misogynist tensions (as well as grandmother setting) of Paul’s personal drama in the play Mig till skräck (1948). But Jack Uppskäraren’s child murder motif also lives on as a recurrent scene in several of Bergman’s later film scripts, sometimes involving the death of an actual small person, sometimes presented symbolically as a rag doll or a fish. In ‘Eva’ the narrator’s child memory concerns the accidental death of a little blind girl; in ‘Fängelse’ the main character, Birgitta Carolina, has a nightmare in which her baby is transformed into a fish whose neck is broken; in Smultronstället Isak Borg’s mother pulls a rag doll out of a box of childhood mementoes in a scene alluding to emotional atrophy; in Persona the ‘double take’ of Alma and Elisabeth is related to Alma’s abortion and Elisabeth’s rejection of her boy; in Vargtimmen, in a flashback fishing episode, the painter Johan reenacts Jack’s childhood memory in the drowning of the boy who attacks him on the cliffs. Thus, Bergman uses one of the most famous murderers in history, Jack the Ripper, to launch a recurrent motif and set of image clusters that in retrospect can be seen to form a receptacle of Bergman themes. In the milk-and-strawberry sequence in The Seventh Seal, the Squire Jöns offers to sing a bawdy song about an amorous fish. Perhaps this is a humorous reference to Bergman’s novella titled ‘Fisken. Fars för film’, originally published in Biografbladet 31, no. 4 (Winter) 1950-51 and 32, no. 1 (Spring) 1951. In this absurd story about Joachim who encounters a fairytale fish that gives him three wishes to be fulfilled, the plot revolves around a sexual conflict between Joachim and two women (wife and mistress). Condemned to death for having killed his wife’s lover, Joachim escapes execution because of a malfunctioning guillotine. His last wish is to return to the womb of his mistress. There seems to be a foreshadowing here of Frost’s concluding lines in Gycklarnas afton (The Naked Night) where he tells of a dream he has had in which he returned to the womb of his wife Alma. Ultimately the fish metaphor is connected to a creative process, to an archetypal moment of conception.
Post-filmmaking Prose After declaring his exit from filmmaking with Fanny and Alexander in 1982, Bergman continued to produce prose works of very conscious literary form, such as his memoirs Laterna magica/The Magic Lantern (1987), structured like a Proustian series of personal recollections interspersed with more contemporary events. His ‘novels’ like Den goda viljan/Best Intentions (1991), Söndagsbarn/Sunday’s Child (1992/93), Enskilda samtal/Private Conversations (1994/95) move freely between biographical fact and reconstruction of an emotionally charged human story that happens to be his (fictionalized) family’s. Den goda viljan depicts the early years in the marriage of a young pastor and his wife; it signals upcoming marital problems, family tensions and ends about the time of the birth of a second son, Ingmar. Söndagsbarn centers on the childhood of this second son, nicknamed Little Pu, and focusses a great deal on the relationship between father and son. Enskilda samtal, finally, tells the story of the mother, approaching middle age and in love with a much younger theology student. Together with the TV play Larmar och gör sig till/In the Presence of a Clown (1994), all
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Post-filmmaking Prose these works form a compressed family history, not quite documentary, not quite fiction. Names have been reshuffled and events telescoped for the sake of dramatic convenience. Thus for instance, a crucial background incident in Den goda viljan – the Queen hearing Pastor Bergman preach – did not take place until 1924 when young Ingmar was six (Den goda viljan ends in 1918 just prior to his birth). There is a clear difference between Bergman’s early plays and prose works from the late 1940s and his depiction of his family saga after the making of Fanny and Alexander. The early works are permeated with the often desperate and definitely rebellious tone of an angry young man, presented in an intense and loud expressionistic style. The later works are written by an old man whose main concerns are to seek understanding and possibly reconciliation with those who gave him life and material to create with. The urgent spirit at one time that shaped the adolescent outbursts by the writer Bergman has not only mellowed, it has returned to using language as a literary tool and recognizes that words employed imaginatively can shape and manifest a universe as much as images in films. All of Ingmar Bergman’s literary works after he left his large-scale filmmaking in 1982 have borne the signs of a writer who can look upon his past with a certain distance but who has also rediscovered the pleasure that lies in story-telling on paper. The narrator Bergman supersedes the filmmaker but also closes the creative circle that began with his first literary sketches in his notebooks from his late teens. Thus, there is both a psychological closure and a creative completeness to Ingmar Bergman’s writing. In the critical canon examining Ingmar Bergman’s filmmaking, it is not uncommon to find quoted samples of a Bergman ‘text’ which move back and forth between his published script and the filmed dialogue. However, there are often important discrepancies between the script and the finished film. This becomes accentuated in the late prose works, which Bergman knew he was not going to film himself. If the original Swedish manuscript has been translated, the refereed ‘text’ takes on an even more nebulous status. (See Törnqvist, ‘Ingmar Bergman Abroad. The Problems of Subtitling.’ 1998, 23 pp. Ø 1650). Any student of Bergman’s late prose faces in fact a rich field of variations between the written and the filmed texts. On the one hand, Bergman’s fiction after Fanny and Alexander contains self-conscious notes that cannot be transferred to the screen. On the other hand, the very same texts borrow the approach of a former filmmaker. Thus, Best Intentions, Sunday’s Child, and Private Confessions seem built on three ‘filmic’ principles: (1) visualization of a scene through concrete detail; a word written must be a word seen; (2) making people confront each other in ‘close-ups’; making them face each other in sharp and direct dialogue; (3) telling a story elliptically, using a cutting technique that forces the reader to fill in the gaps and become a participant in the narrative. Emotional involvement, not intellectual understanding is the ultimate purpose, so that reading the text is a little like watching a (Bergman) film, i.e., being drawn into the magic of a world projected on the screen in a dark cinema. For additional comments, see reception of Bergman’s post-filmmaking prose, Ø 185, 188, 191, 192, 194, 199. Bergman’s late prose works suggest that the further behind he left the film studio, the more he moved towards an acceptance of himself as a writer. However, this is not to say that he himself has regarded these late printed texts as words in search of a reader only. In fact, in several cases he has directed his own late writings for television, such as Sista skriket (The Last Scream), Larmar och gör sig till (In the Presence of a
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Chapter II The Writer Clown) and Saraband. In the introductory piece ‘Monolog’ in the collection Femte akten (2000, The Fifth Act) which includes Sista skriket, he suggests that the written word is a flexible tool, as much an instrument for a performance as a reading experience: I wrote the texts in this book without giving a thought to their possible medium, using a method something like that of the harpsichord sonatas by Bach – though they are otherwise not comparable. They can be played by string quartets, wind ensembles, guitar, organ or piano. I wrote them in the way I have been accustomed to writing for more than fifty years – it looks like drama but could just as easily be film, television or simply texts for reading. [Bokens texter är skrivna utan tanke på eventuellt medium vid ett framförande ungefär som cembalosonater av Bach (utan jämförelse i övrigt). De kan spelas av stråkkvartett, blåsensemble, gitarr, orgel eller piano. Jag har skrivit som jag varit van att skriva sedan mer än femtio år – det ser ut som teater men det kan lika gärna vara film, television eller bara läsning.] (p. 8).
For discussions of Ingmar Bergman’s prose works, see the following: Ekbom, Thorsten. ‘Ingmar Bergman tillbaka till det skrivna ordet’ [IB back to the written word]. DN, 25 January 1993, p. B1-B2. (review of Söndagsbarn, contrasting it to Bergman’s early short story ‘En kortare berättelse om en av Jack Uppskärarens tidigaste barndomsminnen’ [A short tale about one of Jack the Ripper’s earliest childhood memories]. 40-tal, no. 3, 1944, pp. 5-9). Haverty, Linda. ‘Strindbergman: The Problem of Filming Autobiography in Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander’. Literature/Film Quarterly 16, no. 3, 1988: 174-80. James, Caryn. ‘Bergman as Novelist’. In Ingmar Bergman. An Artist’s Journey, ed. by Roger W. Oliver. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995, pp. 112-115. Koskinen, Maaret. I begynnelsen var ordet. Ingmar Bergman och hans tidiga författarskap. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 2002, pp. 290-299 and passim. Steene, Birgitta. ‘Ingmar Bergmans Laterna magica’. Finsk Tidskrift, no. 2-3 (Spring 1988): 78-90. —. ‘Ingmar Bergmans Bilder och den självbiografiska genren’. Finsk Tidskrift, no. 5 (Autumn 1991): 274-286. Vinge, Louise. ‘The Director as Writer: Some Observations on Ingmar Bergman’s “Den goda viljan”’. In A Century of Swedish Narrative: Essays in Honour of Karin Petherick’. Norwich: Norvik Press, 1994, pp. 281-93. Wright, Rochelle. ‘The Imagined Past in Ingmar Bergman’s The Best Intentions.’ In Ingmar Bergman. An Artist’s Journey. On Stage, On Screen, In Print, ed. by Roger W. Oliver. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995 pp. 116-25.
List of Bergman’s Written Work Listed below in chronological order are both published and unpublished works by Ingmar Bergman. Some early unpublished items have been located by the editor, but for the most part such material stems from Ingmar Bergman’s private papers at Fårö, recently deposited at the SFI. Though annotated here, students are advised to check
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Maaret Koskinen’s inventory in her book I begynnelsen var ordet. Ingmar Bergman och hans tidiga författarskap. Ø 1681, p. 321 ff. In addition to copies of Bergman’s film scripts included in his recent gift of personal material, unpublished scripts are also available in the Swedish Film Institute and, at times, in Uppsala Film Studio’s library. The manuscript designation for Bergman’s film scripts that is used here follows the international FIAF formula: Script I Script II Script III Script IV
describes action but not in terms of takes describes and divides action into takes but does not list length of takes states length of each take gives dialogue list only
Script titles are listed under their original title in Swedish. Translations of individual scripts appear in the Swedish script entry. In addition, major volumes of translations that contain more than one script are listed separately under the translated title and under the year of publication. For instance, the volume Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman, which contains translations of the scripts to Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende), The Seventh Seal (Sjunde inseglet), Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället), and The Magician (Ansiktet), is listed as a separate entry (Ø 110) under its year of publication (1960), but there are also cross references to this volume of translations in the individual entries to the four original film titles (Ø 91, 98, 101, 102).
1935-37 1.
Studentuppsatser, Palmgrenska Samskolan [Student themes, Palmgrenska Lyceum]. Bergman’s Fårö papers include some of his school essays on various assigned themes: ‘Hemmet och de olika familjemedlemmarnas uppgifter’ [The home and various family members’ tasks], dated 18 September 1935; ‘Är det berättigat att tala om den gamla goda tiden?’ [Is it justifiable to talk about the good old days?], dated October 25, 1935; ‘Den moderna ungdomen’ [Modern youth], dated 19 November 1935; ‘Recension av någon bok, jag nyss läst. Guy de Pourtales “Richard Wagner”’ [Review of a book I have read recently. G. de P’s ‘Richard Wagner’], dated 5 February 1936. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, p. 336). Not annotated among Ingmar Bergman’s Fårö papers is his graduation essay at the Palmgrenska school, spring 1937, titled ‘Några huvuddrag i Selma Lagerlöfs författarskap’ [Some main features in Selma Lagerlöf ’s authorship]. The Palmgrenska school no longer exists; its student material has been transferred to Stockholms Stadsarkiv. This item is catalogued there under Palmgrenska, Klass L III, volume F 1:21. Bergman singles out the following aspects of Selma Lagerlöf ’s authorship: her love of people and of nature, her interest in the supernatural, and her imagination.
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Chapter II The Writer
1938 2.
Group Item: SFP, Mäster Olofsgården newsletter, 1938-1940 SFP was an abbreviation of ‘Storkyrkoflickorna och Storkyrkopojkarna’ (Great Church girls/ boys), an organized youth group at Mäster Olofsgården, a settlement house in Stockholm’s Old City. See introduction, theatre chapter. *
During his two years as director at MO-gården’s amateur theatre section, Bergman wrote several notices about his own productions and about film and theatre offerings in Stockholm. His first note, titled ‘Till främmande hamn’ [lit. To a foreign port], appeared in SFP no. 3, 1938, and concerns his thoughts about his first production at MO-gården, Sutton Vane’s Outward Bound. Cf. theatre chapter (VI), Introduction and (Ø 344). Material is available at Mäster Olofsgården Archive. Bergman’s Fårö papers contain a small notebook with references to Mäster Olofsgården. See also Henrik Sjögren’s Lek och raseri, 2002, pp. 43-60, for selective quotes from SFP notices.
Additional SFP items written by Bergman are listed below in chronological order: *
‘Teatraliskt i stan’ [Theatrics in town], SFP, no. 2 (1939), p. 1.
Short presentation by Bergman of theatre and film offerings in Stockholm, recommending Strindberg and several French films. Bergman’s comments are motivated by a desire to ‘prove that there is much worthwhile to see on stage right now and that Stockholm’s theatre world has stepped out of its mud bath level’ [bevisa att det finns mycket värt att se på scenen just nu och att Stockholms teatervärld har tagit steget ut ur sin gyttjebadsnivå]. In another column in the same SFP issue, Bergman worries about the reception of his next production (see next item) since it might be too ‘exclusive’ a repertory; he recalls the inappropriate laughter and insensitive response to his presentation of Outward Bound a year earlier: ‘We cherubs, raggamuffins and others have our own experience of a hard-to-please audience and a strange, somewhat unappreciative corps of critics’ [Vi kyrkänglar, trashankar och andra har ju våra erfarenheter av en hårdflirtad publik och en egendomlig, något oförstående kritik]. *
‘Experimentteater!’ [Experimental theater], SFP, no. 3, 1939, p. 24.
Announcement signed ‘B-man’ of two performances, to be presented at Nicolai Elementary School on Ash Wednesday: Danish author Axel Bentzonich’s dramatic short story ‘Guldkarossen’ [The Golden Chariot] and Runar Schildt’s play Galgmannen [The Hangman]. This column is juxtaposed to one expressing Bergman’s worries that the Mäster Olofsgården audience seems reluctant to accept an ‘exclusive repertory’ on its premises. *
‘Lycko-Pers resa’ [Lucky Per’s journey], SFP, no. 3, 1939, p. 5.
Presentation of Strindberg’s play directed by Bergman at Mäster Olofsgården and focusing on the moral content of the play. Cf. Commentary, Ø 347. See also SFP, no. 2 (1939), p. 1, for note on rehearsals of Strindberg’s play; cf. Koskinen, I begynmelsen var ordet. p. 338. *
‘Evenemang’ [Events] SFP, no. 8, 1939, p. 8.
Signed ‘Regissören’ (The Director) this is a brief presentation of an upcoming double bill: Edmond Rostand’s 18th-century play ‘Romantik’ (Romance) and Doris Rönnqvist’s play ‘Höstrapsodi’ [Autumn Rhapsody]. Bergman proudly announces that Mäster Olofsgården’s theatre section is now self-supporting with its own volunteer composer, light and art designers, photographer and PR-man.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work *
‘Experimentteatern igen’ [Experimental theater once more], SFP, no. 9 (1939), p. 3.
A personal presentation of Bergman’s forthcoming production at Mäster Olofsgården of Pär Lagerkvist’s drama Mannen som fick leva om sitt liv (The Man Who Lived His Life Over/The Man Who Lived Twice). Bergman is anxious to point out the ‘professional’ care behind the production both in terms of stagecraft and character analysis. The article clearly shows his total commitment to his directorial task, where the rehearsals had become ‘moments of spiritual recreation’ [stunder av andlig rekreation]. His subsequent analysis of Lagerkvist’s drama is a piece of moral exhortation to his presumed audience, asking them not to be turned away by the high seriousness of the piece. *
‘En saga’ [A fairy tale], SFP, no. 3 (1940), p. 4.
Presentation of Macbeth, scheduled for production in early April 1940; see Commentary in (Ø 355). *
‘Ringaren i Notre Dame’ [The Hunchback of Notre Dame], SFP, no. 4 (1940), p. 6.
Brief review of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Entry also includes a critical comment on Ingrid Bergman’s performance in Juninatten (Night of June). *
‘Ett spelår tilländalupet’ [A year’s repertory has come to an end], SFP, no. 5 (1940), pp. 8, 14.
Summing-up of 1939-40 season at Mäster Olofsgården amateur theatre section. This is the most telling of Bergman’s SFP notices, oscillating between self-defense and irony, and suggesting both enthusiasm and frustration in his work. In addition to rehearsals of five productions (two of them double bills), Bergman arranged regular film showings and a course where the goal was to discuss the majority of Strindberg’s plays (!). Listing the past season’s repertory, Bergman outlines the work schedule for the theatre group and next year’s program, with planned productions of Strindberg’s Oväder (Storm), and John Masefield’s Good Friday, plus a filmmaking project during the summer months. None of this materialized, since Bergman left Mäster Olofsgården for other theatre activities. *
‘Vår lilla stad’ [Our Town], SFP, no. 1 (1940), n.p.
Brief commentary on Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, produced at the Royal Dramatic Theatre.
3.
‘Vaxdukshäftet’ [The wax cover notebook]. Among Bergman’s Fårö papers, now deposited at SFI. Work book containing handwritten short stories and other prose fragments. Some of this material seems to be early sketches for the film script to ‘Hets’. The undated notebook is probably from the summer of 1938. ‘Vaxdukshäftet’ is discussed by Maaret Koskinen in her book I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, pp. 23-60. Among its content is the following material: *
‘En sällsam historia’ [A strange tale].
Short story about a young man’s encounter in a florist shop with a woman who turns out to be a prostitute widow supporting her only child. She is later found murdered. 11 pp. *
‘Familjeidyll’ [Family idyl]. Seven handwritten pp. Translated into German as ‘Aus einem Notizbuch vom Sommer 1938’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, edited by Renate Bleibtreu. Hamburg: 2002.
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Chapter II The Writer About a high school student’s confrontation with his father who loses control and gets a revolver. The boy hits the father with a chair, whereupon the father locks himself up in a room. The boy, after trying to calm his mother, drifts around in the city and is later reprimanded at school for his absenteeism. *
‘Fragment’. 12 pp.
Story taking place in school, divided into four short chapters. Names of the main characters – Jan-Erik Widgren and Caligula – are the same as in the film ‘Hets’. *
‘Judas’. Synopsis of a play in five acts, 6 pp.
*
Untitled short story in fourteen chapters suggesting the content of ‘Hets’. The manuscript was inserted in the notebook but could be of a later date. 114 pp. In Bilder (Images. My Life in Film) Bergman talks about revising the script for ‘Hets’ in 1942. The plot revolves around the schoolboy Jan Erik Widgren and his conflicts at home and in school (with his teacher Caligula). Story also deals with Jan-Erik’s divided attraction to two different women: the somewhat vulgar Vanja and the family girl Britt. Vanja may be an early draft for Berta in ‘Hets’.
*
Untitled story about a young boy’s decision to leave his girlfriend.
Fragment is of interest in that it suggests two later Bergman themes: Love as sacrifice and lying as a form of self-deception.
1939 4.
‘Tivolit. Filmfantasi efter Hjalmar Gullbergs dikt med samma namn’ [The Tivoli. Film fantasy after Hjalmar Gullberg’s poem with the same name]. This handwritten film synopsis consists of 104 short ‘takes’ and lists 15 characters. A text on the front page reads: ‘Regi: Ingmar Bergman, Foto: Axel Bergström, Medverkande: Medlemmar ur Mäster Olofsgårdens teatersektion’ [Direction: IB, Photo: AB, Participants: Members of MO theatre section]. Title suggests Bergman’s early interest in the film medium but also his literary anchoring. Hjalmar Gullberg was one of Sweden’s leading poets at the time. The brief poem ‘Tivoli’ is included in his 1932 collection of poetry, Andliga övningar [Spiritual exercises]. Gullberg’s ‘tivoli’ is a carousel referred to as an earthly dance of death, a rather ‘pre-bergmanian’ metaphor.
1940 5.
‘Himmelrikets nycklar: Sagospel, drömspel, vandringsdrama’ [The Keys of Heaven: Fairy play, dreamplay, station drama]. Unpublished undergraduate thesis (3betygsuppsats) for Professor Martin Lamm’s Strindberg seminar. Institute of Literary History, Stockholm University, fall 1940, 22 typed pp. Among Bergman’s Fårö papers. Bergman’s analysis of Strindberg’s play reads like a prompt copy for a stage production.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work
1941 6.
‘Cirkusen’ [The Circus]. Undated handwritten manuscript in three acts, probably identical with ‘Clownen Beppo’, a pantomime play staged in 1941 at the Sago (Fairy Tale) Theatre (a children’s stage) in Stockholm’s Civic Hall. 25 pp. Bergman’s first wife, Else Fisher, choreographed ‘Clownen Beppo’, and Bergman was responsible for the dialogue. The dramatis personae in ‘Circusen’ are: Regissören, Lejonet, Beppo, Dummer-Jöns, herr Bofvén, Camomilla (The Director, the Lion, Beppo, Clod-Hans, Mr. Crook, Camomilla.) 25 pp., typewritten. (Cf. Ø 374), theatre chapter (VI). See also Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, pp. 157-160, for brief discussion of ‘Cirkusen/Clownen Beppo’.
7.
Stage adaptation of H.C. Andersen’s tale ‘Elddonet’ (The Tinder Box) for the Sago Theatre at Medborgarhuset [Civic Hall], Stockholm. Manuscript not located. Cf. Ø 367 & 385, Theatre chapter VI.
1942 8.
Dramatikerstudions programblad, no. 1, 14 September 1943. Untitled brief introduction by Bergman to his production of Kaj Munk’s play Niels Ebbesen (cf. Ø 379), Theatre chapter.
9.
‘De ensamma’ [The Lonely Ones]. Alternate title: ‘Adjunkt Alman’ [High School Teacher Alman]. Handwritten play manuscript. Dated Duvnäs, 12 August 1942. 50 pp. There is also a handwritten 8-page dialogue fragment of the same play including the following people: Bror, Lisa, the Father, Kreutz, Mr. Andersson. A type-written undated ms covers only pp. 15-39. Dramatis personae: Erik Alman, father and high school teacher; Alice Alman, mother; Bror Alman, their son; Lisa Didricks, Bror’s girlfriend; Miss Alma Karlsson, housekeeper. A family drama about a weak, yet authoritarian father’s confrontation with his son, Bror (same name as younger son Widgren in ‘Hets’). Alman commits suicide. Among Ingmar Bergman Fårö papers deposited at SFI.
10.
‘Fullmånen’ [The Full Moon]. Handwritten play manuscript in three acts with following date notation: Skrivet i Sigtuna 17 oktober 1942 – forts. (förlovningsferie). [Written in Sigtuna 17 October 1942 – cont. (engagement vacation).] In SFI Special Ingmar Bergman Papers. Play (apparently unfinished) contains Bergman’s first reference to the character of Jack the Ripper (cf. Ø 26, below). The setting of Act I is an open square filled with a variety of people: Businessmen, Vagabonds, Voices, the Mayor, the Devil (Hin), Grandma, a Girl and Jack the Ripper. Second Act takes place in the palace with the King, the Jester, the Girl, Servants and three Soldiers. Act III is set at the tavern amidst a gloomy Jack the Ripper, a blind Mother, the Hero (‘sneezing and coughing’), the Town Cryer and some Individuals.
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Chapter II The Writer 11.
‘Kaspernoveller’ [Punch Stories] These unpublished stories were long thought to be lost, but surfaced recently in Bergman’s Fårö storage and are now deposited at SFI. They are dated 1942-43 and consist of three texts: ‘Om varför gangstern skriver vers’ [About why the gangster writes poetry]; ‘Interiör från familjen Kasper’ [A scene from the Punch family]; and ‘Berättelsen om när Kasper och Lebemannen foro ut på landet’ [The tale of when Punch and Dandy travelled into the countryside]. Both the Kasper and Jack figures – and their negative alter egos, Gangstern (the Gangster) and Lebemannen (the Dandy) – are emblematic characters in many of Bergman’s early drafts; they represent a combination of rebellious, bohemian, and self-destructive character types, moving in an expressionistic setting with themes revolving around such subjects as death and womanhood. ‘Om varför gangstern skriver vers’ was published in German as ‘Warum der Gangster Verse schreibt’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 25-39. For more details, see Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, pp. 321-22].
12.
‘Kaspers död’ [Death of Punch]. Unpublished typewritten stage play, 22 pp. Manuscript is structured as follows: Prologue. Punch and Judy (Kasper and Kasperina). Act I. Punch, two Prostitutes (Subba I and II), the Man of the World, the Sinner, the Gangster, the One, the Other. Act II. Punch, a Voice, the Gangster, the Man of the World, the One, the Other, Child I, Child II, the Girl. Play was produced at the Student Theatre, Stockholm University, 24 September 1942. (See Ø 363).
13.
‘Möte med Kasper’ [Encounter with Punch]. Program note to production of ‘Kaspers död’ (Ø 12) at Student Theatre, September 1942. Program note is available at Royal Library in Stockholm and in Swedish Theatre Museum Library. ‘Möte med Kasper’ appears in German translation, ‘Begegnung mit Kasper’, in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 40-42. For other Kasper fragments from same period, see Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), pp. 322-23.
14.
‘Operan’ [The Opera]. Handwritten and unpublished opera libretto, dated Duvnäs, 9 August 1942. 49 pp. Among Ingmar Bergman Fårö papers deposited at SFI. Dramatis personae: Sven, the Boys, the Girls, the Fiddler, Karin, the Old Gentleman, the huldra (troll woman), näcken (water sprite). This may be the opera that Bergman makes references to in several interviews and alludes to indirectly in the film Såsom i en spegel/Through a Glass Darkly when the teenage boy Minus relates his creative literary output to his father David.
15.
‘Reskamraten’ [The Travel Companion]. Play in three acts, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of same name. Dated August 1942. The play was submitted that year to the Swedish Radio but was refused, though in fairly mild terms. Available in Swedish Radio Archives. Also in Ingmar Bergman Fårö papers deposited at SFI.
72
List of Bergman’s Written Work The cast includes the following characters: Dying Father, The Old Woman, The Host, Johannes, The Old Man, The King, The One, The Troll, Head of Council, The Other, The Princess, The King of Toads, The Travel Companion, The Gnome, The Uncle.
16.
‘Rädd att leva’ [Afraid to live] and ‘En bekännelse’ [A confession]. Two versions of same film script, dated October 1942. ‘En bekännelse’ has numbered set descriptions to the left, dialogue to the right. There is also a typed manuscript in seven acts. Among Bergman papers deposited at SFI. For more detail, see Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, p. 323, 340.
17.
‘Stationen’ [The Station]. Handwritten, unpublished play in three acts, dated at end Duvnäs, 9 August 1942. 93 pp. There is also a typed, undated version of same. 39 pp. In Ingmar Bergman Fårö papers deposited at SFI. Dramatic conflict revolves around a dysfunctional family consisting of a sick father (Station Master Anders Bergström), a fun-loving mother (Brita), and their children Mary, 26, and Cecilia, 18. Also among the dramatis personae is Jon Andersson, Bergström’s assistant and successor. For discussion, see Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, pp. 62-64.
18.
‘Tivolit’ [The Tivoli]. Handwritten draft to a play, dated August 1942. 11 pp. In Ingmar Bergman Fårö papers, deposited at SFI. Consists of four separate fragments, of which Fragment III is a prologue and Fragment IV is titled ‘Epilog’. There is also an expanded fragment, titled ‘Några av dem. Pjäs i fem bilder av Ingmar Bergman’ [Some of them. Play in five tableaus by IB]. Manuscript is typed, with the title in Bergman’s handwriting, and dated 22 October 1942. Fragment also includes a Prologue. A play titled ‘Tivolit’ was staged by Bergman at the Stockholm Student Theatre in October 1943. Plot follows a group of tivoli performers during the off-season until the day the fun fair opens its gates again in late spring. See (Ø 366), and Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), pp. 71-79; 157-181.
1943 19.
‘Dimman’ [The Fog]. Handwritten, untitled and incomplete manuscript to a play; most likely a draft to ‘Dimman’, a play mentioned by Bergman in an early interview done by Jolo (see Ø 688) and in early theatre programs listing titles of Bergman’s works, but never staged. The last scene in this draft takes place in a fog where the male protagonist commits suicide. There is also a typed manuscript divided into 20 chapters, 40 pp., and dated Gimo, 4 July 1943. In SFI Ingmar Bergman Papers from his private Fårö archive. A play about a problematic mother-son relationship. The son’s cousin, a young woman by the name of Marianne, arrives from Germany. The mother shoots the girl, the son (Edgar) kills himself. A play full of Strindbergian elements such as mother/vampire motif and the unmasking theme. It was at this time that Bergman set up Strindberg’s Pelikanen (The Pelican) at Stockholm Student Theatre (see Ø 361).
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Chapter II The Writer 20.
‘Dröm i juli’ [Dream in July]. Handwritten, undated, untitled, and incomplete play in a tivoli setting. In three parts, ending with the text: ‘end of first act’. In SFI Ingmar Bergman Fårö Papers. Judging from the cast of characters, this fragment is a draft of Bergman’s 1946 unpublished play of same title (see Ø 38).
21.
‘Hets’ [Frenzy]. Film script. At SFI/USF [Swedish Film Institute/Uppsala Student Film Studio] libraries. Script I, 47 pp. Bergman’s synopsis to Hets in its original form, written as a narrative with a good deal of dialogue and dated 22 March 1943. Front page has a dedication to ‘Caligula and all his likes, [teaching] dead as well as living languages, religion, geography and history.’ [Caligula och alla hans gelikar (som undervisar) döda såväl som levande språk, religion, geografi och historia]. Script II, 158 pp. Serialized as a novella in Filmjournalen, no. 51 (1944) through no. 8 (1945), and in Bildjournalen, no. 12 through 15 (1959). On 7 November 1944, GP reported that Bergman had been asked to write a novel based on his film script. He declined with these words: ‘It [Hets] is conceived as a film and will not become a novel, short story, drama, or TV play.’ [Den är tänkt som film och den blir varken roman, drama eller television.] In 1948 Peter Ustinov adapted the film script to the stage. The play, Frenzy, opened at St. Martin’s Theatre in London 21 April 1948. It was also performed in January 1948 in Oslo under direction of Per Gjersøe (see Ø 967). London production was reviewed in NYT, 22 April 1948, p. 35: 2. Script IV, dialog list, Swedish only, 25 pp. A shooting script with minor notations is among Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI., as well as several drafts and/or synopses of ‘Hets’ among them a prose version in fourteen chapters. (See Ø 3) above. Another manuscript in the same collection is a mixture of play and film script. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), p. 323 for more details. Koskinen discusses the Hets material in same book, pp. 34-57. See also (Ø 24) and (Ø 27) below.
22.
‘Jack hos skådespelarna’ [Jack among the actors]. Handwritten play manuscript, dated Gränna, 4 August 1943. Three typewritten samples among Bergman Fårö papers, one of them marked ‘Bonniers förlag’, the publishing house that published a version of the play in 1946. (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1946. 101 pp.). The play was submitted to the Swedish Radio in 1946 but was refused, together with ‘Rakel och biografvaktmästaren’, later published (1948). The radio reader’s verdict was harsh: ‘Drama about existential anguish. [...] Expressionistically obscure in places, mystifying lines. [...] Strong inclination towards the macabre. A great deal of offensive material about drunkenness and sexuality. Uneven characterization. Unsuitable for the radio’. [Drama om livsångest. [...] Expressionistiskt dunkel här och var, mystifierande repliker. [...] Stark dragning åt det makabra. Massor av stötande saker om fylla och sexualia. Karaktärsteckningen ojämn. Olämplig för radio]. Source: SR (Sveriges Radio) archives. Expressionistic drama in two acts about a troupe of actors who are treated like marionettes by their director, an autocratic and diabolic figure. The title figure is a corporal, Jack Kasparsson, who joins a theater troupe of three actors – husband, wife, and lover. In Pirandellean fashion they perform a triangle drama of soap opera quality and become the parts they enact. As such they are replaceable, and others can step in and assume their roles. When a husband in the troupe dies, Jack Kasparsson takes over the part of lover, while the former lover now shoulders
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List of Bergman’s Written Work the cloak of married cuckold. The play, like life, can go on as before until the Director decides to dissolve the ensemble.
23.
‘Matheus Manders fjärde berättelse’ [Mathew Manders’s fourth tale]. Untitled handwritten manuscript in seven acts, dated Åkeslund 12.10.43 (12 October 1943), with Author’s preface. Also a typewritten version, 52 pp. Cast of characters include Kerstin, Krister, Erik, Gerd, Elna, Civil Servant, Officer, Mutti, Manfred. Plot revolves around a mystical diabolical character by the name of Matheus Manders [possibly named after Ibsen’s Pastor Manders in Gengangere/Ghosts ]. Bergman’s Manders is described as a civil servant with ‘the face of a dancer of death’ [en döddansares ansikte] who has a devastating impact on a group of young people. The manuscript, in SFI Ingmar Bergman Fårö Papers, might be identical with an early, apparently lost Bergman work called ‘Om en mördare’ (About a murderer). ‘Matheus Manders fjärde berättelse’ has been translated into German as ‘Matheus Manders vierte Erzählung’ and published in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 43-81.
1944 24.
‘Hets’: Kniv på en varböld’ [Torment: Knife on a boil]. SF (Svensk Filmindustri) special program to ‘Hets’, n.d. Program issued in connection with opening of Hets in October 1944 to celebrate SF’s 25th anniversary as a production company. Bergman contributes with a statement outlining his three ambitions with Hets: to expose a sickness but free the spectator from pain; to render harmless the Caligulas in society; to elicit symphathy for Caligula because, though sadistic, he acts out of fear.
25.
26.
‘Samtal mellan en ekonomichef och en teaterchef’ [Conversation between a head of finances and a theatre head]. Hälsingborg Theatre Program at end of fall season 1944, pp. 1-7. Bergman promises more than Strindberg and Shakespeare on the repertory. ‘En kortare berättelse om en av Jack Uppskärarens tidigaste barndomsminnen’ [A short tale about one of Jack the Ripper’s earliest childhood memories]. 40-tal, no. 3, 1944, pp. 5-9. Translated into French by A. Amlie (‘Un souvenir d’enfance de Jack L’Eventreur’) in Cinéma 59, no. 34 (March) 1959: 39-44. Also translated into Polish by Tadeusz Szczepański in Kino, no. 287, 1991: 7-11. Short story in which Bergman introduces once more the vulnerable, rebellious, and self-destructive Jack figure. (See Ø 11) above, ‘Kaspernoveller’ [Punch stories]).
27.
‘“Skoltiden” ett 12-årigt helvete’ [School a 12-year hell]. AB, 3 October 1944, pp. 1, 11. In connection with the premiere of ‘Hets’ Bergman gave an account of his years in school, which formed the background for the film. Cf. Commentary to (Ø 202) in Filmography. Response by his former headmaster Håkansson at Palmgrenska School appeared in same paper (AB) on 5 October 1944, p. 16. Reply by Bergman, same paper, 9 October 1944, p. 10.
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Chapter II The Writer 28.
‘Hösttankar’ [Autumnal Thoughts]. In Hälsingborg City Theatre program, Fall 1944. Tongue in cheek dialogue in which theatre director foresees the dissolution of traditional stages and a return to ambulatory performances on church steps. As director, Bergman wishes three things for the Hälsingborg City Theatre: That it be a platform of serious proclamations; That it be a bulwark against stupidity, indifference, crudeness and dullness; That it be a challenge and a playground for fun.
29.
‘Vi måste ge Macbeth’ [We have to present Macbeth]. Helsingborgs Dagblad, 14 November 1944, p. 7. Before the opening of his second Macbeth production, Bergman discussed the circumstances around his first presentation of the play in 1940 and his rationale for presenting it again. See Theatre chapter (Ø 401).
1945 30.
Group Item: Untitled program notes from Bergman’s tenure at the Helsingborg City Theatre, 1945-46 season. See also titled items (Ø 25, 28). *
Program note to production of Sune Bergström’s comedy ‘Reducera moralen’ [Reduce the morals], 12 April 1945.
Bergman proudly announces that the theatre has got its state subsidies back and promises that it will continue to be ‘the stormy center of our city’ [stadens oroliga hörn]. *
Program note to production of Franz Werfel’s play Jacobovski och översten (Jacobowski and the Colonel), 9 September 1945.
At the opening of a new theatre season, Bergman set down a Six-point Declaration concerning the function of the Helsingborg City Theatre and its ensemble. See Theatre/ Media Bibliography (Ø 502, Chapter VII), for fuller listing. *
Program note to production of Olle Hedberg’s ‘Rabies/Bekänna färg’ (Rabies/Show your cards), 1 November 1945.
Could be called IB’s modernist manifesto, a defense of Swedish fyrtiotalist literature (see Ø 952), which is said to be a truthful reflection of the disillusioned and desperate post-war generation. *
‘Avskedsintervju’ [Farewell interview], in playbill program to Björn Erik Höijer’s play Rekviem, at the Helsingborg City Theatre, 6 March 1946.
Tongue-in-cheek interview between a fictional journalist and Ingmar Bergman. For fuller annotation (see Ø 507), Theatre/Media Bibliography, Chapter VII.
31.
‘En slags tillägnan’ [A kind of dedication]. Program note to Bergman’s Malmö production of Strindberg’s Pelikanen (The Pelican), 25 November 1945. Bergman pays homage to Olof Molander, prominent director of Strindberg’s dramas since the mid-1930s. See Commentary, Ø 392.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work 32.
‘Möte’ [Encounter], in printed theatre program to production of Ingmar Bergman’s play Rakel och biografvaktmästaren [Rachel and the cinema doorman], produced at Malmö City Theatre, September 1946, pp. 8-9. A tongue-in-cheek dialogue between a playwright and the director of his play (Author Bergman directed the production of ‘Rakel’). (Cf. Ø 43) below.
33.
‘Blick in i framtiden’ [Look into the future]. Unpublished manuscript, Swedish Radio Archives, Stockholm, n.p. See Theatre/Media Bibliography (Ø 500).
34.
‘Kris’ [Crisis]. Film Script. Script II, titled ‘Mitt barn är mitt’ [My child is mine], dated May-June 1945, SFI/USF Archives, Stockholm, 161 pp. Copyright: SF. Script IV (Dialogue list in German, titled ‘Krise’, with a synopsis of content), 18 pp. Bergman’s script is an adaptation of Danish playwright Leck Fischer’s play Moderhjertet [The mother heart]. Original title is sometimes referred to as Moderdyret [The mother animal]. Bergman also uses title Moderskärlek [Mother love]. (See Ø 2) in Filmography. There are some divergencies between Script II and Script IV: in the latter, based on the released film, a voiceover opens and ends the story; in Script II the speaker is only heard in the beginning.
35.
‘Marie’ Unpublished short story, available in SFI Library, and dated 1945. The story was later expanded in collaboration with Herbert Grevenius to form the script for Bergman’s film Sommarlek (1950, Summer Interlude).
1946 36.
‘Antagligen ett geni’ [Probably a genius]. Röster i Radio, 1946:50, p. 14. Portrait of playwright Björn Erik Höijer whose radio play Sommar had been awarded second prize in a radio contest. Bergman’s brief article is a defense of playwriting as an art form that addresses the broad public and a critique of the modern Swedish poets (fyrtitalisterna), who have at their best a readership of 300 people. (See Ø 952)
37.
‘Det regnar på vår kärlek’ [It rains on our love]. Film Script. SFI/USF Archives. Copyright: Nordisk Tonefilm. Script II. Unpublished and undated adaptation of Oscar Braathen’s play Bra Mennesker [Good people], 127 p., plus some additional notes. Collaboration with Herbert Grevenius. One SFI Script II copy is scriptgirl’s shooting script. Text indicates that Bergman changed the dialogue at the end by extending the conversation between the young couple and the Man with the Umbrella. Script IV (dialogue lists) in English (36 pp.) and German (39 pp.). Production lists are also available containing time and shooting schedules, plus some idiosyncratic notes complaining about noise from airplanes and the troublesome search for extras: 18 cats!
38.
‘Dröm i juli. Filmmanuskript av I. Bergman.’ [Dream in July. Screenplay by I. Bergman]. Referred to as Version I, January 1946. Date at end of manuscript is 24
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Chapter II The Writer January 1946. Manuscript is among SFI Special Ingmar Bergman Papers. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), p. 324, for further details. Violent drama in tivoli setting with drunkenness, fights, and involuntary manslaughter. The ‘dreamer’ of this nightmare is Gunnar, a 25-year-old musician. His wife Eva is expecting a child. An old circus artist Folke, married to Alfhilda, may be an early portrait of Frost and his wife Alma in Gycklarnas afton/The Naked Night (1953). Cast also includes the old owner of a variety show, Mr. Kasparsson, who has artistic ambitions. He has a son, Paul, about 40. These names resurface in Bergman’s stage plays from the 1940s.
39.
‘Kannibalen’ [The Cannibal]. Typed, unpublished and undated manuscript. In SFI Special Ingmar Bergman Papers. An absurdist parody of the holy communion. The dramatis personae are Chief of Police, Mr. Fall, his Wife and a Prisoner named Samuel. Mr. Fall, who has committed 33 cannibalistic murders in one day, asks the Chief of Police to arrest him and have him executed. Mr. Fall has also cut open his own stomach to find his soul, which he keeps attached to a string and plans to cook for dinner. God has walked into his room; Mr. Fall kills him with fire prongs, then drinks his blood and tastes a piece of his flesh. He gives his soul to the prisoner Samuel.
40.
‘Komedien om Jenny’ [The comedy about Jenny]. In SFI’s Ingmar Bergman Fårö Papers. Unpublished early screenplay never filmed. Despite the comedy designation, the listed set of characters suggests that this may be an early draft for Dagen slutar tidigt (Early Ends the Day), one of three plays in 1948 collection Moraliteter (Ø 56).
41.
‘Om att filmatisera en pjäs’ [About filming a play]. Filmnyheter 1, no. 4, 1946, pp. 1-4. About the genesis of ‘Kris’, the first film directed by Bergman, who reveals that he did not like the original play by Leck Fischer, on which the film is based, until he invented the character of Jack.
42.
‘Puzzlet föreställer Eros. Novell för filmen av Ingmar Bergman’ [The Puzzle Represents Eros. A short story for the screen by IB]. Typed, unpublished manuscript dated Persborg, Monday 7 October 1946, on the front page and on the last page, 9 October 1946. 108 pp. SFI Library, Stockholm. This short story forms the basis of a 201-page ‘Script II’ adaptation by director Gustaf Molander, titled ‘Kvinnan utan ansikte eller puzzlet föreställer Eros’ [The woman without a face or the puzzle represents Eros], written between 9 December 1946 and 15 January 1947. According to notes in Molander’s copy, ‘Script II’ has a 5-page additional dialogue, which Bergman was asked to provide. ‘Script IV’ (dialogue list) in English, 34 pp. In connection with Molander’s filmatization, Bergman published an interview with himself about the script to ‘Kvinna utan ansikte’. Titled ‘Rut’, the interview reveals that the main character, Rut Köhler, is based on Bergman’s personal experience. See Filmnyheter 2, no. 11, 1947, pp. 1-4. Note that in the original short story, Rut’s last name is König, not Köhler.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work 43.
‘Rakel och biografvaktmästaren. Teaterpjäs i tre akter av Ingmar Bergman’ [R and the cinema doorman. Stage play in thee acts by IB]. Sveriges Radio Archive. One handwritten and one typed manuscript among Bergman’s archival Fårö papers. This play was submitted to the Swedish Radio but was rejected in no uncertain terms: ‘He wallows in crude and hellish aspects of life’ [Han frossar i alltings råhet och djävlighet]. This is an early version of a published play with the same name, printed in Moraliteter, 1948 (Ø 56). There is an unpublished English translation by Michael Meyer in Bergman’s Fårö papers.
44.
‘Svensk film och teater: Ett samgående eller motsatsförhållande’ [Swedish film and theatre: Collaboration or opposition]. Unpublished lecture given 3 February 1946 in Höganäs City Hall. Arranged by Höganäs Föreläsningsanstalt [H. lecture society]. Advertised in Helsingborgs Dagblad, 2 February 1946, p. 13 and announced in a note in same paper, 3 February 1946, p. 14, but no write-up on content.
1947 45.
‘Det förtrollade marknadsnöjet’ [The magic country fair]. Biografbladet 28, no. 3 (Fall) 1947: 1. This is a Bergman tribute to Méliès and the magic dimension of filmmaking. Published in French as ‘Le plaisir ensorcelé de la fête foraine’. Positif 421, March 1996: 68-71, and in German as ‘Das verzauberte Rummelplatzvergnügen’. Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002), pp. 82-83.
46.
‘Ej för att roa blott’ [Not just to entertain]. Sveriges Radio (SR), 2 January 1947. Bergman participating in a radio discussion with other young Swedish artists about the serious ambitions of contemporary literature, sculpture, music, and theatre. Bergman’s contribution takes the form of a dialogue with actor Anders Ek about the fyrtiotalism movement. (Cf. Ø 952), Chapter IX.
47.
‘I mormors hus’ [In grandmother’s house]. Program note to Göteborg City Theatre production of Bergman’s play Mig till skräck [Unto my fear], October 16 1947. Available at Göteborg Theatre Museum and Swedish Theatre Museum, Stockholm. Translated into German as ‘In Grossmutters Haus’, Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 86-91. Tobias, fictional author of a drama about the writer Paul, depicts Paul’s background, which is reminiscent of the apartment of Bergman’s maternal grandmother in the city of Uppsala.
48.
‘Skepp till India land’ [A ship to India]. A film script. SFI Library, 138 pp. Script II. Unpublished and undated adaptation of Martin Söderhjelm’s play of the same name. With production lists. Serialized as a film novella in the popular magazine Fickjournalen, beginning in no. 44 (1947). Script IV. Dialogue list in English, titled ‘Land of Desire’, 28 pp.
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Chapter II The Writer Among Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, are two typed copies of the script with set and character descriptions to the left, dialogue to the right. One copy is unmarked, the other appears to be assistant director’s copy. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), p. 326.
49.
‘Tre tusenfotingfötter’ [Three centipede feet]. Filmjournalen 29, no. 51-52 (December) 1947: 8-9, 53. Bergman writes about filmmaking as teamwork and presents producer Allan Ekelund, set designer P.A. Lundgren, and cinematographer Göran Strindberg.
1948 50.
‘Brev från Ingmar Bergman’ [Letter from IB]. Terrafilm 10 år. Stockholm: Terrafilm, 1948, p. 20. Letter from Bergman in booklet celebrating the Swedish production company Terrafilm’s 10th anniversary. Letter is adressed to producer Lorens Marmstedt and likens Terrafilm to ‘a beautiful, capricious, lustful, and witty lady in the prime of her life’ [en vacker, nyckfull, vällustig och kvick dam i sina bästa år].
51.
‘Ett dockhem’ [A doll’s house]. Unpublished screenplay adaptation of Ibsen’s famous play. SFI Library Archives, Stockholm, ca. 105 pp. Spring 1948. This represents Bergman’s first contact with Hollywood. The script was commissioned in early spring 1948 by David O. Selznick but never filmed. Alf Sjöberg was also contacted for the film project. According to Selznick, plans were dropped later that spring because of difficulty in finding a suitable cast. See GT, 29 January 1948; GHT, 13 March 1948, p. 9; DN, 30 April 1948, p. 3, and SvD, 2 May 1948, p. 9. Ingmar Bergman received $ 6,000 for the job, with which he bought his first real 9.5 mm projector (see Bergman om Bergman [Ø 788], p. 137, Eng. ed. p. 147). Bergman introduces his adaptation of Ibsen’s play as ‘a tale about the little doll wife Nora and her way out of dreams and lies to clarity and liberation’ [en berättelse om den lilla dockhustrun Nora och hennes väg ut ur drömmar och lögner till klarhet och frihet]. The opening scene is reminiscent of the Christmas scene in Fanny and Alexander, with giggling children, a big, tightlipped and sulking old housemaid, and father Torvald Helmer opening the season’s celebration ‘with patriarchal self-satisfaction’ [med patriarkal självtillfredsställelse], then feigning a stomach ache, so that he can disappear and return as Santa Claus. The props include a music box – a familiar Bergman emblem. On a sofa sits ‘Uncle Eyolf Rank’, and at the piano is Aunt Kristin. The entire party dances a Swedish long dance through the apartment, then sits down to listen to the Christmas gospel. The script ends with Torvald crying and being consoled by the old housemaid. A train whistle is heard. Torvald rushes out in his night shirt to the station. Nora is on board the train. As it leaves, Torvald falls to his knees, crying out: ‘But she lives, she lives...’ [Med hon lever, hon lever ...].
52.
‘Fängelset’ [The prison]. Unpublished Film Script. In SFI and USF Library Archives. Script II for ‘Fängelse’ (The Devils’s Wanton/Prison), dated November 1948 and subtitled ‘En moralitet för filmen’ (A morality for the cinema), ca. 200 pp.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Script IV (dialogue lists) in English, titled ‘Prison’ (ca. 23 pp), and in German, titled ‘Gefängnis’ (ca. 57 half-size pp.), plus synopsis and Swedish press clippings, 2 pp. Endings of ‘Fängelset’ in Script II and IV vary. Script IV ends with a conversation between Martin, the director and Paul, the teacher about God and the meaning of life. Script II ends with Martin and an actress, Greta, at work together in the film studio. Film title was changed from ‘Fängelset’ [The prison] to ‘Fängelse’ [Prison]. ‘Fängelse’ dialogue was excerpted in Filmrutan 1, no. 2 (March 1958), pp. 12-18. Among Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, there is an early typewritten short story version of ‘Fängelse’, titled ‘Sann berättelse. Novell för film av Ingmar Bergman’ [True tale. A short story for the cinema] and dated Duvnäs, August 10, 1948. See also Ø 60 and Ø 62 below.
53.
‘Hamnstad’ [Port of call]. Unpublished film script. SFI and USF Library Archives. Script II at SFI is an adaptation of Olle Länsberg’s voluminous (400 pages) manuscript ‘Guldet och murarna’ [The gold and the walls]. Script II is dated 19 May 1948, 119 pp. Script IV (dialogue list) in German, titled ‘Hafenstadt’, 23 pp. Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, contain a typed director’s copy with some handwritten notes and sketches by Bergman, as well as a map showing in some detail the interior and exterior scenes from shooting the film in Göteborg and Stockholm.
54.
‘Kamma noll. Komedi i tre akter’ [Come up empty. Comedy in three acts]. Typewritten, unpublished play, produced at Malmö City Theatre, 8 December 1948; directed by Lars-Levi Laestadius. SFI Library, Stockholm, ca. 47 pp. Three typewritten copies, found among Bergman’s Fårö papers, are dated Hälsingborg, 17 April 1948. Play has the following motto on front page: ‘Ger man djävulen rent spel förlorar han. (kammar noll)’ [If you give the devil fair play he loses (comes up empty)]. The play is a three-act triangle comedy, set in the Stockholm archipelago, with a married couple, their daughter and her boyfriend (both 17) and a femme fatale from the city, whose arrival sets off a nasty intrigue. The comedy designation seems somewhat stretched and was probably dictated by the play’s happy end.
55.
‘Kinematograf.’ [Cinematograph] Biografbladet 29, no. 4 (Winter), 1948: 240-41. Bergman talks about his grandmother’s apartment, his aunt’s Christmas gift of a laterna magica, and his first ventures into filmmaking. This article was published in French, titled ‘Le cinématographe’. Positif 421 (March) 1996: 68-71.
56.
Moraliteter [Morality plays]. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1948. 256 pp. Three plays published under the common name of Moraliteter. Individual titles are: Dagen slutar tidigt (Early ends the day), Mig till skräck (Unto my fear), and Rakel och biografväktmästaren (Rachel and the cinema doorman). Only the first of these is designed as a morality play with a metaphysical vision. The second is a study of an author who sells his integrity for commercial recognition; the third one is a Strindbergian marriage drama that later became the Rachel episode in the film Kvinnors väntan (Secrets of Women/Waiting Women).
Review Åke Runnquist, ‘Den demoniska silverpennan’ [The demonic silver pen]. BLM, April 1948, pp. 292-94.
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Chapter II The Writer 57.
‘Själva händelsen’ [The event itself]. Filmnyheter 3, no. 20, 1948, pp. 4-7. Bergman writes about an automobile accident and the new sense of life that this brush with death created in him. Out of this episode came the idea for the script to the film Eva. Translated into German as ‘Das eigentliche Ereignis’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 86-91.
58.
‘Trumpetspelaren och vår herre’ [The trumpet player and our Lord]. Unpublished film synopsis and partly completed scenario, sold in February 1948 to SF. Later completed by Gösta Stevens and Gustaf Molander as script for the film Eva, directed by Molander. Script II, available at SFI, is subtitled ‘Novell för filmen’ (Short story for the screen) and dated 10 May 1948, 153 pp. Two typed script copies titled ‘Eva. Novell för filmen av Ingmar Bergman’ [Eva. Short story for the screen by Ingmar Bergman] are among Bergman’s Fårö papers. With a note that film script is by Gustaf Molander. Cf. Next item.
1949 59.
‘Den lille trumpetaren och Vår Herre. Utdrag ur en prosaberättelse’ [The little trumpeteer and Our Lord. Excerpt from a tale in prose]. Maneten. Litterär kalender, ed. by Claes Hoogland. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1949, pp. 63-75. Excerpt from a short story. Episode depicts scene in film Eva where young Bo meets the blind girl Marthe.
60.
‘Filmen om Birgitta-Carolina’ [The film about Birgitta-Carolina]. ST, 18 March 1949, p. 4. Reprinted in part in Röster i Radio/TV, no. 23 (1962), pp. 27-28 before TV showing of film. On the eve of the opening of ‘Fängelse’ (Prison/The Devil’s Wanton), Bergman published this brief essay in a Stockholm daily, in which he talks about the genesis of the film and his conception of the main character, the prostitute Birgitta Carolina.
61.
‘Joakim Naken eller självmordet. Melodram i tre akter (Sista akten i tre tablåer) av Ingmar Bergman.’ [Joakim Naked or the Suicide. Melodrama in three acts (Last act in three tableaus) by IB]. Handwritten manuscript dated Paris 23 October 1949. With a note reading: ‘This is a tragicomedy about the murderer and self-murderer Joakim Naked who lived and worked in Lyon around the turn of the century’ [Detta är en tragikomedi om mördaren och självmördaren Joakim Naken som levde och verkade i Lyon runt sekelskiftet]. Also in type-written sample, 102 pp. In Fårö papers. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, p. 325, for listing of other drafts about Joakim Naked. Cf also (Ø 83), ‘Historien om Eiffeltornet’.
62.
‘På förekommen anledning’ [Upon request]. DN, 5 April 1949, p. 11. Reprinted in Filmnyheter 4, no. 8 (1949): 3. Open letter formulated as an advertisement and response to a department store complaint about main character’s job affiliation. See Commentary to ‘Fängelse/Prison’, in Filmography, (Ø 210).
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List of Bergman’s Written Work 63.
‘Till glädje’ [To joy].Unpublished Film Script. In SFI and USF Library Archive. Script II, dated June 1949, ca. 125 pp. Script II was serialized as film novel in Filmjournalen 32, nos. 12 through 20 (1950). Among Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, there is a director’s script dated June 1949 with some handwritten dialogue changes.
64.
‘Törst’ [Thirst]. Fårö papers, deposited at SFI. Typed copy of director’s script with the standard format at the time (set and character descriptions to the left, dialogue to the right). Contains some commentaries by Bergman and detailed notes made before the shooting. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, p. 327.
65.
‘Vi ser på filmen’ [We look at the movies]. Swedish Public Radio, 1 November 1949. Contribution to radio discussion about current film fare.
1950 66.
‘Blad ur en obefintlig dagbok’ [Pages from a non-existent diary]. SFI Library, 4 pp. Unpublished impressionistic thoughts about filmmaking. Bergman talks about his mixed feelings of panic, pleasure, and professional joy in making a film, and his sense of obsession with the film medium. He likens directing to an organist playing on a huge organ with notes instead of a script. What a director needs above all is know-how and a good condition. As for inspiration, that is fine too, but nothing to rely on. ‘Diary’ ends with a pep talk at the end of a week of filmmaking.
67.
‘“Fisken” Fars för film’ [The fish: A farce for film]. Biografbladet 31, no. 4 (Winter) 1950-51: 200-225; 32, no. 1 (Spring) 1951: 18-21, no. 2 (Summer) 1951: 85-88, no. 3 (Fall) 1951: 110-15. Reprinted in Aura IV, no. 4, 1998: 62-88. Translated into German as ‘Der Fisch. Farce für den Film’. In Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 92-134. Translated into Polish as ‘Ryba. Farsa filmowa’ by T. Szczepański in Kwartalnik Filmowy, no. 14, 1996. An absurd story about an early Bergman prototype, Joachim (alias Jack, Johan), who encounters a fairytale fish that gives him three wishes to be fulfilled. The plot revolves around a sexual conflict between Joachim and two women (wife and mistress). See introduction to this chapter.
68.
‘Frånskild’ [Divorced]. Film script by Bergman and Herbert Grevenius, dated 9 November 1950 for film directed in 1951 by Gustaf Molander. SFI and USF Library Archives. Script I (114 pp.) and Script II (169 pp.).
69.
‘Medan staden sover’ [While the city sleeps]. Script I (ca. 140 pp) and Script II (139 pp.). Scripts are dated 29 January 1950. Script II contains location map and director’s (Kjellgren) notes. SFI and USF Archives.
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Chapter II The Writer Adaptation by Ingmar Bergman and Lars-Eric Kjellgren of a short story by Per Anders Fogelström titled ‘Ligister’ (Hoodlums).
70.
‘Sommarlek’ [Summer interlude]. Unpublished film script. Based on a short story by Bergman called ‘Marie’ (see Ø 35) and completed together with Herbert Grevenius. In SFI and USF Library Archives. Script II, titled ‘Sommarleken’ [The summer interlude] and dated 1 March 1950; 146 pp., plus 14 pp. additional text (takes 558-59) which introduces a ballet master masked as Coppelius, who visits Marie in her dressing-room at the Opera. In the original version, David, Marie’s male friend, appears instead. Script IV (dialogue list) in English, titled ‘Summer interlude’, 29 pp. Among Bergman’s Fårö papers there is a typed copy of the script marked ‘Film 3/50, Annalisa Ericson Sommarleken’. Ericson plays a ballerina in the film. This copy, presumably Ericson’s, also contains some stills from the film and location photographs. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, p. 327. ‘Sommarlek’ was translated into French (but with Swedish film title retained) in Oeuvres, 1962, pp. 23-101 (Ø 122).
71.
‘Untitled program’ note to Bergman’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s play, The Threepenny Opera, which opened at Stockholm’s Intima Teatern, 17 October 1950. Bergman points out his use of Brecht’s 1938 London edition of play, which he was introduced to through Lotte Lenya’s record. Reveals strong reservations about the work. Fascinated by the music, but text bothers him for its detachment and cynicism.
72.
‘Untitled manuscript’ in prose about a Monsieur Bazin and his wife, Madame B. Seems inspired by Bergman’s stay in Paris in 1949. Plot somewhat reminiscent of Trolösa (Faithless). See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), p. 325.
1951 73.
74.
‘Bo Dahlins anteckningar angående föräldrars skilsmässa’ [Bo D’s notes re: his parents’ divorce]. (See Ø 97), 1956 (‘Sista paret ut’). ‘Bris’ Commercials. Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, contain stenciled manuscripts to three of the Bris commercials (see Filmography, Ø 215); they are titled ‘Operation’, ‘Uppfinnaren’ (The inventor) and ‘Trolleriet’ (Magic act), each 2 pp.
75.
‘Mordet i Barjärna. Ett passionsspel av Ingmar Bergman’ [Murder at Barjärna. A passion play by IB]. Unpublished play produced at Malmö City Theatre in 1952. Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Copy at Malmö City Theatre Archives. Cf. Sjögren, Ingmar Bergman på teatern, 1968), pp. 113-18. Prologue is translated into German as ‘Ich stand auf dem Berg’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002), pp. 135-136.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Historical play about a priest who gets involved in adultery and murder. An early draft, titled ‘Jonas och Mari’ [Jonas and Mari], has recently been located among Bergman’s Fårö papers, now deposited at the SFI. Same source also contains a handwritten copy of the play in a brown envelope marked ‘Obs! Farligt Obs! Detta kuvert får ej röras av någon’ [Note! Dangerous Note! This envelope may not be touched by anyone]. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), pp. 325-326. Cf. Commentary and Reception to Malmö production of play, (Ø 414), Theatre Chapter VI.
76.
‘Leka med pärlor’ [Playing with pearls]. In SF program for ‘Sommarlek’ (Summer Interlude), issued at opening of film, pp. 5-7. Bergman writes about the source of the script for ‘Sommarlek’, begun at age 18. Repeats that filmmaking is teamwork: ‘A film is indeed like a centipede, and all the feet must keep the same pace. I have figured out that 129 persons have been more or less involved in “Sommarlek”’. [En film är verkligen som en tusenfoting och alla fötterna måste hålla jämna steg. Jag har räknat ut att 129 personer har varit mer eller mindre involverade i Sommarlek.]
77.
‘Ni vill till filmen?’ [So you want to be in the movies?]. Filmjournalen, no. 36 (9 September), 1951, pp. 14, 26. Reprinted in French as ‘Vous voulez être comédien’ Positif, no. 447, (May 1998): 62-64. Faked ironic telephone conversation between Ingmar Bergman and would-be actor who wants to make it in the movies.
78.
‘Staden’ [The city]. In Svenska radiopjäser [Swedish radio plays]. Stockholm: Sveriges Radios förlag, 1951, pp. 41-95. Expressionistic drama and/or morality play in three acts about Joakim Naken, whose childhood faith and security collapse during a nightmarish Sturm-und-Drang period while tin soldiers drum a funeral march. The title refers to Joakim’s return to the city of his childhood, where he listens to the wisdom of his grandmother. At the time of the first broadcast of Staden on Sveriges Radio (SR), Bergman published an account of the genesis of the radio play: ‘Anteckningar kring Staden’ [Notes about the City]. Röster i Radio, no. 19, 1951, p. 7. Bergman gives a brief account of how he assumed a protective incognito called Joakim Naken, who was able to sense the present, the past, and the future at the same time. With Joakim as his alter ego, Bergman explores a world without grace, which became the play Staden. The 1951 production was aired again on 20 February 1966 in a radio drama series called ‘Radioteater i 40 år’ [Radio Theatre during 40 years]. At that time Bergman was interviewed about the play by Gunnar Ollén on Swedish Radio (15 minutes). (Cf. Ø 542)
1952 79.
‘Kvinnors väntan’ [Waiting women].Unpublished and undated film script. In SFI and Uppsala Film Studio archives. Script II, 185 pp. With prop list, credits, location list, and shooting plan, 18 pp. SFI Script II copy is that of head of film inventory (propman) Gustav Roger. His copy includes notes about exterior and studio shooting. Script has a total of 894 takes. Arne Sellermark adapted Script II for serializing in popular magazine Allers, beginning in no. 49 (6 December 1952), p. 45.
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Chapter II The Writer Script IV (dialogue list) in English, 31 pp.
80.
‘Sommaren med Monika’ [Summer with Monica]. Unpublished film script by Ingmar Bergman and Per Anders Fogelström, upon whose novel with the same name the script is based. Script II, titled ‘En sommar med Monika’ [One summer with Monica] and dated 9 July 1952 (124 pp.) at SFI Archives. Script IV (dialogue list) in English, 15 pp., and in German, 16 pp. SFI and USF Archives.
81.
‘Spela pjäs. Tre lektioner av Ingmar Bergman’ [Performing a play. Three lessons by IB]. Several copies of an undated stencil marked Malmö stadsteater elevskola [Malmö Theatre acting school], 46 pp. Malmö theatre archives; also in Bergman’s Fårö papers. Dramatic exercise for Malmö City Theatre acting students where a director and playwright (Martin) presents his play about two (twin) characters, Mr. A and Mr. One, who compete for his attention.
1953 82.
‘Gycklarnas afton’ [Eve of the clowns]. Unpublished film script. SFI Library Archives. Undated Script II but with final shooting date listed as 31 May 1953. Script II is subtitled ‘Ett skillingtryck på film av Ingmar Bergman’ [A penny print on film by IB], 115 pp. One of two SFI copies of script is the copy used by cinematographer Hilding Bladh; the other copy is probably the director’s copy, containing inserted sketches and additional handwritten dialogue. Script II has a different ending from the released film version: Albert, the circus owner, joins Jens, the coachman, at dawn and falls asleep in a scene reminiscent of the opening sequence of the film. In the film Albert joins Anne, and the two walk silently side by side as the circus wagons roll on. In Script II, the last ‘shot’ of Anne has her look out the window at a picture of the Virgin Mary, which appears on an emblematic sign listed as part of the circus inventory. Script II of ‘Gycklarnas afton’ was serialized as a film novella in Filmjournalen 35, no. 25-26 through no. 38 (1953). Script II was used for the translation into French by C.G. Bjurström and Maurice Pons, ‘La nuit des forains’, published in Oeuvres, 1962, pp. 102-60. Also translated into Polish by A. Asłanowicz as ‘Wieczór Kuglarzy’ and published in Ingmar Bergman Scenariusze, 1973, pp. 32-93. Script IV (dialogue list) – two copies in English, one titled ‘The Buffoon’s Evening’, 25 pp., with production notes; the other titled ‘Sawdust and Tinsel’, 25 pp.
83.
‘Historien om Eiffeltornet’ [The tale of the Eiffel tower]. BLM 22, no. 7 (November) 1953: 498-500. Excerpt from Bergman’s play ‘Joakim Naken’ (see Ø 61), set in Lyon where Joakim is director in an early film studio. Because of a troubled personal and professional life, Joakim has assumed a new personality and has moved into a boardinghouse where he meets the landlady’s young daughter Marthe. He describes a filmatization of the Eiffel Tower, where the tower is perso-
86
List of Bergman’s Written Work nalized. An imaginary film producer demands a happy end. Joakim toys with the idea of having the Eiffel Tower cross the Atlantic and marry the Statue of Liberty.
84.
‘Ingmar Bergman intervjuar sig själv inför premiären på Sommaren med Monika’ [IB interviews himself before the opening of ‘Summer with Monica’]. SF program to ‘Sommaren med Monica’. SF Archives, Stockholm. Reprinted in Filmnyheter 8, no. 2 (1953): 4-5. Tongue-in-cheek interview. Bergman suggests that nude bathing should become obligatory in all Swedish films: ‘In a country where the climate seldom permits anything but tub baths, ice baths and sauna, we should be given the illusion – with the help of the cinema – that there exists some idyllic area where well-shaped girls splash around as God created them, without getting goose pimples all over their bodies’. [I ett land där klimatet sällan tillåter annat än karbad, isbad och bastu borde vi delges illusionen – med filmens hjälp – att det existerar någon idyllisk plats där välformade flickor plaskar runt så som Gud skapade dem utan att få hönshud på hela kroppen.] Bergman ends ‘interview’ with a nature vignette from the shooting of the film, a moment at sea that he calls ‘evighetens sommar’ [eternity’s summer].
85.
‘En lektion i kärlek’ [A lesson in love]. Unpublished Film Script. SFI and USF Library Archives. Script II, dated 22 July 1953, 161 pp. Script IV (dialogue list) in Swedish only, 33 pp. Dialogue excerpt in Filmrutan 1, no. 2 (March 1958): 12-18. See also Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, p. 327, for reference to director’s copy in his Fårö papers, dated 22 July 1953, which contains descriptions of dramatis personae.
86.
‘Vi är cirkus!’ [We are like a circus]. Filmjournalen, no. 4, pp. 7, 31. Translated into German as ‘Wir sind ein Zirkus!’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002), pp. 137-39. Short essay comparing filmmaking to the circus. Both are popular art forms that present entertainment and illusion.
1954 87.
‘Det att göra film’ [Making films]. Filmnyheter 9, no. 19-20 (December): 1-9. SF also brought out an English version. Available at SFI library. Originally given as a presentation at University of Lund, 25 November 1954, this essay was also presented as a radio talk in a slightly altered form on 17 April 1955, and reprinted under the title ‘Filmskapandets dilemma’ [The dilemma of filmmaking] in Hörde ni?, no. 5 (May 1955), pp. 427-33. It was delivered as a lecture in Copenhagen, 14 November 1959. The essay outlines the practical and ethical aspects of being a serious filmmaker.
Translations Danish: Dutch:
‘Ingmar Bergman om att göra film’ in Kosmorama, no. 44 (April 1959): 182- 183; ‘Bekentenis van een filmmaker’ in Critisch Film Bulletin 12, no. 11 (November 1959): 83-84;
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Chapter II The Writer English:
French: German:
Italian:
Spanish:
‘What it Means to Make a Film’ (Stockholm: SF, n.d), tr. by P.E. Burke and Britt Halvorson and reprinted in part in the introduction to Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (Ø 110), pp. xiii-xxii, and in the September 1960 issue of Horizon. Same version also appeared under title ‘Why I Make Movies’ in The Emergence of Film Art, ed. by Lewis Jacobs (New York: Hopkinson & Blake, 1969), pp. 294-302. Essay appeared in two segments under titles ‘I am a Conjurer’, Films and Filming 2, no. 12 (September 1956): 14-15; and ‘Dreams and Shadows’, Films and Filming 3, no. 1 (October 1956): 15-16. Also reprinted in a translation by Royal S. Brown in Film Makers on Film Making, ed. Harry M. Geduld (Bloom?ington: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 177-90. Still another English translation by Alice Turner appeared in Interviews with Film Directors, ed. Andrew Sarris (New York: Avon Books, 1967), pp. 34-45. Also referred to as ‘What Is Filmmaking’; ‘Qu’est-ce que faire des films?’ Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 61, (July 1956): pp. 10-19; SF issued a German translation by Dorothea Tribukeit, titled ‘Film Machen’ (n. d), which also appeared in Filmklub-Cinéclub 5, no. 4 (November-December 1960): pp. 236-46; Published as ‘Fare dei film e per me una necessita di natura’ in Cineforum 5, no. 45 (19 May 1965), pp. 366-72; it was also excerpted as ‘Il nostro lavoro’ in Cinema Nuovo no. 83, (25 May 1956, p. 302). ‘Eso de hacer peliculas’, appeared in Film Ideal, no. 68 (1964), pp. 13-17, and as ‘El Cine segun Bergman’ in Filmoteca, no. 16 (1972/73).
There are certain discrepancies between the translated versions of this essay and the original text.
88.
‘Kvinnodröm’ [Women’s Dream]. Unpublished film script. Script II, 137 pp. At SFI Library Archives. Several copies. One copy is the scriptgirl’s copy and contains ca. 100 pp. bound notes and ca. 10 loose pages, most of them technical and revealing the fast tempo and sequence of shooting the film, as well as notes about disruptions caused by bad weather and airplane noise. Script II was the basis of the serialized novella in the Swedish magazine Allers 85, no. 50 (1961) through 86, no. 1 (1962). Script IV (dialogue list) in English, 21 pp. SFI and Uppsala Film Studio archives. One handwritten and one typed copy titled ‘Kvinnodröm. Novell för filmen av Ingmar Bergman’ [Women’s dream. Short story for the film by IB] are among Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI. The format is not that of a film script.
89.
‘Spöksonaten’ [The Ghost Sonata]. Program note in Malmö City Theatre program to Bergman production of Strindbergs’s drama, 5 March 1954. Available at Malmö Music Theatre library. Bergman relates his earlier experiences with Strindberg’s play and reminisces about his reaction to Olof Molander’s Dramaten production in 1942.
90.
‘Trämålning. Moralitet av Ingmar Bergman’ [Wood painting. Morality play by IB]. In Svenska radiopjäser. Stockholm: Sveriges Radios förlag and Bonniers Uggleböcker, 1954, pp. 9-61. With a brief prefatory note introducing the author as a director and writer.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Trämålning is an one-act play originally written by Ingmar Bergman for his acting students at Malmö City Theatre and later expanded into a script for ‘Det sjunde inseglet’/The Seventh Seal. In the original play, the Knight’s role is relatively minor. Death does not appear in person; and the Squire Jöns dominates the action. A narrator is included. Early drafts of the play are among Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI. In one of these, a 41-page typewritten version, the narrator’s name is Martin. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, p. 326.
Translations Danish: English:
French: German:
Polish: Spanish:
‘Kalkmaleri’, tr. By Aage Henriksen. In Drama. En grundbog, ed. by Sejer Andersen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1978; ‘Painting on Wood’, tr. by Randolph Goodman and Leif Sjöberg. Tulane Drama Review 6, no. 2 (November 1961): 140-52, reprinted in Focus on ‘The Seventh Seal’, 1972 (Ø 1220), pp. 150-73. Paul Britten Austin did an English translation for BBC broadcast on 12 February 1962 (not published); ‘Peinture sur bois’, In L’Avant-Scène du Théâtre, no. 199 (June 1959), pp. 36-41; ‘Holzmalerei. Stück in einem Akt von Ingmar Bergman’, tr. by Barbara Meyer & Sibylle Rahm; among Bergman’s Fårö papers and not published. ‘Tafelbild’, in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, (Ø 1678) pp. 140-166; ‘Malowidło na drzewie’, tr. by L. Kałuska. Życie Literackie, no. 39, 1960; An excerpt was published in Cuadernos de Cine Club del Uruguay (Montevideo), 1961, 16 pp. and titled ‘El retablo de madera’, tr. by Michael Bibin.
1955 91.
‘Sommarnattens leende’ [Smiles of a summer night]. Film Script. SFI and USF Library Archives. Script II, subtitled ‘En romantisk komedi på film av Ingmar Bergman’ [A romantic comedy on film by IB] and dated Rättvik, 27 May 1955, 184 pp. With production notes. Script II was excerpted and published in Folket i Bild (FIB), no. 51 (1956), pp. 20-23. Script was also adapted as a serialized novella in Allers, nos. 14 through 18, 1960. Script II has never been published in its entirety in Swedish but has appeared in several translations, such as: English:
French: German: Italian:
‘Smiles of a Summer Night’, in Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (Ø 110), pp. 5-94. This text is the basis of Steven Sondheim’s musical ‘A Little Night Music’, 1973. See New York Times, 26 February and 4 March 1973, p. 26:1 and sec. 2, p. 1:4, respectively; ‘Sourires d’une nuit d’été’, Oeuvres, 1962, (Ø 122) pp. 161-246; reprinted in L’Avant-Scène du Cinéma 454, 1996, 102 pp; ‘Das Lächeln einer Sommernacht’. In Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, (Ø 1678) pp. 167-240; ‘Sorrisi di una notte d’estate’, in 4 film di Ingmar Bergman (Ø 110), pp. 56-90.
Script IV (dialogue lists) in English (no title), 23 pp.; in German, titled ‘Das Lächeln einer Sommernacht’, 56 pp.; in French, titled ‘Sourires d’une nuit d’été’, 23 pp. See also Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), p. 327, for reference to Bergman’s typed script containing his commentaries and sketches, plus a subtitle/note stating: ‘put together by B. with great effort’ [med stor möda sammanskriven av Bergman].
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Chapter II The Writer 92.
‘Filmskapandets dilemma’. (See Ø 87).
1956 93.
‘Aforistiskt av Ingmar Bergman’ [Aphoristic by IB]. Bergman program note to ‘Det sjunde inseglet’ in Swedish and German. Did not appear in English and French programs to the film. Reprinted in Swedish in program to ‘Sista paret ut’ [Last couple out], 1956, and Vi på SF (Stockholm: SF, April 1957), n.p. Reprinted in German as ‘Aforistisches’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 241-243. Aphoristic statement grouped under three headings: ‘The Forbidden, the Permissible, and the Necessary’ [Det förbjudna, det tillåtna och det nödvändiga]. It is forbidden ‘to mourn the gifts that the fairies did not give you. [...] To be tempted by your neighbor’s film and not steal it’ [att sörja över de gåvor som feerna inte gav dig. [...] Att frestas av din grannes film och inte stjäla den]. It is permissible ‘att begå vilket brott, vilket konstnärligt våld, vilka hissnande lögner som helst så länge de är i sanning förföriska’. [to commit any crime, any artistic violence, any dizzying lies you please, as long as they are truly seductive]. It is necessary ‘att vara så upptagen att man inte har tid att tänka på vad som är förbjudet’ [to be so busy that you don’t have time to think about what is forbidden].
94.
‘Anders de Wahl och den sista rollen’ [A. de W. and his last role]. FIB no. 18, 1956, p.11. Account by Bergman of last role by grand old actor (‘the old lion’) in Swedish theatre, whom Bergman directed in Björn-Erik Höijer’s drama ‘Det lyser i kåken’ [There is light in the shack]. Their work together was marked by arguments, ruthless exchanges, and strong commitment. Having suggested one day that de Wahl quit his (small) part, Bergman discovered an actor who ‘was great, fearful, and inexplicable, a magician practicing his magic’ [var stor, rädd och outgrundlig, en trollkarl som utövade sin trollkraft].
95.
‘Kära Eva och Harriet. Ingmar Bergman skriver brev till två “filmflickor”’ [Dear Eva and Harriet. IB writes a letter to two ‘film girls’]. FIB no. 12, 1956, pp. 12, 39. Open letter to actresses Eva Dahlbeck and Harriet Andersson, both holding central parts in Bergman’s films at the time (Dreams, Smiles of a Summer Night).
96.
‘Sex frågor till Ingmar Bergman’ [Six questions to IB]. Bildjournalen, no. 38, 1956, pp. 8-9. Appeared in French as ‘Bergman par lui-même’, Cahiers du cinéma, no. 85 (July 1958), p. 15; in German (untitled) in Action 4, no. 7 (October 1968): 36; in Spanish in preface to ‘El septimo sello’, Cuadernos de Cine Club del Uruguay (Monteviseo), 1961, pp. i-ii. Brief statement in which Bergman talks about himself as a bourgeois person and ‘an actor not born’ [en ofödd skådespelare].
97.
‘Sista paret ut’ [Last couple out]. Unpublished film script. Cf. Ø 73. Undated Script II, subtitled ‘En film av Ingmar Bergman’ [A film by IB], 138 pp.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Script IV (dialogue list) in German, titled ‘Junge Herzen im Sturm’, 25 pp. and 37 pp. The longer version has synopsis and production notes. A copy of Script IV is subtitled ‘Ur Bo Dahlins anteckningar angående föräldrarnas skilsmässa, återberättade av Ingmar Bergman’ [From Bo Dahlin’s notes about his parents’ divorce as told by IB]. SFI Library Archives, Stockholm. USF Archives, Uppsala, has a copy with a handwritten addition by Ingmar Bergman. A typed copy of Uppsala version is also among Bergman’s Fårö papers and dated 24 October 1951, with a 7 page addition presumably of later date, probably 1956 in connection with Alf Sjöberg’s filmatization of script. Cf (Ø 224) in Filmography.
98.
‘Sjunde inseglet’ [The Seventh Seal]. Film script. SFI and USF Library Archives. Unpublished Script II, dated 5 June 1956 and dedicated to Bibi Andersson, 128 pp. There are several copies of Script II at SFI, one of which has 6 pages of loose notes from the shooting of the film, and another which is a director’s copy full of half-legible notes, all of them of a technical nature. Excerpts from Script II appeared in FIB, no. 51 (1956), pp. 20-23. Script II was adapted as a serialized novella in Allers 84, nos. 14 through 18 (1960), but has never been published in its entirety in Swedish. Script II has, however, appeared in numerous translations: Czech: English:
French: German:
Italian: Polish: Spanish:
‘Selmá pecet’, in Filmové povídky, 1982, pp. 5-52; ‘The Seventh Seal’ in Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman, 1960, (Ø 110), pp. 95164, reissued as a separate paperback in 1968, 92 pp.; also as Lorrimer paperback, London, 1968, together with last part of Ingmar Bergman’s essay from introduction to Four Screenplays; new edition 1984, 82 pp. Script was excerpted in Focus on The Seventh Seal (Ø 1220), pp. 154-58; ‘Le septième sceau’ in Oeuvres, 1962, pp. 247-308; ‘Das Siebente Siegel’, Cinemathek 7 (Hamburg: M. von Schröder, 1962), 85 pp., tr. by Thabita von Bonin (includes IB’s program note to The Seventh Seal, originally issued by SF in 1956; and foreword by Jacques Siclier; ‘Il settimo sigillo’, in 4 film di Ingmar Bergman (Ø 110), pp. 91-154; ‘Siódma pieczęć’, in Ingmar Bergman Scenariusze, 1973, pp. 96-162; ‘El septimo sello’, Serie Cine, no. 10 (Barcelona: Colección Voz Imagen, 1965), 160 pp., tr. by Julio Acerete; excerpted in Cuadernos de Cine Club del Uruguay (Montevideo), 1961.
Script IV (dialogue list) in Swedish, 27 pp. Excerpts from Script IV appeared in Filmrutan 1, no. 2 (March 1958), pp. 12-18.
99.
Untitled program note to ‘The Seventh Seal’. Issued by SF (Svensk Filmindustri) in connection with the American opening of the film, n.d. Reprinted in Focus on The Seventh Seal, pp. 70-71. Also printed in French as ‘Ingmar Bergman explique Le septième sceau’, Arts, no. 667 (23-29) April 1958, p. 4, and in Jacques Siclier. Ingmar Bergman. (Paris: 1960), pp. 81-82. Appeared in German in ‘Das Siebente Siegel’, Cinemathek 7 (Hamburg: M. von Schröder, 1962). Bergman reminisces about mural paintings in Swedish country churches that he visited with his parson father, and states briefly his intention with the film.
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Chapter II The Writer
1957 100.
‘Ingmars självporträtt’ [Ingmar’s self-portrait]. Se, no. 9 (3 March) 1957: 33-34. Translated into German as ‘Ingmars Selbstporträtt’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 243-246. Asked by the tabloid Swedish journal Se to draw his own portrait, IB relates an alleged incident at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956, when a Russian portrait artist drew a picture of him: two faces, one showing an old man, the other a young boy. To these Bergman adds a third one, called figuren [in the sense of ‘a real character’]. The essay is composed as an argument between these three about Bergman’s real identity. As if in a Pirandellian game, the portraits change roles with each other and contradict what they have stated earlier.
101.
‘Smultronstället’ [Wild Strawberries]. Film script. SFI and USF Library Archives. Script II to ‘Smultronstället’ dated 31 May 1957, 159 pp, plus 8 handwritten pages. There are several copies of Script II, one of which has one page of production notes and a very detailed production chart, made by production manager Gustav Roger. One Script II copy is Bergman’s and contains some additions, most notably an expansion of Alman’s examination of Professor Borg in the second nightmare sequence, including the microscope episode and Borg’s diagnosis of the ‘dead’ woman. In Script II Isak’s wife is called in by Alman and appears as Marianne dressed in black. She accuses Isak of having killed her child. Script IV (dialogue lists) in English, titled ‘Wild Strawberries’, 24 pp.; in German titled ‘Am Ende des Tages’, 20 pp.; and in French ‘À la fin du jour’, 17 pp. ‘Smultronstället’ has never been published in Swedish as a screenplay. It appeared serialized as a novella in Allers, nos. 16 through 20 (1962). It has been published in numerous foreign-language editions: Czech: English:
French: German:
Italian:
Persian: Polish: Russian:
‘Lesní jahody’, in Filmové povídky, 1982, pp. 53-100; ‘Wild Strawberries’ in Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (Ø 110), pp. 165-239; reprinted as a separate volume in 1970, 120 pp., and also translated by David Kushner and Lars Malmström as Classic and Modern Filmscripts, no. 18 (London: Lorrimer, 1970), 120 pp. [Lorrimer edition includes part of the introduction to Four Screenplays and Bergman’s homage to Victor Sjöström (Ø 109), plus sample of cutting continuity, pp. 96-120]; ‘Les fraises sauvages’ in Oeuvres, 1962, pp. 310-78; ‘Wilde Erdbeeren’ in Spectaculum 1, 1961, pp. 7-55, tr. Ingrid von Schering; reprinted in 1964 in a separate volume (Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp), 100 pp.; and in a new translation by Anne Storm in Wilde Erdbeeren und andere Filmerzählungen, 1977, pp. 7-72. Also tr. by Conrad Maria Färber in Arbeitsgemainschaft der Jungendfilmarbeit und Medienerziehung, Regensburg 1962, and excerpted in ‘Filmmaterialen’ Filmreihen 4, Psychoanalyse und Film. Aachen: 1980, pp. 61-65; 4 Film di Ingmar Bergman (Ø 110), pp. 156-222. Also in Scene di vita conjugale: L’immagine allo specchio; il posto delle fragole (Ø 174) and excerpted in Cinema Nuovo, no. 144 (March-April 1960), pp. 169-78; Title page not transcribed (SFI), tr. Houshang Taheri (Teheran: Ibn Sina, 1969), n.p.; ‘Tam, gdzie rosną posiomki’ in Ingmar Bergman Scenariusze, 1973, pp. 164-234; See Gordonskaja, (Ø 1178), pp. 119-90;
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Spanish: Turkish:
Fresas salvajas, tr. E. Ripoli-Freixes (Barcelona: Ayman, S.A Editora, 1968), 140 pp.; Yaban lilekleri, Ankara: Bilgi yayeinever, 1965, 95 pp.
1958 102.
‘Ansiktet’ [The Face/The Magician]. Film script. SFI and USF Library Archives. Script II, subtitled ‘Komedi av Ingmar Bergman’ [Comedy by IB] and dated 4 June 1958, 161 pp. Script IV (dialogue list) in English, titled ‘The Face: A Screenplay by Ingmar Bergman’, 28 pp., with one page of production notes. ‘Ansiktet’ has never been published in Swedish. It has appeared in several foreign-language editions: English: French: Italian:
‘The Magician’, in Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman, 1960 (Ø 110), pp. 243325; ‘Le visage’ in Oeuvres, 1962 (Ø 122), pp. 380-453; ‘Il volto’ in 4 Film di Ingmar Bergman, 1960 (Ø 110), pp. 203-300.
A typed copy of ‘Ansiktet’ is among Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI. It is annotated in Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet (2002), p. 328, with a quote from the front page: ‘Mitt hjärta ängslar sig i sin litenhet för det som borde vara dess största längtan: Tre mäktiga floder vars namn är GUD, KÄRLEK OCH DÖD..’. [My heart is anxious in its smallness for what ought to be its greatest longing: Three mighty rivers whose names are GOD, LOVE AND DEATH...].
103.
‘Dialog.’ Filmnyheter 13, no. 11 (1 September) 1958: 1-3. Conversation between Bergman and an imaginary writer, in part an early draft of the 1959 essay ‘Varje film är min sista film’ [ ‘Each Film Is My Last’] Main topic is filmmaker’s responsibility to his public. IB expresses his ambivalent feelings towards his audience. This ‘conversation’ has appeared in: Dutch: English: French: German: Spanish:
104.
‘Bekentenis van een filmmaker’ in Critisch Film Bulletin 12, no. 11 (November 1959): 83-84; ‘Conversation Piece’ in Films and Filming 5, no. 8 (May 1959): 31; ‘Dialogue’ in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 93 (March 1959): 24-26; ‘Dialog’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, (Ø 1678), pp. 247-249; (untitled) in ‘El septimo sello’, Cuadernos de Cine Club del Uruguay (Montevideo), 1961, pp. xv-xvii.
‘Jag vill vara med i leken’ [I want to be part of the game]. Röster i Radio-TV, no. 7, 1958, pp. 22, 53. In connection with his early TV work, Bergman writes a brief essay in which he states his ‘readiness to rush in on the arena and do somersaults’ [beredskap att rusa in på scenen och slå kullerbyttor] and hopes he will not be excluded from the TV medium in the future.
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Chapter II The Writer
1959 105.
‘Djävulens öga’ [The Devil’s Eye]. Film script. SFI Library Archives, Stockholm. Script II, subtitled ‘Komedi av Ingmar Bergman’ [Comedy by IB] and dated Rättvik, 28 August 1959, 191 pp. SFI also has a longer copy of Script II with some photo-technical notes and a location list. Script copy also among Bergman’s Fårö papers with some handwritten changes, as well as assistant director Lenn Hjortzberg’s location and shooting list.
106.
‘Kära Allers familjejournal’ [Dear Allers family journal]. Allers, no. 49 (6 December), 1959, p. 45. Letter to Allers in connection with magazine’s serializing of ‘Kvinnors väntan’ [Waiting women], beginning in no. 49, 1959. Bergman maintains that film and literature are two different matters, but hopes that Arne Sellermark’s adaptation of his film script for Allers’ readers will prove entertaining.
107.
Untitled editorial. Filmrutan 2, no. 1: 1. Critical comment about high entertainment tax on film. Throughout the 1950s when Swedish film production companies, some of which also owned movie house chains, were in financial straits, a lively debate eventually led to a redistribution of tax revenues and the establishment of SFI (Swedish Film Institute).
108.
‘Varje film är min sista film’ [Each film is my last]. Filmnyheter 14, no. 9-10 (19 May) 1959: 1-8. Also aired on SR, 1 January and 6 January 1960, and issued as a pamphlet by SF in Swedish, English, French, German, and Italian, n.d. This was originally a speech given at the Student Society at Copenhagen University on 14 March 1959 and printed in Danish film magazine Kosmorama no. 44, 1959, pp. 182-85. It was also serialized under Danish title ‘Stadier på filmens vej’ [Stages on Film’s Way] in the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken, 4 and 8 May 1959 (kronik page). Best known among Bergman’s essays on filmmaking, ‘Varje film är min sista film’ [Each Film Is My Last Film] is divided into three sections that might be subtitled: (1) the script, (2) the studio, and (3) professional ethics. The first section discusses the creative process from impressionistic vignette to completed film script; the second section deals with instruction of actors; and the last section explains Bergman’s three commandments: Thou Shalt Be Entertaining at All Times; Thou Shalt Obey Thy Artistic Conscience at All Times; and Thou Shalt Make Each Film as though It Were Thy Last. The last of IB’s three commandments was reprinted in the English, French, German, and Italian SF programs to ‘Ansiktet’ (The Magician/The Face), 1959. For additional translations of this essay, see: English:
‘My Three Most Powerfully Effective Commandments’, tr. by P.E. Burke and Lennart Svahn. Films and Filming 5, no. 10 (July 1959):8, 28. Also in Film Comment 6, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 9-13; and in Film World (India) 1965/66, pp. 145-47; and excerpted under the title ‘Bergman Tells How He Directs His Actors’ in Making Films in New York 4, no. 5 (October 1970):16, 32-34; and under the heading ‘Film and Creativity’ in American Cinematographer 53, no. 4 (April) 1972: pp. 427-31, 434;
94
List of Bergman’s Written Work French:
German:
Italian: Polish:
‘Chacun de mes films est le dernier’, tr. Louis Marcorelles. Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 100 (October 1959): 44-54; and in Cinématographie française no. 266 (1964), n.p., and in Cinéma 59, no. 41 (November- December 1959): 39-49. Reprinted as an introduction to French edition of Oeuvres (Ø 122); ‘Jeder Film ist mein letzter Film’, in Der Film, ed. Theodor Kotulla (Munich: R. Piper & Co., 1966), 2: 239-48; also published in German program to ‘Fängelse’ (Das Gefängnis). Die kleine Filmkunstreihe Hefte no. 22, 1961; ‘Ogni mio film e l’ultimo’ (Stockholm: Svenska Institutet, n.d.); ‘Każdi film jest moim filmem ostatnim’, in Ingmar Bergman. W opinii krytyki zagranicznej. Ed. by Donata Zielińska, Warsaw: Filmoteka Polska, 1987, pp. 130139.
1960 109.
‘Extract in Memory of Victor Sjöström.’ Sight and Sound 29, no. 2 (Spring) 1960: 98. Reprinted in Wild Strawberries (London: Lorrimer, 1970). Also published in Swedish in FIB no. 13 (25 March) 1960, p. 24. Bergman’s homage to Victor Sjöström, filmmaker and actor.
110.
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman. Translated from the Swedish by David Kushner and Lars Malmström; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960. 330 pp; New York: Garland, 1985. 384 pp; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. 380 pp. First publication of Bergman scripts in any language. Volume contains text to ‘Smiles of a Summer Night’, ‘The Seventh Seal’, ‘Wild Strawberries’, and ‘The Magician’. This volume was published in an Italian edition as 4 film di Ingmar Bergman, translated by Bruno Fonzi and Giacomo Oreglia. Turin: Giulio Einaudo, 1961, 310 pp.
Reviews Film Quarterly 14, no. 3 (Spring 1961): 61-62; Films and Filming 7, no. 5 (February 1961): 42; Le Soir, 20 April 1962; Manchester Guardian, 1 December 1961, Arts Section; National Review, 22 April 1961, pp. 257-8; New York Times, 21 February 1965, sec. 7, p. 43. Parool, 29 April 1961; Times Literary Supplement (London), 20 January 1961, p. 8. The NYT review listed above is written by Pauline Kael and pertains to the paperback release of Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman. Kael is very appreciative of Bergman as a writer: ‘Just on the basis of the printed page, Bergman is revealed to be a modern dramatist of considerable stature, a man whose theatrical “effectiveness” is comparable to that of Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee.’ Cf however Kael’s critical view of Bergman as a filmmaker (see Ø 1011).
111.
‘Förbön’ [Blessgiving]. Chaplin, no. 8 (November) 1960: 187. Reprinted as ‘Andlig sömngångare och falskspelare’ (Spiritual sleepwalker and counterfeiter). Chaplin 1988, no. 2-3, 76, 157. Translated into German as ‘Fürbitte’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 250-254.
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Chapter II The Writer ‘Prayer’ by Ingmar Bergman before his ‘execution’ in special Bergman issue of Swedish film journal Chaplin. The ‘execution’ was part of a hoax carried out by Bergman himself under the pseudonym of Ernest Riffe. See also (Ø 128).
112.
‘Kära skrämmande publik’ [Dear frightening public]. Undated program note issued by SF at premiere of Djävulens öga (The Devil’s Eye), 9 October 1960. Bergman engages in a dialogue with an imaginery viewer. He is not sure the public will look upon Djävulens öga/The Devil’s Eye as a comedy.
113.
‘A Page from My Diary.’ Program issued by SF in English and French (but not in Swedish) at the opening of Jungfrukällan/The Virgin Spring. SF, Stockholm, 2 pp. Translated together with ‘Why I Make Movies’ in The Emergence of Film Art, ed. by Lewis Jacobs (New York: Hopkinson & Blake, 1969), pp. 294-302. Also appeared in French as ‘Journal d’Ingmar Bergman’ in Cinéma 60, no. 51 (November-December 1960): Brief account of an episode when Bergman and his crew stop their work to watch some cranes flying above. IB realizes that he belongs in Sweden and decides to turn down an American offer.
1961 114.
‘Away with Improvization—This is Creation.’ Films and Filming 7, no. 12 (September 1961): 13. Expressing skepticism about improvization in filmmaking, IB discusses the Russian film ‘Lady with the Dog’, based on a Chekhov story. This article was originally published in Swedish in Chaplin, no. 18 (March 1961), 61-63, and is based on an interview with Bergman by Bengt Forslund: ‘Ingmar Bergman ser på film’ [IB looks at film]. See Interviews (Ø 734).
115.
Cuadernos de Cine Club del Uruguay. Montevideo: Cine Club, 116 pp. Spanish excerpts from scripts to Det sjunde inseglet/The Seventh Seal, and Jungfrakällan/The Virgin Spring, plus play text to Trämålning/Wood Painting.
116.
‘Lustgården’ [Garden of Eden; also listed in English as ‘Pleasure Garden’]. Film script. At SFI Library Archives, Stockholm, and Uppsala Film Studio Archive. Script II (148 pp) of film comedy written together with Erland Josephson under the joint pseudonym Buntel Ericsson, dated 15 August 1961. A film based on Script II was produced by SF and directed by Alf Kjellin. Script IV (dialogue list) in Swedish only, 28 pp.
117.
118.
4 film di Ingmar Bergman. Tr. by Bruno Fonzi and Giacomo Oreglia. Torino: Giulio Einaudo, 1961, 310 pp. See (Ø 110). ‘Nattvardsgästerna’ [The Communicants]. Film script. Two undated Script II, SFI and UFS Archives, 134/118 pp. Complete text with notes. Script IV, British version titled ‘The Communicants’. 22 pp. In English at SFI. SFI has costume sketches for the film by Mago.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, include a director’s copy marked L-136, dated 1961/ 62, with a biblical quote on the title page (Matthew 9:2); some handwritten notes and two maps of location and shooting schedule. ‘Nattvardsgästerna’ was published in Swedish in En filmtrilogi, 1963, pp. 69-118; reissued as PAN paperback in Filmberättelser 1, 1973. A serialized adaptation of ‘Nattvardsgästerna’ appeared in Allers 87, no. 6 through no. 10 (1963). Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light) has been published in numerous foreign editions: Czech: English: French: German:
Italian: Russian:
119.
‘Hosté vecere páne’, in Filmové povídky, 1982, pp. 151-91; ‘Winter Light’ in A Film Trilogy, 1965, pp. 62-101; ‘Les communiants’ in Une trilogie, 1963, pp. 112-98; ‘Licht im Winter’ in Wilde Erbeeren und andere Filmerzählungen, 1979 pp. 12974; also as ‘Die Abendmahlsgäste’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 255-303; ‘Luci d’inverno’ in Sei film, 1979, pp. 3-58; Excerpt in Gordonskaja (Ø 1178), pp. 191-239.
‘Såsom i en spegel’ [Through a glass darkly]. Film Script. SFI Library Archives. Script II, 148 typewritten pages, undated and marked ‘L-131: En film av Ingmar Bergman’ [L-131: A film by IB]. There are three copies; one copy is studio manager’s copy (Gustaf Roger) and has sketches and outline of studio and exterior takes. In this copy the script is still titled ‘Tapeten’ (The Wallpaper). This copy includes some minor changes in dialogue (not in IB’s handwriting) and some indicated cuts. No Script IV available, but a synopsis in English is included in SFI archival material to film. Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, include several manuscripts: a director’s copy with a quote from Corinthians 13:2 and a handwritten note by Bergman: ‘Tålamod. Jag måste ha tålamod. Jag måste stilla mig och ha tålamod. Tålamod. Förutsättningen är tålamod’ [Patience. I must have patience. I must calm down and have patience. Patience. Patience is the prerequisite]. Among the same papers is editor Ulla Ryghe’s copy with a map of locations and shootings. See Koskinen. I begynnelsen var ordet, (2002), p. 328. ‘Såsom i en spegel’ was printed in Swedish in En filmtrilogi, pp. 7-68. PAN paperback ed. in Filmberättelser 1. Excerpt in Chaplin, no. 23 (November 1961), pp. 199-209. The following are translated editions of Såsom i en spegel: Czech: English: French: German:
Italian: Persian: Spanish:
120.
‘Jako v zicadle’ in Filmové povídky, 1982, pp. 101-149; ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ in A Film Trilogy, 1965, pp. 15-61; ‘Comme dans un miroir’ in Une trilogie, 1963, pp. 3-111; ‘Wie in einem Spiegel’, Cinemathek 1 (Hamburg: Marion von Schröder, 1962), 85 pp., tr. by Thabita von Bonin, with postscript by Reinhold E. Thiel; also published in Wilde Erdbeeren und andere Filmerzählungen 1977, (Ø 167), pp. 73-128; ‘Como en un espejo’ in Sei film, 1979, pp. 59-123; Also in Scene di vita conjugale: L’immagine allo specchio; il posto delle fragole, 1979; Title page not transcribed, tr. Houshang Taheri (Teheran: Ibn Sina, 1967), n.p. ‘Como en un espejo’, Serie cine 12 (Barcelona: Coleccion Voz Imagen, 1965), pp. 7-27, tr. Feliu Formosa, with foreword by Julio Acerete.
‘Såsom i en spegel’. Program note issued by SF at opening of the film on 16 October 1961. Bergman claims that the performing artist is a priest and his performance a cult act. The artist is simply an instrument serving his public.
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Chapter II The Writer
1962 121.
‘Min pianist’. [My pianist]. Vecko Revyn, no. 11 (pp. 16-18, 79). Ingmar Bergman writes about his wife Käbi Laretei and the importance of music in his life.
122.
Oeuvres. Translated by C.G. Bjurström and Maurice Pons. With a foreword by René Micha. Paris: Laffont, 1962. 453 pp. French edition of ‘Sommarlek’, ‘Gycklarnas afton’ (La nuit des forains), ‘Sommarnattens leende’ (Sourires d’une nuit d’été), ‘Sjunde inseglet’ (Le septième sceau), ‘Smultronstället’ (Les fraises sauvages), and ‘Ansiktet’ (Le visage). This edition also includes Bergman’s 1959 essay ‘Varje film är min sista film’ (‘Chaque film est mon dernier’). (See Ø 108).
123.
‘Tystnaden’ [The silence]. Film Script. SFI Library Archives, Stockholm.
Script II, subtitled ‘Opus 26: En film av Ingmar Bergman’, dated 18 April 1962, 115 pp. Script IV (dialogue list) in English and French, 10 pp. Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, contain several scripts on ‘Tystnaden’, among them a bound script in grey felt, dated Djursholm, 18 April 1962; a typed script, same date, with some cuts; a possible director’s copy in black binding, same date, with shooting plan, set and cast lists and sequence division; a script titled Opus 26, part handwritten, part typed and with some sketches. See Koskinen. I begynnelsen var ordet, (2002), p. 329. ‘Tystnaden’ was published in Swedish in En filmtrilogi, 1973, pp. 119-65; issued in PAN paperback Filmberättelser 1, 1973 (see Ø 153). It was also serialized in Swedish magazine Allers no. 4 through no. 8 (1967). ‘The Silence’ has been published in numerous translated editions. Samples: Czech: English:
French:
German: Italian:
Polish:
‘Mlcení’, in Filmové povídky, 1982, pp. 193-230; ‘The Silence’ in A Film Trilogy, translated by Paul Britten Austin (London: Calder & Boyars, 1965, pp. 101-43. This edition contains the screenplays ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, ‘Winter Light’, and ‘The Silence’. Also issued in U. S. paperback, Orion Press, 1968; ‘Le silence’ in Une trilogie, translated by J. Robnard (Paris: Laffont, 1963), pp. 199-270; also in L’Avant-scène du cinéma, no. 37 (1964), pp. 1-50, and in a separate volume (Paris: Seghers, 1972); ‘Das Schweigen’, Cinemathek 12 (Hamburg: M. von Schröder, 1965), 61 pp; also in Wilde Erdbeeren und andere Filmerzählungen, 1977, pp. 175-220; ‘Il Silenzio’ in Ingmar Bergman by Tommaso Chiaretti (Rome: Lo Schermo, 1964), pp. 143-201; also in Sei film, 1979, pp. 127-76, and excerpted in Cineforum 4, no. 43 (February 1964): 133-65; Bergman Scenariusze, 1973 (Ø 151), pp. 235-87.
1963 124.
En filmtrilogi: Såsom i en spegel, Nattvardsgästerna, Tystnaden. Stockholm: Norstedt, 164 pp. Issued in PAN paperback as Filmberättelser 1 (1973). 168 pp. First Swedish edition of any Bergman screenplays. Contains Swedish text to Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Press Reception This being the first collection of Bergman film scripts published in Sweden (cf. Four Screenplays, (Ø 110), may have led reviewers to focus on two questions: Could the scripts revise the Swedish ambivalence towards Bergman’s filmmaking, and what was the relationship of the scripts to the finished films? Though Bergman’s real ‘literary’ breakthrough in Sweden was not to come until 1987 with the publication of Laterna magica, almost all reviewers of En filmtrilogi found positive ‘literary’ qualities in the published trilogy. At the same time they also pointed out that Bergman’s written dialogue needed his image-making to carry artistic weight. There was an element of surprise at discovering the asceticism of Bergman’s written language as compared to his early plays with their excessive emotionalism and occasional verbal bombasm. Bo Strömstedt’s review with the headline ‘En diktare’ [A Poet] and Sverker Göransson’s discussion of ‘Ingmar Bergmans kammarspel’ [IB’s chamber plays] are examples of a new recognition of Ingmar Bergman, not as a literary writer but a filmmaking poet. This was an important observation in that it paved the way for a greater sympathetic understanding of the film trilogy than had been the case at its initial screen exposure. Reviews (all of which also discuss Vilgot Sjöman’s book L 136, a diary from the shooting of Nattvardsgästerna) include: Axelson, Sun. ‘Tre liknelser’ [Three parables]. ST, 30 October 1963, p. 7; Cornell, Jonas. ‘En bild av Ingmar Bergman’ [A picture of Ingmar Bergman]. KvP, 17 October 1963, p. 3; Edström, Mauritz. ‘Filmdiktaren Ingmar Bergman’ [The auteur Ingmar Bergman]. DN, 22 November 1963, p. 4; Göransson, Sverker. ‘Ingmar Bergmans kammarspel’ [Ingmar Bergman’s chamber plays]. GHT, 17 October 1963, p. 3; Janzon, Åke. ‘Bullret kring Tystnaden’ [The noise around The Silence]. SvD, 21 October 1963, p. 3; Schildt, Jurgen. ‘Ingmar Bergman – skrivet och beskrivet’ [Ingmar Bergman – written and described]. AB, 16 December 1963, p. 3; Strömstedt, Bo. ‘En diktare’ [A poet]. Expr., 16 October 1963, p. 4. Translated editions of this volume include: Danish: English: French:
125.
En filmtrilogi. (Copenhagen: Det Schønbergske Forlag, 1966); A Film Trilogy. Trans. by Paul Britten Austin (London Calder & Boyars, 1965) and (New York: Grove Press, 1965, 1967). 143 pp. Une trilogie. Trans. by C.G. Bjurström (Paris: Laffont, 1963). 270 pp.
‘För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor’ [Not to speak about all these women]. With Erland Josephson. Script II, undated, SFI and USF Library Archives, ca 100 pp. Several copies of Script II are among Bergman’s Fårö papers, dated 1963: a handwritten director’s copy with a preliminary shooting schedule, dated 21 March 1963; a bound script with the name of the editor (Ulla Ryghe), and a separate dialogue list. For more detail, see Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, p. 129. Script II was adapted as a film novella in Allers 88, nos. 25 through 29, 1964.
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Chapter II The Writer 126.
‘Jag tvivlar på Filmhögskolan’ [I doubt the Film School]. Chaplin, no. 42 (December 1963): 304-5. Plea by Bergman for a Swedish cinemateque and for a film school that would give novice filmmakers more than one chance to make a film.
1964 127.
‘Bergman svarar på Ibsenkritik’ [B. responds to Ibsen Criticism], SvD, 4 December 1964, p. 16. Response to critique by Olof Lagercrantz of Bergman’s 1964 production of Hedda Gabler at Dramaten. See Theatre chapter VI (Ø 440), Reception. For Bergman’s full statement, see the program to Ulla Isaksson’s play ‘Våra torsdagar’ [Our Thursdays], which opened at Dramaten in early December 1964 (not directed by Bergman).
128.
Riffe, Ernest [Ingmar Bergman]. ‘Recueilli’. L’Express, 5 March 1964. Article in the form of a self-interview. Reprinted in L’Avant-Scène du Cinéma, no. 121 (January) 1971, p. 68, under title ‘Bergman parle des femmes’. (Cf. Ø 111).
129.
‘Seminarium om personinstruktion’ [Seminar about casting]. Unpublished notes from a seminar held by IB at Stockholm Film School, 18 September 1964, SFI Archives, Stcokholm, ca. 6 pp. Bergman begins the seminar by stating one basic premise: the professional actor is the alpha and omega of filmmaking. He bases his talk on three scenes from his own films: (1) Tystnaden/ The Silence (Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom and Birger Malmsten in bedroom sequence); (2) Såsom i en spegel/Through a Glass Darkly (Harriet Andersson and Lars Passgård in the attic); (3) Nattvardsgästerna/Winter Light (Ingrid Thulin’s long letter monologue).
130.
‘Trois textes pour Venice. Pour ne pas parler.’ Cahiers du cinéma, no.159 (October) 1964:12-13. One of three texts written by filmmakers in connection with Venice Film Festival. Bergman’s text gives his reason for declining an invitation to Venice Film Festival: ‘All artists except actors should be invisible. [...] The artist should not appear at Christmas celebrations or festivals.’
1965 131.
‘Den fria, skamlösa, oansvariga konsten – ett ormskinn, fyllt av myror’ [The free, shameless, irresponsible art – a snakeskin filled with ants]. Expr., 1 August 1965, p. 4. Also published as preface to Swedish edition of Persona. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1966. This essay was originally written as a speech for the Erasmus Award ceremonies in Amsterdam in Spring 1965, which Ingmar Bergman did not attend because of illness. The essay plays the same central role for Bergman’s views on filmmaking in the 1960s as did ‘What is Filmmaking?’ and ‘Each Film Is My Last’ (Ø 87, 108) in the 1950s. Ingmar Bergman denies that art can have
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List of Bergman’s Written Work any healing or therapeutic function. He sees the artist as a self-absorbed but curious explorer of the world within his reach. The essay, usually referred to as ‘Ormskinnet’ (The Snakeskin) has been published in: Dutch: English:
French:
German:
Italian: Spanish:
132.
‘Credo van een Filmer’ in Supplement. Algemeen Handelsblad, 7 October 1965, and as ‘Ingmar Bergman over kunst’. Baal + Frascati, no. 3 (April) 1986; ‘The Serpent’s Skin’ in Cahiers du cinéma in English 11 (September 1967): 24-29. Also appeared as ‘The Snakeskin’ in Film Comment 6, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 1415, and under the heading ‘Film and Creativity’ in American Cinematographer 53, no. 4 (April 1972): 378-79. Item is also included as a preface to American edition of ‘Persona’ and ‘Shame’ (New York: Grossman. 1972), pp. 11-15. Excerpt and summary in English, Sight and Sound, Autumn 1965, p. 176; ‘La peau du serpent’ in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 188 (March 1967), pp. 16-18. An excerpt titled ‘À propos de Persona’ appeared in Cahiers, no. 179 (June 1966), p. 10; in Arts, no. 27 (30 March 1966), pp. 16-17, under the title ‘Je suis un boulinique’; and in Cahiers du cinéma 453, p. 89, titled ‘L’art est pour moi sans importance’; Excerpt appeared in Kurt Habernoll’s review article on ‘Persona’ in Abend, 29 December 1966. Also translated in full as ‘Die freie schamlose verantwortungslose Kunst – eine Schlangenhaut voller Ameisen’. Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 375-380; ‘La priogione della mia solitudine’ in Cineforum 7, no. 61 (January 1967): 19-29; ‘La piel de serpiente’ in Filmoteca, no. 16 (1972-73), pp. 6-8.
‘Kinematografi’ Film Script for Persona, dated Ornö 17 June 1965. Two copies of typewritten ‘Script II’ titled ‘Kinematografi’ at SFI and one copy at USF Archives. 89 pp. One copy at SFI is copy left by Bergman to be typed up as final shooting script. ‘Kinematografi’ has a prefatory note by Bergman that is not included in published (1966) version of Persona, which instead includes ‘Ormskinnet’ (Ø 131). There are some notable differences between Script II and the final film. In the script the famous prologue consists of only a short film strip with rapidly shifting images of nature (clouds, trees, moon landscape), followed by atmospheric sounds of words. Nurse Alma’s face emerges, followed by the main ‘story’. Unlike the film version, there is no boy and no hospital morgue where he wakes up, and no doubling of Alma’s and Elisabeth’s face. Nor is there any reference later on in the script that the film breaks during Alma’s and Elisabeth’s confrontation, though there is a meta-filmic insert just before Alma and Elisabeth move to the doctor’s summer house (scene 13). Script has some additional dialogue, most notably a fairly long passage in which Elisabeth Vogler talks about her happy and hermetically close relationship to her husband. The book version of Persona was published in Sweden in 1966 (Stockholm: Norstedt), 94 pp. Reprinted as Norstedt/Pan paperback in Filmberättelser 2, 1973, pp. 5-46.
Reception (of Persona as book) Reviewers were as intrigued by Bergman’s preface (‘Ormskinnet/The Snakeskin’) as by the script (which some referred to as a novel). Focus was on Bergman’s view of art as disguise (förställning) and life as role-playing. One critic (Ericsson) thought Persona (the book) covered up the fact that Bergman, as a director, always gave the impression of being greater than the sum of his actors, a weakness according to the reviewer that revealed Bergman’s inability to be
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Chapter II The Writer affected by his instruments; his actors merely confirmed his already shaped vision, formed by his personal experience and feelings.
Reviews Ericsson, Göran O. ‘Förkonstlingen och tystnaden’ [Artificiality and silence]. ST, 18 October 1966, p. 5; Kruskopt, Erik. ‘Tystnaden ingen utväg’ [Silence no way out]. Hufvudstadsbladet, 27 October 1966, p. 7; Leiser, Erwin. ‘Das Schweigen des Künstlers’. Die Weltwoche, 9 December 1966. Perlström, Åke. ‘Den åldrande Ingmar Bergman’ [The aging IB]. GP, 18 October 1966, p. 2; Wejbro, Folke. ‘Ingmar Bergmans “Persona” i bokform’. Gefle Dagblad, 19 October 1966, p. 6. The script has also appeared in numerous foreign-language editions, such as: Danish: English: French:
German: Italian: Polish: Russian:
Persona, tr. Claes Lembourn (Copenhagen: Det schönbergske, 1967), 82 pp. (includes ‘Snakeskin’ essay); ‘Persona’ in Persona and Shame, 1971, pp. 20-101 (includes ‘Snakeskin’ essay, pp. 11-15); ‘Persona’ in L’Avant scène du cinéma, no. 85 (October 1968), 52 pp. (dialogue only); complete script to Persona in French printed in ‘Cris et chuchotements’ suivi de ‘Persona’ et ‘Le Lien’ (Ø 169), 1979, pp. 64-132; ‘Persona’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift-Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 304-342; In Sei film (Ø 173), 1979, pp. 267-310; ‘Persona’ in Bergman scenarieusze (Ø 151), 1973, pp. 288-321; Iskusstvo kino, no. 8 (1991): 133-49.
1966 133.
‘Vargtimmen’ [Hour of the wolf]. Film script.
Script II, subtitled ‘L-165’. En film av Ingmar Bergman, dated Djursholm, August 1964 and April 1966, 89 pp. Also English copy, 62 pp. Script IV (dialogue lists) in English, 22 pp. SFI and USF Archives. One Swedish Script II copy, used as shooting script, has additions referring to ‘the marsh sequence’ (last sequence, followed by final narrative vignette with Liv Ullmann). It replaces pp. 79-87 in other copies of Script II and consists of the grotesque voice of ‘The Mother’ who abuses Johan, surrounded by various bird figures. This addition is retained in published version of the script, as well as in English Script II copy, pp. 59-60. Vargtimmen was published in Swedish in Filmberättelser 2, 1973: 49-85; and in English in Four Stories of Ingmar Bergman, 1976, pp. 97-168. It appeared as Wolfsstunde in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift-Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 340-374.
1967 134.
‘Falskspelet’ [The fraud]. Allers, nos. 46-50, 1967, various pagination. A narrative film script edited for Allers by Arne Sellermark. Setting is in a film studio. Plot revolves around a middle-aged couple – an actor and his wife (a dancer) – whose marriage is breaking up. In an introductory note, Bergman explains that the script was written after the
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List of Bergman’s Written Work making of ‘Sommarnattens leende’ (1955), which was such an ordeal that Bergman tabled the thought of filming ‘Falskspelet’ (see Allers, no. 46, p. 29). A 90-page unpublished script with same title is among Bergman’s private Fårö papers, now deposited at SFI.
135.
A Film Trilogy. Tr. by Paul Britten Austin. London: Calder & Boyars, 1967. 147 pp. Contains translation of screenplays to Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence. Also issued in U.S. paperback by Orion Publishers, 1968.
136.
‘Skammen’ [The Shame]. Film script. Script II in Swedish, titled ‘Skammens drömmar’ [Dreams of Shame], dated Grindstugan, 21 May 1967, 123 pp. Two copies in English, 128 pp. and 114 pp., apparently translated at different times; variance at length is due to typescript and differences in English usage. One copy has no translator listed; the other (114 pp.) lists the name of Alan Tapsell. Script II ‘Skammen’ was published in Filmberättelser 2, 1973: 87-140. It has appeared in the following translations: English: German:
‘Shame’ in Persona and Shame, 1971 pp. 105-91; ‘Die Schande’ in Wilde Erdbeeren und andere Filmerzählungen, 1977, pp. 221-72.
Script IV (dialogue list) in Swedish, 34 pp., SFI Archives, Stockholm. Script IV was published in Italian in Cineforum 9, no. 83 (March): 177-83. ‘Skammen’s’ motto, listed in Script II and in some published editions, is a quote from the German poet Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813): ‘Things Vanish: Become but Dreams.’
1968 137.
‘Fantastic is the Word.’ Film World, no. 3, pp. 4-5. Account of genesis of Shame. Story was originally conceived as a civil war, with same setting as in The Silence. Title of film refers to humiliation and degradation of human life in war.
138.
‘En passion’ [A passion]. Film script.
Script I, titled ‘En passion’, dated 11 August 1968, 56 pp. Script II, titled ‘Annandreas: Förslag till scener ur ett äktenskap’. [Annandreas: Suggestions for scenes from a marriage], dated 10 May 1968, 164 pp. Script IV (dialogue list) in English, 31 pp. SFI, Stockholm. ‘En passion’ was published in Filmberättelser 2, 1973, pp. 141-80. The text was based on Script I. Translations include the following language publications: English: French:
139.
‘The Passion of Anna’ in Four Stories by Ingmar Bergman, 1976 pp. 132-68; ‘Une passion’ in L’Àvant-scène du cinéma, no. 109, 1970, 54 pp.
‘Riten’ [The rite]. TV Film script. Script II, SR/TV Archives, Stockholm, ca. 119 pp. Published in Swedish in Filmberättelser 3, 1973: 7-55;
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Chapter II The Writer Translations Danish: German: Italian:
140.
‘Ritus’ in 4 Filmmanuskripter, 1975, (Ø 165), pp. 5-62. ‘Der Ritus’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift-Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, (Ø 1678), pp. 382-427. ‘Il rito’ in Sei film, 1979, (Ø 173), pp. 177-228.
‘Schizofren intervju med nervös regissör’ [Schizophrenic interview with nervous director]. Chaplin, no. 84 (October) 1968: 274. First printed in Expr., 25 September 1968, p. 12, under the heading ‘Utför med Ingmar Bergman’ [IB downhill]. ‘Interview’ was printed in English and French in Film in Sweden no. 3, 1968, pp. 1-9 (with pictures from ‘Skammen’) and reprinted in English in Take One 2, no. 3 (1969): 11, and in Making Films in New York 4, no. 3 (June) 1970: 12. It also appeared in Spanish in Nuova Film (Montevideo), no. 4 (Winter/Autumn) 1969: 35-36, and in German under the title ‘Engeln und Dämonen’ in Argus (Munich), 7 November 1968, n.p. Under his old pseudonym, Ernest Riffe, Bergman prints a fictitious interview with himself in which he comments sarcastically on the tendency among critics to define his political, religious, and moral values.
1969 141.
‘Fårö-dokument 69’. TV Film script. Script IV, in English at SFI, 19 pp. This is identical with text in film. Script IV, ‘Subtitles’ in English, 66 pp. Several copies at SFI.
142.
‘Reservatet’ [The Sanctuary]. Unpublished typescript, subtitled ‘En banalitetens tragikomedi’ [A tragi-comedy of banality], SR/TV2 Archives, Stockholm. Typed manuscript in English titled ‘The Lie’ and translated by Paul Britten Austen is available at SFI Archives, Stockholm, ca. 40 pp. ‘Reservatet’ was published in Filmberättelser 3, 1973: 58-99. It has appeared in the following translated volumes: Danish: German:
‘Reservatet’ in 4 Filmmanuskripter, 1975, pp. 61-105. ‘Das Reservat’ in Wilde Erdbeeren und andere Filmerzählungen, 1979, pp. 273316.
‘Reservatet’ was planned as a Eurovision play, to be produced in a number of different national TV versions in Europe. Swedish TV version was directed by Jan Molander and televised on 28 October 1970 and retransmitted on 9 April 1971. British version, directed by Alan Bridges, was aired on BBC 1 on 29 October 1970. In the U.S. ‘The Lie’ was produced on 24 April 1973 by CBS Playhouse and directed by Alex Segal. Cf Media Chapter V (Ø 324).
143.
‘Skrämd och illamående bevittnar jag TV-jakten’ [Horrified and sick I witness the TV witch-hunt]. Expr., 8 June 1969, p. 4. Open letter from Ingmar Bergman to SR/TV Corporation, stating his indignation at methods used by a team of news reporters to track down a local politician and expose him to TV cameras in a nervous and unprepared state.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work 144.
‘Svenstedt och Korridoren’ [Svenstedt and The Corridor]. Expr., 11 October 1969, p. 4. Open letter from Ingmar Bergman, supporting removal of a member in a film jury (film critic C.H. Svenstedt), because he had collaborated on a script for one of the films to be judged. Ingmar Bergman calls Svenstedt ‘a clown and a tail-wagger. [...] Take him away. He stinks’. [en clown och svansviftare. [...] Ta bort honom. Han stinker.]
1970 145.
‘Beröringen’ [The Touch]. Film script. Script I, dated September-October 1970, SFI Archives, Stockholm, 86 pp., plus 20-page location list. This script was the basis of the version printed in Filmberättelser 3 (Stockholm: PAN/Norstedt, 1973), pp. 103-149. Swedish published manuscript includes a preface by Ingmar Bergman in which he cautions the reader that a script is a half-baked piece of writing, ‘a pale and tentative mirror image’ [en blek och osäker spegelbild] of the finished film. The text to ‘Beröringen’ [The Touch] has appeared in a number of translated editions: Danish: English: French:
‘Berøringen’ in 4 Filmmanuskripter, 1975, pp. 107-56; ‘The Touch’ in Four Stories of Ingmar Bergman, 1976, pp. 7-56; ‘Le lien’ in ‘Cris et chuchotements’ suivi de ‘Persona’ et de ‘Le lien’, 1979, pp. 133203.
1971 146.
‘Min mors dagböcker avslöjar vem hon var’ [My mother’s diaries reveal who she was]. Husmodern, no. 39, 1971, pp. 18-19, 65, 67. Bergman talks about his discovery of his mother’s diaries after her death and how a more complex portrait of her began to take shape in his mind. See also Linton (Ø 1526), and Commentary to ‘Viskningar och rop’ in Filmography (entry Ø 255).
147.
‘Persona’ and ‘Shame’. Trans. by Keith Bradfield. (London: Calder & Boyars; New York: Grossman, 1971), 191 pp.
148.
‘Viskningar och rop’ [Whispers and Cries]. Film script.
Script I, subtitled ‘En film av Ingmar Bergman’, dated 3 June 1971, 69 pp. This is the script closest to the film version and contains dialogue. Script II, 31 pp., has IB’s introductory remarks to his crew and a presentation of the characters. SFI has English and French translations of Script II. Excerpt of Script II was published in Chaplin, no. 114 (1972), pp. 88-89, as part of an article by L.-O. Löthwall on ‘Cries and Whispers’. Same text appeared in French translation in Cinéma 72, no. 171 (December 1972), pp. 25-27. Most complete published French version of ‘Viskningar och rop’ can be found in L’Avant-scène du cinéma, no. 142 (December 1973), pp. 3-55, which contains Bergman’s notes to his actors, his literary script, and the dialogue script. Swedish publication of script appears in Filmberättelser 3, 1973: 153-71.
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Chapter II The Writer The following translated editions of ‘Viskningar och rop’ are all based on Script II: Danish: English: French:
German: Italian: Polish:
4 filmmanuskripter, 1975, pp. 159-95; New Yorker, 21 October 1972, pp. 38, 46. Also in Four Stories by Ingmar Bergman, 1976: 57-94; ‘Cris et chuchotements’, L’Àvant-Scène du Cinéma. no. 142 (December 1973): 55 pp., and in volume titled ‘Cris et chuchotements’ suivi de ‘Persona’ et de ‘Le lien’, 1979, pp. 3-63 (Ø 169). Also as ‘Une lettre de B à ses collaborateurs de Cris et chuchotements’, Cinéma 72, no. 171 (December 1972): 25-27, and in Ecran 73, no. 15 (May 1973): 11-12; ‘Schrei und Flüstern’ in Wilde Erdbeeren und andere Filmerzählungen, 1977, (Ø 167), pp. 363-400; ‘Sussuri e grida’ in Sei film, 1979, pp. 229-65; ‘Szepty i krzyki’ in Bergman Scenarieusze, 1977, (Ø 164), pp. 323-55.
1972 149.
‘En själslig angelägenhet’ [A Matter of the Soul], dated Fårö, 11 August 1972. Copyright 1990. Published in English translation by Eivor Martinus in New Swedish Plays, ed. by Gunilla M. Anderman. (Norwich: Norvik Press), 1992, pp. 33-64 and in French as Une affaire d’âme (see (Ø 199). The play was later included in a volume of three pieces, titled Föreställningar (Ø 199), 2000. ‘En själslig angelägenhet’ is a monologue (broadcast in 1990) by a woman on the verge of a breakdown who, having plunged a knife in her doctor’s throat, speaks in many different voices about the emotional control she has experienced with her father and her lover.
150.
‘Scener ur ett äktenskap’ [Scenes from a Marriage]. TV script. Script II subtitled ‘Sex dialoger för televisionen av Ingmar Bergman’ [Six dialogues for television by IB], dated June 1972, SFI Archives, Stockholm, 230 pp., plus a 4-page preface. Published editions of ‘Scener ur ett äktenskap’ follow original Script II format, i.e., Swedish television format, except that Ingmar Bergman added a preface to the printed script, in which he addressed his prospective reader. For a commentary, see introduction to this chapter. Swedish script was published as Scener ur ett äktenskap (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1973), 196 pp. Translated editions include the following: Czech: Danish: Dutch: English: Estonian: French: Georgian: German:
‘Scény z manzelského zivota’, Fílmove povídky, tr. Z. Cerník, D. Hortlová, J. Osvald. (Prague: Odéon, 1982), pp. 231-332; Scener fra et aegteskab, tr. Claus Lembourn (Copenhagen: Det Schønbergske, 1974), 172 pp. Scenes uit een huwelijk, tr. Cora Polet. (Utrecht: Bruna, 1975), 144 pp; Scenes from a Marriage, tr. Alan Blair (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 199 pp; Stseenid hest abielust, tr. T. Saluläär. (Tallinn: Peridoodika, 1978), 138 pp; Scènes de la vie conjugale, tr. C.G. Bjurström and L. Albertini (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 202 pp, and 1992, 216 pp.; Scvenebi cvolkumrul cvxovrebidpn. (Tblisi: Xeloveba, 1992), 378 pp.; Szenen einer Ehe, tr. Tabitha von Bonin. (Hamburg: M. von Schröder, 1974), 204 pp; (Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1976, and 1983), 378 pp.;
106
List of Bergman’s Written Work Hungarian: Italian:
Japanese: Norwegian: Polish: Portuguese: Russian: Spanish:
Jelenetek egy hça zassfagbil. (Budapest: Europa könyvhiadi, 1977, 1987, and 1996); Scene di vita coniguale, tr. P. Monaci. (Torino: Einaudi, 1974), 191 pp. Also in Scene di vita conjugale; L’immagine allo specchio; il posto delle fragole (Ø 174), 1979; Aru kekkon no feukei, tr. K. Kazuo. (Tokyo: Herarudo-entëapuraizu, 1981), 246 pp.; Scener fra et ekteskap, tr. C.F. Prytz. (Oslo: Gyldendahl, 1974), 195 pp.; Sceny z życia małżénskiego, tr. Maria Olszańska and Karol Sawicki. (Poznań: Wydawictwo Poznańiskie, 1975), 161 pp.; Cenas da vida conjugal, tr. J. Bernardes. (Rio de Janeiro: Nirdica, 1974), 155 pp. and as Cenas de um casamento sueco (Lisboa: Sécula, 1975), 190 pp.; Sceny iz supruzjeskoj zjizni. (Moscow: Progress, 1979), 202 pp.; Escenas de un matrimonio, tr. J.P. Vega. (Barcelona: Fernando Torres, 1975), 191 pp.
1973 151.
Bergman. Scenariusze. (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa artystyczne i filmowe, 1973), 288 pp. Scripts to ‘Wieczir kuylarzy’ [Gycklarnas afton]; ‘Siodma pieczęć’ [Sjunde inseglet]; ‘Tam, geziearosna poziomli’ [Wild Strawberries]; ‘Milczenie’ [Tystnaden]; ‘Persona’.
152.
‘Det var bara roligt’ [It was nothing but fun], Röster i Radio-TV, no. 15 (1973), pp 4-6; reprinted in part in Röster i Radio-TV, no. 35 (1974), p. 16. Article appeared in Danish (‘Et par måneders arbejd men et livs erfaring’), Politiken, 13 May 1973, p. 42. Bergman writes about the pleasure of making his first TV series, ‘Scener ur ett äktenskap’.
153.
Filmberättelser [Film stories], Vols. 1-3. Stockholm: PAN/Norstedt, 1973. Paperback editions of the following Bergman scripts in Swedish: Vol 1, Såsom i en spegel, Nattvardsgästerna, Tystnaden, 167 pp.; Vol 2, Persona, Vargtimmen, Skammen, En passion, 180 pp.; Vol 3, Riten, Reservatet, Beröringen, Viskningar och rop, 187 pp. These texts, which contain not only the descriptions and dialogue of the films but also Bergman’s comments, are virtually unillustrated, possibly in an effort to present them as autonomous texts and allow the reader to visualize the text for himself. In line with this, the texts contain no production information about the films.
Reception Critics remarked on Bergman’s development from a tentative literary writer in the 1940s to greater artistic self-assurance. What surprised the reviewers in particular was how readerfriendly Bergman’s published scripts were with a simple syntax and word choice, the implication being that his films based on these scripts had been viewed as difficult and complex. This in turn confirmed that the Swedish response to Bergman’s filmmaking was not very different from the gloom-and-doom image of him among many foreign viewers.
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Chapter II The Writer Reviews Franzén, Lars-Olof. ‘Berättelser som förklarar’ [Stories that explain]. DN, 3 December 1973, p. 4; Ohlsson, Joel. ‘Läsa filmmanus torr upplevelse’ [Reading film manuscripts a dry experience]. Arb, 23 April 1974, p. 2; Svensson, Lars. ‘Bergman i bokform’ [B in book form]. Helsingborgs Dagblad, 23 November 1973, p. 21; Tunbäck-Hanson, Monika. ‘Bergmans filmer i bokform’. GP, 8 December 1973, p. 2.
154.
Kommentar till serie ö. [Commentary to Ö series]. SFI, Stockholm, 1973. 21 pp. In connection with a retrospective showing of his films (3 September to 1 October 1973) at SFI Cinematheque in Stockholm, Bergman offered brief comments on nine of his films, from Kris to The Devil’s Eye.
155.
Mandrup-Nielsen, Mads. ‘Jag skulle vilja slå ihjäl er’ [I’d like to kill you]. Röster i Radio/TV, no. 15 (7-13 April 1973], p. 6. Mads Mandrup-Nielsen is introduced as a 28-year-old film scholar who has just started a new company named Dansk Sandheds AS [Danish Truth, Inc.], which is a consortium of progressive, politically conscious younger critics. The so-called interview consists of a long analysis of Scenes from a Marriage. Bergman’s response consists of three no’s and an expressed desire to kill the critic. One can assume that this interview is a hoax in the same spirit as his earlier Ernest Riffe essays (Ø 111, 128, 140).
156.
Strindberg. A Dream Play, Adapted by Ingmar Bergman. (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1973). 58 pp. Bergman’s adaptation of Strindberg’s play for his 1970 Dramaten production, translated by Michael Meyer.
157.
‘Trollflöjten’ [The Magic Flute]. TV Film script. SFI Archive. Script II, 111 pp., dated November 1973. With additional 28 pp. of Bergman’s commentaries that range from a presentation of Schikaneder’s old Vienna theatre, where the original ‘Magic Flute’ was performed, to an analysis of the characters and an explanation of the changes made by Bergman. For anyone interested in his filmatization of Mozart’s opera, these commentaries are very valuable source material. They appeared in a press folder presentation of the film in French as ‘Comment j’ai découvert La Flute enchantée’, n.d. Script I, 175 pp., dated 1974, is a music score to ‘Trollflöjten’ (The Magic Flute) referred to as ‘the Ingmar Bergman version’. SFI Archive material for ‘Trollflöjten’ also includes a typed sheet outlining the production schedule.
158.
‘Un film pour vous divertir.’ Cinéma Québec 3, no. 1 (September) 1973: pp. 13-15. Reprint of Bergman’s statements during press conference at Cannes Film Festival in 1973 when ‘Cries and Whispers’ was shown out of competition.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work
1974 159.
‘Ansikte mot ansikte’ [Face to face]. Film script. Script II, dated 7 December 1974, SFI Archives, Stockholm. Two copies are available: one 148 pp., the other 182 pp. Longer script reverses the opening sequences in the film but is otherwise identical with film version. Shorter script is the one used as basis for printed editions of Script II. Both versions include Bergman’s address to his fellow workers, which is also printed in numerous foreign editions of the screenplay. Ansikte mot ansikte was published in Swedish in 1975 (Stockholm: PAN/Norstedt), 106 pp.
Translations include the following Bulgarian: Danish: Dutch: English:
French: German: Norwegian: Polish: Spanish:
Lice sieíy’l lice. tr. V. Ganyeva. (Sofia: Narodna kultura, 1984), 131 pp.; Ansigt til ansigt. tr. C. Maaløe. (Copenhagen: Schønberg, 1976), 89 pp.; Van aangezicht tot aangezicht. tr. R. Törnqvist-Verschuur. (Utrecht: Bruna, 1976), 98 pp.; Face to Face, tr. Alan Blair. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 119 pp., and (London: Marion Boyars, 1976), 116 pp.; also excerpted in Mademoiselle, no. 8 (April 1976), pp. 189-99; Face à face, tr. C.G. Bjurström and L. Albertini. (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 130 pp.; Von Angesicht zu Angesicht, tr. Hans-Joachim Maass. (Hamburg: M. von Schröder, 1976), 172 pp; (München: Heyne, 1978), 220 pp.; Ansikt mot ansikt, tr. G. Nyqvist. (Oslo: Aschehough, 1976), 80 pp.; Twarza w twarz, tr. by Z. Łanofski (Warszawa: no publisher listed), 1978), 110 pp.; Cara a cara, tr. A. Valiente, Angel Comas Puente and Enrico Ripoll-Freixes (Barcelona: Ayma S.A. Editora, 1977), 147 pp.
1975 160.
4 filmmanuskripter Trans. by C. Maalboe. (Copenhagen: Det Schönberske 1975), 195 pp. Danish editions of The Ritual, The Lie (Reservatet), The Touch, and Cries and Whispers.
1976 161.
Four Stories of Ingmar Bergman. Trans. by Alan Blair. (London: M. Boyars; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday), 168 pp. Reissued as Anchor paperback, 1977. Scripts to The Touch, Cries and Whispers, Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna.
162.
‘Jeder Mensch hat Träume, Wünsche, Bedürfnisse.’ Goethepreis 1976: Ingmar Bergman. (Frankfurt a.M.: Dezernat Kultur und Freizeit), 30 pp. (including all speeches at the ceremony). Bergman’s speech (ca. 2 pp.) delivered at Goethe Award ceremonies in Frankfurt an Main, West Germany, 28 August 1976. Reprinted under the title ‘Der wahre Künstler spricht mit seinem
109
Chapter II The Writer Herzen’ in Filmkunst 74 (1976): 1-3. Also appears under entry title in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift-Ton, ed by Renate Bleibtreu, (2002), pp. 464-468. Bergman discusses briefly the humanistic, psychological, and professional bases of artistic activity.
163.
‘Nu lämnar jag Sverige’ [Now I leave Sweden]. Expr., 22 April, pp. 4-5. In an open letter to the Stockholm tabloid Expr., Ingmar Bergman announces his immediate intention of leaving Sweden in the aftermath of his arrest by tax authorities earlier in the year (see Ø 1272). He feels compelled to depart because his sense of security at work has been shattered, and states that he will leave his Swedish assets behind, dissolve his film company, sell his property, and maybe write a farce about the whole affair. He ends his letter with a quote from Strindberg: ‘Look out, you devil, so I don’t put you in my next play!’ [Se upp din djävel så du inte hamnar i min nästa pjäs!]. A résumé in English of this letter appeared in Screen International, 8 May 1976, p. 23.
1977 164.
Ingmar Bergman Scenariusze [Ingmar Bergman screenplays]. Trans. by A. Asłanowicz. (Warsaw: Wydawnitctwa Artystyczne i Filmowe), 355 pp. Polish edition of Gycklarnas afton, Sjunde inseglet, Smultronstället, Tystnaden, Persona, and Viskningar och rop (cf. Ø 151), 1973.
165.
‘Ormens ägg’ [The Serpent’s Egg]. Film script. Script IV in English available at SFI. Undated. Published in Swedish in paperback. (Stockholm: PAN/Norstedt, 1977). 129 pp. This text is the basis of following translations: Czech: Dutch: English: French: German:
Italian: Polish: Portugese: Spanish:
166.
‘Hadí vejce’, in Fílmove povídky, 1982, pp. 333-99. Het slangeei. (Utrecht: Bruna, 1980), 315 pp.; The Serpent’s Egg, tr. Alan Blair (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 150 pp. Paperback ed. Bantam Books, 1978; L’Oeuf du serpent, tr. C.G. Bjurström and L. Albertini (Paris: Gallimard, 1978, and 1997), 137 pp. Das Schlangenei, tr. Heiner Gimmler (Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe Verlag, 1977), 172 pp. (German script excerpt was also published in Fern und Fernsehen VIII, no. 3 (March) 1988: pp. 44-49); L’uvo del serpente, tr. R. Pavese. (Torino: Einaudi), 1980), 138 pp.; Jajo weza, tr. by Z. Łanofski. (Warsaw: Dialog, no. 4, 1978; (Czytelnik, 1980); O ovo da serpente, tr. P. Johns (Rio de Janeiro, 1978), 111 pp.; El huevo de la serpiente, tr. L. Långström (Barcelona: Aymae, 1977). 152 pp.
‘Den förstenade prinsen’ [The Petrified Prince]. Unpublished script. Currently at SFI Bergman archive but also circulating in U.S. in typescript in an English translation by Alan Blair. ‘Den förstenade prinsen’ was planned as Bergman’s contribution to a projected Fellini and Bergman film on the theme of love, produced by Warners. See (Ø 1174).
110
List of Bergman’s Written Work ‘The Petrified Prince’ is a ‘pornographic’ fantasy, a grotesque variation of ‘The Magic Flute’. It tells the story of a mute and paralyzed prince named Samson, who is enslaved by his queen mother, an aggressive whore who repeatedly rapes her son. Samson makes an unsuccessful attempt to murder his mother but is threatened by a newly arrived father figure who tries to castrate him. Samson runs away with a young mother/whore to establish his own neurotic family.
167.
Wilde Erdbeeren und andere Filmerzählungen. Trans. by Anne Storm. (Munich: Heine, 1977, 1980), 400 pp.; (Munich: Hanser, 1980), 444 pp. German edition of Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence, Shame, The Touch, Cries and Whispers, and The Lie.
1978 168.
‘Höstsonat’ [Autumn Sonata]. Film script Script IV in Swedish at SFI library. There are several manuscripts in Bergman’s Fårö papers. See Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet, p. 332. The script was published in Swedish as Höstsonaten by Norstedt, 1978, and as PAN paperback edition, 1980. 98 pp. This text is the basis of following translations: Bulgarian:
Danish: Dutch: English: French: German: Norwegian: Polish: Portuguese: Russian:
Esenna sonata, tr. V. Ganyeva. (Sofia: Narodna kultura, 1981), 73 pp. Also in Kino Izkustvo XXXIV, no. 5 (May) 1979: 83-112, and in Film a Doba XXIV, no. 12 (December) 1978: 668-679; Høstsonaten, tr. Asta Hoff-Jörgensen. (Copenhagen: Schönbergske, 1979), 95 pp.; Herftsonate, tr. by Jan Ogærts. (Utrecht: Bruna, 1979), 86 pp.; Autumn Sonata, tr. Alan Blair. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 84 pp.; Sonate d’autonne, tr. C.G. Bjurström and L. Albertini. (Paris: Gallimard, 1978, and 1997), 73 pp.; Herbstsonate, tr. H. Gimmler. (Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe), 95 pp; and (Munich: Heyne, 1980), 111 pp.; Høstsonaten, tr. A. Amlie. (Oslo: Cappelen, 1978), 101 pp.; Sonata jesienna, tr. by Z. Łanowski. (Warsaw, 1980); Sonata do Outtono, tr. Bernardes. (Rio de Janeiro: Nordica, no date), 127 pp.; Osennjaja sonata. Kinopovesti. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1988), 253 pp.
1979 169.
‘Cris et chuchotements’, suivi de ‘Persona’ et de ‘Le Lien.’ Tr. by J. Robnard and C. de Seynes. (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 203 pp and 1994, 231 pp. French editions of Cries and Whispers, Persona, and The Touch.
170.
‘Fanny och Alexander’ [Fanny and Alexander]. Film script. Script I, dated Fårö, 8 July 1979. This was the basis of published Swedish edition from 1982 (Stockholm: Norstedt), 224 pp.
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Chapter II The Writer Among translations of this script are the following: Czech: Dutch: English: Estonian: French: German:
Hungarian: Italian: Norwegian: Polish: Portugese:
Fanny a Alexander, tr. Z. Cerncik. (Praha: Mladça fronta, 1988), 166 pp.; Fanny en Alexander, tr. R. Törnqvist-Verschuur. (Amsterdam: Manteau, 1984), 199 pp.; Fanny and Alexander, tr. Alan Blair. (New York: Pantheon, 1982), 216 pp, and (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 216 pp.; Fanny ja Alexander, tr. A. Aaloe. (Tallinn: Periodiodika, 1991), 142 pp.; Fanny et Alexandre, tr. C.G. Bjurström and L. Albertini. (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 237 pp.; Fanny und Alexander: Roman im sieben Bildern, tr. Hans-Joachim Maass. (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1982), 235 pp., and (Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1984), 216 pp.; Fanny és Alexander, tr. C.K. Lazli. (Budapest: Çarçadia, 1985), 226 pp.; Fanny e Alexander, tr. P. Muscarello, R. Pavese. (Milano: Ubulibri, 1987), 145 pp.; Fanny og Alexander, tr. G. Malmström. (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1983), 203 pp.; Fanny i Aleksander, (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1987), 294 pp.; Fanny e Alexandre, tr. J. Bernardes. (Rio de Janeiro: Nordica, 1985), 269 pp.
Hanif Kureishi in New Statesman & Society, July 7, 1989, reviewed the book version of Fanny and Alexander, concluding that the printed version was ‘Bergman minus the magic’.
171.
‘Fårö-dokument 79’. TV film script. Script IV. Dialogue list, 32 pp. plus 5 pp. of additional text that is also inserted in the far left column of the script page. SFI also has a cut version of the script, which was used for an international distribution copy of the dialogue. SFI Archive has several Script IV copies in English (38, 39, and 47 pp.) and one in Spanish: Lista de dialogos. Documento de Fårö 1979, 29 pp.
172.
‘Jag trivs nästan varje dag’ [I like it almost every day]. Expr., 31 March 1979, p. 4. Letter from Ingmar Bergman to Stockholm evening paper Expr. The paper had published an article on Ingmar Bergman by Björn Nilsson, 3 February 1979, p. 4, asking him to return home after what was termed a highly critical reception of his theatre productions in Munich by West German press. Bergman’s letter depicts the theatre life in Munich and refers to himself as a somewhat suspect person in a foreign context. West Germans had difficulty understanding his need for privacy. Letter ends with an homage to Fassbinder, not as a filmmaker but as ‘the clown of German bourgeois life’ [det tyska borgerliga livets clown]. See also group entry (Ø 1272) in Chapter IX.
173.
Ingmar Bergman. Sei film. Tr. by Giacomo Oreglia. (Turin: Guilio Einaudi, 1979), 320 pp. Italian edition of The Ritual, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence, Persona, and Cries and Whispers.
174.
Scene di vita conjugale; L’immagine allo specchio; il posto delle fragole. Tr. by P. Monaci. (Milano: Club degli editori, 1979), 388 pp. Italian translations of Scenes from a Marriage, Through a Glass Darkly, and Wild Strawberries.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work
1980 175.
‘Efter repetitionen’ (After the Rehearsal). TV-play, copyright in summer 1980. Manuscript dated ‘Fårö, 5 August 1980’. Script IV in German titled ‘Nach der Probe’ available at SFI, dated 1981. 56 pp. Published in Swedish in Femte akten. (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1994), pp. 1761. Femte akten was also published in French as Le cinquième acte in 1997 and in English as The Fifth Act in 2001. (see Ø 195). Other translations of ‘Efter repetitionen’ include: Bulgarian: French:
German: Polish:
Kino (Sofia), 3 (July) 1993, pp. 1-80; ‘Après la répétition’ in Théatre en Europe (Paris), no. 5 (January 1985), and in L’Avant-Scène du Cinéma, no. 394 (July 1990); the latter publication was richly illustrated, 79 pp.; ‘Nach der Probe’, in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp 642-677; ‘Po próbie’, tr. by Z. Łanowski in Dialog, no. 9, 1986.
‘Efter repetitionen’ was televised on SVT, channel 1, in 1983; (see Ø 332), Media chapter V.
176.
Slangeei (Het), Het uur van de wolf, Een passie, Beroering, Schreeuw zonder antwoord. (Utrecht: Bruna, 1980), 315 pp. Dutch edition of The Serpent’s Egg, Hour of the Wolf, A Passion, The Touch, Cries and Whispers.
177.
Ur marionetternas liv [From the Life of the Marionettes]. (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1980), 171 pp. Manuscripts in Bergman’s Fårö papers with notes, dated 1979. Translations Dutch: English: French: German: Norwegian:
Dans van de marionetten, tr. Jan Bogaerts (Utrecht: Bruna, 1981), 127 pp.; From the Life of the Marionettes, tr. Alan Blair (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 98 pp.; De la vie des marionettes, tr. C.G. Bjurström and L. Albertini, with a preface by Ingmar Bergman (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 112 pp. New ed. 1997; Aus dem Leben der Marionetten. (Hamburg: Hoffman Campe, 1980), 107 pp. A German version of Script IV is in SFI library; Fra marionettenes liv, tr. A. Amlie. (Oslo: Cappelen, 1980), 139 pp.
1982 178.
Filmové povídky. Prague: Odéon, 1982. Czech edition of The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence, Scenes from a Marriage, The Serpent’s Egg. With an afterword by J. Cieslar. Tr. by Z. Cerník, D. Hortlová, J. Osvald.
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Chapter II The Writer
1983 179.
Ingmar Bergman Seminar. Video Recording dated 2 December 1983, Dept of Cinema Arts, Stockholm University, 2 December 1983. Video recording from a seminar with Bergman in the Department of Cinema Arts at Stockholm University in December 1983.
1984 180.
‘Förord till en översättning’ [Preface to a translation]. Dramaten’s program to Bergman’s production of King Lear. Also in published play text, Stockholm: Ordfront, 1984, pp. 5-6. Brief commentary by Bergman to Britt G. Hallqvist’s new translation of Shakespeare’s play.
181.
‘Karins ansikte’ [Karin’s face]. Unpublished text is basis of a film about Ingmar Bergman’s mother. Visual text consists of photographs of Karin Bergman, the last one being a passport picture, taken shortly before her death in 1967.
1985 182.
Cinéma, no. 327 (30 October 1885): 3. Compilation of published quotes by Bergman on himself, the cinema, Sweden, and women.
183.
184.
‘De två saliga’ [The Blessed Ones]. Manuscript to TV play adapted from Ulla Isaksson’s novel with the same name. Cf. 180. Manuscript in SFI Bergman (Fårö) archive includes director’s copy with shooting plan and group photograph, dated 1985. ‘Propos.’ Positif 289 (March 1985): 17-19. A collage of statements made by Bergman at a press conference in Venice on 9 September 1983. Subjects deal with ‘Fanny and Alexander’, filmmaking versus filming for television, and impact of Strindberg.
1987 185.
Laterna Magica. (Stockholm: Norstedt). 337 pp. New edition 1988. There are several different versions of manuscript among Bergman’s Fårö papers with alternate titles such as ‘Peeling onions’ (Skala lök) – a reference to Peer Gynt – and ‘Tim Konfusenfej’. See Koskinen, (Ø 1681), p. 335. Bergman’s memoirs, in English-speaking world usually referred to as his autobiography. Book has a non-chronological structure, with alternating chapters on childhood, theatre work, the
114
List of Bergman’s Written Work tax affair in 1976, marriage crises, teenage summers in Nazi Germany, encounters with artists like Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo, and Herbert von Karajan. Despite the title, the book contains relatively little information on Bergman’s filmmaking.
Reception Swedish reception was enthusiastic. Three aspects of the book dominated in the reviews: (1) Its narrative structure, moving back and forth between past and present; a form that most commentators referred to as cinematic but that actor Erland Josephson termed ‘theatrical’; (2) its often ruthless self-revelation, painting its author in a rather negative light, a mea culpa moral voice that made reviewers question the book’s purpose and sometimes its authenticity; (3) its emphasis on bodily functions, which several critics related to Bergman’s directing method – one that never rested on theoretical reasoning but on very concrete physical details. Bergman’s stylistic talent seems to have come as a surprise to many, who mentioned his drastic humor, his keen observations, and his ability to set the scene for an event in short, precise descriptions. Foreign reception was by and large more ambivalent than the Swedish. Despite the English subtitle ‘An Autobiography’, most commentators abroad expected the book to focus on an account of Bergman’s experiences in the film trade. What fascinated many Swedish reviewers, namely the book’s place in the Swedish literary canon with roots in Strindberg’s autobiography Tjänstekvinnans son (The Son of a Servant), was of little interest to critics abroad, whose interest in Bergman stemmed mostly from his filmmaking.
Reviews (Swedish) Brohult, Magnus, ‘Bergmans brutala uppriktighet’ [Bergman’s brutal honesty]. SvD, 21 September 1987, p. 4; Donner, Jörn. ‘Livet som skådespel’ [Life as a play]. SDS, 20 September 1987, p. 4; Holmqvist, Bengt. ‘Ingmar Bergman mellan änglar och avgrund’ [Ingmar Bergman between angels and abyss]. DN, 21 September 1987; Josephson, Erland. ‘Kroppen mobiliserar själen’ [The body mobilizes the soul]. Expr., 21 September 1987, p. 4; Palmqvist, Bertil. ‘Kärleken, konsten, det svåra åldrandet’ [Love, art, the difficulty of aging]. Arb, 21 September 1987, p. 4; Schildt, Jurgen. ‘Prosten Bergmans son har talat’ [Parson Bergman’s son has spoken]. AB, 20 September 1987, p. 4-5; Zern, Leif. ‘Ur kaos och mörker’ [Out of chaos and darkness]. Expr., 20 September 1987, p. 4; Wortzelius, Hugo. ‘Bergman kastar masken’ [Bergman discards the mask]. UNT, 21 September 1987, p. 14. Note: Thomas Svensson at the Library School in Borås did a special study of the Swedish reception of Laterna magica: ‘Mottagandet av Ingmar Bergmans självbiografi Laterna Magica. Specialarbete.’ Bibliotekshögskolan. Borås: 1992, 26 pp.
Reviews (Foreign) Bresser, Jean Paul. ‘Vrees doet het gevreesde werkelijkheid worden’. Elsevier, 10 October 1987, pp. 1-4; Ciment, Michel. ‘Bergman juge d’Ingmar’. Positif, no. 324 (February 1988): 28-30; Corliss, Richard. ‘Books’. Film Comment XXIV, no. 6 (Nov/Dec 1988): 77-79; Friedrich, Regine. ‘Auf der Suche nach Beschädigungen’. Frankfurter Rundschau, 29 March 1988; Haakman, Anton. ‘De autobiografie van Oedipus zelf ’. Vrij Nederland, 7 November 1987; Horowitz, Mark. ‘Scenes from a Life’. American Film, XIV, no. 1, October 1988, p. 55-58; Jenny, Urs. ‘Hals über Kopf durch den Abgrund des Lebens’. Der Spiegel, no. 38, 14 September 1987;
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Chapter II The Writer Kousbroek, Rudi. ‘Ingmar Bergman en het theater. De monoloog van een orakel’. NRC Handelsblad, 12 February 1988; Lane, Anthony. ‘The Guts of Greatness’. The Independent, 19 May 1988; Meyer, Michael. ‘The Demonic Charm of a Complex Mind’. The Sunday Times, 15 May 1988; Mosley, Philip. ‘Ingmar Bergman. The Magic Lantern’. Film Criticism XVII, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 5457; Strunz, Dieter. ‘Ingmar Bergman ist der Philosoph unter den Leinwand Meistern’. Berliner Morgenpost, 25 October 1987; Note: In connection with American edition of The Magic Lantern, Nelson Entertainment Inc. issued a video release of nine of Bergman’s early films: Torment, Port of Call, To Joy, Summer Interlude, Secrets of Women, Sawdust and Tinsel, A Lesson in Love, Dreams, and Smiles of a Summer Night.
Articles Allen, Woody. ‘Through a Life Darkly’. NYT, 18 September 1988, sec 7, p. 1, 29, 30-34. (See Ø 1454). Behrendt, Poul. ‘Tvånget att göra upp’ [The need to settle accounts]. SvD, 17 Jan 1988, Sunday section, p. 10. Originally published in Danish Magazine Kritik. (See Ø 1456). Fara, S. ‘La magia misteriosa della lanterna bergmania’. Cinema Nuovo XXXVII, no. 313 (MayJune 1988): 10-12. Kosubek, G. ‘Bergman sucht Bergman. Freunde und Feinde’. Film und Fernsehen no. 7. 1988: 3435 and no. 8, 1988: 21-26. (Presentation of Laterna magica with excerpts from book). Steene, Birgitta. ‘Ingmar Bergmans Laterna magica’. Finsk tidskrift, no. 2/3, 1988: 78-90.
See also Jan Myrdal response to Bergman’s account of his political ignorance in Laterna magica (see group entry Ø 1439). Olle Svenning used the autobiography to bring up the 1976 tax case again: ‘Ingmar Bergman väcker minnen’ [IB evokes memories]. Arb, 2 January 1988. See also reply by Harry Schein in same paper, 15 January 1988. Bergman’s brother-in-law, Paul Britten Austen, expressed concern that the subjective dimension of Laterna magica as a memoir book would be viewed as truthful facts. ‘Apropå årets bästsäljare’ [Apropos of the year’s bestseller], KvP, 23 December 1987.
Translations Bulgarian: Chinese: Czech: Danish:
Dutch: English: Estonian: French:
Laterna magica, tr. V. Ganyeva. (Sofia: Chemus, 1995), 310 pp; also excerpts in Bulgarian Film journal Kinoizkustvo XLIV, no. 1 (January 1989), pp. 30-44; Baigeman zichuan, tr. Li Senayo. (Taipei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi, 1994), 270 pp.; Laterna magica, tr. Z. Cernciu. (Praha: Odeon, 1991), 287 pp.; Laterna magica, tr. I.E. Hammar. (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 1987, and 1997), 253 pp. Second edition: (Valby: Borgen, 1990) (2 vol). 268, and 252 pp.; Laterna magica, tr. Karst Woudstra. (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1987), 283 pp; published in Series ‘Grote Cineasten’; The Magic Lantern, tr. Joan Tate. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988), 312 pp. and (London: Penguin, 1989), 308 pp. and (New York: Viking, 1988), 308 pp.; Laterna magica. (Tallinn: Eesti Ramat, 1989), 254 pp.; Laterna magica, tr. C.G. Bjurström, L. Albertini. (Paris: Gallimard, 1987);
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List of Bergman’s Written Work German:
Mein Leben, tr. Hans-Joachim Maass. (Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe, 1987), 350 pp; (Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1988), 319 pp; (Frankfurt am Main: Gutenberg, 1989), 350 pp; (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1992), 350 pp.; Greek: Hëe magikëe kamera: mia autobiografia, tr. T. Kallifatides. (Athen: Kaktos, 1989), 286 pp.; Hebrew: Laterna magikah. (Tel Aviv: Am oved, 1991), 222 pp.; Hungarian: Laterna magica, tr. K. Lazli. (Budapest: Europa, 1988), 285 pp.; Icelandic: Töfralampin: sjalsvisaga. (Reykvavik: Gjölvi, 1992), 269 pp.; Italian: Lanterna magica, tr. F. Ferrari. (Milano: Garzanti, 1987, and 1990), 259 pp.; Japanese: Bergman jiden, tr. K. Buich. (Tokyo: Shinchëo-sha, 1989), 349 pp.; Latvian: Laterna magica, tr. I. Kagevska. (Riga: Liesma, 1993), 232 pp.; Lithuanian: Laterna magica, tr. Z. Maleikaitele. (Vilnius: Alma Littera, 1994), 284 pp.; Norwegian: Laterna magica, tr. S. Ness. (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1987), 232 pp.; Polish: Laterna magica, tr. Z. Łanowski. (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1991), 274 pp.; Portuguese: Lanterna magica, tr. A. Pastor. (Lisboa: Caravela, 1988), 312 pp; Lanterna magica: una autobiografia, tr. A. Pastor. (Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara, 1988), 292 pp.; Roumanian: Lanterna magicela, tr. D. Shafran, E. Florea, C. Baneiu. (Bucuresti: Editura Meridiane, 1994), 316 pp.; Russian: Laterna magika. (Moskva: ‘Iskusstvo’, 1989), 285 pp.; Serbo-Croatian: Moj livot: laterna magica, tr. M. Rumac. (Zagreb: Grafyki zavod Hrvatske, 1990), 303 pp.; Slovakian: Laterna magica. (Bratislava: Slovenskij spiso valelij, 1991), 524 pp.; Spanish: Linterna magica, tr. M. Torres, F. Uriz. (Barcelona and Buenos Aires: Tusquets, 1988), 319 pp; excerpts in El Pais, 14 February 1988; Turkish: B y l fenar, tr. G. Tauskein. (Istanbul: AFA, 1990), 335 pp.
1988 186.
The Marriage Scenarios: Scenes from a Marriage, Face to Face, Autumn Sonata, tr. A. Blair. (London: Aurum), 347 pp. and (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 407 pp.
1989 187.
‘Mine danske engle.’ [My Danish angels]. Morgenavisen (Danish), 18 November 1989. Also in Universitetsavisen, 11 January 1990. Speech (tr. by Henrik Egede) by Bergman at his reception of Danish Sonning Price for 1990 (see Chapter IX, Ø 1477). His three Danish angels (= literary/critical influences) were (1) Søren Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death, a book that fascinated him at age 16 for its dark streak and humor; (2) Georg Brandes’ book about Shakespeare, which he read some 40 years later and which opened a way for him into Shakespeare’s texts; and (3) Kaj Munk’s play Ordet, which Bergman’s father took him to see in a small private theatre in Stockholm; Bergman was a teenager and much moved by the play. Later he read and staged other works by Munk, whom he felt close to for ‘his emotional strength, his intellectual confusion, and his dangerous romantic love of strong individuals’ [hans känslostyrka, hans intellektuella förvirring, hans farliga, romantiska kärlek till starka individer]. Bergman also talks about his visits (during his Malmö period in the 1950s) to the Danish Film Museum in Copenhagen, which ‘seemed to be administered by heaven’ [verkade administreras av himlen].
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Chapter II The Writer
1990 188.
Bilder. (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1990), 435 pp. Using his work books and filmmaking diaries, Ingmar Bergman analyzes a number of his own films, grouped into thematic units. The book project started as a series of conversations with Bergman’s editor, Lasse Bergström. It was in part prompted by Bergman’s dissatisfaction with the earlier interview book Bergman om Bergman (1971) in which he felt he had been manipulated by the interviewers. See article by Harry Schein, ‘Ingmar Bergmans filmer’. Dagens Nyheter, 18 November 1990, p. A2, arguing that Bilder [Images] exposes the gap between critical interpretors and the filmmaker.
Reception Bergman’s negative reference to Bergman om Bergman (Ø 787) prompted many reviewers to juxtapose it to Bilder. The consensus was that the two works complemented each other (sometimes to the point of repeating the same statements verbatim) and gave the impression of a filmmaker for whom his films were still alive, almost like works in progress. This, it was argued, gave an unusual vitality to a book that offered both remembered vignettes of the films’ genesis and an account of a lifelong artistic process. (See Aghed, Koskinen, Zern) The book was termed self-exposing, unusually engaging, and honest. (See Wortzelius.) National Film Theatre (NTF) published a program (February 1994): 22-23, to celebrate publication of Images – My Life in Film.
Reviews Aghed, Jan. ‘Det blev en djävla promenad’ [It turned into a hell of a walk]. SDS, 22 October 1990, p. 4; Arrhenius, Sara. ‘Bilder med hygglig skärpa’ [Images with adequate focus]. AB, 22 October 1990, p. 5; Nasta, Dominique. ‘Images’. Revue du Cinéma, no. 33-35 (1993): 194; Ellingsen, Thor. ‘Bergmans “jævla spasertur”’. [B’s hell of a walk]. Dagbladet (Norwegian), 25 March 1991; Kell (Keith Keller). ‘Bilder’. Variety, 7 January 1991, p. 110; Magny, Joel. ‘Bergman à la lettre’. Cahiers du Cinéma. no. 453, 1992: 84-88 (review article); Nasta, Dominique. ‘Images’. Revue Belge du Cinéma, no. 33-35 (1993): 194; Olsson, Sven E. ‘Med dämonerna som medarbetare’ [With the demons as collaborators]. Arbetet, 22 October 1990, p. 4; Roy, André. ‘Images’. 24 Images, no. 81 (Spring 1996): 62; Wickbom, Kaj. ‘Bergman naket uppriktig’ (B nakedly outspoken). Barometern, 22 October 1990, p. 17; Wortzelius, Hugo. ‘Ingmar Bergmans bilder. Självutlämnande och äkta’ [IB’s images. Self-exposing and genuine]. UNT, 22 October 1990, p, 16; Zern, Leif. ‘Vägen till mellangärdet’ [The road to the diaphragm]. Expr., 22 October 1990, p. 4-5.
Translations Chinese: Danish: Dutch: English:
Baigeman lun dianyin. (Taipei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi, 1994), 350 pp.; Billeder, tr. J. Stegelmann. (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 1990), 435 pp; also in (Copenhagen: Bogklubben 12 bøger, 1991), 435 pp.; Beelden: een leven in films, tr. K. Woudstra. (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1992), 433 pp.; Images: My life in film, tr. M. Ruuth. (New York: Arcade Publishers, 1994), 442 pp. and (London: Bloomsbury, 1994), 442 pp.;
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Estonian:
Pildid. (Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1995), 367 pp, and Kartiny. (Tallinn: Alexandra, 1997); Finnish: Kuvasta kuuvan, tr. H. Eskelinen. (Helsinki: Otava, 1991), 399 pp.; French: Images, tr. C.G. Bjurström, L. Albertini. (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 407 pp.; German: Bilder, tr. J. Scherzer. (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1991), 378 pp.; Hungarian: Képek, tr. K. Lcaszli. (Budapest: Europa, 1992), 390 pp.; Italian: Immagini, tr. R. Pavese. (Milano: Garzanti, 1992), 406 pp.; Norwegian: Bilder, tr. A. Amlie. (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1991), 437 pp.; Polish: Obrazy, tr. T. Szczepański. (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa artystyczne i filmove, 1993), 439 pp.; Portugese: Imagens, tr. A. Pastor. (Sao Paolo: Martin Fontes, 1996), 441 pp.; Russian: Bilder was excerpted under title ‘Kartiny’ in seven issues of Iskusstvo Kino, no. 17 (January-July 1993); Serbo-Croatian: Slike, tr. L. Rajic. (Novi Sad: Promety, 1996), 338 pp. Spanish: Imagenes, tr. J.Uriz Torres, F. Uriz. (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1992), 371 pp.
189.
Ingmar Bergman, Seminar at Svenska Filmklipparförbundet [Swedish Film Editors Association], 16 December 1990. Typewritten manuscript available at SFI. Bergman discusses his editing experiences.
1991 190.
‘Backanterna’. Text adaptation by Ingmar Bergman for his staging of Euripides’s play as an opera. Text is available as special program, Royal Opera, Stockholm.
191.
Den goda viljan. (Stockholm: Norstedt. New edition: MånPocket, 1992), 394 pp. First handwritten version of ‘Den goda viljan’ is dated 1988; last, typed version 1990 (2 February), with subtitle ‘Fyra Akter av Ingmar Bergman’ [Four Acts by Ingmar Bergman]. Among Fårö papers. Den goda viljan (Best Intentions) is a narrative of Bergman’s parents as young adults. Their story takes place during ten years prior to Ingmar Bergman’s birth in 1918. It was made into a film, directed by Bille August.
Reception (of the book) ‘The yet unborn child Ingmar Bergman is swishing about in the narrative’s fetal water, as if he saw the whole thing from within the womb’ [Det ännu ofödda barnet Ingmar Bergman ligger och skvalpar i berättelsens fostervatten, som såg han alltsammans inifrån livmodern]. Sverker Andréason’s (GP) imaginative description of Ingmar Bergman’s narrative position in his novel Den goda viljan sums up the focus among reviewers: the author was both an astute observer and an empathetic participant in the drama about his parents up to the time of his own birth. Many critics read the book as Bergman’s search to understand himself through his parents in a portrait of them that was part fact, part fable. (See Kollberg, Westling, Zern) The book was seen as Bergman’s attempt to understand and become reconciled with his parentage, a process that had started with Laterna magica. Bergman calls Den goda viljan a novel, but reviewers preferred to see it as a script or a play of epic and dramatic dimensions; they pointed to the predominance of dialogue and referred to descriptive passages as stage directions filled with color, smell, and physical presence or as a form of visualizing fiction. ‘Ingmar Bergman’s prose is seeing’, wrote Leif Zern. ‘It comes quite
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Chapter II The Writer close to the characters, depicting – not the emotion itself but its background; the result is both very clear and inexplicable’. [Ingmar Bergmans prosa är seende. Den kommer helt nära personerna och beskriver – inte själva känslan men dess bakgrund; resultatet är både mycket tydligt och oförklarligt.] Leif Zern, who referred to Den goda viljan as ‘one of the most moving love stories in Swedish literature’ [en av de mest rörande kärleksberättelserna i svensk litteratur], described Bergman’s approach as that of a director instructing his actors. Events were described for the readers by an involved observer who retained a unique objectivity ‘as if we were face to face with facts that openly reveal their secret’ [som om vi var ansikte mot ansikte med fakta som öppet avslöjar sin hemlighet]. Lars Olof Franzén – somewhat more lukewarm to the work but intrigued by its narrative method – suggested that Bergman forced the reader to participate as an ‘actor’ by using a technique characteristic of Bergman’s manipulative filmmaking. Den goda viljan confirmed the critical reception of Laterna magica. Ingmar Bergman was recognized as a major writer in Swedish literature: ‘Best Intentions is a new artistic conquest for Ingmar Bergman. As an innovative love novel it will become incorporated in Swedish literary history’ [Den goda viljan är en ny konstnärlig landvinning för IB. Som en nydanande kärleksroman kommer den att införlivas med den svenska litteraturhistorien] (Magnus Brohult, SvD). Another reviewer (Aghed, SDS) concluded that ‘as a literary creation, the book ‘Den goda viljan’ stands securely and extremely convincingly on its own’ [Som litterär skapelse står boken ‘Den goda viljan’ stabilt och ytterst övertygande på egna ben].
Reviews, Swedish Aghed, Jan. ‘Den goda viljans genuine arvtagare’ [The real inheritor of good intentions]. SDS, 4 December 1991, p. A 4; Andreasson, Sverker. ‘Ljuset som förvandlar’ [The light that transforms], GP, 2 December 1991, p. 4; Brohult, Magnus. ‘Förnämligt verk om de stora livsfrågorna’ [Superb work about the big questions in life]. SvD, 2 December 1991, sec. 2, p. 2; Franzén, Lars-Olof. ‘Bergman berättarglad men ofarlig’ [B a happy narrator but harmless]. DN, December 1991, p. B1; Kollberg, Bo-Ingvar. ‘Släktkrönika om starka viljor och självutgivande kärlek’ [Family chronicle about strong wills and self-exposing love]. UNT, 24 December 1991, p. 12; Westling, Barbro. ‘Drömmen om att äntligen bli sedd’ [The dream of being seen at last]. AB, 2 December 1991, p. 4-5; Zern, Leif. ‘Tystnad, tagning kärleksroman’ [Silence, take, love novel]. Expr., 2 December 1991, p. 4.
Reviews, Foreign ‘Goede bedoelingen’. Groene Amsterdammer, 6 January 1993.
Translations Czech: Danish: Dutch: English: Finnish: French:
Dobrca veáule. (Praha: Argo-Panda, 1992), 415 pp.; Den gode vilje, tr. A. Feilberg. (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 1991), 228 pp; also in (Copenhagen: Bogklubben 12 bøger, 1992), 288 pp.; Goede bedoelingen: roman, tr. K. Woudstra. (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1992), 377 pp.; The Best intentions, tr. Joan Tate. (New York: Arcade Publ. and London: Harvill, 1993), 295 pp.; Hyvö tato, tr. M. Kyrö. (Helsinki: Otava, 1992); Les meilleures intentions, tr. C.G. Bjurström, L. Albertini. (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 482 pp.;
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List of Bergman’s Written Work German: Greek: Hungarian: Italian: Japanese: Korean: Norwegian: Polish: Russian: Slovakian: Spanish:
Die besten Absichten, tr. H. Gimler. (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1993), 435 pp; new ed. 1996, 436 pp.; Hoi kalyteres protheseis, tr. A. Konidarëe, N. Serbetas. (Athens: Synchronaëe epochëe, 1995), 361 pp.; A legjobb szçandekok. (Budapest: Europa, 1993), 394 pp.; Con le migliori intenzioni, tr. C.G. Cima. (Milano: Garzanti, 1994), 332 pp.; Ai no feukei, tr. O. Shinji. (Tokyo: Sekaibunka-sha, 1993), 430 pp.; Choeseon-eui-e kido (Soeul: Hang gyeror, 1993), 373 pp.; Den gode viljen, tr. G. Malmström. (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1991), 317 pp.; Dobre chęci, tr. H. Thylwe. (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1995), 326 pp.; Blagie namerenija, tr. A. Afinogenova. (Moskva: Chudozjestvennaja literatura, 1996), 300 pp.; Dobrca vueëla (Bratislava: Vydavat eelstvo, 1993), 326 pp.; Las mejores intenciones, tr. M. Torres. (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1992), 331 pp, and (Barcelona: Circulo de lectores, 1993), 413 pp.
1992 192.
‘Söndagsbarn. 3 akter för bio’ [Sunday’s Child. Three acts for the cinema]. (1992). Film script. Script II at SFI, 123 pp. Copyright: Cinematograph AB, Fårö. Script II, at SFI, 216 pp. This longer version is a breakdown of original script (above) into 679 takes, with titles. Script includes one comment by director (Daniel Bergman) that he plans to include shots of mural paintings from Det sjunde inseglet/The Seventh Seal (church sequence) in young boy Pu’s visit to an old church where his father is to preach. The first Script II above is the text used for publication of Söndagsbarn (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1993), 123 pp. Söndagsbarn (Sunday’s Child) is a portrait of the boy Pu (Ingmar Bergman’s nickname) at age eight. Pu is described in ways that bring to mind the boy in Persona: ‘His look is somewhat sleepy, his cheeks childishly full and his mouth half open, probably adenoids’ [Uppsynen är något sömnig, kinderna barnsligt fylliga och munnen halvöppen, troligen polyper]. Ingmar Bergman’s text is a novelistic narrative rather than shooting script, sometimes kept in a humorous ‘literary’ style, as when comparing the pastor who built the Bergman family’s rented summer house to Noah and his Ark. ‘Noah was not a builder either but strictly speaking a good-natured, somewhat alcoholic tugboat skipper on the Euphrates’ [Noa var inte heller någon byggare utan strängt taget en godmodig, något alkoholiserad pråmskeppare på Eufrat]. Söndagsbarn is both a novella and a piece of autobiography, with an author who interrupts the narrative to comment on it. Pu’s story is interwoven with flashforwards to an adult Ingmar Bergman visiting his aging and dying father. In a note Bergman called Söndagsbarn ‘an exactly retold memory.... the closest to anything I have ever dared to come’ [ett exakt återberättat minne.... det närmaste jag vågat komma någonting någon gång].
Reception (of book) ‘Who would have thought’, wrote one reviewer (Ström), ‘that one could again be fascinated by the rounds in the Bergman family?’ [Vem kunde tro att man åter skulle kunna fängslas av turerna i den bergmanska familjen?] Once more, Bergman’s stylistic and narrative skills amazed Swedish critics: ‘Here a language is born that more and more bears the genuine signs of authorship; clear and lucid and [...] reflected in an unmistakable desire to tell stories’ [Här föds ett språk som alltmer bär författarskapets äkta kännetecen; klart och genomlyst; [...]
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Chapter II The Writer speglad i en omisskännlig lust att fabulera], wrote Asta Bolin in Vår lösen. She was seconded by Eva Ström in SDS: ‘Bergman’s strength as an author lies in his self-evident confidence, knowing that he will be able to spellbind and seduce an audience with his words. More than a literary text, his story feels like it was brought to the reader orally, which is both unusual and refreshing today’ [Bs styrka som författare är den självklara trygghet han har i förvissningen att han skall kunna trollbinda och förföra ett auditorium med sina ord. Mer än som en litterär text känns hans berättelse som muntligt framförd till läsaren, både ovanligt och uppfriskande i dag]. Some even felt that Söndagsbarn was superior to Den goda viljan, more stringent and less wordy. What was emphasized in particular was Bergman’s ability to juxtapose very concrete and evocative vignettes, filled with color and smell, and to write dramatic dialogues signalling the dark forces at work underneath an idyllic summer landscape. The film version of Söndagsbarn (directed by Daniel Bergman, son of Ingmar Bergman and Käbi Laretei) premiered prior to the publication of the book. Critics who compared the two usually preferred the elder Bergman’s literary work (see Hansell, Expr. and Palmqvist, Arb).
Reviews (of book) Andersson, Gunder. ‘Långt farväl till pappa’ [Long farewell to daddy]. AB, 25 January 1993, p. 4; Andréason, Sverker. ‘En färd som försonar’ [A journey that reconciles]. GP, 25 January 1993, p. 4; Axelsson, Bo. ‘Söndagsbarn’. Tidningen Boken, no. 2, 1993, pp. 7-8; Bolin, Asta. ‘Den faderlöse fadern’ [The fatherless father]. Vår lösen, no. 2, 1993, pp. 99-100; Brohult, Magnus. ‘Dödens oupphörliga närvaro’ [Death’s constant presence]. SvD, 25 January 1993, p. 22; Ekbom, Torsten. ‘Ingmar Bergman tillbaka till det skrivna ordet’ [IB back to the written word]. DN, 25 January 1993, p. B1-B2; Elam, Ingrid. ‘Berättelse från ett oändligt avstånd’ [Story from an immense distance]. GT/KvP, 25 January 1993, p. 4; Hansell, Sven. ‘Metmask och högmässa’ [Fishing worm and Sunday sermon]. Expr., 25 January 1993, p. 4; Kollberg, Bo Ingvar. ‘Självbilden hos ett söndagsbarn’ [The self-portrait of a Sunday child]. UNT, 8 February 1993, p. 10; Palmqvist, Bertil. ‘Skimrande barndomsskildring’ [Shimmering childhood tale]. Arb, 25 January 1993, national ed., p. 4; Ström, Eva. ‘Uppfriskande Bergman’ [Refreshing Bergman]. SDS, 25 January 1993, p. A4; See also review article by Magnus Bergh, ‘Flodens sång: Dalälven från Selma Lagerlöf till Ingmar Bergman’ [The song of the river: The Dala River from Selma Lagerlöf to IB]. BLM, no. 5, 1993, pp. 39-41.
Translations Czech: Danish: Dutch: English: Estonian: Finnish: French: German:
Nedelnaatka, tr. Z. Cernçik. (Praha: Volvox Globator, 1995), 78 pp.; Søndagsbarn, tr. A. Feilberg. (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 1993), 101 pp.; Zondagskinderen, tr. K. Woudstra. (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1994), 140 pp.; also (Den Haag: Stichting Kitgeverij, 1996), 157 pp.; Sunday’s Children, tr. Joan Tate. (New York: Arcade Publ., 1994), 153 pp, and (London: Harvill, 1994), 107 pp.; P hapäevalapsed. (Tallinn: Perioodika, 1997); Sunnuntailapsi, tr. M. Kyrö. (Helsinki: Otava, 1993), 138 pp.; Enfants du dimanche, tr. C. G. Bjurström. (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 155 pp.; Sonntagskinder, tr. V. Reichel. (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1996), 160 pp.;
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Hungarian: Italian: Norwegian: Polish: Portugese: Slovakian: Spanish:
Vascarnapi gyerekek (Budapest: Europa könyvkichi, 1994), 131 pp.; Nati di domenica, tr. G. Cima. (Milano: Garzanti), 1993, 144 pp.; Søndagsbarn, tr. A. Amlie. (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1993), 114 pp.; Niedzielne dziecko, tr. H. Thylwe. (Warszawa: Prószyński i Ska, 1994), 100 pp.; Filhos de domingo, tr. I. Ribero. (Lisboa: Difel, 1995), 165 pp.; Nedeliatko. (Bratislava: H & H, 1995), 134 pp.; Niños del domingo, tr. M. Torres. (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1994 and 1996), 142 pp.
1993 193.
‘Sista skriket. En lätt tintad moralitet’ [The Last Scream/The Last Gasp. A Slightly Tinted Morality Play]. Undated manuscript of one-act play, SFI Archives. Includes pasted stills from the silent cinema and a note referring to ‘Dramatens produktionsplan, söndagen den 24 januari 1993. Pjäs av I. Bergman på Lilla scenen avsedd för säsongen 1996/97’ [Dramaten production plan, Sunday 24 January 1993. Play by I. Bergman on the Small Stage intended for the 1996/97 season]. Play depicts the encounter between Swedish filmmaker from the silent era, Georg af Klercker, and film producer Charles Magnuson. The play premiered at the Swedish Film Institute’s Cinema Victor in connection with the showing of the SFI restoration of two silent films by Klercker. It was also performed a few times in Göteborg, Malmö, and Dramaten. (See Theatre Chapter, Ø 474). It was also televised (see Media Chapter, Ø 338) and published in special Bergman insert in Chaplin, vol. xxxv, no. 3, 1993, pp.19-26. ‘Sista skriket’ is also included in 1994 volume titled Femte akten (Ø 195).
1994 194.
‘Enskilda samtal.’ [Private Confessions/Conversations]
Script I, marked ‘Konfidentiellt’ in SFI Archive, 173 pp. Dated at the beginning of script ‘Fårö 1 juni 1994’ and at end ‘8 juni 1994.’ Script I is the text used for published version of Enskilda samtal (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1996), 166 pp. New Månpocket edition in 1997. Script II at SFI, 41 pp. plus 1 p. This is basically a dialogue manuscript and marked as the final TV script, dated 5 May 1997. The script was made into a television film, directed by Liv Ullmann. (See Ø 340), Media chapter. Enskilda samtal (Private Conversations/Private Confessions) is a novel about Ingmar Bergman’s mother, here called Anna Bergman. The book’s title refers to the Lutheran alternative to Catholic confession: Anna Bergman has five private conversations with her pastor Jacob, whom she has known since her first communion. The occasion is a marital crisis in her life: she has fallen in love with a young theologian. At one point the narrator intercepts the conversations with hesitant questions to himself. See introduction to this chapter. For genesis of novel, see Christina Rosenqvist, ‘Karin Bergman & kärleken’ [Karin Bergman and love]. Vi, no. 47-48, 1996, pp. 59-62.
Reception (of book) Like all of Ingmar Bergman’s films and books rooted in his childhood, Enskilda samtal was seen by the critics as circling around two essential questions: Bergman’s relationship with his parents and his questions of faith and doubt. His empathy with his subject, Anna Bergman, and her unhappy life was felt to be so close to self-identification that one reviewer suggested a para-
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Chapter II The Writer phrase of Flaubert’s famous phrase about his creation, Madame Bovary: ‘Anna, c’est moi’. (Elensky) With a language that one critic (Enander) called ‘brilliantly suggestive’ [briljant suggestivt], Bergman emerged as ‘one of our country’s really great authors’ [en av vårt lands verkligt stora författare]. Another reviewer (Schottenius, Expr.) called Enskilda samtal ‘autobiographical grains of sand that take on a pearly glow in new mussel shells’ [självbiografiska sandkorn som får en pärleglans i nya musselskal]. Like a mantra, reviewers repeated that in his focus on images, cues and stage directions, Bergman revealed his filmmaking basis in his literary works: ‘All that is, is visible. All that is said is spoken’ [Allt som är är synligt. Allt som sägs är talat] (Schottenius). In fact a number of reviewers had a hard time separating Bergman’s literary text from their own memories of his films. There was also a sense that Bergman had become his own prisoner, forever returning to his childhood past (Jonsson). The reviewer in SvD (Elensky) likened him to a snake in a new skin that had not completely shed its old.
Book Reviews Elensky, Torbjörn. ‘Återigen nya masker för nya taskspelare’ [Once more new masks for new entertainers]. SvD, 11 November 1997, p. 26; Enander, Christer. ‘Bergmans hemlighet’ [Bergman’s secret]. Tidningen Boken, no. 1-3, 1997, p. 3; Haryson, Kajsa. ‘Enskilda samtal’. Femina månadsmagasin, no. 12, 1996, p. 122; Jonsson, Stefan. ‘Fånge i sitt eget hem’ [Prisoner in his own home]. DN, 11 November 1996, p. B2; Lutz, Volke. ‘Ein Seitensprung macht die Ehe zur Hölle’. Berliner Morgenpost, 25 April 1997; Palmqvist, Bertil. ‘Den sanna kärleken överlever inte sanningen’ [True love does not survive truth]. Arbetet Nyheterna, 11 November 1996, national ed., p. 4; Rudvall, Agneta. ‘Enskilda samtal’, Svenska kyrkans tidning, no. 48, 1996, p. 3; Schottenius, Maria. ‘Lögn och bikt’ [Lies and confession]. Expr., 11 November 1996, p. 4; Tunbäck-Hansson, Monika. ‘Regissören vinner över författaren’ [The director wins over the author]. GP, 11 November 1996, p. 37; Westling, Barbro. ‘Mamma än en gång’ [Mom once more]. AB, 11 November 1996, p. 5.
Translations Danish: Dutch: English: Finnish: French: German: Hungarian: Norwegian: Polish:
195.
Personlige samtaler, tr. A. Feilberg. (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 1996). 151 pp.; Vertrouwelijke Gesprekken, tr. Karst Woudstra. (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1997), 159 pp.; Private confessions, tr. Joan Tate (London: Harvill, 1996 and New York: Arcade Publ., 1997), 161 pp.; Yksitysiä keskusteljuja, tr. H. Thylwe (Helsinki: Otava, 1996); Entretiens privés, tr. Alain Gnaedig. (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), 167 pp.; Einzelgespräche, tr. V. Reichel. (München: Hanser, 1996), 188 pp; new ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 152 pp.; Öt vallompas, tr. K. Lasszlo. (Budapest: Europa, 1996), 162 pp.; Fortrolige samtaler, tr. K.O. Jensen. (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1996), 135 pp.; Rozmowy poufne. (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Warszawskie, 1996), 147 pp.
Femte akten. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1994, 175 pp. Contains the following works: ‘Monolog’ [Monologue]; ‘Efter repetitionen’ [After the Rehearsal]; ‘Sista skriket’ [The Last Gasp/The Last Scream]; ‘Larmar och gör sig till’ [In the Presence of a Clown].
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List of Bergman’s Written Work ‘Monolog’ is a personal preface in which Bergman talks about his approach to the written word. The remaining three works are written in dialogue form. ‘Efter Repetitionen’ became a TV film, see (Ø 332); ‘Sista skriket’ a theatre and TV play see (Ø 474) and (Ø 338); and ‘Larmar och gör sig till’ a TV film (see Ø 340), Media Chapter V. The book title is a reference to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt where death (‘The Passenger’) in the last act jokes with Peer: ‘One does not die in the middle of the fifth act.’ All of the works included in Bergman’s Femte akten have in common that they deal with emotional and professional finales: an aging director summing up his views of his profession; a has-been filmmaker dismissed by his producer; a would-be cinematographic inventor whose grand performance ends in a short circuit explosion.
Reception Almost all reviews consisted of plot and theme summaries of the works in the volume and had few comments about Bergman as an author, except for references to his skills as a writer of dialogue.
Book Reviews Andréason, Sverker. ‘Konsten trotsar döden’ [Art defies death]. GP, 31 October 1994, p. 40; Davidsson, Katarina. ‘Femte akten’. Montage, no. 35-36, 1995, p. 76; Larsson, Lisbeth. ‘Fem akter är fler än fyra dramer’ [Five acts are more than four dramas]. Expr., 26 November 1995, p. 4; Munkhammar, Birgit. ‘Det luktar och knarrar teater’ [It smells and creaks of theatre]. DN, 31 October 1994, p. B2; Palmqvist, Bertil. ‘Fredsfördrag med levandet’ [Peace treaty with life]. Arbetet Nyheterna, 24 October 1994, national ed., p. 5; Ring, Lars. ‘Filosofi, dödsrädsla och tarvligheter’ [Philosophy, fear of death and vulgarities]. SvD, 10 February 1995, p. 24; Westling, Barbro. ‘En demon har blivit ödmjuk’ [A demon has humbled]. AB, 31 October 1994, p. 4.
Translations include English: French:
German: Hungarian: Polish:
The Fifth Act, tr. by Linda Rugg and Joan Tate. (New York: The New Press, 2001), 152 pp.; Le cinquième acte, tr. C.G. Bjurström. (Paris: Gallimard, 1997). Also published in L’Avant Scène du Cinéma, no. 394 (July 1990): 3-75 (with an analysis by Alain Bergala and a filmography); ‘Larmar och gör sig till’ is translated as ‘In Gegenwart eines Clowns’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift – Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 754-830; Az ötödik felvongas, tr. K Lasszlo. (Budapest: Europa, 1995), 171 pp.; Piekąty akt, tr. E. Niewiarowska. (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Warszawskie, 1997).
1998 196.
3 för en. Den goda viljan, Söndagsbarn, Enskilda samtal. (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1998). Swedish paperback volume of Best Intentions, Sunday’s Child, and Private Conversations.
197.
‘Vous voulez être comédien?’ Positif, no. 447 (May 1998): 62-64. (See Ø 77), 1951.
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2000 198.
Bergmans 1900-tal. En hyllning till svensk film, från Victor Sjöström till Lukas Moodysson. (Göteborg: Göteborg Film Fesival), no pag. With a preface by Gunnar Bergdahl. English edition titled Twentieth Century of Bergman (!), also produced by Göteborg Film Festival. Bergman selects and comments on 35 Swedish films made in the 1900s.
199.
Föreställningar. Trolösa, En själslig angelägenhet, Kärlek utan älskare (Stockholm: Norstedt, 2000), 296 pp. This volume contains three ‘performances’ [föreställningar] by Bergman, three ‘scores’ for films. The first one (Trolösa/Faithless) was made into a film directed by Liv Ullmann (see Filmography, (Ø 259). The second one (En själslig angelägenhet/A Matter of the Soul) became a radio play; and the third one (Kärlek utan älskare/Love without Lovers) was never produced at all. ‘Trolösa’ (pp. 5-126), dedicated to ‘Lena och Liv’ [actress Lena Endre and director Liv Ullmann], is dated Fårö 10 September 1997 and is preceded by a motto, a quote from playwright Bobo Strauss: ‘No form of common failure, neither illness nor ruin nor professional adversity, gives such a cruel and deep echo in the subconscious as a divorce. It touches directly at the roots of all anguish and revives it. With a single stroke a divorce penetrates as deeply as life itself will reach.’ ‘En själslig angelägenhet’ (pp. 127-58), dated Fårö 11 August 1972, is a monologue (broadcast in 1990) by a woman on the verge of a breakdown. (Also listed in Ø 149) The third text, ‘Kärlek utan älskare’ (pp. 159-296) was written in Munich and dated 4 March 1978. According to Bergman’s prefatory note it was refused by several film production companies. Printed text is dated Stockholm, 20 December 1999. The story tells of film director Marco Hoffmann who has disappeared, leaving behind some fragments for a film. The editor Anna Bergman tries to make a cohesive feature out of the material (the manuscript is gone). A projection room displays sixteen undressing girls. Spectators buy time in a slot machine to watch them. Peter Egerman visits one of them, Ka. An interim vignette presents a variation of a classical love myth, Philemon and Baucis, an old married couple who don’t want to be separated in death and are turned into a tree. The next scene shows a court theatre; excerpts from Shakespeare’s The Tempest are performed. Peter works in Ludwigswerke, gets involved in business machinations, buys out a newspaper editor. At a party he shoots Bauer, a police chief, and is himself shot by Wolfgang, Bauer’s 12-year-old son. Back in the projection room, Marco returns and puts a match to the reels. The ‘film’ goes up in smoke.
Reception Reviews were more critical but also more perceptive than in the reception of Bergman’s previous collection of prose works, Femte akten. The focus was on Bergman’s fictional world, the closed bourgeois room, and on his dramaturgical structure. The three pieces in the volume were seen as a progression: From ‘faithless’ role-playing to the madhouse and the world of creative chaos, and from a conventionally constructed realistic relationship drama in Trolösa to a surreal inner-directed conflict in En själslig angelägenhet and a grotesque political caricature in Kärlek utan älskare. Almost all reviewers regretted that Kärlek utan älskare had been rejected by film producers (though Bergman used part of the story in From the Life of the Marionettes) and suggested that this work in particular might have led him to pursue a new track in his filmmaking rather than the classical route of bourgeois drama.
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List of Bergman’s Written Work Several reviewers pointed out that a reader’s reaction to such works as Femte akten and Föreställningar was inevitably influenced by the faces of Bergman’s actors in his earlier film and theatre productions. This implies a critical change from the response to such earlier Bergman publications as Den goda viljan, Söndagsbarn, and Enskilda samtal, where reviewers often stressed the autonomy of the literary text.
Book Reviews Lindblom, Sisela. ‘Kött och blod bland boksidorna’ [Flesh and blood on the book pages]. DN 11 September 2000, p. B1; Olsson, Ulf. ‘Bordellens bilder’ [Images of the brothel]. Expr., 11 September 2000, p. 4; Palmqvist, Bertil. ‘Kunde ha inlett en ny epok’ [Could have inaugurated a new epoch]. Arb, 11 September 2000, p. 7; Ström, Eva. ‘Hur bryter man sig ur det Bergmanska mörkret?’ [How does one break out of Bergmanian darkness?]. SDS, 16 September 2000, p. A4; Tjäder, Per Arne. ‘I det sammanpressade rummet’ [In the compressed room]. GP, 11 September 2000, p. 36; Westling, Barbro. ‘Försoning? Aldrig i livet’ [Reconciliation? Never in your life]. AB, 11 September 2000, p. 5; Wickbom, Kaj. ‘Föreställningar’ [Performances]. Filmrutan, no. 4, 2000, pp. 42-43.
Translations Danish: English:
French:
German:
Forestillinger, tr. by Ib Lindberg & Lise Skafte Jensen. (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2000), 224 pp.; Translation of ‘En själslig angelägenhet’ by Eivor Martinus titled ‘A Matter of the Soul’, appeared in New Swedish Plays, ed. by Gunilla Anderman. (Norwich, East Anglia: Norvik Press, 1992), pp. 33-64; Une affaire d’âme, tr. by Vincent Fournier. (Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 2002), 320 pp. Includes, besides title text, a translation of Trolösa (Infidèles) and Kärlek utan älskare (Amour sans amants). Translation of Trolösa was published under title ‘Treulose’ in Ingmar Bergman. Im Bleistift-Ton, ed. by Renate Bleibtreu, 2002, pp. 754-830.
2001 200.
Gengångare. Ett familjedrama av Henrik Ibsen. Adaptation and Translation by Ingmar Bergman. With an afterword by Ingmar Bergman. Dated Fårö in May 2001. Printed in Dramaten Program 10 for 2001-2002. Stockholm: Dramaten, 2002. See Commentary to 2002 production of Gengångare (Ghosts), (Ø 487), theatre chapter VI.
2003 201.
‘Saraband’. Script for TV feature film, directed by Ingmar Bergman. Televised on 1 December, 2003. Saraband was published by Norstedt (Stockholm: 2003), 107 pp. Working title was also ‘Anna’. Original title – ‘Saraband’ – refers to Bach’s fugue. In a press interview on 28 January 2002, Bergman presented the story as a free-standing continuation of Scener ur ett äktenskap (Scenes from a Marriage), using the same actors – Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann – as in the 1973 TV version (see Ø 343), media chapter (V).
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Chapter II The Writer Translations French:
Sarabande, tr. by Vincent Fournier. With a preface by Jacques Aumont. Paris: Edition des Cahiers du Cinéma, 2004-2005, 112 p.
2004 201a. ‘Sommarprataren’ [Summer speaker]. Radio talk. SR, 18 July 2004. Bergman talks about his musical taste and the importance of music in his life and work. Available for purchase on CD from SR.
201b. Tre dagböcker [Three diaries]. With Marie von Rosen. Stockholm: Norstedt, 2004. Three diaries kept separately by Bergman, his wife Ingrid, and their daughter Maria during Ingrid’s terminal illness in 1995. The diaries were edited by Bergman and Maria.
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Bergman’s real international breakthrough as a filmmaker came with The Seventh Seal (1956) and established him as a screen director whose personal vision focused on metaphysical and religious issues. The still photo is taken during the shooting of the film, as Bergman is seen talking with the figure of Death (Bengt Ekerot). Photo: Gunnar Fischer. Courtesy: Svensk Filmindustri (SF)
Chapter III The Filmmaker To follow a highly visible and prolific artist’s production is to partake in the making of a creative persona, which may undergo different metamorphoses over the years, depending upon the kind and degree of mythmaking that particular cultural contexts help formulate. The public image of a young Ingmar Bergman in the emerging Swedish folkhem of the 1940s differs from the critical view of him in the politicized 1960s or the portrait of him as an aging artistic giant in the early 21st century. For just as personalities change and develop over the years, so do the esthetic and cultural interpretations of such personalities. Yet, in the case of Ingmar Bergman, the object himself has helped solidify his image through his own ability to shape his life into a legend. One expressive aspect of his self-created persona lies in the way Bergman has used, again and again, his own childhood games as an entryway into an imaginary landscape. To the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, a toy projector in the nursery closet harbored features that would become important to him as a screen artist. In his essay from 1954 ‘Det att göra film’, he writes about the lifelong spell of his ‘little rickety projector’and about his sensuous recollection of his first encounter with it: It was my first magic box. [...] I have often wondered what fascinated me and still fascinates me in the same way. Something can occur to me in the film studio, or in the darkness of the editing room, when I have the small frame in front of me and the film strip running through my fingers, or during the fantastic birth process of mixing and the finished film slowly unveils its face. [Det blev min första trollerilåda. [...] Jag har ofta undrat över vad som fängslade mig så restlöst. Och vad det är som fortfarande fängslar mig på exakt samma sätt. Det kan komma över mig i ateljén eller i klipprummets skymning, då jag har den lilla bilden framför mig och filmbandet löpande mellan mina fingrar, eller under mixningens fantastiska födelseprocess, då den färdiga filmen långsamt avtäcker sitt ansikte.]
To Bergman his childhood projector came to signify a number of important aspects of the film medium. First and foremost his ‘rickety’ toy suggested the magic of movement. As in classical philosophy, motion became associated with the life process itself. There was something miraculous just in his being able to initiate movement with
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Chapter III the Filmmaker mechanical means and thus simulate life. Second, the projected image was both copy and mimesis, imprint and representation, fake and reality. Third, Bergman’s exposure to the magic ‘box’ was analogous to his role as a young puppeteer: it gave him the satisfaction of exerting the rudimentary control of a director, of shaping his own world. Finally, the overriding importance of the magic lantern lay in its potential to help him portray and at the same time transcend his own subjective world. Bergman came to realize quite early that to him the essence of filmmaking lay in its potential to go beyond the spatial and temporal limits of physical reality and depict an inner mindscape. In the essay from 1954, ‘Det att göra film’ [What is Filmmaking?], he speculates about the special power of the film medium: I cannot help thinking that the medium at my disposal is so fine and complicated that it should be able to illuminate the human soul more strongly, to reveal more ruthlessly, cover new realms of reality of which we are still ignorant. Maybe we should even be able to find a crack through which to penetrate the twilight land of suprareality... [Det är en tanke jag inte kan värja mig för att jag sysslar med ett medium som är så raffinerat att vi skulle kunna belysa människosjälen oändligt mycket skarpare, avslöja ännu hänsynslösare, inmuta helt nya domäner i verkligheten åt vår kännedom. Kanske skulle vi till och med finna en springa att tränga oss ut i öververklighetens skymningsland...]
Filmmaking: Enter the Magician In keeping with his assessment of the magic potential of the film medium, Ingmar Bergman’s earliest attempts at defining his position as a filmmaker centered on the role of fantasy in the cinema. In a 1946 talk in a film club at Uppsala University, when Bergman was at the very beginning of his film career, he attacked the new realism in the American cinema and advocated a return to ‘magic’ and ‘illusionism’. He formulated his views as an homage to Georges Méliès, ‘the first imaginative artist in the cinema’ [den första fantasifulla konstnären inom filmen], who, in a bold and naïve way, had challenged the use of the camera as a documentary recorder of reality. Méliès was a practicing magician turned filmmaker. Though technically primitive compared to modern film projection facilities, his apparatus embodied the essence of filmmaking as a popular rather than sophisticated art. It is an approach defended by Bergman: There is nothing shameful or degrading about the cinema having been at one time a form of peep show entertainment, a clown and conjuring act. But it is wrong and denigrating to deny its origin and make it lose its sense of magic and its clowning qualities, which are so stimulating to our imagination. [Det är inte fel och förnedrande för filmen att den ursprungligen varit ett marknadsnöje, ett gyckel och taskspeleri, men det är fel och förnedrande att den förnekar detta sitt ursprung. Att den håller på att förlora sin magi och sina fantasieggande gycklaregenskaper.] (‘Det förtrollade marknadsnöjet’, Biografbladet 28, no. 3, 1947, p. 149).
Bergman’s somewhat defensive tone might be juxtaposed to the role of the cinema at the time. Whether viewed as an escapist medium or valued for its potential as a
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Swedish Filmmaking during Bergman’s Formative Years serious social and psychological medium, the cinema was deemed to be an inferior form of cultural expression that could not compete with the theatre in terms of elegance, depth, or poetry. As one of the leading film and theatre critics in Sweden at the time (and one of Bergman’s early supporters), Nils Beyer once wrote: There is no romantic glow about the camera, the celluloid and the projector. [...] The cinema cannot compete with the theatre as dream, playfulness or imaginative vision. [...] Practically all movies we see are filmed naturalistic theatre. [Det finns ingen romantisk glöd kring kameran, celluloiden och projektorn. Filmen kan inte tävla med teatern som dröm, lekfullhet eller fantasifull vision. [...] Praktiskt taget alla filmer vi ser är filmad naturalistisk teater.] (En bok om film, 1947).
Bergman, on the other hand, liked to point out from the start that the laterna magica, as a precursor to the film camera, possessed the capacity to spellbind the viewer and provide a spectacle of enchantment. In the past, viewers had been drawn like curious and excited children to the laterna’s magic world. To Bergman an ideal audience was one that preserved such a childlike willingness to let themselves be ‘duped’. He viewed himself as a magician whose success was based on an ability to use his apparatus to put the viewers in an emotionally intense state of mind and ‘make them laugh, scream with fright, smile, believe in fairy stories, become indignant, feel shocked, charmed..’. [få den att skratta, skrika av skräck, le, tro på sagor, indigneras, chockeras, bedåras...] (‘Det att göra film’, 1954, p. 5) The seductive power of the camera would later be made into a motif in a number of Bergman films. It serves as an important signifier in Fängelse (1949, Prison), Ansiktet (1959, The Magician/The Face), Fanny och Alexander (1982), and Larmar och gör sig till (1993, In the Presence of a Clown).
Swedish Filmmaking during Bergman’s Formative Years To Ingmar Bergman, filmmaking was not only a playful and magical game. It could also be a painful undertaking, a form of ‘self-combustion and self-effusion, a tapeworm 2,500 meters long that sucks the life and spirit out of me’ (quoted in Time, 14 March 1962, p. 62). This observation refers both to the taxing filmmaking process itself and to his own involvement in the script, which has almost always been a form of personal statement. But Bergman’s description of the filmmaking situation also refers to the structure of the film industry in Sweden when he entered the field. Unlike the various subsidized city theatres where he was contracted to work as a stage director, the cinema dwelt in a more commercial sphere that seemed to follow the same box office guidelines as Hollywood. The Swedish film industry was in the hands of private companies that relied on profit for their survival. Their final goal was clearly expressed, in the alleged words of Olof Andersson, one-time head of Svensk Filmindustri, the leading film company in Sweden at the time: ‘A good film is a film that sells.’ Seemingly well aware of the commercial backbone of Swedish filmmaking at the time, Bergman presented a talk at Lund University in the early 1950s (later to be developed into the essay ‘Det att göra film’), in which he referred to the industry as a ‘brutal’ enterprise system and likened his own role in the cinema to that of an acrobat
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Chapter III the Filmmaker performing a rope dance, a balancing act prompted by popular demand and by production company expectations. The filmmaker carried with him his personal skill and vision, but he also had to appease a whole complex of investors, critics, and entertainment seekers. Without bringing profits to the film industry coffers, a filmmaker’s magic touch might be dispelled overnight: If I make [...] two or three films that are economic flops, the producer rightly claims that he no longer dares invest his money in my talent. Suddenly, I find myself a suspect figure, an embezzler who will have plenty of time to contemplate the usefulness of his so-called artistic ambitions. The magician is robbed of his apparatus. [Om jag således gör [...] två eller tre filmer som innebär ekonomisk förlust, anser producenten med rätta att han inte längre vågar satsa sitt guld på mina talanger. Jag finner mig då helt plötsligt vara en misstänkt figur, en penningförskingrare, och får god tid att tänka på vad mina så kallade konstnärliga ambitioner egentligen hade för nytta med sig. Trollkarlen är berövad sin apparatur.] (‘Det att göra film’, p. 4)
Bergman later acknowledged that during his early years in filmmaking he ‘went on sawing away very furiously at the very branch I was sitting on’ [sågade väldigt häftigt i den gren jag satt på] (Bergman om Bergman, p. 63; Eng. Ed. p. 57). He certainly did not mince his words about the film production industry which, he said, left a filmmaker ‘trampling in a marshland with his nose above the water, a marshland of economic troubles, conventional attitudes, stupidity, fear, insecurity and confusion’ [står och trampar i ett träsk med näsan ovanför vattnet, ett träsk av ekonomiska bekymmer, konventionalism, dumhet, rädsla, osäkerhet och virrighet]. He did not hesitate to rile the production companies for curtailing artistic freedom to safeguard a lucrative success: It would be desirable if film producers, as well as other captains of industry, would provide laboratories for the creative artist. [...] But film producers have only faith in engineers and imagine, in their stupid reverence, that the salvation of the industry comes about through technical inventions. [...] I sometimes get a tired desire to accommodate myself and make myself into what they want me to be, though at the same time I know that this would be the end and totally meaningless. Therefore, I am glad that I am not born with equal part reason and guts. [...] Why shouldn’t we scare the film producers? It’s part of their profession to be scared, they get paid for their ulcers! [Det vore önskvärt att filmproducenterna såväl som andra fabriksledare ställde laboratorier till de skapande krafternas förfogande. [...] Men filmproducenterna har bara förtroende för ingenjörer och inbillar sig med stupid vördnad att industrins räddning går genom tekniska uppfinningar. [...] Jag får en trött lust att anpassa mig och göra mig sådan man vill ha mig, samtidigt som jag vet att detta vore slutet och den fullständiga likgiltigheten. Därför är jag ändå glad att jag inte är född med lika delar förnuft och inälvor. [...] Varför skall man inte skrämma filmproducenter? Det hör till deras yrke att vara rädda. De har betalt för sina magsår!] (‘Det att göra film’ p. 8)
Some 40 years later Bergman would depict the somewhat cynical commercial attitude of the film industry in his one-act stage play, Sista skriket (‘The Last Gasp/Sream’). Bergman imagines a meeting between Georg af Klercker, a Swedish filmmaker on the
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Swedish Filmmaking during Bergman’s Formative Years skid, and the mogul Charles Magnusson, the founder of Svenska Bio (1909), a company that reconstituted itself in 1919 as Svensk Filmindustri (SF). In the play, Magnusson is not insensitive to the artistic potential of the medium, but he is an entrepreneur who views a filmmaker’s contribution as an investment. Af Klercker is really not much to stake his money on at this point. Therefore, Magnusson can afford to ignore him. Bergman’s assessment of his own situation in the 1940s and 1950s is incorporated into Sista skriket, a fact that he confirmed in a program interview: ‘Since I myself had several times been almost kicked out and dismissed, I really understand how af Klercker must have felt’ [Eftersom jag själv vid ett flertal tillfällen nästan hade blivit utsparkad och avskedad, förstår jag verkligen hur af Klercker måste ha känt det] (see Åhlund, Chaplin, 1992, Ø 926, Interviews). Magnusson, himself dismissed from his post in the late Twenties, was long gone when Ingmar Bergman was hired in 1941 in the manuscript department at Svensk Filmindustri. Gone were the golden years of Swedish filmmaking when the silent Swedish cinema had established an international reputation with directorial names like Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller and cinematographer Julius Jaenzon (Mr. Julius), all of whom had been active in the U.S. Jaenzon’s fate is indicative of the decline that took place in the 1930s. When Ingmar Bergman entered the scene, Jaenzon had become an embittered alcoholic whose talent had gone to waste as the talkies took over and Swedish filmmaking turned to a formula production of mostly popular so-called ‘pilsner farces’ and elegant ‘champagne’ comedies and melodramas. The war years, however, offered a different perspective for Swedish film production companies, since the influx of foreign movies diminished, while the box office demand for new features increased. Filmmakers who had been ostracized in the 1930s were now invited back. One of them was Alf Sjöberg, who was to direct Bergman’s first script, ‘Hets’ (1944, Torment/Frenzy). The Swedish cinema also witnessed the emergence of a new generation of producers who were on the lookout for young talents. Carl Anders Dymling at SF, Lorens Marmstedt at Terrafilm, and Rune Waldekranz at Sandrews all recognized Bergman’s potential. Victor Sjöström, the grand old man of the Swedish silent cinema who had returned from Hollywood and become one of the artistic advisers at SF, also supported Bergman, especially during the shooting of the first film he directed, Kris (1946). By the early 1950s Bergman had created a name for himself in the film studio as a determined young film artist whose will was not easily ignored. As a matter of fact, there was a saying among those who dwelt within the radius of Bergman’s studio work that ‘what Ingmar wanted, Dymling always wanted, the producers always wanted it, God always wanted it’ [Vad Ingmar ville, ville alltid Dymling, ville alltid bolagsherrarna, ville alltid Gud] (Lillie Björnstrand. Inte bara applåder, Stockholm: Tiden, 1975, p. 144). Bergman’s artistic career was also helped by the close connection between stage and screen in the Swedish cinema, dating back to the silent era. The stage-cum-screen tradition provided the filmmaker with an important asset – working with stage actors who had, for the most part, a highly professional and disciplined training. This suited the rather rigid work morale of Ingmar Bergman. Over the years he came to surround himself with a ‘stable’ of actors. They did not constitute a film repertory company but were nevertheless a team he knew well from his years as a theater director in Hälsingborg, Malmö and Göteborg, and whose capacities and extraordinary skills he had
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Chapter III the Filmmaker been able to assess on stage. Without doubt these ties between stage and screen contributed to the professional quality of Ingmar Bergman’s filmmaking and also helped establish certain specific aspects of his film style. As Törnqvist remarks in his book Bergman’s Muses (see Chapter IX, Ø 1689), ‘Bergman’s interest in pictorial composition rather than camera movement, his preference for continuity editing, for panning above cutting, and for long takes may all be seen as theatrical characteristics’ (p. 218). To this one might add his increasing focus on the actor’s dominant space above that of panoramic nature scenes, so common in traditional Swedish filmmaking. The very timing of Bergman’s arrival in the film studio was perfect. Had he shown up ten years later, he would have found a cinema in growing economic difficulties. The Swedish film industry produced some 40 films a year in the 1940s. Ten years later the number had diminished to less than half, and only a few film companies had survived the industry’s financial crisis. With his passionate commitment to the medium and his intense determination, Ingmar Bergman might eventually have succeeded at any time, but it is unlikely that he would have been given the same opportunity to learn the trade and use the existing production facilities. His first five years as a filmmaker can be seen as a trial-and-error period when he worked with different production companies, cinematographers and actors while absorbing a variety of film styles, from French film noir to Italian neo-realism. He once stated that he would have been willing to make movies about anything, ‘even the telephone directory’ [till och med telefonkatalogen] (Kommentar till serie från A till Ö, Ø 154). Filmmaking was a craving ‘as primitive and elemental as hunger and thirst’. [lika primitiv och elementär som hunger och törst] (‘Det att göra film’, Ø 87). But he shared the film studios with a very talented group of filmmakers of his own generation, among them Hasse Ekman and Lars-Erik Kjellgren, who seemed to take much more naturally to the medium. In fact, by the end of the 1940s, Bergman had come to fear that his filmmaking days were numbered. He had tried his luck at three different production companies: Svensk Filmindustri, Sandrews, and Terrafilm. A studio lockout in 1950-51 aggravated his situation. The final blow seemed to come in 1953 when Gycklarnas afton (The Naked Night) – today considered one of Ingmar Bergman’s early master-pieces – got a lukewarm reception. In an excessive response, one reviewer opened and closed his column with the following oft-quoted line: ‘I refuse to dissect any further Ingmar Bergman’s latest throw-up’ [Jag vägrar att ockulärbesiktiga Ingmar Bergmans senaste spya]. Bergman says in retrospect: Of course I experienced both the public and critical fiasco as something catastrophic. I knew that for each time things went to pot my subsequent chances to make film became more limited. I knew that for each time my situation became more insecure and risky. The sector narrowed. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. (Bergman on Bergman, p. 82) [Det är klart att jag upplevde både publikfiaskot och kritikerfiaskot som något katastrofalt. Jag visste att varje gång det gick åt pipan så var mina fortsatta möjligheter att få göra film begränsade. Jag visste att för varje gång blev det osäkrare och riskablare. Sektorn blev trängre. Och det var en mycket obehaglig känsla]. (Bergman om Bergman, s. 87)
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Ingmar Bergman: His Filmmaking Credo Ingmar Bergman: His Filmmaking Credo Between 1945 and 1956, the year of his international breakthrough with Sommarnattens leende (1955, Smiles of a Summer Night), Ingmar Bergman directed thirteen feature films, of which he had written the script to eight. After his Cannes recognition in 1956, SF finally let him make Det sjunde inseglet (1956-57, The Seventh Seal), giving him the modest sum of 75,000 kronor (at the time about $15,000) and 35 shooting days to complete the project. True to form, he disciplined himself to finish the takes in 34 days and within the allotted budget. The film cemented his filmmaking reputation abroad, and The Seventh Seal was hailed in the U.S. as ‘the first truly existential work for the cinema’ (Andrew Sarris, Film Culture, 1959). During the 1950s Bergman also formulated certain fundamental principles that would guide him as a filmmaker and keep him from undermining his artistic integrity in a profit-oriented industry. His artistic credo, eventually published in the 1959 essay ‘Varje film är min sista film’ [Each Film is My Last] (Ø 108), was set down as three ‘commandments’ which were presented under the following headings: – Always Be Entertaining. [Var alltid underhållande] – Thou Must Follow Thy Artistic Conscience. [Du skall följa ditt konstnärliga samvete] – Every Film Is My Last Film. [Varje film är min sista film] The first exhortation – to be entertaining – was dictated by the viewing and paying public who had the right to demand a vital and enjoyable experience. This did not mean however that the filmmaker had to give in to audience pressure: In his second commandment Bergman chooses loyalty to his artistic vision as his number one priority. This is, however, a rather tenuous and tricky dictum, since it implies all kinds of moral transgressions in the name of poetic license: ...I am permitted to falsify if it is artistically defensible, I may also lie if it is an attractive lie, I ought to murder my nearest ones or myself or anyone else if it helps my film, I may prostitute myself if it is beneficial to the cause, and I have to steal if I don’t have anything of my own to present. [...jag tillåts förfalska om det är konstnärligt försvarligt, jag får också ljuga om det är en attraktiv lögn, jag bör mörda mina närmaste eller mig själv eller vem som helst, om det hjälper min film, jag får också lov att prostituera mig om det gynnar saken och jag måste stjäla om jag inte har något eget att komma med]. (p. 7)
Yet, though all means were permissible as long as they served an artistic goal, it did not imply a laissez-faire approach to filmmaking, one that seeks the easiest way out to reach the end product. On the contrary, behind the second commandment lies an absolute demand on the creative self to submit to whatever rigorous discipline and humiliating circumstances necessary to maintain artistic integrity. Bergman’s third commandment, finally, is one of caution, based on his own recognition of the precarious economic basis of filmmaking which meant that each new film he made might very well be his last. For this reason he decided that his only loyalty had to be to the film in the making. But in return, such a focus on the work at hand, precluding any looking back or looking forward, gave Bergman a sense of artistic comfort, for he knew that only he and his team could influence the way a
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Chapter III the Filmmaker given film would take shape. By following his third commandment and relying on his own creative strength and not worrying about future filmmaking opportunities or about the day when the public might be indifferent to his art, Ingmar Bergman could also maintain his sense of professional pride and his vitality as a film artist. Bergman’s three commandments form his artistic catechism. But he also developed certain fundamental concepts about the film medium, which can be distilled as follows from several short essays, program notes, and interviews: 1. Filmmaking required of Bergman that he develop a narrative approach and a visual style that could accommodate what he called ‘the dramaturgy of the juicy dream’ [den smaskiga drömmens dramaturgi]. As a young script reader at SF, he had been trained by his boss, Stina Bergman, in the realistic and formulaic American approach to scriptwriting: This technique was extremely obvious, almost rigid: The audience must never have the slightest doubt where they were in the story. Nor could there be any doubt about who was who, and the transitions between various points of the story were to be treated with care. High points should be allotted and placed at specific places in the script, and the culmination had to be saved for the end. (Images. My Life in Film, p. 118) [Denna filmdramaturgi var ytterst påtaglig, närmast rigid: publiken skulle aldrig behöva sväva i tvivelsmål om var man befann sig. Ingen tvekan skulle råda om vem som var vem, och berättelsens transportsträckor skulle behandlas med omsorg. Höjdpunkter skulle fördelas och placeras på bestämda därför avsedda ställen i manuskriptet. Kulminationen skulle sparas till slutet]. (Bilder, s. 118)
American film dramaturgy, which had gained international acceptance, was too linear for Bergman’s purposes. To him the film medium should attempt to ‘penetrate into hitherto unseen worlds’ [tränga in i hittils osedda världar]. But the transition from a dramaturgy with roots in 19th-century realism to a modernistic structure that attempted to depict the associative and fragmented pattern of the subconscious or nocturnal psyche was not without problems. Bergman retained as guiding principles some fundamental aspects of his first exposure to American-style scriptwriting: a clear plot development and a sense of climactic timing. In fact, clarity in presentation was to remain a self-imposed demand by Bergman throughout his filmmaking career. But it created a certain tension in him between an artistic desire to experiment with a new visual language and his equally strong desire to be understood and communicate with an audience: The result is a tug-of-war between my need to search for a filmically associative form to express a complicated situation and my demand for absolute clarity. Since I do not create my work for the edification of myself or a few people but for the entertainment of the masses, the latter imperative usually wins out. Nevertheless, I sometimes try the riskier alternative, and it turns out that the public also absorbs an advanced irrational style with a keen sense. [Det blir slitningar mellan mitt behov att söka ett filmiskt associativt uttryck för en komplicerad situation och mina krav på absolut klarhet. Eftersom jag inte skapar mitt verk till min egen eller fåtalets uppbyggelse utan till miljonpublikens underhållning segrar för det
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Ingmar Bergman: His Filmmaking Credo mesta det senare imperativet. Ibland prövar jag likväl det riskablaste alternativet och det har visat sig att publiken förvånansvärt lyhört absorberar även en avancerad irrationell linjeföring]. (‘Varje film är min sista film’ Each Film Is My Last, p. 4-5)
Bergman refers to his modernistic approach to film narration as walking ‘the dangerous roads’ [de farliga vägarna]. He knew that the medium had to be challenged and the public tested. Yet, still towards the end of his career, he suspects that his filmmaking approach ‘might not have been clear enough and simple enough’ [har kanske inte varit tillräckligt tydlig och tillräckligt enkel] (Tre dagar med Bergman, Ø 919, p. 64). 2. Filmmaking is based on good craftsmanship. While the impulse to create for the screen might spring from an inner drive and a desire to convey a personal vision, the hard reality is that without a craftsman’s competence, the result will be disappointing. Ever since the silent era of filmmaking, Swedish film production had had a wellestablished crew of skilled craftsmen, many of whom reacted negatively to Bergman as a temperamental novice. Bergman became convinced that some of them helped sabotage his early filmmaking efforts. This challenged him to learn all the technical aspects of the trade, so that he could better control a production: ‘I was all the time declared an idiot until I stubbornly and step by step learnt everything that had to do with my profession. Today there is no one who can rap me over the knuckles in technical matters’ [Jag blev oavbrutet idiotförklarad tills jag benhårt steg för steg lärde mig allt som hade med mitt yrke att göra. I dag är det ingen på det tekniska planet som kan slå mig på fingrarna] (Bergman on Bergman, p. 58/Bergman om Bergman, p. 63). To achieve professional skill as a filmmaker became a matter of great pride to Ingmar Bergman: ‘I say, my films are good craftsmanship. I am diligent, conscientious and extremely careful. I make my work for daily use and not for eternity. My pride is that of a craftsman’ [Jag säger att mina filmer är ett gott hantverk. Jag är flitig, omsorgsfull och ytterst noggrann. Jag skapar mitt arbete för dagligt bruk och inte för evigheten. Min stolthet är en hantverkares] (‘Det att göra film’/‘What is Filmmaking?’ 1954, Ø 87). 3. Filmmaking is teamwork. Ingmar Bergman’s control of a film production was to become legendary, but so would his sense of loyalty to his staff of co-workers. As a director he seems to have functioned like an old-fashioned company leader who demanded an absolute work morale from his employees but also shielded them in moments of crisis. His actors have expressed, in a variety of different ways, the sense of security and trust they have felt in his leadership. Actor Anders Ek, a man of strong will and conviction, admired Bergman for his ability ‘to guide him towards profound depths’ [att leda fram mot de stora djupen]. Actress Eva Dahlbeck once claimed that working with Bergman was like being placed in a garden, around which the director built a secure fence that prevented any disturbing visitors from entering the area. (See interviews in Filmnyheter 9, no. 12, 1954: 4-6, 21.) Bergman’s creative vision could never bear too much impulsive improvization. Instead, he evolved a directorial approach where moments of concentrated and controlled takes would alternate with relaxed pauses, often filled with laughter and small talk. The filming itself had to proceed with careful planning, a precise and punctual tempo; yet it should not be so strenuous as to cause fatigue: Every limb in the big collective must know what is to be done. The whole mechanical apparatus must be freed from all uncertainty. These preparations must not take too long,
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Chapter III the Filmmaker however; they must not tire or bore those involved. The rehearsals before a take must occur in full awareness [of what needs to be done] and with technical precision. (‘My Three Powerfully Effective Commandments’, Film Comment 1970, p. 11) [Jag vet t. ex. att allt i en scen måste vara noga förberett, varje lem i det stora kollektivet måste veta vad som ska göras. Hela mekaniken måste vara självklart befriad från all osäkerhet. Dessa förberedelser får inte ta för lång tid, de får inte tråka ut eller trötta de inblandade. Repetitionerna till tagningen måste ske under klar medvetenhet och teknisk precision.] (‘Varje film är min sista film’, Ø 108, p. 5).
In his adolescence Bergman experienced the important transition from silent cinema to the talkies, from visual images accompanied by captions to sound tracks. Sound and image came to share equal space in his imagination. To him this was part of his own childhood experience. In Laterna magica, there are numerous references to audiovisual impressions that used to fascinate him as a child: A swishing light beam, a scratching ink pen, a creaky cart drawn by a horse on a cobblestone street. Such recollections of sounds and images find their way into his filmmaking. Likewise his use of music in his filmmaking goes far beyond serving as an emotional complement, for it is built into the very montage and rhythm of a sequence. At times it seems to dictate the very movement of a scene and determine the camera’s approach to the photographed image. For instance, in a brief and fleeting reconciliation scene between the two sisters Karin and Maria in Viskningar och rop/Cries and Whispers, a few bars on a cello seem to guide the camera’s caressing pendulum between the women’s faces: the music suppresses the sound of their voices and assumes the role of an invisible conductor. As a result, there is, as Michel Chion has remarked, a tremendous difference in experiencing a Bergman film with or without sound. Bergman’s creation of audiovisual illusion is, in Chion’s wording, ‘an added value’ to the optical illusion of the image, an enrichment brought about by a synchronic use of sound and image. (Michel Chion. Audio-Vision. Sound and Screen, ed. & transl. by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia UP, 1994, p. 5) Bergman once speculated on how valuable it would be for him to have at his disposal a musical method whereby to realize a film script. What he calls for is a score that could transform his vision into notes: So I have decided to make a particular film, and now begins a complicated work that is hard to master: To transfer rhythms, moods, atmospheres, tensions, musical scores to words and sentences in a [...] readible manuscript. [...] And then I come to the essential matter, I mean the montage itself, the rhythm, the inner relationship of the images, the whole vital third dimension without which the finished film will be a dead mechanical product. I cannot specify distinct musical keys, [...] I don’t have the slightest chance of suggesting the breathing and pulse of the work. I have often asked for a kind of musical score that would give me the chance of translating all the shades and notes of my vision. . . [Jag har alltså beslutat mig för att göra en viss film och nu vidtar ett komplicerat och svårbemästrat arbete: Att överföra rytmer, stämningar, atmosfärer, spänningar, sekvenser, tonarter, till ord och meningar i ett läsbart [...] manuskript. [...] Men så kommer jag till det essentiella, jag menar själva montaget, rytmen, bildernas inbördes relation, hela den livsviktiga tredje dimension utan vilken den färdiga filmen är en död fabrikationsartikel. Jag kan
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Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production inte ange tydliga tonarter [...] jag har inte minsta möjlighet att antyda verkets andhämtning eller puls. Jag har ofta efterlyst en sorts notskrift som skulle ge mig en chans att översätta visionens alla dagrar och toner...] (‘Varje film är min sista’/Each Film is my Last, p. 3)
Ultimately, what Bergman implies in his reference to musical analogies is something that lies beyond mere notes and technicalities. Filmmaking to Bergman is related to music as an art built on creating a flow of harmony and balance, intercepted by moments of dramatic climaxes or crescendos. All great art in fact is to Bergman like capturing a sense of rhythm, a mood and a movement that tries to emulate breathing itself: All art has to do with breathing in and breathing out. Because our whole life consists of rhythms of day and night; light and darkness; black and white; breathing in and breathing out – and in this we live. If we don’t inscribe rhythm in every interpretation, every recreation – swiftly, slowly, restrained, you let loose, you make a pause, you maintain the whole time a tension, so that the public is given an opportunity to breathe along – well, then it does not function. [All konst har med in- och utandning att göra. Därför att hela vårt liv består av rytmer med dag och natt; ljus och mörker; svart och vitt; inandning och utandning – och i detta lever vi. Om vi inte skriver in rytmen i varje interpretation, varje återskapande – snabbt, långsamt, återhållet, man släpper lös, man gör paus, man upprätthåller hela tiden en spänning, så att publiken hela tiden får en möjlighet att andas med – ja, då fungerar det inte.] (Interview in Mikael Timm. Ögats glädje, 1994, p. 129)
Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production Ingmar Bergman’s filmmaking spans more than half a century or half the history of the film medium. His prolific production demands some kind of organized classification even though it is important to bear in mind that almost any categorization of such a large and rich material will imply certain intellectual shortcuts. Yet, despite the risk of oversimplifying, one might divide Bergman’s films into different groups where the selected approach is both chronological and thematic. Other organizing principles such as a focus on stylistic features or on clusters of actors and actresses/male and female parts would be equally feasible. Sometimes a shift in theme also signals a shift in style and milieu, and a given actor can serve as inspiration for a film narrative. The classification used here should not obscure the fact that there are in Bergman’s entire filmmaking what one might call certain primordial tensions and conflicts that permeate his production from beginning to end; a strong moral viewpoint determines both his metaphysical and psychological motifs; there is a continuous awareness of the interplay, both on the social and personal level, between control and humiliation, often presented as a series of shifting positions, so that his characters are seldom either absolute winners or losers. Within the framework of such ‘constant themes’ as the quest motif; the scapegoat or humiliation motif, the confessional motif, the voyeuristic or parasitical motif, Bergman develops conflicts and situations that de-
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Chapter III the Filmmaker monstrate an emotional tug-of-war between human beings, and between individuals and their gods and demons. A number of important turning-points in Bergman’s filmmaking may be noted. The first occurs after his international breakthrough in the mid-Fifties, which enabled him to dictate his own terms and create his major auteur films of that decade: Sjunde inseglet (1956, The Seventh Seal), Smultronstället (1957, Wild Strawberries), Ansiktet (1958, The Magician/The Face), and Jungfrukällan (1960, The Virgin Spring). A second turning-point takes place in the early Sixties when he moves from the epic journey format and/or ‘historical’ films of the preceding decade to the chamber films, beginning with Såsom i en spegel (1961, Through a Glass Darkly) and culminating with Viskningar och rop (1972, Cries and Whispers). This shift coincides with Bergman’s discovery of the stark Fårö landscape and with the definite establishment of Sven Nykvist as his cinematographer. Yet another shift has to do with his recognition of the intimate potential of the TV medium. Though he had explored television since the 1950s, it was at first reserved for adaptations of some of his play productions. But with the documentary TV film Fårö-dokument (1969) and the television series Scener ur ett äktenskap (1973, Scenes from a Mariage), he used the medium as a realistic form of screen projection. Bergman’s next turning-point, finally, seems conditioned by his homecoming in the early 1980s after several years in exile. It is now he begins to explore his family history, which brings a new psychological intensity to his films (including his TV films and his scripts). Color, which played such a vital part in Viskningar och rop, is now explored to the fullest in Fanny och Alexander (1982). In the charts below, Bergman’s role as either director or scriptwriter is divided into six different group headings. Film titles are indicated as follows: Scripts revised by Bergman but based on literary works by others are marked rev. plus author’s name. Films originally conceived for television have script references marked TV. Titles listed are original Swedish titles, followed by English distribution titles. For more details, check individual films in the filmography chapter (IV) and in media chapter (V).
Group I. Films from the Forties and early Fifties. Focus: The Young Couple Hets (1944, Torment/Frenzy) Kris (1946, Crisis)
Script Director & Script rev. from play by Leck Fischer Director & Script rev. from play by Oscar Braathen Director & Script rev. from play by Martin Söderhjelm Director & Script rev. from novel by Dagmar Edqvist Director & Script rev. from novel by Olle Länsberg Script Director & Script Director & Script
Det regnar på vår kärlek (1946, It Rains on Our Love) Skepp till India land (1947, Land of Desire/Ship to India) Musik i mörker (1948, Night is My Future/Music in Darkness) Hamnstad (1948, Port of Call) Eva (1948) Fängelse (1949, The Devil’s Wanton/Prison) Sommarlek (1950, Illicit Interlude/Summer Interlude) Sommaren med Monika (1953, The Story of a Bad Girl/Monica, Summer with Monica)
Director & Script with P.-A. Fogelström
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Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production In this first group of films, which could also be referred to as Bergman’s apprentice works, we find a variety of visual styles, from the neo-realistic study of lower class urban life in Hamnstad to the Carné-inspired lyricism and film noir imagery of Det regnar på vår kärlek, Skepp till India land and Fängelse. But the period also includes the nostalgic though tragic Sommarlek, the first of Bergman’s films exploring a native Swedish genre, the poetic summer film. The summer landscape is also the setting of Sommaren med Monika. The mood of these early films is often melancholy and escapist, though frequently erupting into rebelliousness. The young couples are seldom integrated in a middleclass lifestyle, but bourgeois authority casts its long shadow. The plots include a number of minor characters who represent law, morality, and order: policemen, members of the clergy, school teachers, and stern parents. Their function is to stall and frustrate the young couples in their search for freedom and love; they stand for repression. The couples bond together, sometimes with the blessing of a providential figure like the Man with the Umbrella in Det regnar på vår kärlek but sometimes with tragic outcomes as in Fängelse.
Group II. Early Family or Marriage Films, often with Women as Central Characters Törst (1949, Three Strange Loves/Thirst)
Director/Script w. Herbert Grevenius, rev. from story by Birgit Tengroth. Script Director & Script
Frånskild (1951, Divorced) Kvinnors väntan (1952, Secrets of Women/ Waiting Women) En lektion i kärlek (1954, A Lesson in Love) Kvinnodröm (1955, Dreams) Sommarnattens leende (1955, Smiles of a Summer Night Nära livet (1957, Brink of Life/So Close to Life)
Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script w. Ulla Isaksson
The generation gap that operated on both a family and social level in Bergman’s earliest films, with an older generation seeking control over the young, becomes more inner-directed in the films in the second group and often involves painful erotic tensions between young and old. Mari’s bittersweet young love in Sommarlek is played out against the cynicism of her lascivious uncle Erland. In Kvinnodröm and Sommarnattens leende the erotic desires of older men for young women remain unfulfilled: The young are only in love with youth. By the mid-Fifties Ingmar Bergman had become known as a connoisseur of women. His films were often advertised in the Swedish trade journals as particularly appealing to the female public, and script excerpts were published in popular women’s magazines. In a whole series of films, Bergman explored the loneliness of housewives and forlorn young girls. Stepping out of his adolescent spleen, he concluded that the world of women was his universe. Bergman’s first biographer, Marianne Höök, states in her book Ingmar Bergman (1962): The women in Ingmar Bergman’s films are usually more interesting than the men. In contrast to the crudely cliche-like depictions of women in the Swedish cinema, where the
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Chapter III the Filmmaker vamp and the rosy peasant girl are amply represented, Bergman’s subtle view of women came as a liberation. [Kvinnorna i Ingmar Bergmans filmer är vanligtvis mer intressanta än männen. I motsats till de grovt schablonlika porträtten av kvinnor i den svenska filmen, där vampen och den rödkindade bondflickan finns väl representerade, kom Bergmans subtila syn på kvinnor som en befrielse.] (Höök, 1962, p. 84)
Nära livet (1957, Brink of Life) is in some ways the epitome of Bergman’s portrayal of women in the Fifties. Three women meet in the maternity ward – Cecilia, Stina, and Hjördis. Bergman had depicted a female collective in an earlier film, Kvinnors väntan (1952, Secrets of Women). But while the women in that film formed a cohesive unit of mutual strength and confidentiality, Nära livet projects three different destinies threatened by forces beyond the women’s control. Young Hjördis tries to abort a pregnancy she did not want; Cecilia desperately wants her baby but miscarries; Stina, although she is a glowing, healthy housewife, gives birth to a stillborn baby. To give birth is a phenomenon rather than a biological function and becomes part of the same puzzling existential situation as that facing Antonius Block in Det sjunde inseglet. The philosophical mood is in some ways the same in both films: Death stalks nearby and strikes inexplicably: ‘Chance becomes the deciding factor for the weal and woe of mankind’ [Slumpen blir den avgörande faktorn i människors väl och ve] (Ulla Isaksson (author of script) in Vi magazine, no. 12, 1958, p. 20).
Group III. Religious or Existential Quest Films of the Fifties and early Sixties, often with Male Protagonists Det sjunde inseglet (1956, The Seventh Seal) Smultronstället (1957, Wild Strawberries) Jungfrukällan (1960, The Virgin Spring) Såsom i en spegel (1961, Through a Glass Darkly) Nattvardsgästerna (1963, Winter Light/The Communicants)
Director & Script Director & Script Director Director & Script Director & Script
All of the films in the first and second groups, with the exception of Sommarnattens leende, are set in contemporary Swedish society. But in several of the films in the third group Bergman shifts the action, or part of the action, to the past. The setting ranges in time from the early Middle Ages in Det sjunde inseglet and Jungfrukällan to the turn of the last century in the flashbacks in Smultronstället. As an alternative to the ‘historical’ setting, Bergman introduces the stark and abstracted winter landscape in Nattvardsgästerna (1962) and the isolated island setting in Såsom i en spegel (1961). Both milieus are removed from today’s urban reality and provide a distancing effect. The focus in the third group of films is on a religious or existentialist quest, dominated by male protagonists. It is now that Antonius Block, the brooding Knight in Det sjunde inseglet, emerges as a Bergman prototype. In the disguise of a 14thcentury homebound crusader, he poses some basic questions about the nature of the divine and the purpose of living. The bureaucratic authorities of the earlier films are
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Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production replaced by an elusive divinity, alternately named the silent God or the spider God. Even such a seemingly non-religious film as Smultronstället can be placed within a similar framework. Its main character, Isak Borg, is really engaged in a struggle for his own soul and peace of mind, as if participating in a Christian penitence drama. Det sjunde inseglet and Smultronstället are road movies or station dramas in the sense that much of the action is structured as a journey where different stops along the way become moments of reflection and inner testing. One might compare such a structure to the soul-searching of the medieval morality play, where different ‘stations’, i.e., encounters between the protagonist and other characters, represent a choice of virtue or vice, good or evil. The Crusader Antonius Block in Det sjunde inseglet is in fact an Everyman figure looking for a sign from God. Like a morality play protagonist, he encounters a series of events and characters that signify different options to pursue. Professor Isak Borg in Smultronstället sets out on a journey of social recognition after a long life in the medical profession; but he too becomes a quester in search of a deeper personal commitment to life. Töre’s daughter in Jungfrukällan travels to church with offerings to the Virgin Mary. Her journey, abruptly terminated by her murder, is completed by Töre in a defiant and absurdist act of faith as he promises to build a church on the very spot where his only daughter was cruelly ravished and killed. Bergman’s so-called trilogy (Såsom i en spegel, Nattvardsgästerna and Tystnaden) depicts the eventual demise of the providential god of Bergman’s religious heritage but also exposes the failure of the earthly father. David in Såsom i en spegel is so absorbed in his own frustrated efforts to write that he is tempted to use his own daughter’s mental illness as an object of study. Tomas, the pastor in Nattvardsgästerna, fails to be the father of his flock that his congregation has a right to expect. In Tystnaden, the father of the child Johan is conspicuously absent and the substitute father figure, the old waiter in the foreign hotel where the action takes place, is a kind but doddering fool. In the films that date from the 1950s, Bergman furthered the tradition of the socalled Swedish style of cinematography that dated back to the silent cinema: a high contrast photography with frequent use of back-lighting, silhouette shots, a serene, somewhat theatrical scenography and rather slow pacing. Gunnar Fischer, trained in this school of cinematography was the perfect instrument for that time. But a definite change becomes noticeable in the early 1960s, which coincides with Bergman’s switch of cinematographers. The lyrical nature poet Gunnar Fischer was then replaced by the more robust though uniquely talented Sven Nykvist. In Jungfrukällan (1960) Nykvist still seems to be following in Fischer’s tracks as he photographs a legendary Swedish landscape with glittering waterways and sunlight filtering through birch trees, and contrasts this to dark foreboding shadows in murky interiors. But as Bergman develops a new kind of cinematic structure, what one could call ‘the film of the confined space’, Nykvist’s camera work becomes more subtle, using a great deal more greyish tones than the earlier black and white contrasts. One can see the shift very clearly in Såsom i en spegel (1961). Bergman now discards the historical milieu of the central films of the Fifties, the use of flashbacks, the physical journeys. Travelling, if it occurs at all, becomes more confined and reflects the characters’ stymied situation. It is as though many of the films of the Sixties emanate from the state of mind of Isak Borg during his night-
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Chapter III the Filmmaker marish dreams in Smultronstället. The defiant quester Antonius Block in Det sjunde inseglet, who challenges Death to a game of chess, is now replaced by the frustrated and insecure pastor Tomas in Nattvardsgästerna (1962); by the neurotic painter Johan Borg in Vargtimmen (1967); the disintegrating artist Jan Rosenberg in Skammen (1968); the forlorn islander Andreas Winkelman in En passion (1969). In these films the road is no longer the main setting or spatial metaphor but is replaced by the circumscribed island landscape, as bleak and confining as a sickroom, yet absolute in its envelopment by the sea. The Baltic setting of many of Bergman’s films from the 1960s is realistic in the sense that it is geographically identifiable; yet it serves a symbolic function as an extension of the troubled state of mind of the characters. This focus on interior psyches rather than external action is noticeable in Bergman’s increasing use of the close-up. It was in fact during the shooting of the first of his ‘Baltic’ films, Såsom i en spegel, that he declared the importance of the human face to his filmmaking. At the same time, he expressed his reservations of the beautifying imagery of his earlier films: Our work in films must begin with the human face. We can certainly become absorbed in the esthetics of montage; we can bring objects and still life into a wonderful rhythm; we can make nature studies of astounding beauty, but the approach to the human face is without doubt the hallmark and distinguishable feature of the film medium. (Hollis Alpert, ‘Style is the Director’, Saturday Review, 23 December 1961, p. 40) [Det mänskliga ansiktet är utgångspunkten för vårt arbete. Vi kan visserligen fördjupa oss i bildmontagets estetik, vi kan sammanföra föremål och stilleben till underbara rytmer, vi kan göra naturstudier av häpnadsväckande skönhet, men närheten till det mänskliga ansiktet är utan tvivel filmens adelsmärke och särtecken.] (‘Varje film är min sista film’, p. 5)
With Såsom i en spegel Ingmar Bergman claimed to have found a new direction for himself by concentrating on only four people (see Forslund, Chaplin no. 18, 1961). He coined the term ‘chamber film’ for this new type of cinema focusing on few characters and building up an intense and intimate atmosphere. The term ‘chamber film’ is a direct reference to the chamber plays of August Strindberg (1849-1912), the Swedish playwright whose strong influence Bergman has frequently acknowledged. Written in 1907-08, Strindberg’s chamber plays were dramatic attempts to convey, through the portrayal and interaction of a small group of people confined to a single locale, a set of associative relationships structured like a musical composition, as variations of a leitmotif leading up to a concluding coda. In similar fashion, Bergman abandoned the larger orchestration of his earlier films and discarded conventional film music. The only music heard in his chamber films are a few bars of a Bach or Brahms composition, almost always played on a single instrument. Even the inclusion of a fragment from Mozart’s Trollflöjten/The Magic Flute in a puppet scene in Vargtimmen is toned down to the chamber music level. The reductive process in terms of film acoustics in the chamber films marks their contrast to the much more rhetorical, male-oriented films of the Fifties, which seem to emanate from verbalized crucial moments in the protagonists’ life: Antonius Block in Det sjunde inseglet speaks with Death in a confessional dialogue and addresses a Christ figure in church in defiant words. Isak Borg in Smultronstället is quite analytical about his journey into the past. Though he relives his life in visual dreams, he is
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Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production presumably writing down the events of the day in his diary and retelling them to us. Language then is an important vehicle in Bergman’s male universe. But with Såsom i en spegel, dialogue becomes subservient to imagery and gesture. The first two words learned by Ester in the unknown language in Tystnaden are naigo and kasi, face and hand. Rapport comes not through verbal communication – words in fact are often like missiles announcing warfare – but through touch and look. The reduction of the spoken element in Bergman’s films culminates in such works as Persona (1966), where one of the characters, Elisabet Vogler, acts mute, and Viskningar och rop (1972) where the conversations are sparse and punctuated with long moments of silence or faint whisperings from voices that never fully materialize. There is both a consciousness of the visual medium and a philosophical aspect to this reduction of speech. The relatively sparse dialogue of the chamber films is not only a manifestation of Bergman’s attempt as a filmmaker to free himself from verbal dominance, it is also his questioning, through the cinema, of the trustworthiness of the spoken word. Finally, silence can be interpreted as an absence of life – the whisperings in Viskningar och rop are like the faint echoes of the dead, still in touch with the living. Silence also signifies the Christian deity’s withdrawal from human destinies.
Group IV. Films Exploring the Role of the Artist and/or Directorial Persona Till glädje (1949, To Joy) Gycklarnas afton (1953, The Naked Night/ Sawdust and Tinsel) Ansiktet (1958, The Magician/The Face) För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor (1964, All These Women) Persona (1966, Persona) Vargtimmen (1967, The Hour of the Wolf) Skammen (1968, Shame) Riten (1969, The Ritual) Herbstsonate (1978, Höstsonaten/Autumn Sonata) Ur marionetternas liv (1979, Aus dem Leben der Marionetten/From the Life of the Marionettes) Efter Repetitionen (1984, After the Rehearsal) Larmar och gör sig till (1997, In the Presence of a Clown) Trolösa (2000, Faithless)
Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script w. Erland Josephson Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script (TV) Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script Script
Bergman’s artist is the central character in the fourth group of films. His role ranges from the vulnerable circus director Albert Johansson in Gycklarnas afton to the potential mesmerizer Albert Vogler in Ansiktet or the neurotic wreck Johan Borg in Vargtimmen and the moral coward Jan Rosenberg in Skammen. Gone now is a naive visionary like the juggler Jof in Det sjunde inseglet, whose second sight enabled him to see the holy Virgin. What Bergman develops instead is the other aspect of Jof ’s destiny: to be exposed to ridicule, a scapegoat figure forced to perform a table dance in the tavern to the jeers of an onlooking crowd. There are in fact vestiges in Bergman’s portrayal of the artist of a Platonic pharmakos myth: Plato banished the artist
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Chapter III the Filmmaker from his utopian society for fear that his visionary power might excite the citizens and bring chaos and madness. Bergman’s depiction of the artist and his audience maintains a more precarious balance: at times the artist is destroyed, at other times the onlooker becomes the scapegoat. It is part of Bergman’s conception of the relationship between artist and audience that performer and spectator take part in a ritual, a cult act in which worship and symbolic sacrifice constitute the essential elements. In the TV film Riten this conflict is the very fabric of the film. Like participants in old religious rites, Bergman’s artists can take possession of their audiences. The acting trio in Riten drives to death a Judge who has been sent to question them on a charge of obscenity. Vogler in Ansiktet brings the rational doctor Vergerus to the verge of madness by playing macabre tricks on him in an attic; his namesake Elisabet Vogler in Persona takes possession of the nurse Alma until Alma’s self-identity is threatened. A distinct element of eroticism becomes part of such encounters. Elisabet Vogler and Alma take turns in representing the two sides in a symbiotic relationship of would-be lovers exhibiting attraction and repulsion, separateness of self and fusion of self. The actress feeds on Alma’s life story vicariously; Alma’s identification with Elisabeth is so strong that she momentarily replaces her in a meeting with Elisabeth’s husband. Bergman’s artist may create illusions that provide pleasure and entertainment but also cause irritation and anger. His audiences counter either by being mesmerized by his performance or by exposing the artist as a fake and liar and ostracizing him from their midst, from organized society. The humiliation motif is built into such an encounter between artist and spectator. Albert Johansson, the pedestrian owner of Circus Alberti in Gycklarnas afton and his clown Frost face in turn jeering crowds: Frost in the flashback beach sequence where soldiers become cruel voyeurs of his ordeal as he tries to rescue his wife Alma, and Albert during a performance in the circus round, exposed to a taunting public. Albert Vogler in Ansiktet attracts the mistress of the house but is insulted by the Egerman household, where his troupe has stopped to perform a seance. The self-absorption of the artist is a dominant motif in such Bergman films as Persona, Vargtimmen, Skammen, and Höstsonaten, whose neurotic or egotistical protagonists confirm what Bergman suggests in his essay ‘The Snakeskin’ from 1965: that artistic activity in a godless world is self-focussed and has lost its element of worship, of meaningful ritual. A figure like the self-centered pianist mother in Höstsonaten has lost all spirituality and can only fantasize about money and her next performance. In earlier films, an artist like the hypnotist Albert Emanuel Vogler in Ansiktet was both prophet and charlatan; wearing a Christ mask, he ‘acted’ mute before a 19th century upper-class group of Pontius Pilates and performed ‘miracles’ before both susceptible and skeptical people. Such Christ references in Bergman’s portrayal of artists are not uncommon in his films from the 1950s. Frost, the clown in Gycklarnas afton, performs his own Golgotha walk, barefoot and humiliated as he struggles to carry his wife on his back like a cross; Jof, the visionary juggler and actor ‘Det sjunde inseglet’, assumes a tortuous pose, half bear, half figure on a cross, as he is forced to dance on the table in the tavern scene; David, the father and writer in Såsom i en spegel, breaks down in anguish in front of the window, so that window frame and body form the pattern of a cross. The same pose is used to define Tomas’s anguish in Nattvardsgästerna. But in Persona the sacrificial implications of the artist’s role shift from Christian metaphors
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Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production to old classical references. Elisabeth Vogler, the silent actress with ‘the cold eyes’ who feeds on her nurse to regain vitality is clearly a pythia figure. In Vargtimmen, the communal aspect of art is transformed into a ludicrous dinner party whose participants literally turn into the artist’s ‘consumers’, parasitical bird demons who cannibalize the painter Johan Borg. But the artist is himself a ‘cannibal’, a detached observer who feeds on other human beings. In Persona Bergman’s alter ego is a young boy who wakes up in a morgue as if from a deep sleep. Just before this scene, we have been introduced to a collage of images, potential material for a film. The boy’s awakening and subsequent movements culminating with his wiping a glass screen with his hand until a woman’s face becomes visible set the ‘plot’ in motion; the boy is a creative consciousness who leads us into the fictional story, which is at the same time his dream or his reminiscing. The rather abstracted nameless boy in Persona, who serves more as a vehicle than actual participant in the film narrative, may be juxtaposed to the title figure in Fanny and Alexander (1982), who opens the film story by taking the spectator through his grandmother’s apartment, where the narrative develops. Persona’s boy figure may also be juxtaposed to the male protagonist Peter Egerman in Ur marionetternas liv/Aus dem Leben des Marionetten. Both these films grew out of a painful period in Bergman’s life when he was trying to ‘relocate’ himself as an artist. In 1965-66 he had left his position at the Royal Dramatic Theatre and was physically ill. In 1978-79, he was still looking for a footing in exile and felt he had failed to convey his sense of pain and frustration in his first foreign-made film Das Schlangenei. The artistic persona appears much more camouflaged in the story of Peter Egerman than in Bergman’s other films in this group. Peter’s story revolves around deception and self-deception and maintains a narrow distinction between reality and fantasy or nightmare. Though Bergman chose to make Peter a German businessman, he also provided him with a desperate aggressiveness and vulnerability that makes him a kin to many of Bergman’s artist figures. Like Johan Borg in Vargtimmen he is haunted by ‘demons’ from his past, and as in Ansiktet and Persona, Aus dem Leben... depicts a world in which a sensitive individual is driven to despair by people who abuse him or fail him. In probing deeper and deeper into Peter’s psyche, Aus dem Leben... is much closer to a film like Persona than to the work preceding it, Das Schlangenei. When art loses its aspect of ritual and cult act, the artist is thrown back upon himself. When the ‘director’ has no subject at hand, he may invent his own muse, like Henrik invents an affair with his young actress in Efter repetionen or ‘Bergman’ invents Marianne in Trolösa. What is depicted in these instances is actually the creative process itself: an artist’s material beginning to take shape in his mind, not smoothly and painlessly but as a complicated mixture of personal tensions and professional selfawareness. The director in Efter repetitionen and the ‘Bergman’ coach in Trolösa both resist the intrusion of personal matters and old memories and are fascinated and revitalized by them.
Group V: The Haunting Past: Memories and Nightmares En passion (1969, Passion of Anna) Beröringen (1970, The Touch) Viskningar och rop (1972, Cries and Whispers)
Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script
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Chapter III the Filmmaker Scener ur ett äktenskap (1974, Scenes from a Marriage) Ansikte mot ansikte (1975, Face to Face) Höstsonat/Herbstsonate (1978, Autumn Sonata) Trolösa (2000, Faithless) Saraband (2003)
Director & Script TV Director & Script TV Director & Script Director & Script Director & Script TV
In his works from the 1970s onwards, Bergman’s characters have left their religious baggage behind, but they seldom, if ever, seem able to free themselves from the traumas of their past or from some mysterious force of the mind that takes possession of them. Anna in En passion (1969) wreaks havoc on her lover Andreas Winkelman and herself by her fixation on a marriage and an accident in the past that may or may not be self-styled; the psychiatrist Jenny in Ansikte mot ansikte, almost succeeds in committing suicide when the ghosts of her childhood begin to haunt her; the sisters in Viskningar och rop all have their lives shaped by past circumstances beyond their control, be it illness, rigid conventions and role playing, or unhappy but insoluble marriages. Even young Alexander in Fanny och Alexander is pursued to the bitter end by his stepfather’s evil ghost, who threatens to never let go of him. In Bergman’s world no one escapes his or her destiny. The puppeteer director of his youth continues to pull the strings of his human marionettes, but now the manipulator dwells inside them like an internalized psychological demon. The men and women of Bergman’s films from the 1970s have little in common with the young couples in the very first films he made. Their relationships start where those of the young couples ended: in marriage. But this is followed by ennui, a drifting apart, impending divorce or break-up. Far from socially maladjusted like their younger predecessors in the films of the 1940s, Bergman’s mature couples of the seventies hark back to such marriage films as Kvinnors väntan and En lektion i kärlek. Sophisticated and comfortable in their middle-class lifestyle, they have achieved an economic status beyond what the working-class youngsters of such films as Det regnar på vår kärlek, Hamnstad and Fängelse could dream of. Nevertheless, they are seldom able to bond together but instead face loneliness and anxiety. At the end of Scener ur ett äktenskap Marianne awakens from a nightmare that has thrown her into a state of fright. The episode seems in a way to signal the exploration of the troubled mind of Jenny, the psychiatrist in Ansikte mot ansikte. In two preceding films, En passion and Viskningar och rop, Bergman portrays women who dwell in the same anguished world as some of his leading male characters in the quest films of the Fifties. More and more men and women share the dubious pleasure of inhabiting the same angst-ridden bergmanian universe. Thus, a film like Viskningar och rop could in some ways be seen as the female counterpart to Isak Borg’s encounter with his impending death in Smultronstället. The women’s attempt to deal with the present crisis of Agnes’ death takes the form of a series of flashbacks into their past, reminiscences as painful as Isak Borg’s reexamination of his life. Both films end on a similar note of nostalgia and reconciliation. Isak is led by young Sara, the eternally young sweetheart, through a verdant landscape where he discovers his long since dead parents on a summer outing. Agnes, the dying woman in Viskningar och rop, pictures herself, in a voice-over reading from her diary, together with her sisters in the luscious
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Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production park on her estate. It is a moment of epiphany, a family communion that may be as much dream and wishful thinking as was Isak Borg’s final vision of his parents. The idealization of the maternal as embodied by the housekeeper Anna in Viskningar och rop (culminating in a pietà scene when she takes the dying Agnes to her bosom) is reinforced in the caring grandmothers in Ansikte mot ansikte and Fanny och Alexander or in the competent ex-wife Marianne in Saraband. But it is counterbalanced by the critical portrait of the mother in Höstsonaten (1978). Here Bergman seems to launch on another examination of the parent motif, this time focussing not on a critique of the father but on a scathing exposure of the mother. Charlotte, the professional pianist, neglects her two daughters, one of whom is mentally retarded. During a visit to her married daughter Eva, Charlotte’s self-absorption in her career becomes the basis for violent accusations by Eva. Though Charlotte is portrayed more superficially by actress Ingrid Bergman than the script suggests, she nevertheless joins the league of selfish parents that used to appear in Bergman’s earlier films, but this time the confrontation is far more ruthless, which made the film a target for feminist critique. Höstsonaten was made during Bergman’s exile from Sweden. Many had speculated that his creativity would dry up outside of his native country or that the frustrations he would face working with foreign crews would sabotage his future film projects. Some saw signs of this when Das Schlangenei was released in 1977, a year after his departure from Sweden. The film, set in pre-Nazi Germany in 1923, became his first critical and public fiasco since the early 1950s. His second German-made film, Aus dem Leben der Marionetten, did not reach mass audiences in Europe or the United States, though it was well received in France. On the whole it fared better with the reviewers in Sweden than elsewhere, perhaps in response to a need among the critics to atone for their government’s treatment of Bergman. In retrospect, it is a film that has, like Gycklarnas afton, attained a special place in the Bergman canon. It is also a favorite of Bergman himself. In Tre dagar med Bergman (p. 66), he says to the interviewers apropos of the making of From the Life of Marionettes: I found myself in a difficult situation, far away from my homeland where I did not want to return. I had already tried to express my pain and suffering in The Serpent’s Egg, but without succeeding. That whole project was a big mistake. But in From the Life of the Marionettes I found a way, a form, a very definite and distinct form to which I could transfer my pain, my anguish and all my difficulties and reshape them into something concrete. I love that film. [Jag befann mig i en vansklig situation, långt borta från mitt hemland dit jag inte ville återvända. Jag hade redan försökt att ge uttryck för denna smärta och detta lidande med Ormens ägg men utan att lyckas. Hela det projektet var ett stort misstag. Men i Ur Marionetternas liv fann jag en sätt, en form, en mycket bestämd och tydlig form till vilken jag kunde överföra och omforma min smärta, min ångest och alla mina svårigheter till någonting konkret. Jag älskar den filmen.]
None of Bergman’s films made outside of his native country can be said to spring directly from his foreign experience. Ormens ägg was written before his arrest in Stockholm in 1976. Höstsonaten was the fulfillment of a promise made long before to actress Ingrid Bergman. Aus dem Leben der Marionetten was based on the couple Peter and Katarina, who appeared briefly in the opening sequence of Scener ur ett
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Chapter III the Filmmaker äktenskap. As for the technical crew, Sven Nykvist and several members of the production team remained part of Bergman’s staff for his foreign films and provided a link to his previous filmmaking. In Das Schlangenei, the elaborate studio set reflects more the ambition of American producer Dino de Laurentiis than Bergman’s own intentions as these are indicated in the script. In both Herbstsonate and Aus dem Leben der Marionetten, Bergman toned down any extravagance in the mise-en-scène. In fact, Marionetten’s concentration on black-and-white close-ups brought the spectator back to the world of Persona and seemed like an explicit visual statement by Bergman, suggesting that he always carried his cosmos within him. (Bergman conceived the film in black and white, but compromised with the German TV producer by opening the film in color. See Tre dagar med Bergman, p. 64.) As Bergman shifted his focus once more to women in such films as En passion, Beröringen/The Touch, Viskningar och rop, and Hörstsonaten, he began to employ color, which he had only done once before, in another woman-dominated film, För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor from 1964. In this ‘intermezzo’ in Bergman’s filmmaking, color was used in a deliberately gaudy, pyrotechnical manner that fit the farcical mood of the film. In films like En passion and Viskningar och rop color plays a more subtle role. In En passion it serves to underscore the repressed emotions of the characters on the Baltic island by projecting them against a subdued scale of earth tones. In Viskningar och rop Bergman has stated that the use of red dissolves to signal the flashbacks in the lives of the four women is connected with his own childhood fantasies of the soul as a membrane of red. But red also connotes passion and sexual arousal, as in the flighty Maria’s case, or blood when passionate emotions spell hatred, self-destruction, and revenge, as in Karin’s case. Red is also the life force that is draining from the cancerous Agnes’ frail body. Finally, the shift from black and white to color in Bergman’s filmmaking is in keeping with his memories of the male and female worlds of his childhood. The male figures wear the stark black garb of a man of the cloth and move in the light of harsh realities. The women dress more colorfully and their presence is associated with the prismatic world of filtering light, a visualization of an inner world of passion – sensuous, dangerous and spiritually redemptive.
Group VI. The Family Saga Fanny och Alexander (1982, Fanny and Alexander) Den goda viljan (1991, Best Intentions) Söndagsbarn (1992, Sunday’s Children) Enskilda samtal (1996, Private Confessions) Larmar och gör sig till (1997, In the Presence of a Clown)
Director & Script Script Script Script Director & Script, TV
With his reconciliation with the Swedish government in the early 1980s and the warm reception he encountered upon returning to Sweden, Ingmar Bergman began to look upon his distant past with less critical eyes. For his filmmaking, this mellowed view resulted in Fanny och Alexander. The film can in fact be seen as his cinematic testament – a filmmaker’s homage to and exploration of his childhood, part fiction, part retrospection. Thematically, Fanny och Alexander is a summation of long-established
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Ingmar Bergman’s Films: Grouping of a Lifelong Production Bergman motifs and conflicts: the creative world of the laterna magica juxtaposed to a world of repression and humiliation. A linkage is established between these two milieus not only in terms of the widowed Mrs. Ekdahl’s marriage to Bishop Vergerus but also in an explicit stress on ritual in both households: the one pertaining to the theatre, the other to the church. Ingmar Bergman’s work for the cinema, so often associated with a world of existential pain and anguish, ends with a celebration of human togetherness and family bonding, and with an affirmation of the healing power of the imagination. With Fanny och Alexander, Bergman restores magic and art as top priorities in his universe. The film reconfirms his own loyalty to the playful fantasy-maker Méliès, his filmmaking Vergilius whose name he invoked in his youthful lecture at the Uppsala Film Studio some 40 years before making Fanny och Alexander. After he bid farewell to filmmaking, Bergman wrote and directed a number of works for television. Perhaps the most remarkable one is Larmar och gör sig till/ In the Presence of a Clown. The plot revolves around a fictionalized relative, Uncle Carl, who dabbled in film entertainment in the early days of the cinema. Partly set (for its climax) in the wintry village of Frostnäs where Nattvardsgästerna once took place and using some of the same characters (though not actors), the small group of onlookers are exposed to the accidental short-circuiting of Carl’s film projector. However, out of this provincial chaos amidst candle light and a clinking piano emanates Schumann’s Aufschwung, and the would-be filmmaker and his mistress assistant perform a kind of rite amidst a small crowd of spectators. For a brief moment, the assembly hall in Frostnäs becomes a cult place. One is reminded that the title of the first film set in the same god-forsaken part of the world was ‘Nattvardsgästerna’ or ‘The Communicants’. In that film, Tomas, the doubting minister, never gave comfort to the villagers who came to his church, the way Carl’s primitive and aborted film showing does, as it is miraculously metamorphosed into a secular communion that brings about a healing stillness among the audience, as powerful as any holy sacrament. Larmar och gör sig till depicts a spiritual moment on a small scale and becomes a moving companion piece to the more flamboyant Fanny och Alexander and, above all, a tribute to art as ritual and worship. Bergman executes a self-referential tour de force that forms a fitting finale to his wish expressed at the beginning of his film career to participate in building ‘a cathedral on the plain’.
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Bergman's early filmmaking took place under rather primitive circumstances, as suggested in this photo during the filming of Summer with Monica (1953) where Bergman and his crew are seen standing in the water by an island in the Stockholm archipelago. To save on transportation costs, the rushes from each day's filming were collected to be sent later by boat to the film laboratory. There, scratches were discovered on the negatives, so that retakes had to be made.
From the shooting of Fanny and Alexander in 1982 (Courtesy: Arne Carlsson/Cinematograph/SF)
Chapter IV Filmography
Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record The Filmography Chapter lists in chronological order all screen works that were scripted and/or directed by Ingmar Bergman. Each film entry comprises a plot synopsis, credits, notes, critical commentaries, a reception summary, and reviews. The credits include major crew members and a complete cast list. Names of Swedish cinemas where a film first opened are usually limited to one or two samples. Commentaries for those Bergman scripts that have been filmed by other directors tend to be less extensive, unless the Bergman script became the subject of a media debate. The title heading used in each entry is the Swedish distribution title, followed by its year of release and, in brackets, by its English title. In the rest of the entry, only the original distribution title is used, except in direct quotes where the refereed title appears. At the end of the Filmography is a selective list of foreign distribution titles. Foreign titles of Ingmar Bergman’s early films were often the invention of distributors looking for a way to cash in on the reputation of the Swedish cinema as a producer of sexually titillating films. Title explanations are included before the synopsis of the film narrative when the foreign distribution title departs radically from the original or when the Swedish title, though translated literally, carries connotations not conveyed in English. A special organizational problem involves Bergman works that were originally conceived for television but have also circulated (abroad) as commercial feature films and then often in a specially edited, abridged version. As a rule, the original television version has been seen by a Swedish or Scandinavian audience only, while the version adapted for cinema viewers has had an international circulation but a limited or no movie house showing in Bergman’s own country. In an interview Bergman once commented on making parallel cinema and TV versions of the same work (see preface, p. 19). However, his statement only applies to works that were designed from the start to circulate in two different versions, i.e.,
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Chapter IV Filmography films like Scener från ett äktenskap/Scenes from a Marriage, Ansikte mot ansikte/Face to Face, and Fanny and Alexander. But the fact is that in several cases, a Bergman film made only for television was also sold as a movie house product – despite Bergman’s protest. Examples are Riten/The Ritual from 1969 and Efter repetitionen/After the Rehearsal, a TV film transmitted in 1984. The procedure followed here with regard to both multiple-version and multipledistribution works has been to focus on the foreign reception in the Filmography entry (i.e., on the internationally circulated cinema versions) and to single out Swedish (or sometimes Scandinavian) reviews and comments in the media chapter (i.e., information that pertains directly to the TV transmission, including press debates). For space-saving reasons, a full synopsis and complete credit list only appears once in such cases, and then always, for the sake of consistency, in the Filmography listing. A shorter synopsis and credit list is included for the same item in the media chapter. Variations in length between the film and TV versions are noted in the respective context. Date of entry may differ between the filmography and media listings. For instance, Scener ur ett äktenskap has a 1974 title date in this chapter but a 1973 date in the media chapter, thus referring to its first TV transmission. However an item originally conceived for television may, occasionally, have a later release date than the film version. The following works are involved [first date after the title refers to first television showing, second date (if different) to its international release]: Riten (The Ritual), 1969 Fårö dokument 1, 1969, 1970 Scener ur ett äktenskap (Scenes from a Marriage), 1973, 1974 Trollflöjten (The Magic Flute), 1975 Ansikte mot ansikte (Face to Face), 1976 Fårödokument 2, 1979, 1980 Fanny and Alexander, 1984, 1982-83 Efter repetitionen (After the Rehearsal), 1984 Den goda viljan (Best Intentions), 1991-92, 1992 Enskilda samtal (Private Confessions/Conversations), 1996, 1998-99 Larmar och gör sig till (In the Presence of a Clown), 1997, 1998 Saraband, 2003 For eighteen of Bergman’s feature films, documentary footage or ‘bakomfilmer’ are or will be available in the Ingmar Bergman Archive at the Swedish Film Institute. ‘Bakomfilmer’ so far pertain to the following film titles: Gycklarnas afton, 1953 En lektion i kärlek, 1954 Kvinnodröm, 1955 Sommarnattens leende, 1955 Det sjunde inseglet, 1957 Smultronstället, 1957 Ansiktet, 1958 Nära livet, 1958 Såsom i en spegel, 1961
Nattvardsgästerna, 1962 Persona, 1966 Skammen, 1968 Viskningar och rop, 1972 Scener ur ett äktenskap, 1973 Ansikte mot ansikte, 1976 Ur marionetternas liv, 1980 Höstsonaten, 1981 Efter repetitionen, 1984
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record In addition, documentary footage from Bergman’s film Beröringen/The Touch, 1970, was used in Stig Björkman’s portrait of Ingmar Bergman (see Chapter VIII, Interviews, Ø 796). A documentary was made by the American producer of The Serpent’s Egg (see film entry in this chapter, Ø 249). Special TV documentaries have been made using several of Bergman works. For a complete list, see Varia, segment A. 202.
HETS, 1944 [Torment, Frenzy], B/W Director Screenplay
Alf Sjöberg Ingmar Bergman
The Swedish word hets implies stress, a tense atmosphere, an agitated mood. The verb hetsa connotes the baiting of animals; as a reflexive verb, hetsa upp sig carries the meaning of ‘working oneself into a frenzy’. To have a hetsigt temperament means to be hot-tempered and choleric. All of these connotations have a bearing on both the school situation and the personal relationships in Hets/Torment, which is a film depicting teacher abuse, parental and social pressure, young passion and frustration, and sexual promiscuity.
Synopsis Hets, the first film scripted by Bergman, takes place in a boys’ school in Stockholm in the 1940s; in the conservative upper-class home of one of the pupils, Jan-Erik Widgren; and in the cheap lodging of a young girl, Berta Olsson, who works in a tobacco shop. The opening sequence, establishing the use of film noir-inspired photography, depicts the late arrival of a young schoolboy and the rigid school atmosphere during compulsory morning prayers. Later during a Latin class the friction between Jan-Erik and a sadistic teacher nicknamed Caligula becomes evident. A love story develops between Jan-Erik and Berta, whom he has found drunk in the street. Jan-Erik’s performance in school deteriorates, and he becomes the target of Caligula’s sarcasm and despotism. The dramatic action reaches its climax when Jan-Erik finds Berta dead in her bed. Outside in the hallway, Caligula is crouching like a frightened animal. Brought to the police station, he becomes hysterical until an autopsy establishes that Berta died of natural causes (a heart attack). Caligula turns the tables on Jan-Erik by reporting his affair with Berta to the school principal. Jan-Erik responds by hitting Caligula and is subsequently suspended from school. When his classmates matriculate, Jan-Erik stands alone in the rain outside the school watching them emerge in their white student caps, symbolic of educational success. What follows is an addition to the original script: Jan-Erik moves away from home to Berta’s apartment where the school principal visits him, offering to help. Later, Jan-Erik finds Caligula on the stairs, trembling with fear and self-pity. Ignoring him he steps out into the sunshine. The final shot shows him standing on a hill overlooking the city. Slowly he begins to walk down towards it. (The ending brings to mind the opening vignette in Strindberg’s novel Röda rummet/The Red Room where an angry young Arvid Falk stands in the same location as he begins his exploration of the city’s corruptive mores and institutions).
Credits Production company Executive producer Production manager Director Assistant Director
Svensk Filmindustri Harald Molander Gösta Ström Alf Sjöberg Ingmar Bergman
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Chapter IV Filmography Artistic Director Screenplay Cinematography Architect Music Costumes Make-up Editor
Victor Sjöström Ingmar Bergman Martin Bodin Arne Åkermark Hilding Rosenberg Mimmi Törnquist Carl M. Lundh, inc. Oscar Rosander
Cast Caligula Caligula’s mother Jan-Erik Widgren Berta Olsson School Principal Teacher ‘Pippi’ Jan-Erik’s friend Sandman Jan-Erik’s father Jan-Erik’s mother Jan-Erik’s brother Dr. Nilsson, physician Student Pettersson Student Krantz Student without hymn book Teacher proctoring late arrivals Student arriving late at school Teachers at morning prayer Physicians at the morgue Police Woman The Pastor at Berta’s funeral Parish Assistant Lina, Widgren’s housemaid Student Extras
Stig Järrel Hilda Borgström [part cut in released version] Alf Kjellin Mai Zetterling Olof Winnerstrand Gösta Cederlund Stig Olin Olav Riégo Märta Arbin Anders Nyström Hugo Björne Jan Molander Birger Malmsten Bengt Dalunde Gunnar Björnstrand Bertil Sohlberg Nils Hultberg, Rune Landsberg Torsten Hillberg, John Zacharias Lillie Wästfelt Edvard Danielsson Selma Sandberg Greta Stave Curt Edgard, Arne Ragneborn, Rolf Bergström, Paul ‘Palle’ Granditsky, Lennart Nyberg, Carl-Olof Alm, Sten Gester, Allan Linder, et al.
Bergman’s voice is heard once on the radio in Berta’s apartment. Filmed on location at Norra Latin School in Stockholm and Råsunda Studios, beginning 21 February 1944 and completed 25 May 1944. Distribution U.S. Distribution Running Time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Oxford Films 101 minutes 12 September 1944 2 October 1944, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm), et al 21 April 1947
Commentary Hets was part of SF’s 25th anniversary program aimed at quality production and introducing a new policy of giving aspiring young filmmakers a chance to succeed in the industry. Bergman’s original script, ending with the matriculation sequence, was considered too depressing, and he
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record was asked to add the scene depicting Jan-Erik’s return to Berta’s apartment. During the shooting Bergman, who was more of a script boy than an assistant director, was however assigned the task of handling the outdoor scene at the end, shot in South Stockholm. He describes the job in Bilder/Images. My Life in Film, pp. 119-122. The screenplay to Hets has never been published, but the story appeared as a novella in Filmjournalen, nos. 51/52 (1944) – 8 (1945) and in Bildjournalen, nos. 12-15 (1959). Several early drafts of ‘Hets’ are among Bergman’s Fårö papers, now deposited at SFI. These drafts are discussed extensively in Maaret Koskinen’s book I begynnelsen var ordet, 2002, pp. 34-57. Peter Ustinov made a stage adaptation based on the film, entitled ‘Frenzy’. It opened at St. Martin’s Theatre in London, 21 April 1948. The script was also dramatized as a stage play and performed in 1948 in Oslo by the city’s newly founded Studio Theatre. See Øyvind Anker (Chapter IX, Ø 1141). Upon the release of Hets, the production company (SF) issued a brochure (Stockholm: SF, n. d., 11 pp.), which contains brief statements by Bergman (see Ø 24), Alf Sjöberg (director), Hilding Rosenberg (composer) and Erik Tuxén (music director). In connection with the premiere of Hets, Bergman published a brief newspaper account of his own years in school: ‘Skoltiden ett 12-årigt helvete’ [School a 12-year hell]. Aftonbladet 3 October 1944, pp. 1, 11. A comment by his former headmaster (Håkansson) at the Palmgrenska School in Stockholm appeared in the same paper (AB) on 5 October 1944, p.16. Reply by Bergman in same paper, 9 October, p. 10.
Reception Literary magazine BLM’s editor Georg Svensson reviewed Hets and praised SF for bringing together so much talent. In the public response to the film there was more focus on Bergman’s script than on Alf Sjöberg’s direction. Part of the film’s tremendous impact in Sweden can be related to its timely story, which coincided with an intense discussion of the old-fashioned structure of the Swedish school system and the need for democratic reform. For sample views see the following: Beklädnadsfolket 1, no. 11 (1944), pp. 18-19, (article by Elsa Brita Marcussen titled ‘Skolans auktoritestro måste bort’ [School Authoritarianism must disappear], with a commentary on the added ending of the film); SF Nyheter, no. 30, pp. 4, 14 and no. 33 (1944), pp. 1, 4 (résumés of public response to Hets); ST, 6 October 1944, p. 7 (article by Stig Järrel’s teacher); SvD, 12 October 1944, p. 4 (editorial); Svenska Morgonbladet, 13 October 1944, pp. 4 (Margot Wohlin, school pedagogue); Tidning för Sveriges läroverk (Journal of the Swedish Teachers Association): no. 20 (21 October 1944), pp. 321-22 (editorial) and p. 330; no. 21 (4 November) 1944, p. 350, and no. 2 (20 January) 1945, pp. 36-37. Film was attacked in all articles in this teacher publication; Vecko-Journalen, no. 43 (22 October 1944), p. 9 (editorial by Carl Björkman, leading Stockholm film critic); Vecko-Journalen, no. 45 (5 November) 1944, p. 32. Swedish author Frank Heller [Gunnar Serner] wrote: ‘To air his antipathy for the Swedish school system, Mr. Ingmar Bergman mobilizes both a triangle drama and a sample of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopatia sexualis, a study that has played a great and, most often, sad role in literature’ [För att lufta sin antipati för det svenska skolsystemet, mobiliserar herr Ingmar Bergman både ett triangeldrama och ett prov på Krafft-Ebings Psychopatia sexualis, en studie som har spelat en stor och oftast sorglig roll i litteraturen].
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Chapter IV Filmography Hets/Torment opened to several devastating reviews in the U.S. on 21 April 1947 but later became somewhat of a cult film. See also Filmnyheter, no. 8, 1947, p. 10, referring to positive reviews in Newsweek (‘honest approach makes for unusual film’). According to head of Svensk Filmindustri, Carl Anders Dymling, the Legion of Decency began a crusade against the film in New York and other American cities. SF has no further data on this. Filmnyheter, no. 17 (1949), p. 15, carries a news item about a similar reception of Torment in Canada, where local censorship boards closed cinemas, and students in at least one city demonstrated by burning the head of the censorship board in effigy.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 3 October 1944; Göteborg press, 7 November 1944 (see especially GP, 7 November 1944, p. 4); BLM 13, no. 9 1944, p. 785; Vi no. 42 (1944), p. 11; Vecko-Journalen, no. 42 (1944), pp. 28, 46.
Reviews Cinématographie française, 13 November 1947, n.p. (no. 1285); Monthly Film Bulletin, no. 150 (13 June 1946), p. 86; New York Herald Tribune, 22 April 1947, p. 34:2; New York Times, 22 April 1947, p. 34:2; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968 p. 2177; Newsweek, 14 April 1947, pp. 96-97.
Interviews and Longer Articles In connection with a Swedish TV broadcast of Hets in 1972, Torsten Jungstedt interviewed Alf Sjöberg (director), Allan Ekelund (production manager), and Jarl Nylander (assistant photographer) about the filming of Bergman’s first film script. See Röster i Radio-TV, no. 11 (4-10 March 1972), pp. 16-17. Peter Cowie interviewed Bergman in September 1982 about his memories of the shooting of Hets and of Alf Sjöberg as a director. See Monthly Film Bulletin L, no. 591 (April 1983): p. 84-85; item has somewhat misleading title ‘Ingmar Bergman’s Schooldays.’ Birgitta Steene published an essay on Hets titled ‘The Sjöberg-Bergman Connection: Hets. Collaboration and Reception’ in Tijdsschrift voor Skandinavistiek 20:1 (1999): p. 85-102.
See also Bergman, Karin. Detta underliga skådespel som heter livet (Linton, Ø 1526), pp. 152-53; Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 230-32; Dansk Film Museum program note, 4 March 1953, 4 pp; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 61-69; Filmnyheter 1, no. 11 (1946):17-9 (reception in England); S. Krohn, Filmorientering (NFI/Norwegian Film Institute), no. 96. (March 1966), 4 pp; SF-nyheter, no. 21 (1945), pp. 10-13; Svensk filmografi, 1940-1949 (Ø 1314), pp. 385-88. Updated information on internet: www. svenskfilmdatabas.se
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KRIS, 1946 [Crisis], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman, adapted from a radio play by Leck Fischer
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Synopsis Kris opens with a speaker voice-over introducing the idyllic town where 18-year-old Nelly lives with her foster mother, Ingeborg. Nelly is courted by Ulf, a considerably older agronomist. Preparations are under way for Nelly to attend her first ball, with Ulf as her escort. However, on that same day, Nelly’s biological mother, Jenny, arrives in town and is later joined by her lover, Jack. Jenny wants Nelly to work in her beauty parlour in the city. At the ball Jack approaches Nelly and offers her a drink which he calls ‘Jack the Ripper’s Evensong’. He and Nelly cause a scandal by interrupting the traditional entertainment with modern improvised jazz. Escaping outdoors, Jack explains to Nelly that he is a ‘moonlight creature’ who can love no one but himself. The rendez-vous is intercepted by Ulf, but Nelly decides shortly thereafter to leave town. Arriving in the city she begins to work in her mother’s beauty parlor. Ingeborg, now deathly ill, travels to the city in search of Nelly but has to return home alone. One evening Jack comes to the beauty salon where Nelly is alone. The couple is surprised by Jenny. In a vengeful mood she tells Nelly that Jack is a mythomaniac who makes up stories about himself to arouse women’s sympathy. Jack leaves very upset and shortly afterwards shoots himself against the flickering neon signs of a theatre. Nelly is shocked by his suicide but returns home to the small town where she is warmly received by Ingeborg and, somewhat more hesitantly, by Ulf.
Credits Production Company Exexcutive Producer Production Manager Director Artistic Advisor Screenplay
Alternate titles
Architect Music Sound Props Make-up Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Harald Molander Lars-Eric Kjellgren Ingmar Bergman Victor Sjöström Ingmar Bergman, based on radio play by Leck Fischer entitled Moderhjertet [Mother heart], first produced by Danish radio (DR) on 27 September 1944. Drömmen om Nelly [The dream of Nelly], Mitt barn är mitt [My child is mine], Moderdyret [The mother animal] Arne Åkermark Erland von Koch Lennart Svensson Harry Malmstedt, Ragnar Carlberg Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Seivie Ewerstein
Cast Nelly Jack Ingeborg, Nelly’s foster mother Jenny, Nelly’s mother Ulf Uncle Edward, physician Aunt Jessica Malin, housekeeper Mayor Mayor’s Wife
Inga Landgré Stig Olin Dagny Lind Marianne Löfgren Allan Bohlin Ernst Eklund Signe Wirff Svea Holst Arne Lindblad Julia Caesar
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Chapter IV Filmography Singer at ball Nelly’s dance partner Beautician Assistant at beauty parlor Customers at beauty parlor Man in the beauty parlor Musician at ball Trumpet Blower Bass Tuba Player Flute Player Clarinet Player/Orchestra Leader Pianist Wife of Town accountant at ball Young Woman on train Old Woman on train Gypsy Woman Men in the street at Jack’s suicide Participants at ball
Dagmar Olsson Karl-Erik Flens Siv Thulin Monica Schildt Anna-Lisa Baude, Hariette Garellick John Erik Liebel Sture Ericson Wiktor ‘Kulörten’ Andersson Gus Dahlström John Melin Holger Höglund Ulf Johanson Margit Andelius Carin Cederström Mona Geijer-Falkner Singoalla Lundbäck Nils Hultgren, Per H. Jacobsson, Rune Ottoson, Britta Billsten, Ullastina Rettig, Gustaf Hedström, Gösta Qvist, Maud Hyttenberg, Otto Adelby, Hanna Adelby, et al.
Filmed on location at Hedemora in central Sweden, Stockholm (Djurgården) and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 4 July 1945, and completed 31 August 1945. Distribution Running Time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 93 minutes 12 February 1946 25 February 1946, Spegeln (Stockholm)
Commentary Leck Fischer’s play was produced at the Helsingborg City Theatre during Bergman’s first season there as head of the theatre. Directed by Ingrid Luterkort, it opened on 6 October 1944. The foster mother in the Helsingborg production was played by stage actress Dagny Lind, who appears in the same role in Bergman’s film version. Bergman’s screenplay shows some changes from Leck Fischer’s play, such as a shift of focus from the struggle between mother and foster mother to a love story between Nelly and Jack. Jack is Bergman’s own invention, and the most dramatic figure in the film. For Bergman’s account of the genesis of the Jack character, see Chapter II (Ø 41). In a 1973 retrospective at SFI, Bergman commented on his debut as a film director in a special series of program notes (see Ø 154): ‘If someone had asked me to film the telephone book I would have done so. The result might have been better. I knew nothing, could do nothing and felt like a crazy cat in a ball of yarn’. [Om någon hade bett mig filma telefonkatalogen hade jag gjort det. Resultatet hade möjligen blivit bättre. Jag visste ingenting, kunde ingenting och kände mig som en galen katt i en garnhärva.] See also comments on his novice status in the film world in Laterna magica, pp. 81-88 (English edition, pp. 67-73), and remarks about the shooting of Kris in Bilder/Images. My Life in Film, 1990, pp. 122-130.
Reception Most reviews of Kris were critical; the film was termed unbalanced in style and juvenile in mood and character depiction. But individual sequences, especially from the beauty parlor, were singled out as showing great promise. Danish reviews, comparing the film to the original
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Danish play, were mostly negative. This is in line with most adaptation discussions at the time, which tended to favor faithfulness to the literary original above cinematic criteria. Kris got better reviews outside Stockholm. See positive write-up by Gerd Osten in GHT, 9 March 1946, sec. B, p. 2, and by Thorsten Eklann in UNT 5 March 1946, p. 7, including his commentary in the same paper on 16 March, p. 9. A discussion of Kris between critics Bengt Chambert, Gerd Osten (Pavane), and Gösta Werner appeared in Biografbladet 27, no. 2 (Summer 1946): 114-120. Such attention suggests that Bergman was not treated as an ignorant novice among the film critics.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 26 February 1946; BLM 15, no. 3 (March 1946): 246-47; Vecko-Journalen 39, no. 10 (1946): 27; Vi, no. 10 (9 March), p. 6.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma, no. 85 (July 1958), p. 6; Variety 8 May 1946, p. 8.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 22-23; Biografbladet 30, no. 4 (Winter 1949-50): 226-27; Cahiers du cinéma no. 486 (December 1994), p. 9; Danish Film Museum program, 7-11 November 1960, 4 pp; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 71-78; Expr., 11 September 1973, p. 8; Filmnyheter 3, no. 19 (1948):7-9; Perspektiv 2, no. 8 (October 1951): 498-505; SF program to Kris, 11 pp; Svensk filmografi 1940-1949 (Ø 1314), pp. 512-14; SDS (Malmö), 9 September 1945, p. 21.
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DET REGNAR PÅ VÅR KÄRLEK, 1946 [It Rains on Our Love], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman & Herbert Grevenius.
Synopsis The film opens with a Hitchcock-inspired shot (Foreign Correspondent) showing a crowd of people under umbrellas waiting in the rain for a bus. An older man turns to the camera and introduces himself as the Man with the Umbrella. He is the narrator of the story and also acts as a providential character. A young couple, Maggie and David, meet at Stockholm’s Central Station. David has recently been released from prison. Maggie, who once had ambitions to become an actress, has made a living as a prostitute. Now she is pregnant with a child whose father is unknown. David, as yet ignorant of Maggie’s pregnancy, joins her, and the two leave the city. To find shelter, they break into an empty pea patch cottage. The next day the owner, Håkansson, a nasty old man who lives alone with a hoard of cats, appears and threatens to report them for trespassing. Later he changes his mind and offers to sell them the cottage. David has found employment at a garden nursery run by Mr. Andersson and his shrewish wife. Two well-meaning Robin Hood-like characters keep leaving household utensils at David’s
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Chapter IV Filmography and Maggie’s front steps. They have stolen the items from the Andersson couple who accuse David of the theft. Maggie tells David of her pregnancy, which causes him to run off on a drunken spree. Later, however, he offers to marry her. The two go to the local pastor to register and to ask him to read the marriage banns in church. The pastor turns out to be a pedantic bureaucrat who obviously takes unctious delight in stalling their plans. Arriving back home, Maggie and David find yet another bureaucrat waiting in front of their cottage. He is a civil servant, Herr Purman, who tells them to leave immediately. The cottage had been expropriated by the town council before Maggie and David moved in and is now going to be torn down for a new development. In a fit of anger, David hits Herr Purman, who reports the incident to the police. Maggie, in shock, miscarries. The last fourth of the film is set in a courtroom. The Man with the Umbrella appears, acting as Maggie’s and David’s defense attorney. He gets David acquitted of Purman’s assault charge. The film ends as the young couple take leave of the Man with the Umbrella at a crossroad. A sign appears with arrows pointing in opposite directions, labeled City and Country. David and Maggie choose the road to the City.
Credits Production Company Executive Producer Production Manager Director Screenplay
Cinematography Architect Music Sound Editor Continuity
Sveriges Folkbiografer Lorens Marmstedt Lorens Marmstedt Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman and Herbert Grevenius adapted Norwegian playwright Oskar Braathen’s play Bra Mennesker [Decent people], first produced at the Oslo National Theatre on 9 September 1930 Göran Strindberg, Hilding Bladh P. A. Lundgren Erland von Koch Lars Nordberg Tage Holmberg Gun Holmgren
Cast Maggi David Lindell Man with the Umbrella Per Håkansson, cottage owner Anderson, proprietor of nursery Mrs. Anderson Hanna Ledin, a friendly neighbor Mr. Purman Bicycle Mechanic, friend of David His Wife The Pastor The Prosecutor The Judge Assistant to Judge Kängsnöret [Shoestring], bum Stålvispen [Eggbeater], bum
Barbro Kollberg Birger Malmsten Gösta Cederlund Ludde Gentzel Douglas Håge Hjördis Pettersson Julia Cæsar Gunnar Björnstrand Magnus Kesster Sif Ruud Åke Fridell Benkt-Åke Benktsson Erik Rosén Albert Johansson Sture Ericson Ulf Johanson
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Clerk Policemen Attendant at station Ticket salesman at station Men at Café Women in Courtroom
Erland Josephson Bertil Anderberg, Edvard Danielsson Carl (Johansson) Harald Nils Hultberg John W. Björling, Einar Hylander Karin Windahl, Britta Billsten, Margot Lindén
Filmed on location at pea patches near Hellasgården in South Stockholm and at Drevviken and Sandrews’ Novilla Studios in the Stockholm nature park Djurgården in August 1946 (completed on August 22nd). Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svenska AB Nordisk Tonefilm 95 minutes 31 October 1946 9 November 1946, Astoria (Stockholm)
Commentary The Man with the Umbrella and other allegorical overtones in the film exist already in Braathen’s play. Bergman’s work on the script confines itself to the trial, i.e., to the most realistic part of the film. Hilding Bladh started shooting Det regnar på vår kärlek but had to turn over the job to Göran Strindberg because of a time conflict. Each one is responsible for about 50% of the footage. Strindberg remembers shooting outdoor scenes and interior scenes from pea patch cottage. Strindberg’s footage in the city scenes is typical of his film noir style. Cf. his footage in Fängelse/ Prison. A Norwegian film based on Braathen’s play was made in 1937 with the title Bra mennesker [Decent people], directed by Leif Sinding.
Reception Reviews were mixed, but on the whole Bergman was praised for his playful and lyrical approach. Many pointed to the influences from French cinema of René Clair, Julien Duvivier, and Marcel Carné. A longer analysis of Bergman’s film was published by Bengt Chambert in Biografbladet 27, no. 4 (Winter 1946-47): 235-239, comparing it to Marcel Carné’s film noir and noting Méliès’ influence on Bergman. In early 1947 Det regnar på vår kärlek began a very successful round in the Swedish provinces. Signature Björn in Hudiksvallsposten, 26 February 1947 p. 7, concluded: ‘We have to go back to the era of Victor Sjöström to find anything comparable on the Swedish screen’ [Vi måste gå tillbaka till Victor Sjöströms epok för att hitta något jämförbart på den svenska duken].
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 10 November 1946; BLM 15, no. 10 (December 1946): 906-907; Vecko-Journalen 37, no. 47 (1946): pp. 14-15, 45; Vi no. 47 (1946), p. 28.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma no. 85 (July 1958): 6.
See also Bergman, Ingmar. Bilder/Images. My Life on Film, pp. 132-33; Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 27-29; Cahiers du cinéma no. 74 (August–September 1957);
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Chapter IV Filmography Danish Film museum program, 14-17 May 1962, 4 pp.; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 79-85; Expr., 29 August 1974, p. 30; Image et son, 1967 (Ø 1233), pp. 6-7; Robin Hood, ST, 2 October 1964, p. 24; SDS, 10 November 1946 p. 18; Svensk filmografi, 1940-1949 (Ø 1314), pp. 542-544; H. Wortzelius, Biografbladet 30, no. 4 (Winter 1949-50): 217-236.
Awards 1946: 1947:
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Ingmar Bergman won a Charlie (Swedish Oscar) for the film. Film was ranked best Swedish film for 1946-47 by Swedish Film Journalists Club and the film magazine Biografbladet.
KVINNA UTAN ANSIKTE, 1947 [Woman without a face], B/W Director Screenplay
Gustaf Molander Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis Ragnar Ekberg, an author, sits at a hotel bar while his off-screen voice introduces him as the narrator of a story whose main characters are Martin Grandé and his mistress Rut Köhler. Seeing Rut leave the hotel alone, Ragnar checks on Martin and finds him dying after a suicide attempt. Later at the hospital Ragnar meets Rut and follows her home. She shows him a portrait she has painted representing the devil and tells him a fairytale called ‘The Three Chimney Sweeps and the Changing of Guards’ [De tre sotarna och Vaktparaden]. In a flashback we see Rut in her mother’s apartment as a caller arrives; it is Sam Svensson, a chimney sweep and trumpeteer who offers Rut free tickets to a concert. Rut serves him beer, and later they climb up on the roof to make love. Ragnar’s voice interrupts Rut’s story while the camera introduces us to Martin, his wife Frida, and their small son Pil. The family is gathered for dinner at Martin’s parents. A quarrel starts over the way the grandparents spoil their grandson. Martin insults Frida. Later, feeling guilty, he takes Pil with him in the car to buy flowers for Frida. At the florist he sees Rut for the first time. She deliberately breaks off the heel on one of her shoes and accepts Martin’s offer to drive her home. Some time later she waits for him outside the university where he is a student. They begin an affair, with Ragnar providing an alibi for them. But Ragnar and Martin are drafted. Worried that Rut will not be faithful, Martin deserts from the army and returns to Stockholm. Rut takes him to Sam Svensson’s concert and persuades Sam to rent them a room. Martin’s and Rut’s liaison is short-lived. Martin finds himself a cold shack, while Rut returns to her mother, whose lover Victor is the model for Rut’s portrait of the devil. Rut tells her mother how Victor tried to seduce her when she was only 12, and extracts 700 kronor from Victor as compensation. She returns to Martin who flies into a jealous rage at the sight of the large sum of money. He goes back to his family and avoids charges of desertion by claiming a nervous collapse. Rut pursues Martin who accompanies her to the hotel where the film started. In the hospital, Martin’s parents suggest that he go to the United States. The film ends at the train station with Frida saying goodbye to Martin who is leaving to board a ship for the US. They talk about their future together. Rut is also at the station, but Martin does not see her. After he is gone, Frida, expressing her pity, talks briefly to Rut.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Credits Production company Director Screenplay Photography Architects Sound Music Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Gustaf Molander Ingmar Bergman Åke Dahlqvist Arne Åkermark, Nils Svenwall Sven Hansen Erik Nordgren Oscar Rosander Lucie Kjellberg
Cast Martin Grandé Rut Köhler Frida Grandé Ragnar Ekberg Martin’s father Martin’s mother Rut’s mother Victor Sam Svensson
Alf Kjellin Gunn Wållgren Anita Björk Stig Olin Olof Winnerstrand Linnea Hillberg Marianne Löfgren Georg Funkquist Åke Grönberg
Filmed at Råsunda Studios and at Märsta station, beginning 3 February 1947 and completed in Spring 1947. Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 100 minutes 9 July 1947 16 September 1947
Commentary For genesis of script, see (Ø 42). According to an article in Filmnyheter 2, no. 4 (1947): 21-22, Bergman followed part of the shooting of film. Director Gustaf Molander was one of SF’s grand old men, known for his sober and elegant upper class comedies and melodramas.
Reception Bergman’s script caught the limelight, just as had been the case with Hets. The leading film critic Carl Björkman noticed Bergman’s dramatic and lyrical talents: ‘Ingmar Bergman’s “Kvinna utan ansikte” is the work of a poet. A bit uneven and jerky at times, charmingly immature at times, often leaving question marks. But always inspired, with the brilliance of a very youthful genius who has all the deviltry of film and theatre in his blood’. [Ingmar Bergmans ‘Kvinna utan ansikte’ är en diktares verk. Lite ojämt och ryckigt någon gång, förtjusande omoget ibland, ofta med frågetecken. Men nästan hela tiden inspirerat, gnistrande av ett mycket ungdomligt geni som fått både teaterns och filmens alla djävlar i blodet.] Björkman’s appreciative review might be juxtaposed to Artur Lundkvist’s negative reaction: ‘When faced with Ingmar Bergman’s fiery excitement, his convulsive furor, one easily gets a feeling of being offered dramatic drugs, a violent storm in a teapot, a theatrical “much ado about nothing”. In the midst of all the noise and all the rebellious gestures, one suddenly begins to wonder if he actually has anything to say’ [Inför Ingmar Bergman med hans hetsiga upprördhet, hans konvulsiviska furia får man lätt en känsla av att bli bjuden dramatisk narkotika, ett våldsamt stormande i ett vattenglas, ett teateraktigt ‘mycket väsen för ingenting’. Mitt i allt
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Chapter IV Filmography bullret och alla de upproriska åthävorna kan man plötsligt börja undra om han egentligen har något att säga.]
Reviews Björkman, Carl. ‘Kvinna utan ansikte’. DN, 17 September 1947. Lundkvist, Artur. ‘Film’. BLM XVI, no. 8 (October) 1947: 683.
Awards 1948:
206.
Stockholm film critics (and Uppsala critic Pir Ramek) voted Kvinna utan ansikte best Swedish film of the year, followed by his Musik i mörker/Music in Darkness and Skepp till India land/A Ship to India. See Biografbladet, Summer 1948.
SKEPP TILL INDIA LAND, 1947 [A Ship to India], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman after a play by Martin Söderhjelm
The original Swedish title is a direct reference to a poem by Gustaf Fröding (1860-1911), which begins: ‘Jag ville jag vore i Indialand/och India vore sig själv’ (I wish I were in Indialand/and India were itself). The Swedish name for India is Indien; by renaming it Indialand, the poet converts a distant geographic spot to a melodious land of fantasy, a never-never land: ‘Jag ville jag vore en drömlands son/en infödd av Indialand’ (I wish I were a dreamland’s son/a native of Indialand). Early American and British titles, ‘Frustration’ and ‘Land of Desire’, place emphasis on psychological mood while ignoring the irony of the setting: a tug boat serving as a launch pad for escapes to exotic lands. Final distribution title Ship to India places skipper Blom’s unreachable destination firmly on the map. ‘Ship to Indialand’ or ‘Ship to Never-Never Land’ would come closer to the original meaning. Danish title – ‘Sømandstøsen’ or ‘The Sailor’s Gal’ – changes the conflict (as does one of the French titles, ‘Le port des filles perdues’) to the story of a promiscuous woman.
Synopsis The film opens seven years after the main action has occurred. Johannes Blom returns from long service in the merchant marine. He looks up Sally, who is living alone. She tells him she does not need his pity. Johannes goes down to the harbour where his father’s sloop used to be. In a flashback he recalls his past, beginning on the day his father Alexander brought home Sally, with whom he planned to sail for ‘Indialand’. Alexander Blom is going blind. His neglected wife Alice hopes his condition will worsen to make him dependent on her and give up Sally. Johannes falls in love with Sally. When Captain Blom discovers Sally’s interest in his son, he forces Johannes to work as a diver against his will and attempts to murder him by cutting off the air in the diving tube. Johannes is rescued at the last minute, and the father flees in panic to a room he keeps in town, decorated with model ships and exotic objects which he now proceeeds to destroy. He then makes an aborted suicide attempt, but becomes crippled and totally dependent upon his wife. The film ends as Johannes snaps out of his reveries and returns once more to Sally’s place. He succeeds in persuading her to leave with him, and they depart together, not as lovers but as mutual friends.
Credits Production company Executive producer Production manager
Sveriges Folkbiografer Lorens Marmstedt Allan Ekelund
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Director Screenplay
Photography Architect Music Sound Make-up Editor Continuity
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman after Martin Söderhjelm’s play Skepp till Indialand, first produced at the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki, 23 October 1946 Göran Strindberg P. A. Lundgren Erland von Koch Lars Nordberg, Sven Josephson Inga-Lisa Storthors, Arne Lundh Tage Holmberg Gerd Osten
Cast Captain Alexander Blom Johannes Blom, his son Sally Alice Blom Crewmen Hans, Bertil, Erik Selma Sofi Manager of music hall A foreign crewman Kiki, a dwarf Alexander Blom’s partners Street girl Girl on beach Young man on beach Woman witnessing arrest Black crew member Old men in the street
Holger Löwenadler Birger Malmsten Gertrud Fridh Anna Lindahl Lasse Krantz, Jan Molander, Erik Hell Naemi Brise Hjördis Petterson Åke Fridell Peter Lindgren Otto Moskowitz Gustaf Hiort af Ornäs, Rolf Bergström Ingrid Borthen Amy Aaröe Gunnar Nielsen Svea Holst Charles White John W. Björling, Uno Larsson
Filmed on location at Ankarsudden, Torö, in Stockholm archipelago and at Sandrews’ Novilla Studios in Stockholm’s Djurgården (Deer Park), beginning 28 May 1947, and completed 16 July 1947. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Premiere U.S. Opening
Nordisk Tonefilm Film Classics, Janus Films, Inc. 102 min 22 September 1947, Royal (Stockholm) 29 August 1949, Rialto, NYC
Commentary Bergman’s screenplay intensifies the father-son relationship in the original play by Söderhjelm and adds a variety-show sequence, in which Ingmar Bergman can be seen as a man in beret (his ‘trademark’ for many years) watching a Punch-and-Judy show. Bergman writes about the making of Skepp till India land in Bilder/Images. My Life in Film, 1990, pp. 136-139. In a reportage from the shooting of the film in Expr., 7 June 1949, p. 11, Bergman stresses both the escapist motif and the theme of youthful rebellion.
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Chapter IV Filmography Reception In Bilder/Images (p. 139) Bergman calls the reception of Skepp till India land ‘a massive adversity’ [en massiv motgång], but actually the film received mixed reviews. Arne Sellermark in Filmjournalen 29, no. 40 (1947): 7, referred to it as ‘a horror ship of fyrtiotalism’ [ett fyrtitalistiskt skräckskepp], i.e., full of the malaise of Sweden’s literary Forties (see Ø 952), but was in general positive about the film. Nils Beyer in Stockholm MT, 23 September 1947, p. 11, criticized Bergman for using a trendy literary cliché in his portrait of Sally, the good prostitute. The only longer study of Skepp till India land was published by Hugo Wortzelius: ‘Ensamhet och gemenskap. Reflexioner kring Ingmar Bergmans “Skepp till Indialand”.’ Biografbladet 28, no. 4 (Winter 1947-48): 229-235. He sees family conflict in the film as a desperate human search for contact rather than a generation battle. He also compares the film’s strong element of escapism to so-called utbrytningsdröm [dream of breaking away], a common motif in Swedish cinema at the time. Variety, 22 October 1947, p. 13, carried a brief note about Ship to India, recommending the film for the U.S. market. But Variety, 31 August 1949, p. 8, dismissed it as a ‘a slow murky film with no appeal for the US market’. In France, the film became a modest success during the Bergman vogue of 1958. See Cahiers du cinéma no. 86 (August 1958): 42-43.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 23 September 1947; BLM 16, no. 8 (October 1947): 683; Vecko-Journalen 38, no. 40 (1947): 39; Vi no. 40 (1947), pp. 11, 22.
Foreign Reviews Il giornale d’Italia (Rome), 3 October 1968, n.p. (SFI clipping); New York Herald Tribune, 27 August 1949, p. 4; New York Times, same date, p. 7:3; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, pp. 2355-56; Variety, 31 August 1949, p. 8.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 30-31; Danish Film museum program, 1964, 4 pp.; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 86-90; Filmjournalen 29, no. 30 (1947): 10-11; Filmorientering (Norwegian Film Institute), no. 79 (November 1964), 4 pp.; Image et son (Ø 1233), pp. 7-9; Scen och Salong no. 7 (1947): 8-10; Svensk filmografi, 1940-1949 (Ø 1314), pp. 610-612.
Awards 1947:
207.
Honorable mention at Cannes Film Festival.
MUSIK I MÖRKER, 1948 [Music in darkness], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Dagmar Edqvist and Ingmar Bergman
The Swedish title has alliteration and cadence, lost in literal English translation. Early American title ‘Night is my Future’ focusses on main character’s blindness and ignores importance that music plays in the film.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Synopsis The film opens with an expressionistic dream sequence: young Bengt Vyldeke is blinded when trying to save a puppy during a rifle drill in the army. Returning to his family residence in the country, Bengt tries to adjust to a world of darkness and begins to play the organ in a country church. One day when playing at a funeral, he meets a lower class girl, Ingrid, whose father is being buried. Ingrid needs a job and becomes a servant in Bengt’s home. The two fall in love, and Ingrid encourages Bengt to pursue his musical studies. He applies to the Academy of Music in Stockholm but fails his entrance exam. Subsequently, he begins to play in a pub whose owner exploits all the employees. One day Bengt is falsely accused of theft and loses his job. In the meantime Ingrid has been admitted to a teacher’s college where she meets Ebbe. A chance encounter brings Ingrid and Ebbe together with Bengt. The two men are jealous of each other. In a contest of bending arms, Ebbe wins. Later he hits Bengt when discovering that Ingrid is in love with him. Bengt is grateful, for he feels that Ebbe has treated him as an equal and not as a handicapped person. The pastor in the church where Bengt used to play the organ is Ingrid’s guardian after her father’s death. He refuses to give his blessing to a marriage between Ingrid and Bengt, partly because of their social differences and partly because of Bengt’s blindness. Bengt, however, decides to pursue a career as a church organist and is accepted into such a program. Ingrid will teach grade school. The pastor finally gives them permission to marry. The films ends as they leave by train for their new life together.
Credits Production company Executive producer Production manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Props manager Music Sound Make-up Editor Continuity
Terrafilm Lorens Marmstedt Allan Ekelund Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman and Dagmar Edqvist, after her 1946 novel of the same name Göran Strindberg P. A. Lundgren Gösta Pettersson Erland von Koch Olle Jakobsson Inga Lindeström Lennart Wallén Ulla Kihlberg
Cast Bengt Vyldeke Ingrid Olofsson Ebbe Larsson Kernman, pastor Kruge, pub owner Klasson, musician at pub Mrs. Beatrice Schröder Augustin Schröder Agneta, Bengt’s sister Lovisa, housekeeper at Schröder’s Otto Klemens, blind worker Hedström, music director
Birger Malmsten Mai Zetterling Bengt Eklund Olof Winnerstrand Douglas Håge Gunnar Björnstrand Naima Wifstrand Åke Claesson Bibi Lindqvist-Skoglund Hilda Borgström John Elfström Sven Lindberg
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Chapter IV Filmography Einar Blom Blanche Sylvia Evert, boy in pub Hjördis, his mother Anton Nord Post office clerk Jönsson, waiter Blind pianist Woman throwing out garbage Chief cook Train engineer Man at train station Mrs. Else Klemens Hotel guest
Bengt Logardt Marianne Gyllenhammar Ulla Andreasson Rune Andreasson Barbro Flodquist Segol Mann Svea Holst Georg Skarstedt Reinhold Svensson Mona Geijer-Falkner Arne Lindblad Stig Johanson Ulf Johanson Britta Brunius Otto Adelby
Filmed at Sandrews Studios at Lästmakargatan, Stockholm, beginning 1 November 1947 and completed 30 December 1947. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. Opening
Terrafilm/Stjärnfilm Embassy Pictures/Janus Films, Inc. 85 minutes 15 January 1948 17 January 1948 8 January 1963, Eight Street Playhouse, NYC
Bergman can be seen as a train passenger in the final scene.
Commentary Bergman switched the focus of Edqvist’s novel from a love story across class barriers to a psychological study of a traumatized young man. He talks briefly about the making of Musik i mörker in his book Bilder/Images. My Life in Film, pp. 139-40. In a shooting reportage in Expr. (11 December 1947, p. 16), he is described as a man who ‘aggravates, hates and acts in fear, agony and anguish’ and only sees ‘the dark aspects of life’ [en man som hetsar och hatar och handlar i skräck, vånda och ångest (och bara ser) livets mörka sidor]. Musik i mörker was said to be an answer to his critics that he could also make ‘happier’ films.
Reception Reviewers approved of Bergman’s adaptation of the original story but were somewhat divided about the filmic result. Robin Hood claimed that the expressionistic opening was an obvious imitation of Eisenstein (ST 17 February 1948, p. 6). Carl Björkman (DN, 18 January 1948), though acknowledging Bergman’s obvious artistic ambitions, termed Musik i mörker no more than ‘an altogether presentable film, it is proper in its smallest detail, as slick as drawing paper [...] but narrated in a monotone, without joy and spontaneity. [en alltigenom snygg film, den är proper in i minsta detalj, glättad som illustrationspapper [...]men entonigt berättad, utan glädje och spontanitet]. Björkman suggested that Bergman look at the current Italian cinema for a treatment of tragic subjects with warmth, humor and emotional involvement rather than ‘narrow anguish’ [snäv ångest]. Bergman’s next film venture, Hamnstad/Port of Call, was conceived as an ‘Italian’ neo-realist film. The film was a modest public success in Sweden, and, in fact, the first Bergman film to make money. It has had limited distribution outside of Sweden but was not released in U.S. until 1963.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Variety reviewed it on 29 July 1959 (p. 6), referring to it as an old picture showing some talent. Time, 25 January 1963, p. 42 (Am.Ed. p. 59), compared its ‘silly plot’ favorably to Jane Eyre. NYT, 9 January 1963, p. 5:-6, dismissed it as ‘cinematic juvenilia of a painful sort’.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 18 January 1948; BLM, February 1948, p. 153-154; Vecko-Journalen 39, no. 5 (1948): 24; Vi no. 5 (1948), p. 14.
Foreign Reviews Filmfacts, 7 February 1963; Films and Filming, 8 no. 7 (April 1962) p. 33; Monthly Film Bulletin, March 1961, p. 32; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3371; Time, 25 January 1963, p. 42 (Am.ed. p. 59); Variety, 29 July 1959, p. 6.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 790), pp. 30-31; Biografbladet 30, no. 4 (Winter 1949-50): 217-236; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1382), pp. 99-102; Image et son, 226 (March) 1969: 9-10; New York Herald Tribune, 31 December 1962, p. 15; Svensk filmografi, 1940-1949 (Ø 1370), pp. 645-647. Musik i mörker was an entry at the 1948 Venice Film Festival but won no prize.
208.
HAMNSTAD, 1948 [Port of Call], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman after Olle Länsberg’s novel Guldet och murarna [The gold and the walls]
Synopsis A docu-style camera depicts the bustling port of Göteborg; the tenement housing where Berit, the main character, lives and the factory where she works. The story begins as Gösta, a 29-yearold sailor who has just returned home after eight years at sea, passes the spot where Berit has just tried to commit suicide by jumping into the water. Later Gösta, a serious man who reads contemporary Swedish poetry, meets Berit in a dance hall. He follows her home and spends the night with her. It is a casual relationship, and no bonds are formed between the two. In a flashback we learn that Berit is the product of a broken home. One scene depicts her parents quarreling; another shows her strict mother moving about in the home, imposing her meticulous sense of order and fundamentalist religion on Berit. Still another flashback tells how Berit, who then attended a milliner’s school, is locked out by her mother when she returns home late one night. On this occasion Berit has met a young man reminiscent of Jack in Kris. She moves in with him, but her mother has her admitted to a juvenile institution. Berit escapes but is caught and and sent back. When Gösta meets her, she has been released on probation and is working in a ball-bearing factory. Berit’s mother reports her daughter’s encounter with Gösta to the probation officer, Mr. Vilander.
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Chapter IV Filmography Gösta is uncertain about his feelings for Berit. He comes late to a second meeting. After they have had a good time together at an amusement park, Berit tells him of her past. Gösta is upset, runs away and gets drunk with a prostitute. New complications arise. Gertrud, a pregnant friend of Berit’s, has arranged for an abortion which fails. Berit takes the critically ill Gertrud to Gösta who helps her to the hospital. Berit is now apprehended. In a plea-bargaining for her freedom, she divulges the address of the abortionist. She and Gösta make plans to stow away on a ship, but just before boarding, they change their minds and decide to stay in the harbour city.
Credits Production company Executive producer Production manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Propman (Studio manager) Music Sound Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindusti Harald Molander Lars-Eric Kjellgren Ingmar Bergman Stig Ossian Ericson Ingmar Bergman, from Olle Länsberg’s Guldet och murarna [The gold and the walls] Gunnar Fischer Nils Svenwall Gösta Ström Erland von Koch Sven Hansen Oscar Rosander Ingegerd Ericsson
Cast Berit Holm Gösta Andersson Berit’s mother Berit’s father Berit as a child Gertrud Ljungberg, hotel maid Gertrud’s father Agneta Vilander, social worker Mr. Vilander, probation officer Man from Skåne Gustav ‘Eken’, Stockholm kid Mrs. Krona, abortionist Police superintendent ‘Tuppen’ [the Rooster], foreman Tuppen’s buddies Gunnar Johan, his father His mother Thomas A prostitute Girls from reform school Joe, a Negro Salvation Army soldiers
Nine-Christine Jönsson Bengt Eklund Berta Hall Erik Hell Kate Elffors Mimi Nelson Sture Ericson Birgitta Valberg Hans Strååt Harry Ahlin Nils Hallberg Sven-Eric Gamble Sif Ruud Nils Dahlgren Yngve Nordwall Torsten Lilliecrona, Hans Sundberg Bengt Blomgren Helge Karlsson Hanny Schedin Stig Olin Brita Billsten Ernma Groth, Else-Merete Heiberg Bill Houston Britta Nordin, Estrid Hesse
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Captain on Dutch ship Girl in dance-hall Swing kid at the dance-hall Man at card game A screaming girl Police sister Voice reading court verdict
Herman Greid Vanja Rodefeldt Rune Andreasson John W. Björling Harriet Andersson Inga-Lill Åhström Stig Ossian Ericson
Filmed on location in Göteborg and Hindås, and on the Södertälje-Stockholm train, beginning 27 May 1948, and completed 17 July 1948. Distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri 99 minutes 4 October 1948 11 October 1948, Cosmorama, Kaparen (Göteborg) 18 October, Skandia (Stockholm) as Port of Call, November 1959
Commentary In late winter and early spring 1948, a labor conflict jeopardized shooting schedules. When SF studios opened again on 27 May, two productions got under way: Eva, written by Bergman but directed by Gustaf Molander, and Hamnstad, directed by Ingmar Bergman but not based on his script. Why Molander got to direct the very personal script of Eva and why Bergman took care of the social-realistic Hamnstad is not clear, except that the latter film was set in Göteborg, where Bergman resided at the time. Ingmar Bergman added one scene to the original script, the episode where Gösta gets drunk with a prostitute. Swedish censorship board cut about 30 seconds from a scene of violent abuse (in ‘act 3’).
Reception Swedish reviews of Hamnstad were mixed. Mikael Katz (Expr., 19 October 1948, p. 9), usually critical of Bergman, approved of a ‘new’ Bergman who subordinated himself to the docu-style of the script. But Bergman’s supporter in ST (Robin Hood, same date, p. 12) was very negative: ‘One is tired of abortions, women’s penitentiaries, social workers, cheap seductions and equally cheap dance halls’ [Man är led vid aborter, ‘kvinnofängelser’, socialkuratorer, billiga förförelser och lika billiga danshak]. Those who saw Hamnstad as an example of postwar neorealism favored it; those who compared it to Swedish street-and-problem films of the Forties were negative. Abroad, the film was shown too late to ride on the neorealistic wave of the Forties. It got respectful though lukewarm reception during auteur-oriented Ingmar Bergman retrospectives in France (1958), Britain, and the U.S. (1959).
Swedish Reviews Göteborg press, 12 October, and Stockholm press, 19 October 1948; BLM 17, no. 9. (November 1948): pp. 707-708 (review by Artur Lundkvist); Vecko-Journalen no. 45 (1948), pp. 24, 4; Vi no. 44 (1948), p. 20.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma no. 85 (July 1958): p. 6-7; Films and Filming, October 1959, p. 25; Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1959, p. 147.
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Chapter IV Filmography See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 32-33; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 103-107; Danish Film Museum program, May 1960; Filmnyheter 3, no. 15 (1948): 16-18; Vi 39, no. 47 (1952): 3-4; L. Ernesto, Bianco e nero, nos. 8-9 (1964), pp. 58-72; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 10-11; Svensk filmografi, 1940-1949 (Ø 1314), pp. 678-680 and 716-720 (H. Wortzelius).
209.
EVA, 1948, B/W Director Screenplay
Gustaf Molander Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis Bo Fredriksson, a trumpeteer in the navy, returns home on leave. On the train he remembers how he ran away at age 12 after quarreling with his father and joined an ambulatory theatre company whose director had a 10-year-old blind daughter, Marthe. Returning to the present, Bo receives a warm welcome from his parents. In the evening he visits a neigbouring family, the Berglunds, whose niece Eva is working on the farm. Later Bo makes love to Eva. At the same time old Berglund dies, cared for by his wife. This triggers a second flashback in Bo who remembers bringing blind Marthe on board a locomotive and setting it in motion. Their joy ride ends in disaster as the locomotive derails and Marthe is killed. Ever since, Bo has felt that death follows him everywhere. After his visit to his parents, Bo returns to Stockholm where he shares an apartment with a musician, Göran, and his wife Susanne, who makes passes at Bo. After a night of heavy drinking Bo has a nightmare in which, encouraged by Susanne, he kills Göran. The next morning Eva comes to Stockholm to surprise Bo. The two decide to leave town and move out to the skerries. Eva is pregnant, and Bo is a happy expectant father. But one day when the baby is almost due, Bo and an old fisherman, Johansson, find the corpse of a German soldier who has washed ashore on the Swedish coast. Eva watches the two men carry the soldier into a nearby storage shack and goes to check on them. The shock of seeing the dead soldier precipitates the birth of the child. Johansson helps Eva to a midwife who delivers her of a healthy boy. In the birth of their son, Bo feels that death has ceased to be a threat. He now accepts death as an inevitable part of life.
Credits Production company Director Screenplay Photography Architect Music Sound Make-up Editor
Svensk Filmindustri Gustaf Molander Ingmar Bergman and Gustaf Molander, from a synopsis by Ingmar Bergman Åke Dahlqvist Nils Svenwall Eric Nordgren Lennart Unnerstad Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Oscar Rosander
Cast Bo Fredriksson Eva
Birger Malmsten Eva Stiberg
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Susanne Bolin Göran Bolin Erik Fredriksson Mrs. Anna Fredriksson Frida, Bo’s sister Frida at 7 Lena, Bo’s sister Aron Berglund Mrs. Maria Berglund Mikael Johansson, fisherman Bo at 12 Marthe, the blind girl Josef Friedel, Marthe’s father Josef ’s brothers Karl and Fritz Man in the train Midwife Train engineer in flashback Waitress Station Master Station Master in flashback Railroad Worker
Eva Dahlbeck Stig Olin Åke Claesson Wanda Rothgardt Inga Landgré Monica Weinzierl Yvonne Eriksson Olof Sandborg Hilda Borgström Carl Ström Lasse Sarri Anne Karlsson Sture Ericson Erland Josephson and John Harryson Hans Dahlin Hanny Schedin Lennart Blomkvist Barbro Flodqvist Göthe Grefbo David Erikson Birger Åsander
Filmed on location in Tylösand, Nynäshamn, Hudiksvall, Tvetaberg, Handen, Tumba, Bogesund, and Norrköping, and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 27 May 1948 and completed 28 June 1948. Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 97 minutes 6 December 1948 26 December 1948, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm), Cosmorama (Göteborg), Scania (Malmö), et al.
Commentary Swedish censorship board cut about 1 minute from the seduction scenes, acts 3 and 4. See (Ø 57) for Bergman essay on genesis of Eva. Bergman’s original working title was ‘Starkare än döden’ [Stronger than death] while original title of script was ‘Trumpetaren och vår herre’ [The Trumpeteer and our Lord]. See also (Ø 58-59) for published prose excerpt called ‘Den lille trumpetaren och vår herre’ [The little Trumpeteer and our Lord]. In an article titled ‘Eva – en ingmar bergmansk vändpunkt?’ [Eva – a turning point for Ingmar Bergman], Biografbladet vol. 30, no. 2 (Summer) 1949: 101-06, Hugo Wortzelius provided a rereading of the film, written in the aftermath of the release of Bergman’s Fängelse/ Prison in 1949. Together with Bergman’s Gycklarnas afton (The Naked Night), Eva was chosen to represent Swedish filmmaking in an arts festival celebrating the 500th anniversary of Saõ Paolo, Brazil, in 1954.
Reviews Stockholm, Malmö and Göteborg press, 27 December 1948; UNT, 18 January 1948; BLM, January 1949, pp. 52-53 (Artur Lundkvist); Biografbladet, no. 2, 1949, p. 101-06;
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Chapter IV Filmography Obs!, no. 1, 1949, p. 52; Vi, no. 3, 1949, p. 19 (Gerd Osten/Pavane).
210.
FÄNGELSE, 1949 [Prison], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
The original title is symbolic, Bergman’s version of Sartre’s Huis clos [No Exit], i.e., a depiction of human existence where hell is other people. The early American distribution title, ‘The Devil’s Wanton’, while picking up on Bergman’s reference to the film as a morality play for the screen, is too suggestive of promiscuous living and ignores the main character’s trapped life condition and tragedy.
Synopsis An old mathematics teacher tells the director, his former pupil, of an idea for a screenplay. The film is to open with a proclamation by the Devil that human life is an inferno. The suggestion is dismissed with laughter. Later, at the home of Tomas, a young author whose marriage has brought him to the verge of suicide, the story turns to a prostitute, Birgitta-Carolina. Tomas’ account is visualized; the ‘real’ film begins, focusing on the young girl and demonstrating the schoolteacher’s thesis. Mixing naturalistic details with expressionistic dream sequences, Bergman tells of a rendezvous between Tomas and Birgitta-Carolina in an old attic, where the couple project an old silent farce they find in a movie projector. In the attic, Birgitta-Carolina falls asleep and has a nightmare. In a bathtub she sees a doll bobbing in the water; a hand lifts up the doll, but it changes into a fish that is squashed. In her nightmare Birgitta-Carolina reenacts an earlier episode in her life when she had to surrender her newborn baby to the sister of a pimp who drowned it. Next the camera follows Tomas to the harbor. He sees a dead bird and kicks it into the water. This anticipates Birgitta-Carolina’s suicide after she has been tortured with cigarette butts by a former lover. Tomas returns home to his wife. Birgitta-Carolina has been his vicarious sufferer. The film ends in the film studio. The teacher comes back to ask the director about his opinion of the original plot idea. The answer is that it would never work.
Credits Production Company Executive producer Production manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Property Music Sound Make-up Editor Continuity
Terrafilm Lorens Marmstedt Gösta Pettersson Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Göran Strindberg P.A. Lundgren Sven Björling Erland von Koch Olle Jakobsson Inga Lindeström Lennart Wallén Chris Poijes
Cast Birgitta-Carolina Söderberg Tomas
Doris Svedlund Birger Malmsten
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Sofi, Tomas’ wife Martin Grandé, director/narrator Peter, Birgitta-Carolina’s pimp Linnéa, Peter’s sister Paul, mathematics teacher Mrs. Signe Bohlin, landlady Arne, actor in film studio Greta, actress Alf, Peter’s friend Magnus, opera singer Anna, landlady’s young relative Anna’s fiance, postman Lasse, young boy Lasse’s mother Cinematographer Lighting crew Police superintendent Plainclothes policemen Man in Birgitta-Carolina’s dream Voice of B-C’s mother in nightmare Man in Birgitta-Carolina’s nightmare Dark woman Guest at boarding house Workers in film studio Make-up artist in film studio Scriptgirl in film studio Minister Performers in film projector farce
Eva Henning Hasse Ekman Stig Olin Irma Christenson Anders Henrikson Marianne Löfgren Carl-Henrik ‘Kenne’ Fant Inger Juel Curt Masreliez Åke Fridell Anita Blom Arne Ragneborn Lasse Sarri Britta Brunius Torsten Lilliecrona Segol Mann Börje Mellvig Åke Engfeldt, Gösta Ericsson Ulf Palme Britta Holmberg John W. Björling Gunilla Klosterborg, Birgit ‘Bibi’ Lindkvist Sven Björling, Kalle Öhman, Harry Karlsson Inga Lindeström Chris Poijes Rune Lindström [cut] The Brothers Bragazzi
Filmed on location in Stockholm’s Old Town and at Sandrews’ Studios at Lästmakargatan/ Gärdet, Stockholm, beginning 16 November 1948 and completed 4 March 1949. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Terrafilm Embassy Pictures, Janus Films, Inc. 80 minutes 18 March 1949 19 March 1949, Astoria (Stockholm) 4 July 1962, 55th St. Playhouse, NYC
Commentary Structurally, Fängelse was Bergman’s most complex film to date, with a metafilmic frame showing scenes from a film studio, and a plot narrative constructed as a series of flashbacks. Original title of film was ‘Fängelset’ (The Prison). The script was based on an unpublished novella by Bergman called ‘Sann berättelse’ [True story]. An episode using a wallpaper motif was not included in the film but was used many years later in Såsom i en spegel/Through a Glass Darkly (1961). One copy of the script in SFI Archives has an added ending with Kenne Fant’s name on it, 4 pp. It suggests a dissolve on Tomas, then a ‘postludium’ that takes place in the film studio, showing the arrival of the old teacher. This is closer to the finished film than Bergman’s original script, in which the tone in the studio is more serious, with Greta, the actress, saying to Arne
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Chapter IV Filmography (her co-actor) and Martin (the director): ‘In spite of everything one must seek God. That’s the last chance’. [Trots allt måste man söka Gud. Det är sista chansen.] There are some ironies in the film that are probably lost on a non-Swedish audience: The song heard on the radio when Alf, a pimp, burns Birgitta-Carolina with a cigarette is ‘När lillan kom till jorden’ [When baby arrived on earth], a nursery rhyme by Alice Tegnér known to all Swedes of Bergman’s generation. On the eve of the opening of Fängelse, Bergman published a brief newspaper essay, ‘Filmen om Birgitta-Carolina’ (see Ø 60), reprinted in part in Röster i Radio/TV, no. 23 (1962), pp. 27-28. In it he mentions trimming the budget for Fängelse by cutting down the number of studio days, limiting the sets and supplies for the outdoor shooting, using no extras and little music, avoiding overtime, doing rehearsals outside of scheduled shooting time, starting work earlier in the morning and trimming the manuscript minutely. He also reveals a decision to follow Hitchcock with long takes and few cuts or by using cuts-in-the-camera. Prior to a 1962 TV showing, Bergman was interviewed about the film, SVT, 14 June 1962. He now responded to a question about his Hitchcock technique: ‘My present technique is not the same. Hitchcock’s technique was originally a fascinating thought, but it no doubt implies a few weird consequences when carried to the extreme’ [Min nuvarande teknik ser inte ut på samma sätt. Hitchcocks teknik var urprungligen en fascinerande tanke, men den för onekligen med sig en del besynnerligheter när man följer den in absurdum]. Bergman discusses the same material in Bilder/Images, pp. 145-53. Bergman made Fängelse without any pay; instead, he was supposed to receive 10% of the profits, but the film was an economic flop. Swedish censors cut ten meters from Birgitta-Carolina’s suicide scene.
Reception Fängelse caused a lively debate in Swedish press. See editorial in Filmnyheter, no. 8 (1949), pp. 13, and Expr., 1 April 1949, pp. 1, 9, for discussion of the lawsuit threatened by the Turitz Corporation over the fact that the film’s prostitute is said to work in one of its chain stores (EPA). For Ingmar Bergman’s response, see a newspaper ad signed by Bergman in DN, 5 April 1949, p. 11 (reprinted in Filmnyheter 4, no. 8 (1949):3). Film was shown to the employees at EPA. Though still dissatisfied, EPA decided not to take any action (see DN, 2 April 1949, p 7). Humorist Erik Zetterström (Kar de Mumma) wrote a column about the incident in SvD, 6 April 1949, p. 8, calling Ingmar Bergman ‘one of the leading men in the Swedish Angst Union’ [en av de ledande männen i Svensk Ångestunion U.P.A.] and telling EPA to relax, knowing that ‘in Ingmar Bergman’s films all the main characters are usually prostitutes, pimps, child murderers, alcoholics, demented people, etc’. [i Ingmar Bergmans filmer är samtliga huvudpersoner i regel gatflickor, sutenörer, barnamördare, alkoholister, sinnesrubbade o.s.v.]. Most Swedish critics rejected Ingmar Bergman’s bleak view of life in Prison, and many saw it as flirting with the metaphysical spleen of Sweden’s literary Forties. Thorsten Eklann in an article titled ‘40-talistisk filmmoralitet’, Biografbladet 30, no. 1 (Spring 1949): 15-23, argued that Bergman’s film represented a stylistic analogy to Swedish modernist poetry by breaking with traditional linear cinema and using an associative technique built on an intricate flashback structure. See also Robin Hood’s defense of film in ST, 7 April 1949, p. 9. For ‘fyrtiotalism’ issue, see (Ø 952). Prison received a favorable review in Variety, 6 April 1949, p. 6, written by its Stockholm correspondent. But after its release in France on 17 March 1959, the European correspondent in Variety (25 March 1959, p. 22) called it ‘loaded with private symbolism and expressionistic bric-a brac’. The most extended foreign analysis of Fängelse is by Marsha Kinder (Ø 1373) and a review article in Télé-Ciné no. 83 (July 1959), F. 351 (12 pp).
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 20 March 1949; BLM 18, no. 4 (April 1949): 315-317; Vi, no. 14 (2 April) 1949, p. 20.
Foreign Reviews Arts (French), 18 March 1959, n.p. [SFI clipping]; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 61 (July 1956), p. 53; no. 85 (July 1958), pp. 7-8; and no. 95; (May 1959), pp. 51-53; Cinéma 59, no. 35 (April 1959): 100-102; Films and Filming, no. 7 (April 1962): 33; Films in Review 13, no. 6 (June/July 1962): 360-361; Filmfacts 3 August 1962, pp. 161-162; Filmkritik, no. 1 (1962): 22-25; Image et son, no. 122-123 (May-June 1959): 34; Kosmorama, no. 77 (December 1966); pp. 78-79; Monthly Film Bulletin, April 1961, p. 43; Motion Picture Herald, 11 July 1962, n.p. (American Motion Picture clipping); New York Herald Tribune, 5 July 1962, p. 12; New York Times, same date, p. 21-2; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3333; Positif, no. 31 (November 1959), pp. 58-59; Variety, 6 April 1949, p. 6, and 25 March 1959, p. 22.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 38-44; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 61 (July 1956), p. 53; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1314), pp. 113-129; Die kleine Filmkunstreihe Hefte, no. 22 (1961), 13 pp. Filmjournalen 31, no. 14 (1949): 7 and no. 16 (1949): 31 (portrait of Doris Svedlund); Films in Review 4, no. 9 (November 1953): 461-464; Filmorientering (NFI), no. 23 (1961), 3 pp; Image et son, 226 (March) 1969: 11-14; Isstkustvo Kino, no. 10 (October 1989): 92-94; Kosmorama, no. 39 (November 1958): 70, and Kosmorama (394), pp. 34-36; New York Herald Tribune 31 December 1962, p. 15; Neue Filmkunst, 1962, 3 pp. (German program to ‘Gefängnis’); G. Osten, Värld utan nåd (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand), 1951: 28-37; A.Plebe, Filmcritica, no. 133 (May 1963): 255-262; Röster i Radio-TV, no. 23 (10-18 June) 1962, pp. 26-28, and no. 46 (8-15 November) 1970, pp. 2122; Svensk filmografi, 1940-1949 (Ø 1314), pp. 713-720.
211.
TÖRST, 1949 [Thirst], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Herbert Grevenius, Birgit Tengroth
Synopsis Törst begins in a hotel room in Basel, Switzerland, in 1946. A couple, no longer young but not yet middle-aged, are about to return home to Sweden after a trip abroad. The husband, Bertil, is
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Chapter IV Filmography an art historian and coin collector; his wife Rut is a former ballet dancer who is now too old to perform. As Rut and Bertil travel through bomb-devastated Germany, their private war escalates. Rut displays her frustration and messiness. Bertil shows his pedantry and stinginess. The focus is on Rut, whose past is revealed in flashbacks, the first one depicting her love affair many years earlier with Raoul, an army captain. At a summer outing in the archipelago, he tells her of his intention to return to his wife and children. But the affair continues, and one day Rut tells the captain that she is pregnant. He denies his paternity and forces her to have an abortion. As a result, Rut has become sterile. A second flashback depicts Rut’s life as a student in ballet school. She is completely absorbed in her work and has no time for love. Her best friend is Valborg, who is lesbian. The film shifts to Viola, Bertil’s former wife, whose story runs parallel to Bertil’s and Rut’s. Lonely and unhappy, she seeks the help of a psychiatrist who tries to seduce her. As she flees from his office, she meets Valborg who follows her home and tries to approach her sexually. Horrified, Viola escapes and begins to drift through the city. She walks past groups of dancing couples, celebrating Midsummer, and continues down to the waterfront where she commits suicide. The two plots now coalesce. Viola’s death is juxtaposed to Rut’s and Bertil’s quarrels, which climax in a nightmarish sequence with Bertil dreaming that he has murdered Rut. Waking up in a cold sweat, he finds her alive and realizes that in spite of their incessant arguments, he does not want to lose her. The film ends on a note of resigned reconciliation.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Music Orchestration Choreography Costumes Props Make-up Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Helge Hagerman Hugo Bolander Ingmar Bergman Herbert Grevenius, from Birgit Tengroth’s short story ‘Resa med Arethusa’ (1948) Gunnar Fischer Nils Svenwall Lennart Unnerstad Erik Nordgren Eskil Eckert-Lundin Ellen Bergman Gösta Ström Hilmer Peters Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Oscar Rosander Ingegerd Ericsson
Cast Rut Bertil Viola Dr. Rosengren, psychiatrist Valborg Raoul, captain, Rut’s former lover Astrid, his wife Dance teacher
Eva Henning Birger Malmsten Birgit Tengroth Hasse Ekman Mimi Nelson Bengt Eklund Gaby Stenberg Naima Wifstrand
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Workman Male nurse Nurse Patient Swedish pastor on train Danish pastor on train Woman on train Her little girl German train conductor Train passengers German policeman Hotel guest Porter in Basel Widow in cemetery Piano teacher Ballerinas
Sven-Erik Gamble Gunnar Nielsen Britta Brunius Estrid Hesse Helge Hagerman Calle Flygare Else-Merete Heiberg Monica Weinzierl Verner Arpe Erik Arrhenius, Carl Andersson Peter Winner Oscar Rosander Hermann Greid Sif Ruud Inga-Lill Åhström Inga Norin, Ingeborg Bergius, Laila Jokimo, Öllegård Wellton
Filmed on location in Stockholm, on Ornö in the Stockholm archipelago, and at Råsunda Studios in Stockholm, beginning 15 March 1949 and completed 5 July 1949. Many of the foreign exteriors were shot using back projections. The film’s depiction of a lesbian relationship involving Valborg was cut by the censors. Distribution U.S. Distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. Opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 88 min 24 September 1949 17 October 1949, Spegeln (Stockholm) 11 July 1961
Commentary Törst was the collective title of a volume of three short stories published by author/actress Birgit Tengroth in 1948. Herbert Grevenius chose one of them, ‘Resa med Arethusa’ (Journey with Arethusa), as the narrative basis of his film script but retained the book title, probably for PR reasons, for Tengroth’s work had caused quite a stir in Sweden, and several film production companies were bidding for it. According to Rune Waldekranz, Tengroth had a verbal agreement with Sandrews to film her book, provided Ingmar Bergman got to direct it. Sandrews entered into negotiations, but SF retained Bergman and signed a contract with Tengroth behind Sandrews’s back. Herbert Grevenius discussed his and Bergman’s adaptation of Birgit Tengroth’s Törst in Filmnyheter, no. 9-10 (1949), pp. 4-7 (also in German program note issued by Superfilm). Grevenius wrote the script in Göteborg while Ingmar Bergman was rehearsing a play there. Together they discussed the script in the evenings. In the film, Tengroth’s uncompromising, often erotic thirst for life is replaced by repressed hate, despair and resignation. Birgit Tengroth played Viola in the film. Bergman discusses their collaboration in Bilder, pp. 154-57. She introduced him to the close-up of the lighted match against the human face, which was to be used again in Vargtimmen/Hour of the Wolf. Ingmar Bergman appears for a split second in a train scene depicting a Swedish and a Danish pastor conversing about trivia while ruins from World War II pass by before their eyes. An article about shooting the studio-built train compartment scenes appeared in AB, 10 April 1949,
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Chapter IV Filmography p. 9, describing Bergman’s use of long takes (like Hitchcock and the earlier Bergman film Fängelse/Prison) and the difficulties he had in varying the scenography in such a limited space. Filmnyheter, no. 14 (1949), pp. 4-6, carried a reportage about Thirst, in which Bergman was presented as a real connoisseur of women. Script to Törst was published as a novella in Filmjournalen 31, no. 51-52 (1949) through 32, no. 13 (1950).
Reception Swedish reviewers spoke of Ingmar Bergman’s controlled intensity and Grevenius’ sober handling of sensationalist material. An exception was Mikael Katz in Expr., 18 October 1949, p. 9, who referred to the film as ‘meaningless digging in angst’ [meningslöst rotande i ångest]. Robin Hood in ST, 23 October 1949, p. 9, replied: ‘To call “Törst” meaningless is [...] to rule out Goya who poked around among Spanish idiots, and Dostoyevski who focussed on prostitutes in St. Petersburg’. [att kalla ‘Törst’ meningslös [...] är att utdöma också Goya, som rotade i spanska dårar, och Dostojevskij som rotade i gatflickor i S:t Petersburg.] Mikael Katz replied in Expr., 25 October 1949, p. 9, and Robin Hood retorted in ST, 1 November 1949, p. 9. Törst had limited circulation abroad. Released in France in 1961, it was considered of interest only to Bergman cinephiles. It ran into trouble in West Germany when the film industry’s selfcensorship (Filmbewertungstelle in Wiesbaden) first refused to pass it because of its lesbian motif. Bergman was interviewed briefly by the Düsseldorf paper Der Mittag, 20 October 1953, in which he responded: ‘No one can claim that my film makes such matters desirable. On the contrary! My only task is to see to it that people who watch my films do not remain indifferent.’ After an appeal from the West German distributor and further negotiations, the Filmbewertungstelle changed their decision on the ground that the ‘destructive moments’ in the film could be seen as a deterrent (see report in Dagens Nyheter, 23 February 1953, p. 7). The most extensive discussion of Törst can be found in the Danish Film Museum program by F. Jüngersen, Jr., 6 May 1963, 4 pp.
Reviews Stockholm press, 18 October 1949; BLM 18, no. 9 (November 1949): 731-732; Vi, no. 44, 1949, p. 22; Arts (French) 3 May 1961, n.p. Cinéma 61, no. 57 (June 1961): 105-106; Cahiers du cinéma no. 85 (July 1958), pp. 8-9 and no. 120 (June 1961), pp. 52-53; Image et son no. 142 (June 1961), p. 38; Télé-Ciné no. 97 (July 1961), p. 47; Variety 15 March 1950, p. 12.
See also Bianco e nero 25, no. 8-9 (August–September 1964): 58-72; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 131-38; Image et son 226 (March) 1969: 14-15; Svensk filmografi, 1940-1949 (Ø 1314), pp. 740-42.
212.
TILL GLÄDJE, 1950 [To Joy], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Synopsis During rehearsals of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – ‘Ode to Joy’ – the young violinist Stig Ericsson gets a telephone message that his wife Marta has been killed in a kerosene explosion at their summer cottage. Returning home to an empty apartment, Stig spots a doll he once gave his wife and begins to remember their life together. The rest of the film is a single flashback, starting seven years earlier when Stig and Marta were novices in the orchestra. Marta saves Stig from the clutches of an evil couple, Mikael and Nelly Bro. Eventually, Stig and Marta get married and have children. Marta soon discovers that Stig is an ambitious egotist, a view confirmed by their music conductor, Sönderby. When Stig fails as a soloist, he blames Marta and deserts her. Gradually, Stig accepts his artistic limitations and is reconciled with his wife. He remembers their quiet moments of happiness. It is shortly thereafter that Marta is killed. The final sequence brings us back to the present. As Stig returns to the orchestra for a rehearsal, Sönderby talks about the joy that Beethoven wanted to express in his music, a joy beyond pain and despair. In the last scene, Stig’s small son enters the concert hall. He sits down to listen to the orchestra as it bursts into ‘Ode to Joy’.
Credits: Production company Production manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Music Orchestration Props Make-up Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Gunnar Fischer Nils Svenwall Sven Hansen From Mozart, Mendelssohn, Smetana, Beethoven (Egmont Overture, First and Ninth Symphonies) Eskil Eckert-Lundin Tor Borong Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Oscar Rosander Ingegerd Ericsson
Cast Stig Eriksson Stig Olin Marta Olsson Maj-Britt Nilsson Lisa, their daughter Berit Holmström Lasse, their son Björn Montin Sönderby Victor Sjöström Mikael Bro John Ekman Nelly Bro Margit Carlquist Marcel, cello player Birger Malmsten Stina Sif Ruud Persson Rune Stylander Bertil, actor Erland Josephson Anker Georg Skarstedt Man performing marriage ceremony Allan Ekelund Two housewives Carin Swensson, Svea Holm Nurses Svea Holst, Agda Helin Salesgirl Maud Hyttenberg
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Chapter IV Filmography Doorman Lisa, at 3 Lasse, at 3 Man waiting in maternity ward Guests at Marta’s birthday party Grandmother
Ernst Brunman Eva-Fritz Nilsson Staffan Axelsson Tor Borong Astrid Bodin, Marianne Schüler, Marrit Ohlsson Dagny Lind [cut]
Filmed on location in Hälsingborg and Arild, southern Sweden, and at Råsunda Studios in Stockholm, beginning 11 July 1949 and completed 2 September 1949. Distribution Running time Released Premiere Foreign Opening
Svensk Filmindustri 98 minutes 17 February 1950 20 February at Spegeln (Stockholm) Paris, 30 April 1971 To Joy has only been released in U.S. on video.
Commentary Bergman appears briefly as an expectant father in the maternity ward. Filmjournalen 32, nos. 12 through 20 (1950), published Bergman’s script as a novella. SF’s Filmnyheter, IV, no. 18, 1949, pp. 4-5, published a reportage from the shooting. Bergman discusses the film in Bilder (pp. 277-82) where he calls it ‘an impossible melodrama’ [en omöjlig melodram].
Reception Swedish reviews were mixed and somewhat contradictory. AT, 21 February, p.12, advised Bergman to stop trying to be a writer, while SvD (same date) thought Bergman wrote the best dramatic dialogue since Strindberg. Summation of Swedish reception of Till glädje can be found in Filmjournalen 32, no. 11 (1950): 7, 27. Film had a limited circulation abroad. See review section below.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 21 February 1950; BLM 19, no. 3 (March 1950): 232-233; Teatern, no. 3 (1950), p. 15; Vi, no. 9 (1950), p. 21.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma, no. 85 (July 1958), pp. 9-10; Cinéma 74 no. 187 (May 1974), pp. 124-126; Filmblätter (East Berlin), 1 August 1950, n.p. (SFI clipping); Filmforum (Emsdetten) July 1954, p. 8; Image et son, no. 299 (October 1975), pp 15-16; Radio-Cinéma-Télévision, 27 July 1958, n.p; Télé-Ciné, no. 189 (June 1974), p. 26; Variety, 6 October 1971, p.22.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 45-47; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 74 (August–September 1957), p. 21; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 139-145;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Image et son, no. 272, pp. 15-16, and no. 299 (October) 1975: 391; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314), pp. 64-67.
213.
MEDAN STADEN SOVER, 1950 [While the city sleeps], B/W Director Screenplay
Lars-Eric Kjellgren L.-E. Kjellgren/Per Anders Fogelström. Synopsis by Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis A gang of young boys brought to court on charches of car theft and rabble-rousing are given suspended sentences. They decide to break with their criminal past and continue without their leader Jompa. Jompa’s girlfriend Iris hopes she can change his antisocial lifestyle. When she becomes pregnant, her father forces Jompa to marry her. On her wedding night, Iris finds a large sum of money in Jompa’s wallet, but does not know that he has stolen it from her father’s boss, a decent man who has found Jompa a job as a car mechanic. Jompa quits his job afterwards and goes downhill rapidly. He drags other members of the old gang with him and sabotages their attempt at social rehabilitation. During a break-in in a pawn shop, Jompa and his companions are surprised by the owner. In panic Jompa kills the man and flees with Iris to a hideaway cabin. But the police track them down, and after a wild chase, Jompa is caught.
Credits Production company Director Screenplay
Photography Architect Location manager Sound Music Editor
Svensk Filmindustri Lars-Eric Kjellgren L-E. Kjellgren/Per Anders Fogelström from the latter’s novel Ligister [Hoodlums], 1949. Synopsis by Ingmar Bergman Martin Bodin Nils Svenwall Gustav Roger Sven Hansen Erik Nordgren Oscar Rosander
Cast Jompa Iris Her father Her mother Jompa’s father Rut Doorman Kalle Lund A Cad
Sven-Erik Gamble Inga Landgré Adolf Jahr Märta Dorff John Elfström Barbro Hiort af Ornäs Carl Ström Ulf Palme Hilding Gavle
Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 101 minutes 29 August 1950 8 September 1950
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Chapter IV Filmography 214.
SÅNT HÄNDER INTE HÄR, 1950 [High Tension], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Herbert Grevenius
Spy thriller, based on the idea that dangerous political spies can operate also in idyllic and neutral Sweden. British title High Tension seems like a witty reference to the villain’s final fate: suicide in a fall over high tension wires. West German title Menschenjagd suggests the politicized man hunt from East to West Germany that took place during the Cold War.
Synopsis A voice-over announces the location of a small, sheltered country. Atkä Natas, an engineer from the country of Liquidatzia, arrives by plane on a diplomatic passport. From his hotel he calls the American Embassy. The police, investigating the attemted suicide by an old Baltic woman, find a note adressed to Baltic refugees, warning them about a third world war and urging them to return to their homeland. Björn Almqvist, one of the policemen, looks up one of the woman’s relatives. A Baltic wedding is under way. One of the guests is Vera, a lab technician and refugee, wife of Natas. She has adjusted to her new country. She knows Björn from before. Vera asks Natas about the fate of her parents but receives evasive answers. During the night, she tries to murder Natas with an injection. She discovers and copies an important paper in Natas’s briefcase, then calls a doctor who pronounces Natas dead. But before the ambulance arrives, Natas’s body is stolen. He has been picked up by an agent from his own country. Recovering consciousness, he is tortured and confesses his plans to defect to the United States. Björn Almqvist discusses Natas’s ‘death’ with Vera. He suspects her of foul play and orders her followed. She meets with a group of Baltic refugees in a small movie theater. The groom from the wedding is there and accuses Vera of working for the authorities back home. He is revealed to be an agent spying on the refugees. Almqvist visits Vera at her lab. They are surprised by Natas, now working for his torturers. To protect Vera, Almqvist arrests her for attempted murder. But the phone has been cut, and the house is surrounded by Natas’s people. Natas knocks Almqvist unconcious and disappears with Vera. Recovering, Almqvist takes up the chase in a black Chrysler parked outside. The police find Vera drugged and hidden in a lifeboat on board an East European steamer, Mrofnimok Dagyn. In the meantime, Natas tries to escape but is cornered on top of an outdoor elevator and jumps to his death.
Credits Production company Production manager Director Assistant director Screenplay
Photography Architect Props Sound Music Orchestrations Make-up Editor
Svensk Filmindustri Helge Hagerman Ingmar Bergman Hugo Bolander Herbert Grevenius, after a novel by Waldemar Brøgger [pseud. Peter Valentin], I løpet av 12 timer [Within 12 hours], published in 1944 Gunnar Fischer Nils Svenwall Tor Borong Sven Hansen Erik Nordgren Eskil Eckert-Lundin Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Lennart Wallén
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Continuity Speaker
Sol-Britt Norlander Stig Olin
Cast Vera Irmelin Björn Almkvist Atkä Natas A doctor Policeman Refugee pastor Vanja, refugee Speaker at meeting Leino, alias Sander, informer Refugee, woman at wedding The ‘Shadow’ Agents for Liquidatzia Hotel manager Young neighbour Filip Rundblom Mrs. Rundblom The house owner Captain on Mrofnimok Gadyn Disturbed woman Switchboard operator Woman in rental flat Caretaker Old, shocked woman Worker with hang-over Stage manager/laboratory attendant Student at Charles XII statue Young girl First mate on ship Engineer on ship His assistant Policeman Projectionist Estonians
Signe Hasso Alf Kjellin Ulf Palme Gösta Cederlund Yngve Nordwall Hannu Kompus Sylvia Tael Els Vaarman Edmar Kuus Helena Kuus Rudolf Lipp Segol Mann, Willy Koblanck, Gregor Dahlman, Gösta Holmström, Ivan Bousé Hugo Bolander Stig Olin Ragnar Klange Lillie Wästfeldt Magnus Kesster Alexander von Baumgarten Hanny Schedin Gunwor Bergqvist Mona Geijer-Falkner Erik Forslund Helga Brofeldt Georg Skarstedt Tor Borong Maud Hyttenberg Mona Åstrand Fritjof Hellberg Eddy Andersson Harald Björling Ingemar Jacobsson Wiktor ‘Kulörten’ Andersson Agnes Lepp-Kosik, Helmi Nerep, Hilma Nerep, Marja Parkas, Riina Reinik, Priit Hallap, Haari Kaasik, Teet Koppel, Hans Laks, Gustav Laupman, Elmar Nerep, Karl Sööder
Filmed on location in Stadsgården and Ängby, Stockholm, and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 6 July 1950 and completed 19 August 1950. Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 84 minutes 18 October 1950 23 October 1950, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm)
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Chapter IV Filmography Commentary Read backwards, Atkä Natas becomes Äkta satan [Real Devil], while the name of the ship, Mrofnimok Gadyn, becomes Kominform Nydag (Ny Dag [New Day], title of Swedish Communist daily). Sånt händer inte här was a commissioned work, using returning Hollywood actress Signe Hasso as a major drawing card. Bergman is said to have had his doubts about her participation in the film from the moment he met her at Stockholm airport (she was ill with a thyroid infection; see Bergman om Bergman, p. 54/ Bergman on Bergman, p. 48), but in Bilder (1990, pp. 285-90) he attributes his difficulties in making the film to his own illness (sinusitis) and his encounter with the Baltic refugees that appear in the film, whose real life stories made Sånt händer inte här appear ‘almost obscene’ [nästan obscen]. Sånt händer inte här has been withdrawn from circulation by Bergman. It was shown briefly in England under the title High Tension.
Reception Swedish reviews were unanimous in their view that this type of secret-agent film was not Bergman’s forte. Twelve years after the original release, the German film journal Filmkritik (no. 7, 1962, p. 325) reviewed the film and found it interesting as a marriage drama pointing forward to later Bergman films. In 1972, Robert Stiernevall wrote an undergraduate paper on the film, titled ‘Sånt händer inte här: Detaljer och synpunkter kring en thrillerfilm av Ingmar Bergman’ [This doesn’t happen here: Details and views about a thriller film by Bergman]. Stockholm Univ. Film/Theatre Dept., Autumn 1972, ca. 25 pp. (SFI library).
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 24 October 1950; BLM no. 10 (1950): 799-800; Perspektiv 4 no. 3 (March 1953): 132-133.
Foreign Reviews Filmkritik, no. 7 (1962), p. 325; Monthly Film Bulletin, January 1953, p. 9; Der Neue Film, 20 June 1959, n.p. (SFI clipping).
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 47-50; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 74 (August 1957), p. 20; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 147-55; Filmjournalen 32, no. 32 (1950): 10-11; Furhammar, Leif & Folke Isaksson: Politik och film. Stockholm: PAN Norstedt, 1968, pp. 182-186, tr. as Politics and Film. London: Studio Vista, 1971, pp. 133-135; Image et son 226 (March) 1969: 19; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314), pp. 87-90.
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BRIS-FILMERNA, 1951-53 [Breeze soap commercials], B/W Director Screenplays
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
In 1951, in protest over the high entertainment tax on box office receipts, Swedish film producers closed their studios and began a year-long lockout of their film crews. To have an income
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Ingmar Bergman signed a contract with the Sunlight & Gibbs Corporation to make nine commercials for one of its products, Bris soap. The films were made in 1951, 1952, and 1953. According to Bergman om Bergman (p. 57), each commercial had to contain one of two slogans: ‘Perspiration alone does not smell; it is the skin bacteria that cause the smell when they come in contact with perspiration’ [Svett i sig själv luktar inte, det är bakterier, som gör att när de kommer i kontakt med svetten blir det lukt] or ‘Bris kills the bacteria – no bacteria – no smell’. [Bris dödar bakterierna, inga bakterier, ingen lukt]. Ingmar Bergman had fun making the commercials, though he had some difficulty fitting the Bris text into the films. In fact, though commissioned, these commercials reflect on a small scale Bergman’s filmmaking at the time by pinpointing two of his favorite themes: the magic of the film medium and the deceptive nature of filmmaking. 1.
2.
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5. 6. 7.
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‘Gustavianskt’/‘Gustav III’ [‘King Gustavus III’]. A historical setting, only seemingly splendid, for in the 18th-century Bris soap was not yet invented, and the stench, even in the royal court, was quite unbearable. ‘Tennisflickan’/‘Magisk teater’ [‘The Tennis Girl’/‘The Magic Theater’]. Evil monsters – the skin bacteria – fight harmless creatures – the perspiration drops – and the contact produces a nasty smell that only Bris soap can eliminate. ‘Tvålen Bris’/‘Bris tvål’ [‘Bris Soap’]. In the most conventional of the nine commercials, Bergman introduces an old man, played by veteran comedian John Botwid, whose task it is to misunderstand the name of the soap, which has to be repeated over and over again. ‘Operation’/‘Filminspelning’ [‘Operation’/‘Film Shooting’]. Three of the commercials utilize the film medium self-consciously. In this one, Bergman shows the viewer how a commercial film is made. ‘Uppfinnaren’ [‘The Inventor’]. A man dreams that he has invented a marvellous soap that can work miracles. The film is conceived as a Méliès farce. ‘Trolleriet’/‘Trolleriföreställningen’ [‘The Magic Show’]. Miniature people in a puppet show are engaged in a struggle between good and evil forces. Again Bris soap comes to the rescue. ‘Rebusen’ [‘The Rebus’]. The first half of the commercial shows images without any text, so that the viewer is challenged to interpret them. A voice asks if the film was difficult to follow, whereupon it is shown a second time, now with the Bris slogan as text. ‘Prinsessan och svinaherden’ [‘The Princess and the Swineherd’]. A variation on the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the princess who promised the swineherd one hundred kisses in exchange for a music box. Bergman’s swineherd possesses a remarkable soap, which neither the princess nor the king can resist. ‘Tredimensionellt’/‘Filmföreställningen’ [‘Three-dimensional’/‘The Film Showing’]. In this metafilm we witness the projection of a commercial in a movie theater. It is intended as a spoof on the three-dimensional film, much discussed at the time, for which the viewers needed special glasses. The starlet who presents Bris steps out of the screen-within-thescreen and falls on a spectator.
Credits Production company Producer Director Screenplays Photographer Production year Distributor
Svensk Filmindustri for AB Sunlight Ragnar M. Lindberg Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Gunnar Fischer 1951 (no. 1-3), 1952 (no. 4-6), 1953 (no. 7-9) AB Filmkontakt
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Chapter IV Filmography Cast Introducer King Gustav III The valet Negro valet
Doris Svedlund Åke Jensen Börje Lundh Charles White
2. Introducer Girl in the shower
Ulf Johanson Barbro Larsson
3. Introducer A girl The old man Man in white coat
Erna Groth Barbro Larsson John Botwid Gösta Prüzelius
4. The actress The husband Botte, stage manager Grips
Barbro Larsson Lennart Lindberg John Botwid Gösta Prüzelius, Torsten Lilliecrona
5. Teodor His wife
Georg Adelly Emy Hagman
6. The man The woman The magician
Lennart Lindberg Berit Gustafsson Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt
7. The introducer
Barbro Larsson
8. The king The princess The valet
John Botwid Bibi Andersson Curt ‘Minimal’ Åström
9. The spectator Woman in shower Narrator
John Botwid Marion Sundh Gösta Prüzelius
1.
Bergman’s Bris films have only rarely been shown. This, plus the fact that they represent a film artist’s concession to make commercials, has made them somewhat of a cult phenomenon among Bergman commentators. Sight and Sound, XIII, no. 1 (January 2003), p. 8, mentions the making of a documentary about the Breeze films, but this has not been confirmed elsewhere. Other material on the same matter include the following: Bergman’s Fårö papers, deposited at SFI, contain stenciled manuscripts to three of the Bris commercials, titled ‘Operation’, ‘Uppfinnaren’ (The inventor) and ‘Trolleriet’ (Magic act), each 2 pp. Maaret Koskinen analyzes the commercials in ‘Tvålopera à la Bergman’ [Soap-opera à la B.]. Chaplin no. 215-216 (1988) pp. 84-88. Translated in English in Chaplin special issue titled ‘Ingmar Bergman at 70 – a Tribute’, pp. 30-34; also published in Il giovane Bergman, 1992 (Ø 1521) pp. 21-28.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Susan Vahabzadeh writes about the Bergman commercials in ‘Kleine, schäumende Autorenfilme’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 7 June 1996. Gertrud Wennström’s article ‘Ingmar Bergman gjorde reklam för tvålen Bris’ [Bergman made commercials for Bris soap] appeared in Unisont. Tidning för Unilever-anställda i Sverige, no. 6 (December) 1978: 10-11.
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SOMMARLEK, 1951 [Summer Interlude], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
The second half of the title (lek) means play as in children’s play. But the coined word sommarlek suggests the Swedish word for love, kärlek (lit. dear-play). Early American title, Illicit Interlude, is a misnomer for a film that according to Ingmar Bergman depicts the best there is, namely summer, young love and the Swedish archipelago. Cf. Bosley Crowther in NYT, 27 October 1954, p. 32:6: ‘The film no more merits the pornographic word ‘illicit’ than it deserves to be labelled smut.’
Synopsis This structurally intricate film begins and ends at the Opera in Stockholm where the main character, Marie, is a ballerina. During a dress rehearsal of Swan Lake, a diary is delivered to Marie written on an island in the Stockholm archipelago many summers ago when she had a love affair with a young student, Henrik. The diary is being returned to her by her Uncle Erland, an embittered old man who has been in love with her for a long time. As Marie opens her diary, the face of young Henrik appears as if in a mirror, next to hers. She imagines his return, but instead is surprised by her ballet master, dressed in his role as magician in Coppelia. He appears twice in the film, both times to remind Marie of her commitment to dancing, but also to warn her of the ephemeral nature of her work. After ballet practice Marie quarrels with her present boyfriend David, a journalist. On the impulse of the moment, she leaves on a small steamer headed for the island where she and Henrik were once lovers. The rest of the film consists of three flashbacks and a final sequence in the present. The first recollection occurs on the steamer and is seen partly from Henrik’s perspective. The seond flashback takes place when Marie returns to the small shack where she stayed that summer. The camera recaptures the lyrical beauty of the summer landscape and the sequence ends as Marie takes Henrik to her secret wild strawberry patch. The third flashback is triggered by Marie’s meeting with Uncle Erland on the island. In her memory she is back in his villa, rehearsing while young Henrik sits on the floor, passive and waiting. Annoyed, he runs away. When Marie goes to look for him, she meets an old black-clad woman, Mrs. Calwagen, who is dying of cancer. She is playing chess with a clergyman. This flashback is filled with tension and pain, and ends as Marie relives Henrik’s fateful leap into the sea. Hitting his head on an underwater rock, he breaks his neck. He struggles ashore and dies in Marie’s arms. The plot returns to the present. David comes to Marie’s dressing room, and she gives him the diary to read. In the final scenes Marie stars as the lead ballerina at the opening night of Swan Lake. She dances off the stage, and comes upon David in the wings. The two embrace.
Credits Production company Production manager Director
Svensk Filmindustri Helge Hagerman Ingmar Bergman
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Chapter IV Filmography Screenplay Photography Architect Props Music Orchestration Make-up Editor Continuity Working titles
Ingmar Bergman and Herbert Grevenius from an unpublished story by Bergman, ‘Marie’ Gunnar Fischer Nils Svenwall Gösta Ström Erik Nordgren Eskil Eckert-Lundin Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Oscar Rosander Ingegerd Ericsson, Sol-Britt Norlander Sentimental Journey, Sommarleken [The summer play]
Cast Marie Henrik Marie’s boyfriend David Nyström Uncle Erland Aunt Elisabeth Mrs. Calwagen, black-clad woman Kaj, ballerina Ballet master Clergyman Nisse, doorkeper at the theater Karl, workman at the opera Maja, dresser Sandell Lighting man Kerstin, ballet dancer Captain on steamer A doctor A nurse Uncle Erland’s housekeeper Delivery boys Carlsson, stage manager at opera Marie as ballerina Ballet dancers
Maj-Britt Nilsson Birger Malmsten Alf Kjellin Georg Funkquist Renée Björling Mimi Pollak Annalisa Ericson Stig Olin Gunnar Olsson Douglas Håge John Botwid Julia Caesar Carl Ström Torsten Lilliecrona Marianne Schüler Ernst Brunman Olav Riégo Fylgia Zadig Emmy Albiin Sten Mattsson, Carl-Axel Elfving Gösta Ström Gun Skoogberg Monique Roeger, Gerd Andersson, Göte Stergel with the ballet at the Royal Opera in Stockholm.
Filmed in the Stockholm archipelago (Dalarö-Rosenön, Saltsjöbaden, Sandemar) and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 3 April 1950 and completed 18 June 1950. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Gaston Hakim Productions, Inc. 96 minutes 2 April 1951 1 October 1951, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 26 October 1954, Plaza, NYC
Commentary The film was withdrawn from the Venice Film Festival in 1951 because SF wanted to test it out in Sweden first. Resubmitted in the following year, it won no prize.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record SF issued an undated program to Sommarlek with notes, excerpts from reviews, and short essay by Ingmar Bergman (see Ø 76), which also appeared in the Danish program issued by Nordisk Film Kompagnie. Filmjournalen 32, no. 9 (1950): 25, 29, contains interview/article with Ingmar Bergman where he reports that the earliest draft for the film was written in a Latin notebook at age 18. Bergman writes briefly about Sommarlek in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 283-85, where he mentions a teenage love story as the background of the film. The script to Sommarlek was serialized as a film novella in Allers Familjejournal, nos. 26-30, 1960, illustrated with photographs from the film. The screenplay has been published in French in Oeuvres (see Ø 122), pp. 5-100.
Reception Sommarlek was Ingmar Bergman’s first real critical success in Sweden, a film in which he helped solidify and give depth to the native ‘summer film’ genre. Stig Almqvist in Filmjournalen 33, no. 41 (1951): 18-19, 29, praised Bergman’s filmmaking: ‘Ingmar Bergman’s filmmaking method is miraculous. [...] He belongs to a handful here and there in the world who are now discovering the future articulation of film, and the result can be revolutionary’ [Ingmar Bergmans metod att göra film är mirakulös. [...] Han hör till dem – en handfull benådade här och där i världen – som nu upptäcker filmens framtida artikulation, och resultatet kan bli en revolution]. Harry Schein in BLM 20, no. 9 (November 1951): 713-714, suggested the emergence of a new Ingmar Bergman, freed from his earlier metaphysical brooding. This view was reported in Variety, 28 November 1951, p. 6. Sommarlek was not released in the U.S. until 1954. The earliest American version is rumored to have had inserts of silhouetted nude bathing scenes filmed on Long Island Sound but removed in later distribution copies. This has not been verified. In France, Télé-Ciné published a special issue on Jeu d’été in no. 78 (fiche no. 339, October 1958), 12 pp., containing credits, character analysis, plot synopsis, and critical comments. In Italy, newspapers carried analyses and comments about the film on 3 October 1968, in connection with Italian TV broadcast. Film a Sogetto, Centro S. Dedelle dello Spettacolo, Milan, 28 December 1964, 8 pp., is an Italian fact sheet on Un’ estate d’amore, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 2 October 1951; Teatern no. 5 (1951), p. 2; Vecko-Journalen no. 43 (1951), p. 44.
Foreign Reviews Arts, 7-15 May 1958 (C. Givray); Cahiers du cinéma, no. 84 (June 1959), pp. 45-47; Cinéma 58 no. 28 (June 1958), pp. 116-17; Filmkritik no. 6 (June) 1964, pp. 311-312; Films and Filming 6, no. 3 (December 1959): 25; Monthly Film Bulletin, December 1959, p. 156; New York Herald Tribune, 27 October 1954, p. 21; New York Times, same date, p. 32-6; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 2820; Positif no. 18 (November 1956), pp. 26-28; Variety, 28 November 1951, p. 6.
Longer Review Articles C. Bretteville, Filmorientering (Norwegian Film Institute), no. 108 (November 1966), 4 pp.;
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Chapter IV Filmography E. Comuzio. ‘Un estate d’amore’. Cineforum no. 294 (May) 1990: 47-50; J. Donohoe. ‘Cultivating Bergman’s Strawberry Patch: The Emergence of a Cinematic Idea’. Wide Angle 2, no. 2, 1978: 26-30; G. D’Orazio in 1975 dissertation (Ø 1265); B. Gråsten, Danish Film Museum program, April 1963, 4 pp.; J. Rivette. ‘Die Seele im Bauch’. Cicim. Revue pour le cinéma français, January 1989, pp. 133-137.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 51-54, 63-67; Sw.ed., 65, 68-71; Biografbladet 32, no. 2 (Summer 1951): 55-59; Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 16 (October 1952): 7; Cine Club del Uruguay, program 114, 25 August 1952, n.p.; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 162-67; Etudes cinématographiques no. 10-11 Autumn 1961, pp. 207-216; Filmnyheter 5, no. 9-10 (1950): 23-35, and 6, no. 12 (1951): 2, 8-10, 24; Image et son, no. 214 (March) 1968: 173-178; Kosmorama 137, 1978, pp. 48-51; Museo de arte cinematografica (Brazil), program no. 21 (12 October 1956) n.p.; Perspektiv 2, no. 10 (December 1951): 625-633; Röster i Radio-TV, no. 8 (1978), pp. 20-21; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314), pp. 160-163. Wide Angle 2, no. 2 (1978): 26-30.
Awards 1952:
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Honorary mention for script and direction by Svenska Filmsamfundet (Swedish Film Society).
FRÅNSKILD, 1951 [Divorced], B/W Director Screenplay
Gustaf Molander Ingmar Bergman & Herbert Grevenius
Synopsis Gertud Holmgren, a middle-aged woman, has been married to Tore Holmgren, an engineer, for 20 years. Of their two children, a son died at an early age and a daughter is living in a modern student marriage. Gertrud considers herself happily married, but one day Tore asks for a divorce. He wants to marry a colleague with whom he can share his professional interests. Gertrud is surprised to find that her rival is neither younger nor prettier than she is. Gertrud moves into a rented room. Her landlady’s son, Bertil Nordelius, takes an interest in her. He is a young doctor engaged to Marianne Berg, a socialite. On Christmas Eve, Gertrud’s daughter and her husband come to visit but soon leave to spend the holidays with Tore and his new wife. Gertrud is invited to share Christmas with the Nordelius’s. Bertil and Marianne quarrel. Later Bertil seeks Gertrud’s company. She rebuffs him, and soon afterwards he leaves for work at a regional hospital. On Midsummer Eve, Gertrud visits friends in the country, but leaves when Tore and his wife arrive. Returning to her room, she finds Bertil waiting. They make love. The next day Gertrud decides to leave while Bertil is at work. Marianne arrives and accuses Gertrud of stealing Bertil from her. Gertrud gives some advice and departs. On the train, a man her own age shows an interest in her. She discovers that she is loooking forward to her first vacation in 23 years, paid with her own money.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Credits Production company Director Screenplay Photography Architect Music Editor
Svensk Filmindustri Gustaf Molander Ingmar Bergman and Herbert Grevenius, from a synopsis by Bergman Åke Dahlqvist Nils Svenwall Erik Nordgren Oscar Rosander
Cast Gertrud Holmgren Tore Holmgren Dr. Bertil Nordelius Tore’s new wife Marianne Berg Mrs. Nordelius Ingeborg Hans Man on the train
Inga Tidblad Holger Löwenadler Alf Kjellin Irma Christenson Doris Svedlund Hjördis Petterson Marianne Löfgren Stig Olin Håkan Westergren
Filmed on location in Stockholm and Uppsala, and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 15 November 1950 and completed 30 December 1950. Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 103 minutes 25 September 1951 26 December 1951, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm)
Note Frånskild was an entry in the Berlin Film Festival, 1952. It has had limited circulation abroad.
218.
KVINNORS VÄNTAN, 1952 [Waiting Women/Secrets ofWomen], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
American title Secrets of Women has an unfortunate, titillating suggestion of female freemasonry.
Synopsis Kvinnors väntan is made up of three separate stories told by a group of women who live with their families in a summer compound in the Stockholm archipelago. Four of the women are married; the fifth is the teenage sister of one of them. To pass the time, each of the married women agrees to tell the others a crucial episode from her marriage. Annette, the oldest of the women, claims that their marriages will not stand up to the close scrutiny of a long summer together. Her own story never gets told, but her somewhat bitter view is that married women’s consolation lies ‘in Jesus or the grandchildren.’ The first episode is related by Rakel whose marriage to Eugen is childless. She tells of an affair she had with a former lover, Kaj, who had come to the summer house on a visit. When Eugen finds out, he gets desperate and, hiding in a woodshed, threatens to shoot himself. He tells
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Chapter IV Filmography Rakel that it is his sense of shame and loneliness rather than her unfaithfulness that plagues him. Rakel calms him, and they continue their marriage. The second episode concerns a young woman, Marta, and her husband Martin. The setting is Paris. When Martin, a painter and the family’s black sheep, meets Marta in a nightclub, she leaves her Amercan fiancé. Marta and Martin become a couple, and soon she is pregnant. In a flashback within a flashback, Marta’s lonely delivery is depicted in nightmarish vignettes from her life with the immature Martin who abandons her. Later Martin returns to her, and they get married. Like Rakel, Marta looks upon her husband as a big child. The third story, comical in tone, is a visual tour de force set in an elevator. Karin Lobelius and her husband Fredrik, a successful and preoccupied businessman, return home from a party. When the elevator gets stuck, husband and wife tease each other with their infidelities, and then make love for the first time in many years. They decide to go on a second honeymoon, but when the elevator is repaired in the morning, Fredrik discovers that he is late for a business meeting and rushes off to work, forgetting the entire incident. Karin muses over the fate of women. The film ends as the younger sister of Marta, having learned nothing from the older women’s accounts, decides to elope with her boyfriend. They set out in in a small boat just as the husbands arrive from the city. Nothing is done to try to intercept the young couple.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Music Orchestration Make-up Props Editor Continutity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Gustav Roger Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Gunnar Fischer Nils Svenwall Sven Hansen Erik Nordgren Eskil Eckert-Lundin Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Walter Sarmell Oscar Rosander Bente Munk
Cast Rakel Kaj, her lover Eugen Lobelius, her husband Marta Berg Martin Lobelius, her husband Karin Lobelius Fredrik Lobelius, her husband Maj, Marta’s younger sister Henrik Lobelius, her boyfriend Annette Paul Lobelius, her husband Anesthesiologist Rut, nurse Bob, American pilot
Anita Björk Jarl Kulle Karl-Arne Holmsten Maj-Britt Nilsson Birger Malmsten Eva Dahlbeck Gunnar Björnstrand Gerd Andersson Björn Bjelfvenstam Aino Taube Håkan Westergren Carl Ström Märta Arbin Kjell Nordenskiöld
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Nurse Nightclub waiter Old Mrs. Lobelius Doorman Newspaper distributor Garbage man Stranger outside Marta’s door Åke, Marta’s boy Karin’s boys Nurse Young man by the elevator Man outside nightclub Dancers at night club Trumpet players at night club
Lena Brogren Torsten Lilliecrona Naima Wifstrand Douglas Håge Mona Geijer-Falkner Wiktor ‘Kulörten’ Andersson Sten Hedlund Leif-Åke Kusbom Jens and Peter Fischer Rut Karlsson Sten Mattsson Gustav Roger Inga Berggren, Carl-Gustaf af Verchou Rolf Ericson, Bengt-Arne Wallin
Filmed on location on Siarö in the Stockholm archipelago, in Paris, and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 3 April 1952 and completed 20 June 1952. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 107 minutes 22 October 1952 3 November 1952, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 11 July 1961, Fifth Ave. Cinema, NYC
Commentary Bergman appears briefly as a man on the stairway outside a gynecologist’s office. Bergman had been scheduled to direct Hon dansade en sommar (One Summer of Happiness) but was replaced by Arne Mattsson. Instead he was given the go-ahead with Kvinnors väntan, a script inspired by his third wife (Gun Grut) who had experienced a similar situation in a summer family compound. Bergman discusses the genesis of the film in Bilder, (1990), pp. 290-291. In a brief interview in Vecko-Journalen no. 46, 1952, Bergman talks in private terms about his motivation to make Kvinnors väntan: He had long planned to make a film about women and to try his hand at a comedy. In an unsigned article from the shooting of the film in ST 22 June 1952, p. 7, Kvinnors väntan was said to be Bergman’s brightest and most optimistic work so far. In magazine Se, no. 48 (1952), pp. 22-25, G. Olsson provided an insider reportage: ‘Det får publiken aldrig se’ [What the audience will never get to see], with reprinted pages from script. The script of Kvinnors väntan was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 49-52/1959 and no. 1/1960, illustrated with photographs from the film. The film was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1953; it created little attention. F. Koval discussed it briefly in a report from the festival in Films in Review, October 1953, pp. 390-391.
Reception Kvinnors väntan received glowing reviews in the Swedish press and established Ingmar Bergman’s reputation as a filmmaker with a unique understanding of women and their emotional crises. Surrealistic Paris flashback and elevator episodes were singled out as visually outstanding. It was ranked Best Swedish Film in 1952/53 by Swedish film critics in a poll taken by magazine Filmnyheter. Like most Bergman films of the early Fifties, Kvinnors väntan made its first international round in Latin America (1956 in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay). It opened in France in 1959, riding on
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Chapter IV Filmography Cahiers’ Bergman wave in 1958-59; and in the U.S. in 1961 where it was treated as a museum piece. Appearing in West Germany in 1962, it received quality rating by the West German Classification Board. It opened in East Germany in 1972. A review in Filmblätter (East Berlin), no. 108 (1972), predictably called it ‘a sad film... revealing the limitations of bourgeois society’. Institut des hautes études cinématographiques issued a fiche (no. 157) on Kvinnors väntan.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 23 October 1952; BLM 21, no. 10 (December 1952): 796-797; Hörde ni?, January 1953, pp. 41-43; Perspektiv 3, no. 10 (December 1952): 475-476; Vecko-Journalen no. 46 (1952), p. 42.
Foreign Reviews Arts, 3-10 December 1958 (C. Gauteur); Bianco e nero, no. 2-3 (February 1961), pp. 121-22; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 85 (July 1958), pp. 10-11 and no. 92 (February 1959), pp. 46-48; Cinéma 59, no. 33 (February 1959), pp. 119-122; La cinématographie française, 20 December 1959, n.p; Critisch Film Bulletin 12, no. 6 (1959):44; Filmfacts, 6 October 1961, pp. 221-222; Film Quarterly, no. 1 (Fall 1961), pp. 45-47; Filmkritik no. 6 (June) 1962, pp. 266-268; Films and Filming 6, no. 3 (December 1959): 24; Image et son no. 118 (January 1959), p. 15, and no. 214 (March 1968), pp. 173-178. Monthly Film Bulletin, March 1960, p. 33 National Review, 4 November 1961, pp. 311-313; New York Times, 12 July 1961, p. 36:1; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3266; New York Herald Tribune, same date, p. 15; Télé-Ciné no. 80 (January–February 1959), p. 11, 15 Time, 14 July 1961, p. 92 (A.E. p. 70); S. Kauffmann, A World on Film (112), pp. 279-280; Variety, 24 December 1958, p. 6.;
See also SF program, 1952, 11 pp.; Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), p. 55, 67 et passim; Camera, January–March 1968, pp. 7-8; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 176-186; Filmnyheter 7, no. 9-10,1952: 12-14 (reportage from shooting); Image et son, 226 (March) 1969: 19-21: Museo de arte cinematografica (Rio De Janeiro), program no. 19, 5 October 1956; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314), pp. 234-237.
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SOMMAREN MED MONIKA, 1953 [Summer with Monica], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Per Anders Fogelström & Ingmar Bergman
For early foreign distribution titles, see section on ‘Foreign Reception’ below.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Synopsis The film is set in the working-class section of South Stockholm and in the archipelago. Two young people, Monica and Harry, meet in a café. She is working for a wholesale fruit and vegetable dealer, and he in a store selling glass and china. They don’t like their jobs. At the movies on a date, Harry and Monica have divergent visions of the future. Harry wants to study and improve his social status; Monica dreams of film stars. Monica lives at home in narrow quarters. Her father drinks, her mother is worn out. She herself finds escape in sleep and in romance magazines. One day after a quarrel she gives up her job and leaves home. She looks up Harry, and they spend the night in his father’s small motor boat. The next morning Harry arrives late for work and is fired. He and Monica leave the city in the boat and spend a leisurely summer in the archipelago. Lelle, Monica’s former boyfriend arrives and sets the motorboat on fire. With Monica’s help, Harry beats up Lelle. Monica becomes pregnant and grows increasingly desperate about it. When food gets scarce, she steals from a summer resident but is caught in the act. The upper-class owner is full of contempt for Monica and calls the police. But Monica escapes, and she and Harry return to Stockholm. They get married. Harry goes to night school and gets a new job in the contruction business. Monica, however, has difficulty adjusting to her role as wife and mother. She neglects the baby and the housework, and takes up with former boyfriends. One morning after returning home from a trip with the construction team, Harry finds Monica in bed with another man. They quarrel, and Harry hits Monica. She decides to leave him. The film ends with shots of Harry walking past a display window, carrying his baby daughter in his arms. He lifts her up and the reflection of both of them is seen in the window.
Credits Production company Production manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Music Orchestration Make-up Editors Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman and Per Anders Fogelström, from a novel by the same name by Fogelström, 1951. Gunnar Fischer P.A. Lundgren and Nils Svenwall Tor Borong Sven Hansen Erik Nordgren. Waltz ‘Kärlekens hamn’ [Haven of love], composed by Filip Olsson, Ornö Eskil Eckert-Lundin Carl M. Lund, Inc. Tage Holmberg and Gösta Lewin Birgit Norlindh
Cast Monika Eriksson Harry Lund Mrs. Lindström, Harry’s aunt Lelle, former boyfriend Harry’s father Forsberg, Harry’s boss in store Forsberg’s accountant Johan
Harriet Andersson Lars Ekborg Dagmar Ebbesen John Harryson Georg Skarstedt Gösta Ericsson Gösta Gustafsson Sigge Fürst
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Chapter IV Filmography Salesman in glass shop Ludvig, Monika’s father Monika’s mother Monica’s boss Driver Monicas’s male colleagues at work Messenger boy at Monika’s work Owner of summer home His wife Their daughter Hasse, Monika’s young brother Mrs. Boman, café owner Movie star Movie star Lindevall, parson Tobacconist Harry’s buddy Harry’s construction boss Harry’s workmates Bums Monica’s boyfriends Monika’s date at café Scrap dealers Ladies in backyard window Nurse at maternity ward House owner His daughter A girl
Gösta Prüzelius Åke Fridell Naemi Briese Arthur Fischer Torsten Lilliecrona Bengt Eklund, Gustaf Färingborg Hans Ellis Ivar Wahlgren Renée Björling Catrin Westerlund Carl-Uno Larsson Hanny Schedin Kjell Nordenskiöld Margaret Young Nils Hultgren Ernst Brunman Sten Mattsson Åke Grönberg Magnus Kesster, Carl-Axel Elfving Wiktor ‘Kulörten’ Andersson, Birger Sahlberg Anders Andelius, Gordon Löwenadler Bengt Brunskog Nils Whiten, Tor Borong Mona Geijer-Falkner, Astrid Bodin Gun Östring Harry Ahlin Jessie Flaws Mona Åstrand
Filmed on location at Sadelöga, near the island of Ornö in the Stockholm archipelago, and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 22 July and completed 6 October 1952. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening Working title
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc./Gaston Hakim Prod. 96 min 6 February 1953 9 February 1953, Spegeln (Stockholm) 3 February 1956, The Orpheum Theater, Los Angeles En sommar med Monika [One summer with Monica]
Commentary In a first synopsis (SFI Archives), Fogelström presents Harry as a 17-year-old daydreamer and schoolboy who lives with his father, an artist. He meets Britt (later named Monica) in a café; she comes from a dysfunctional family. The two live part of the time in a boat that belongs to Harry’s father. There are several confrontations between father and son. When Britt becomes pregnant, Harry’s aunt insists they get married. Soon they are part of the social system and feel a loss of freedom. Britt leaves Harry and child. Harry’s father calls him a good-for-nothing, and his aunt takes care of the child. Harry is told he has only himself to blame. In Ingmar Bergman’s screen adaptation of Fogelström’s novel, the emphasis shifts from Harry to Monica. Fogelström
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record accepted this; see FIB, no. 1 (2-8 January) 1953, pp. 10-11, 38, for his response to the film. Swedish censors cut a love-making scene between Monika and Harry after their fight with Lelle. Bergman talks briefly about the shooting of Sommaren med Monika in Bilder/Images (1990), pp. 295-96. Most of the film was shot on location during a summer that Ingmar Bergman and his crew recall with nostalgia. To save the transportation costs from the archipelago to the photo lab in Stockholm, Bergman let the daily rushes pile up over a three-week period. But once the film was developed, it showed a bad scratch on the negative, necessating 75% retakes. See (Ø 84) for Bergman vignette from the shooting. Filmnyheter 7, no. 13 (1952): 8-10, 24; Filmnyheter 7, no. 17, pp. 8-10, 23; Filmnyheter 7, no, 1920 (1952), pp. 32-35; and Filmnyheter 8, no. 1 (1953): 20-23, contain interviews with Harriet Andersson and Lars Ekborg and a series of articles titled ‘Männen kring Monika’ [The Men around Monica].
Swedish Reception Swedish reception of Sommaren med Monika was rather lukewarm. Though critics praised its realism, they found the film uneven, the editing poor, the tempo dull, and the typecasting unfortunate. The summer landscape was termed trite and overused. The film became known mostly for Harriet Andersson’s pouting portrayal of Monika; the sexy image of the actress in a décolleté sweater launched the film both in Sweden and abroad. After Sommaren med Monika was rediscovered in 1958 by Jean-Luc Godard in France (see below), the film became recognized by the Swedish social-conscious generation of the Sixties. A television showing of Monika in Sweden in 1977 led to a feminist reader exchange in GP, 28 January 1977, p. 3, and 7 February 1977, p. 2. One viewer saw Monika as defiant of a male chauvinist society, while another argued that Monika’s escape from marriage was a flight into a tough male world that would destroy her.
Foreign Reception In a review in Variety, 7 July 1954, p. 22, Mosk[owitz] suggested cutting the nude bathing scene, an ironic piece of advice in view of the film’s later fate in the U.S. On 5 February 1956, AB (pp. 1, 5) carried a front page news report from Los Angeles about the arrest of Morton Lippe, manager of the Orpheum Theatre in L.A., during a showing of Summer with Monica or The Story of a Bad Girl, which was the first American distribution title. Lippe was booked on misdemeanor charges; the film was confiscated by local police. Apparently, the American distributor had added scenes of nudist bathing to Bergman’s original version. Los Angeles Times, 7 February 1956, n.p. (American Motion Picture Academy clipping) reported further confiscations in the Los Angeles area. On 26 April 1956, Variety, Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Herald Tribune all reported that L.A. film distributor Jack Thomas was fined $750 and sentenced to 90 days in jail. The Los Angeles Examiner quoted from Judge Byron J. Walter’s summation of the case: ‘Monica appeals to potential sex murderers. [...] Crime is on the increase and people wonder why. This is one of the reasons.’ The distributor, however, was acquitted from the charge one year later in higher court. In AT, 6 February 1956, p. 6, SF head Carl Anders Dymling denied rumors that SF had made a special export version of the film with added nude shots. However, pirated copies of the film circulated at drive-in theaters in the American midwest as early as 1954. For details, see Jack Stevenson in Chaplin 258, no. 3 (Summer) 1995: 18-22 (Ø 1596). Sommaren med Monika was released again in the U.S. in 1960, under the original Swedish title, but its old reputation as pornography lingered. Films in Review, March 1960, pp. 173-174, called it ‘a clumsily, carelessly directed sexploiter about a stupid teenager’.
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Chapter IV Filmography In 1989, American Film, vol. 14, no. 7, p. 68, gave Monica an A rating in a review of a released video recording by Connaisseur Video Collection. Review concluded: ‘This is one of the director’s rare movies of which it can truly be said: hubba, hubba.’ In France the release of Sommaren med Monika in 1954 as ‘Le sac du douchage’ or ‘Monique ou le désir’ led to a lively press debate after Cahiers du cinéma, no. 36 (1954), p. 45, had termed it ‘the most erotic film since Gustav Machaty’s L’Extase’. Four years later Monika was shown on a commercial rerun in Paris and received overwhelming support by Jean-Luc Godard (Arts, 30 July-5 August 1958, p. 6), who termed it the cinematic event of the year: ‘You must dash to the Cinéma Panthéon as you dashed to the van Gogh exhibit. Monica is the most original picture by the most original of filmmakers.’ In an extensive analysis of Monika in Image et son, no. 205, 1967, pp. 113-120, Hubert Arnault suggests that the tremendous critical success of the film on its second round in France depended on its combination of two features dear to French cineastes at the time: the exoticism of the Nordic summer and the handheld cinéma-verité camera, which anticipated the nouvelle vague by several years. François Truffaut includes a poster reference to Monika in his film Les 400 coups (The 400 Blows). In England, the realism of Monika resulted in a glowing response from I. Quigly, usually a severe Bergman critic. See Spectator, 19 December 1957, pp. 88-89. In (West) Germany, the Film und Mode Revue, no. 19, 1953, called many scenes in the film too constructed and excessive but saw in Bergman’s filmmaking the work of ‘a personality with whom every film fan should get acquainted.’
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 10 February 1953; BLM no. 3 (March 1953): 233-34; Perspektiv IV, no. 3 (March 1953): 129-30; Teatern, no. 2 (February 1953): 6.
Foreign Reviews Arts, 30 July – 5 August 1958, p. 6; Godard review appeared in English in Godard on Godard (ed. J. Narboni, T. Milne). London: Secker & Warburg, 1972, pp. 84-85; Bianco e nero, no. 11-12 (November-December 1961): 82-85; Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 36 (1954): 50; and no. 85 (July 1958): 11; Critisch Film Bulletin 12, no. 10 (1959): 78; Film und Mode Revue, no. 19, 1953; Films and Filming 5, no. 5 (February 1959): 25; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 February 1956; Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1959, p. 16.
See also G. Allombert, Image et son, no. 122-123 (May-June 1959), pp. 19-20 (in special issue on the portrayal of adolescence in the cinema); Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 72-79; Sw.ed. 76-80; Cahiers du cinéma 14, no. 84 (June 1958): 11; Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 187-195; Image et son, 1967 (Ø 1233), pp 21-24; ‘Mabuse’ (Stockholm Film Festival program), August 1992, p. 5 (interview with Harriet Andersson); SF program, 1953, 11 pp.; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314), pp. 267-270;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record SVT, channel 1, 17 November 1990 (five minute introduction to TV showing of film by Ulrika Knutsson and Maaret Koskinen).
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GYCKLARNAS AFTON, 1953 [The Naked Night/Sawdust and Tinsel], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
The Swedish word gycklare is often used by Ingmar Bergman in its original medieval sense of an itinerant performer. Gycklare were people who used to entertain the public with gyckelspel at fairs and in market places. It is likely that Bergman intended the title of his film to refer to circus performers as a collective group. John Simon’s English translation ‘The Clown’s Evening’ in his book Ingmar Bergman Directs (pp. 50-105) seems to point to the single character of Frost. American distribution title The Naked Night has a certain relevance probably not intended by its original distributor: Film depicts a night of unmasking when circus owner Albert Johansson is deprived of professional dignity and faces personal despair. Visually, this is a night film, with dawn, twilight and darkness enveloping its main characters from the opening shot to the final vignette. British title, Sawdust and Tinsel, is a more direct reference to the film’s circus milieu. Most misleading foreign title is the Italian one: Una vampata d’amore.
Synopsis Gycklarnas afton opens with a bleak shot of Circus Alberti arriving in a small Swedish town at the turn of the last century. The owner, Albert Johansson, wakes up in his cramped wagon, walks outside and climbs up next to the coachman, Jens. The film’s only flashback follows as Jens tells the story of Frost the Clown and his wife Alma. One summer seven years earlier, Alma went swimming in the nude before a group of soldiers on artillery practice. When notified, Frost sheds his clown suit and carries Alma out of the water and back to the circus. The flashback sequence is an overexposed white-out, and the diegetic sound effects – the jeering laughter of the soldiers and the firing of the cannons – have a surreal quality. The sequence has no dialogue but is accompanied by Karl Birger Blomdahl’s modernistic music. The humiliation of Frost and Alma is soon to be felt by Albert and his mistress, Anne. Setting out in their Sunday best to borrow costumes for their dilapidated circus from the repertory theatre in town, they face the ridicule of Mr. Sjuberg, the theatre’s manager. Later Albert leaves the circus to visit his wife, who operates a small store in town with the help of their two young boys. Albert pleads with her to take him back but is rebuffed and pitied. As he leaves his wife, he sees Anne exit from a pawn shop. She has been visiting Frans, an actor in the repertory theatre, who has made love to her in his dressing-room and given her a worthless trinket in return. Back in the circus wagon, Albert vents his frustration on Anne, but is interrupted by Frost who arrives with a bottle. Both men get drunk. Albert takes out his pistol and threatens Frost, who tells him to shoot Alma’s sick bear instead. Suddenly, Albert tumbles ouside; his mood changes. He orders the circus tent raised. He and Frost sing a popular broadsheet song. The theatre company has been invited to the circus performance. Frans and the audience taunt Anne during her performance as a Spanish equestrienne until she falls off her horse. With his long riding whip Albert flips off Frans’s hat. In an ensuing fight, Frans kicks sawdust in Albert’s eyes until he is like an enraged, blinded animal. Anne intervenes, and Albert is carried out. Back in his trailer, he takes out his pistol and shoots his own image in the mirror. Then he walks outside to the cage that houses Alma’s bear. Despite her protestations, he kills the animal. Afterwards he goes to the stables to seek the company of the horses.
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Chapter IV Filmography The next day the circus is on the road again at early dawn. Albert walks beside Frost who relates a dream he has had: he became smaller and smaller until he was only a seed in Alma’s womb and then he disappeared altogether. Frost goes into his wagon to join Alma. Albert and Anne come together alongside the circus wagon. Without a word they walk off towards another day.
Credits Production company Executive producer Production manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Music Costumes Make-up Editor Continuity
Sandrews Rune Waldekranz Lars-Owe Carlberg Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Hilding Bladh, Göran Strindberg and Sven Nykvist Bibi Lindström Olle Jakobsson Karl-Birger Blomdahl Mago (Max Goldstein) Nils Nittel, Sture Höglund wig shop Carl-Olov Skeppstedt Marianne Axelsson
Cast Anne Albert Johansson Frans Teodor Frost Alma, his wife Agda, Albert’s wife Mr. Sjuberg, theatre director Jens, the coachman Dwarf Officer Blom, stage manager Mrs. Ekberg, circus musician Mrs. Ekberg’s son Aunt Asta, circus performer Albert and Agda’s oldest son Little Albert, their youngest son Policeman ‘Beautiful Anton’, circus performer Tightrope dancer Fager, circus performer Mrs. Fager, circus performer Mrs. Meijer, circus performer Theatre actors Meijer, circus performer Uncle Greve, circus performer Mrs. Tanti, circus performer Policeman
Harriet Andersson Åke Grönberg Hasse Ekman Anders Ek Gudrun Brost Annika Tretow Gunnar Björnstrand Erik Strandmark Kiki (Otto Moskowitz) Åke Fridell Curt Löwgren Majken Torkeli Vanje Hedberg Hanny Schedin Göran Lundquist Mats Hådell Eric Gustafson Michael Fant Julie Bernby Conrad Gyllenhammar Mona Sylwan Naemi Briese Lissi Alandh, Karl-Axel Forsberg, Olav Riégo, John Starck, Erna Groth, Agda Helin Sigvard Törnqvist John W. Björling Gunborg Larsson Gunnar Lindberg
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Filmed on location in Arild, southern Sweden, at Kullaberg and Ystad, in the Gävle City Theatre, and at Sandrews’s Studios, Gärdet, Stockholm, beginning spring 1953 and completed in early summer 1953. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Sandrew-Baumanfilm Times Film Corporation/Janus Films 92 minutes 11 September 1953 14 September 1953, Grand (Stockholm) 9 April 1956, Little Carnegie, NYC
Commentary Bergman writes about the genesis of the film in Bilder (1990), pp. 184-88. The script of Gycklarnas afton was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 40-44, 1960, illustrated with photographs from the film. Producer Rune Waldekranz has given an account of the origin of the film in an article titled ‘Birgit Tengroth svek men plötsligt stod Ingmar Bergman där med sina gycklare’ [Birgit T. failed but suddenly Bergman was there with his jesters], Kulturens värld no. 4 (November 1995): 50-57. Waldekranz had tried earlier to engage Bergman for a film project with Sandrews but had lost out to SF (see Commentary to Törst, Ø 211). Bergman still felt obliged to make a film for Sandrews, and a few years later he proposed his script, Gycklarnas afton. Though he expected no immediate box office success, Waldekranz persuaded his boss, Anders Sandrew, to produce the film. The film is shot by three different cinematographers. During the shooting, Göran Strindberg had to make a study trip to Hollywood to learn the new cinemascope technique. Sven Nykvist was proposed as his substitute. Nykvist passed Bergman’s test and eventually won his approval. Cinematographer Hilding Bladh shot the flashback sequence; Göran Strindberg shot the outdoor scenes and most indoor scenes; Nykvist shot scenes in the circus tent. This film marks the first time that Mago (Max Goldstein) worked as Bergman’s costumier.
Reception The Schreiber Circus in Örebro, Sweden, accused Ingmar Bergman of giving circuses a bad reputation by showing ‘pornographic trash in which the female circus artists are depicted as prostitutes’[en pornografisk smörja i vilken kvinnliga cirkusartister porträtteras som prostituerade]. See Örebro Dagblad, 29 September 1953, p. 1. Robin Hood in ‘Filmskott’, ST, 20 September, p. 4, discussed the mixed response to Gycklarnas afton. Critical reactions oscillated from enthusiasm to abusive remarks. The most notorious review was by Filmson [Sven Jan Hanson] in AB, 15 September 1953, p. 11: ‘I am of the opinion that one should not defecate in public even if one has a lot to get rid of – unless one can sublimate one’s miseries like August Strindberg’. [Jag anser att man helst bör undvika att orena offentligt även om man har mycket att bli av med, såvida man inte som en August Strindberg kan sublimera sitt elände.] Other negative assessments were made by Viveca Heyman in Beklädnadsfolket, no. 7, 1956, p. 12, and by I. Olsson in Lantarbetaren, no. 5, 1956, p. 17. By contrast, Nils Beyer, MT (Stockholm), same date, p. 7, called Gycklarnas afton Ingmar Bergman’s best film. Generally, the film got better reviews in the press outside Stockholm. Sandrews issued a program to Gycklarnas afton (no. 106, n.d., 8 pp.), with credits, excerpts from Swedish reviews, and presentation of leading actor Åke Grönberg. An English version is available at SFI archives, but contains only credits and plot synopsis.
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Chapter IV Filmography Foreign Response Bergman visited Oslo and Bergen in connection with the Norwegian opening of the film. He became upset over Norwegian cuts. See Bergen Morgenavis, 18 March 1954, p. 1. Norwegian censor Bernt A. Nissen claimed that only two meters had been cut beyond the 25 meters already omitted by Swedish censors. In both cases, the cuts were from the fight in the circus arena and from Albert’s suicide attempt. Variety, 8 February 1956, p. 6, presented The Naked Night as ‘a controversial Swedish import with stress on sex and morbidity’. This view was echoed in Newsweek, 23 April 1956, p. 53, and New York Herald Tribune, 10 April 1956, p. 20, where W. Zinsser wrote: ‘The Naked Night... is a rueful tale. The climate is cold and drizzly, everybody is seething with passion and remorse.’ The review in NYT, 10 April 1956, p. 27: 5, was devastating, calling the film an offensive imitation of the worst aspects of cinematic expressionism, referring in particular to the flashback sequence of Frost and Alma in the beginning of film. In retrospect, Gycklarnas afton, which at first was only appreciated in cineast circles in Latin America, has become an Ingmar Bergman classic, winning several awards (see below, Awards). Cahiers du cinéma, no. 77 (December 1957), pp. 48-50, dubbed La nuit des forains a remarkable auteur film, and in 1958, Télé-Ciné published a special issue on the film (no. 73, fiche 324, pp. 112), including a discussion of Bergman’s use of the circus as an emblem of life. In November 1961, Danish Film Museum issued a five-page program on Gycklarnas afton, comparing it to Dupont’s Variété. Film a soggetto, Centro S. Fedelle dello Spettaculo, Milan, 4 February 1965, 10 pp., is an Italian fact sheet on Vampata d’amore, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 12 September 1953; BLM 22, no. 8 (October 1953): 638-639; Perspektiv 5, no. 8 (October 1953): 380-381; Teatern 20, no. 4 (1953): 13-14.
Foreign Reviews Arts, 15-22 October 1957 (Eric Rohmer); Bianco e nero, February-March 1961, pp. 121-127; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 77 (December 1957) and no. 85 (July 1958), pp. 11-12; Cinema Nuovo, no. 144 (March-April 1962), pp. 154-155; Films and Filming 1, no. 11 (August 1955): 18; Filmkritik, no. 1 (January) 1959, pp. 10-14; Filmkritik Jahrbuch 2 (1960): 3-5; Le Monde, 31 October 1957; Monthly Film Bulletin, June 1955, p. 83; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 2919; Positif, no. 27 (February 1958), pp. 38-41; Revista de cinema, no. 22 (April-May 1956), pp. 10-13.
Longer articles/discussions Doorman, Joseph. ‘The Naked Night’. Film Notes (Wisconsin Film Society), 1960, pp. 102-105; Holmer, Per. ‘Förnedringsmotiv i femtiotalsfilmen’ [Humiliation motifs in Fifties film]. Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959, pp. 302-308; Ramseger, Georg. ‘Ein Film der uns den Atem verschlägt’. Die Welt, 6 December 1958;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Schildt, Jurgen. ‘Den allvarsamma leken’ [The serious game]. Perspektiv IV, no. 8, 1953: 380-382. Schildt’s review article recognizes Bergman’s visual talent, but the script is said to be full of trite statements about art and life. This view of Bergman as a gifted image maker but a poor writer represents a very common view of him among Swedish commentators in the 1940s and 1950s; Simon, John. Offers the most extensive (and also the finest) analysis of the film in his book Ingmar Bergman Directs, pp. 50-105, and in his collection of reviews Private Screenings, pp. 17-18; Wolf, S. ‘Abend der Gaukler’. Praktische Hinweise für die Jugenfilmarbeit: Filmbesprechungen, n.d., 12 p. With credits and a presentation of film as one of several Bergman movies selected for young people.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 81-96; Etudes cinématographiques 1, no. 1-2 (1960): 109-114; Film Culture no. 29 (Summer 1963): 23-24; Filmorientering (Norw. Film Inst.) no. 2 (December 1960); Der frühe Bergman (Ø 1326), pp. 197-213; German program to Abend der Gaukler (Göttingen: Walter Kircher Filmkunst) 1959, 12 pp.; Image et son no. 125 (November) 1959: i-xi (special supplement 17), and no. 226 (March) 1969: 24-28; Kosmorama no. 137, 1978, pp. 51-54; Svensk Filmografi (Ø 1314), 1950-59, pp. 302-05.
Awards 1954: 1957: 1958: 1959: 1999:
221.
First prize in Montevideo Film Festival, 1954; L’Etoile du Cristal de L’Académie du Cinéma, Paris; Gold Plaque in Buenos Aires Film Festival; Highest quality rating by the West German Classification Board; German Film Critics Award for Best Direction, Frankfurt am Main. Second Prize by Polish Film Critics’ Society; Listed in Swedish Filmrutan survey as one of the ten best Swedish films of the century.
EN LEKTION I KÄRLEK, 1954 [A Lesson in Love], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis As the credits roll across the screen, an ironic voice announces: ‘This is a comedy that could have been a tragedy.’ The plot of En lektion i kärlek begins with a bet made by two men about a woman with whom they share a train compartment. One of the men is David Erneman, a gynecologist; the woman, unknown to the viewer, is his wife Marianne. David and Marianne have been married for 16 years. David is having an affair with his former patient, Suzanne. In a series of flashbacks we see the development of their relationship, from their first romantic summer together to a farcical episode when Marianne surprises them in bed at a tourist inn. David has now broken off his affair and tries to regain Marianne’s love. He pursues her on the train to Copenhagen where she is scheduled to meet her lover Carl-Adam, to whom she was once engaged. It is at this point in the film that the bet occurs.
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Chapter IV Filmography Another flashback gives us a glimpse of the first encounter between David and Marianne, which ocurred in Copenhagen. David was sent by Carl-Adam to fetch Marianne, who was a tardy bride-to-be. David and Marianne fell in love. In a farcical scene, a powerless pastor has to witness how all the ceremonious preparations for the wedding are smashed to pieces. Two flashbacks on the train focus on David’s family. In the first, he is walking on the beach with his 15-year-old daughter Nix, who reveals her disgust with the erotic interests of her friends and with her parent’s extramarital affairs. David responds by telling Nix of his boredom. The next flashback takes place a year before the present events on the train. It is an early summer morning in the country home of David’s parents, Henrik and Svea Erneman. It is Henrik’s seventy-third birthday; his children and grandchildren serve him morning coffee in bed. Later in the day they all go on a traditional automobile excursion. Nix talks to her grandfather about her fear of death. In the evening there is a dance at which the mutual trust of the older Erneman couple becomes a lesson to David and Marianne. The film ends in Copenhagen. Marianne decides not to pursue her relationships with CarlAdam. She and David check into a hotel room where Cupid himself hangs a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door. A cherub comes through the hotel corridor, turns the sign, and opens the door. David and Marianne are seen sitting on the bed, toasting in champagne. When the door is closed, the text on the turned sign reads: ‘Silence! A Lesson in Love’.
Credits Production company Production manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Music Orchestration Make-up Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Ingmar Bergman Rolf Carlsten Ingmar Bergman Martin Bodin P.A. Lundgren Gustaf Roger Sven Hansen Dag Wirén Eskil Eckert-Lundin Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Oscar Rosander Birgit Norlindh, Bente Munk
Cast Marianne Erneman Eva Dahlbeck David Erneman Gunnar Björnstrand Suzanne Verin, his ‘affair’ Yvonne Lombard Nix, Erneman’s daughter Harriet Andersson Carl-Adam, Marianne’s former fiance Åke Grönberg Henrik Erneman, grandfather Olof Winnerstrand Svea Erneman, grandmother Renée Björling Lise, maid Birgitte Reimer Sam, chauffeur John Elfström Lisa, nurse Dagmar Ebbesen Traveling salesman Helge Hagerman Pastor Sigge Fürst Train conductor Gösta Prüzelius Uncle Axel, potter Carl Ström
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Hotel manager Jönsson, hotel clerk Bartender Wedding guests
Dancer at cabaret in Copenhagen Pelle, Marianne and David’s son Hotel maid Clarinet player at cabaret Man looking for his wife at cabaret Young men at cabaret Taxi driver in Copenhagen Piano player at cabaret Bellboy
Arne Lindblad Torsten Lilliecrona Georg Adelly Julie Bernby, Wera Lindby, Henning Blanck, Olof Ekbladh, Gustaf Färingborg, Kaj Hjelm, Vincent Jonasson, Georg Skarstedt, Bengt Thörnhammar Yvonne Brosset Göran Lundquist Margareta Öhman Torbjörn ‘Tompa’ Jahn John Starck Kjell Nordenskiöld, Tor Åhman Tor Borong Mats Olsson Björn Näslund
Filmed at Filmstaden (Råsunda), in Copenhagen (Nyhavn), on the Malmö-Copenhagen ferry, in Hälsingborg, Arild, Ramlösa, Pålsjöskog, the Mjölby train station, Beatelund, and Saltsjöbaden, beginning 30 July 1953 and completed 16 September 1953. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Swedish premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus 94 minutes 23 August 1954 4 October 1954, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 14 March 1960, Murry Hill Theatre, NYC
Commentary Ingmar Bergman appears briefly in the train sequence, reading a newspaper. Bergman writes about the film in Bilder/Images, 1990, p. 342. The script of En lektion i kärlek was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 6-10/1960, illustrated with photographs from the film.
Reception En lektion i kärlek was Ingmar Bergman’s first popular success in Sweden. AB called the film ‘capricious and entertaining’; DN termed it an ‘unpretentious’ film combining joie de vivre and esprit; ST referred to it as a spontaneous and visually conceived comedy bubbling over with fresh ideas and dialogue. But SvD termed the film a disappointment after the more subtle ‘woman’s film’ Kvinnors väntan. Several months later Hanserik Hjertén in Arbetaren (4 January 1955, p. 4) questioned an earlier statement by film critic Marianne Höök in Vecko-Journalen (no. 44, 1954) that Ingmar Bergman was a genius in depicting women. The film was not distributed in U.S. until 1960, in the aftermath of such major Bergman successes as Sjunde inseglet/The Seventh Seal, Smultronsstället/Wild Strawberries, and Ansiktet/ The Magician/The Face. Perhaps inevitably, this made it seem a minor work. Films in Review, February 1960, p. 103, called it ‘pointless adolescent tom-foolery’ and Film Quarterly, no. 4 (Summer 1960), pp. 52-53, did not find ‘Bergman doing a turn of Ernst Lubitsch [...] very funny’. New York Herald Tribune, 15 March 1960, p. 15, voiced a rare appreciation: ‘[It is] like Schopenhauer giggling. It is enough to make one want to learn the language.’ Télé-Ciné, no. 95 (April 1961) published a fiche on the film (no. 380), 11 pp. Image et son, no. 214 (March 1968), pp. 173-178 contains a longer analysis of film.
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Chapter IV Filmography Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 5 October 1954; BLM 23, no. 9 (November 1954): 762; FIB no. 43 (1954), p. 47; Perspektiv no. 2 (1955), p. 78; Vecko-Journalen no. 44 (1954), p. 16.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma no. 85 (July 1958), p. 12 and no. 103, pp. 58-60; Cinéma 60, no. 43 (February 1960): 121-123; Filmfacts 1 April 1960, pp. 53-54; Filmkritik no. 2 (1963), p. 95 and no. 3 (1963), pp. 133-4; Image et son no. 126 (October 1959), pp. 18-9; Monthly Film Bulletin June 1959, p. 68; New Republic, 25 April 1960, p. 20; New York Times, 15 March 1960, p. 46; NYT Film Reviews 1913-1968, p. 3178; Positif, no. 17 (June-July 1956): 51-53; (part of a presentation of Scandinavian film in Paris); Variety, 4 Nov 1959, p. 7.
See also Arts, 16-23 December 1959, p. 7; Atlas Filmheft, no. 14 (1960); Cahiers du cinéma, no. 74 (August-September 1957), p. 26; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 28-29; Kosmorama, no. 137, 1978, pp. 34-35; SF program in Swedish and English, 1954, 5 pp.; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314) pp. 384-87.
Awards 1955: 1963:
222.
Punta del Este Festival Award; Unspecified award at Film Comedy Festival in Vienna.
KVINNODRÖM, 1955 [Dreams/Journey into Autumn], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
The American title, Dreams, ignores that this is a film about women. The British title, Journey into Autumn, is hardly applicable to one of the main charachters, Doris, a teenage model. Neither title, however, is as offensive as the Argentine one: Confeción des pecadores.
Synopsis Kvinnodröm begins and ends in a fashion photographer’s studio in Stockholm; the rest of the film takes place in Göteborg, where the main characters, fashion designer Susanne and her model Doris, travel on business. Opening sequence is silent and tense. Doris is getting ready for the photographer. Only the drumming fingers of Magnus, an obese businessman and fashion director, can be heard. Susanne’s tension continues on the train trip to Göteborg. In a wordless sequence (the only sound being that of the train’s wheels) Susanne fights an impulse to commit suicide. Her struggle is reflected in quick images of her face against a rain-swept train window.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Arriving in Göteborg, Susanne and Doris go their separate ways. The plot follows two tracks, one involving Susanne and her attempt to get her lover Henrik Lobelius, a businessman, to make a commitment to her; the other depicting Doris and her brief encounter with a much older man, Consul Sönderby. The dreams of the two women are thus revealed: Susanne wants to get married and have children; Doris wants to be rich and live the life of a movie star. Henrik Lobelius arrives at Susanne’s hotel room. Preoccupied with his faltering business, he admits his economic dependence upon his wife. When Mrs. Lobelius arrives unexpectedly, Susanne realizes that Henrik will never seek a divorce. In a parallel episode, we follow Doris’s excursions in the city. Consul Sönderby buys her clothes and jewellery. They go to an amusement park where a roller coaster ride brings out the age difference between them. Returning to the Consul’s villa, Doris gets tipsy on champagne and reveals her completely materialistic dreams. Sönderby’s motives are also self-centered: he wishes to rejuvenate himself through Doris, who reminds him of his dead wife. Their fantasies are interrupted by Sönderby’s cold and offensive daughter. Doris decides to leave without the gifts bestowed upon her by the Consul. Back in Stockholm, Susanne receives a letter from Henrik Lobelius, suggesting that they continue their clandestine affair. Susanne tears up the letter. Doris returns to her former boyfriend, Palle, a young student. Both women seek solace from their ruptured dreams through hard work.
Credits Production company Executive producer Production manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Make-up Editor Continuity
Sandrews Rune Waldekranz Lars-Owe Carlberg Ingmar Bergman Hans Abramson Ingmar Bergman Hilding Bladh Gittan Gustafsson Sven Björling Olle Jakobsson Sture Höglund Carl-Olov Skeppstedt Katherina Faragó
Cast Susanne Frank Doris Consul Otto Sönderby Henrik Lobelius Marta, his wife Palle Palt Magnus, fashion director Marianne, Sönderby’s daughter Mrs. Arén Mrs. Berger Women aides in fashion studio Ferdinand Sundström, photographer in Göteborg Sundström’s aides
Eva Dahlbeck Harriet Andersson Gunnar Björnstrand Ulf Palme Inga Landgré Sven Lindberg Benkt-Åke Benktsson Kerstin Hedeby-Pawlo Naima Wifstrand Renée Björling Git Gay, Gunhild Kjellqvist Ludde Gentzel Maud Hyttenberg, Folke Åström
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Chapter IV Filmography Sundström’s assistant photographer Make-up girl Fanny Katja Fashion photographer Photographer in Stockholm Model Mr. Barse, jeweler Hotel clerk Man at Liseberg Shop assistant at café Taxi driver Ladies in a café
Curt Kärrby Jessie Flaws Marianne Nielsen Siv Ericks Bengt Schött Axel Düberg Viola Sundberg Tord Stål Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt Richard Mattson Inga Gill Per-Erik Åström Ninni Arpe, Margareta Bergström, Elsa Hofgren, Millan Lyxell, Inga Rosqvist, Greta Stave, Ella Welander, Gerd Widestedt
Filmed at Sandrews Studios, Stockholm, beginning 15 June 1954 and completed 4 August 1954 (additional takes in February 1955). Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Sandrew-Bauman Film Janus Films, Inc. 86 minutes 28 May 1955 22 August, Grand (Stockholm) 31 May 1960, Fith Ave. Cinema, NYC
Bergman appears briefly in train corridor during Susanne’s and Doris’s journey to Göteborg.
Commentary The role of the Consul (Sönderby) was written by Bergman for the actor Anders Henrikson, who, however, refused to work with Bergman. Instead, the part went to Gunnar Björnstrand. Reportage from filming Kvinnodröm by Arne Sellermark appeared in Allers, no. 35 (1954), pp. 6-7, 37-38, with statements by Ingmar Bergman about his views on women and how to depict them on the screen.
Reception Bergman’s Kvinnodröm had been rumored to be a continuation of his rose-colored period. It was a term used by reviewers for such films as Kvinnors väntan and En lektion i kärlek, with reference to French playwright Jean Anouilh’s division of his own plays into pièces noires and pièces roses. But Marianne Höök (Vecko-Journalen, no. 36, 1955, p. 14) found Kvinnordröm to be a dark and brooding film. To her, it confirmed Bergman’s strength in depicting women. However, B. Ehrén in Ny Dag, 23 August 1955, p. 3, objected to Bergman’s female portraits, calling them ‘a sexist presentation’. This typifies a divided critical view that was to surface many times during Bergman’s career, up to and including Herbstsonate (1978, Autumn Sonata). See group entry (Ø 975). In France Kvinnodröm/Rêve des femmes was shown in early fall of 1958 during the peak of the Ingmar Bergman vogue. It was reviewed by Eric Rohmer in both Cahiers du cinéma, no. 89 (November), pp. 46-49, and Arts, 15-22 October, n.p. Rohmer called Bergman a truly international filmmaker. Télé-Ciné no. 80 (January-February 1959) published a fiche (no. 342), 11 pp., on the film.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Kvinnodröm was discussed extensively in the Argentinian press during the summer of 1959, but was considered a minor film. See Buenos Aires El Pueblo, 17 June 1959 (SFI clipping). U.S. reception of Dreams, released out of sequence in the 1960s, echoed the Latin American evaluation.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 23 August 1955; BLM no. 7 (1955), p. 567; FIB no. 38 (1955), p. 42; Perspektiv no. 10 (1955), pp. 465-466; Teatern no. 3 (1955), p. 6; Vecko-Journalen no. 36 (1955), p. 14; Vi no. 35 (1955), p. 23.
Foreign Reviews Bianco e nero, February-March 1961, pp. 120-127; Cahiers du cinéma no. 85 (July 1958), pp. 12-13, and no. 89 (November 1958): 46-49; Cinéma 58, no. 32 (January 1958), p. 114; Films and Filming 5, no. 12 (September 1959): 22-23; Filmfacts 15 July 1960, pp. 143-144; Filmkritik no. 9 (1963), pp. 426-428; Image et son no. 118 (January 1959), p. 17; Monthly Film Bulletin, August 1959, pp. 100-101; New York Times, 1 June 1960, p. 42: 1; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, pp. 3192-3193; New York Herald Tribune, same date, p. 20; Positif no. 30, (July 1959); Time 13 June 1960, p. 67; Variety, 19 November 1958, p. 6.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 44-45; Sw.ed., 102-104; Dansk Film Museum program, January 1965, 4 pp; Filmorientering (NFI), no. 34 (April 1962), 4 pp; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 29-31; Kauffmann, A World of Film (Ø 1011), pp. 279-280; Musikern, no. 9 (1954), p. 5; Sandrews’ program no. 134, 22 August 1955 (also in English); Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314), pp. 456-459.
223.
SOMMARNATTENS LEENDE, 1955 [Smiles of the Summer Night], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis Sommarnattens leende is an erotic masque set in southern Sweden in 1901. The action takes place in the Egerman household; in the local theatre and the lodgings of Desirée Armfeldt, an actress; and at the Ryarp manor house owned by her mother. The various tours of love matching create an intricate plot pattern and represent the three smiles of the summer night.
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Chapter IV Filmography Anne Egerman, virgin wife of middle-aged lawyer Fredrik Egerman, rebuffs her husband’s physical advances. Fredrik goes to visit his former mistress Desirée Armfeldt, falls in a puddle of water and borrows a nightshirt and cap belonging to Desirée’s current lover, Count Malcolm. A young child appears, and the astounded Fredrik learns that he is the father. Soon afterwards, Count Malcolm makes a stormy entrance. Jealous charges and countercharges follow. Early the next morning Desirée persuades her aged mother to arrange a party on her estate. The Malcolms and the Egermans, including Fredrik’s adult son Henrik, a student of theology, are to be invited. In the meantime, Count Malcolm has hinted to his wife Charlotte that Fredrik Egerman is an intimate friend of Desirée Armfeldt. Charlotte conveys this information to Anne Egerman during a visit, but Anne proudly declares that she is already aware of her husband’s liaison. Henrik Egerman is approached by Petra, the maid, but wards off her advances while quoting the Scriptures. Anne and Henrik are attracted to each other. At the gathering at Ryarp, old Mrs. Armfeldt serves a love potion at dinner. Fredrik Egerman notices Anne’s tender feelings for Henrik. Charlotte Malcolm, having made a bet with her husband, tries to seduce Henrik. Henrik is upset over the cynical conversation at the dinner table and leaves. Later he tries to commit suicide, but his attempt ends in a surprise. Planning to hang himself from a damper, he accidentally touches off a mechanism on the wall. Bells begin to chime and the bed in an adjoining room comes rolling into Henrik’s room. In the bed lies Anne, asleep. Later that night the two elope with the willing assistance of Petra, while Fredrik Egerman, without their knowledge, watches from a distance. To defend his honor, Count Malcolm has challenged Fredrik Egerman to a game of Russian roulette in a pavillion on the estate’s park grounds. The lawyer is the unlucky player who ends up shooting himself. Outside, Charlotte and Desirée are waiting. Suddenly, Fredrik Egerman stumbles out, black in the face; the pistol was loaded with soot. Charlotte is reconciled with her husband, and Fredrik Egerman, sad and lonely, returns to Desirée, which was the scheme set up by the actress and her mother. The film ends with the sun rising over the summer night. Petra, the maid, and Frid, the groom, are seen romping in the hay.
Credits Production company Production manager Location manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Music arrangement Orchestration Music
Costumes Make-up
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Gustav Roger Ingmar Bergman Lennart Olsson Ingmar Bergman Gunnar Fischer P.A. Lundgren Ove Kant P.O. Pettersson Erik Nordgren Eskil Eckert-Lundin Robert Schumann, ‘Aufschwung Opus 12’ Frédéric Chopin, ‘Fantasie-Impromptu Opus 66’ Franz Liszt, ‘Liebestraum Opus 62, no. 3’ ‘Bort med sorg och bitterhet’ (Text: Ingmar Bergman) ‘Freut euch des Lebens’ (sung by Eva Dahlbeck) Mago (Max Goldstein) Carl M. Lundh, Inc.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Editor Continuity
Oscar Rosander Katarina (Katherina) Faragó
Cast Desirée Armfeldt Fredrik Egerman Anne Egerman Henrik Egerman Old Mrs. Armfeldt Petra Count Malcolm Charlotte Malcolm Frid Beata, the cook Malla, Desirée’s maid Actresses Desirée’s son Niklas, Malcolm’s aide Butler Dresser Adolf Almgren, photograper Mrs. Almgren Policeman Maids to old Mrs. Armfeldt Dinner guest Notary Tobacconist Actor Curtain puller Servants Mrs. Armfeldt’s butler Aide at lawyer’s office Clerks at lawyer’s office
Eva Dahlbeck Gunnar Björnstrand Ulla Jacobsson Björn Bjelfvenstam Naima Wifstrand Harriet Andersson Jarl Kulle Margit Carlqvist Åke Fridell Jullan Kindahl Gull Natorp Birgitta Valberg, Bibi Andersson Anders Wulff Gunnar Nielsen Gösta Prüzelius Svea Holst Hans Strååt Lisa Lundholm Sigge Fürst Lena Söderholm, Mona Malm Josef Norman Börje Mellvig David Erikson Arne Lindblad Einar Söderbäck Sten Gester, Mille Schmidt John Melin Ulf Johanson Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt, Georg Adelly [cut]
Filmed on location at Jordberga estate in Skåne (southern Sweden) and at Råsunda Studios, Stockholm, beginning 28 June 1955 and completed 29 August 1955, plus two days in November 1955. Distribution U.S. Distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Bank Film Distributors of America 108 min, British version 104 min 14 December 1955 26 December 1955, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 23 December 1957, Sutton, NYC
Ingmar Bergman appears briefly as a bookkeeper at Egerman’s legal office in a scene that was cut from the final version of the film.
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Chapter IV Filmography Commentary The script of Sommarnattens leende was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 16-20/1960, illustrated with photographs from the film. The script is included in an English translation in Four Screenplays by Ingmar Bergman (Ø 110). Reportage from filming Sommarnattens leende appeared in ST 31 July 1955, p. 9. Bergman writes briefly about it in Bilder/Images (1990), pp. 345-46. Assistant director Lennart Olsson kept a two-volume diary during the shooting of Sommarnattens leende (deposited in SFI Library). See also KvP 27 January 1974, Sec. 2, p. 16, for Olsson’s account of filming: ‘Bergman was like a thundering cloud’ [Bergman var som ett åskmoln]. Olsson’s diary is a detailed, rather dull day-to-day recording of Bergman’s production, and lacks the element of personal involvement evident in Vilgot Sjöman’s record of the shooting of Nattvardsgästerna/Winter Light, some years later (see Ø 1100). Arne Sellermark interviewed Bergman during the shooting of Sommarnattens leende: ‘Tre nattliga leenden’ [Three nightly smiles]. Filmnyheter 10, no. 19-20, 1955: 4-7, 10. Bergman states his satisfaction with having found an expressive comedy form. In yet another Sellermark interview article, titled ‘Är han tyrannregissör?’ [Is he a tyrant director?], Vecko-Journalen, no. 41 (15 October) 1955, pp. 26-29, Bergman reveals that he got the idea for Sommarnattens leende from his Malmö staging of Lehar’s operetta The Merry Widow. He also states that the film could have been a tragedy but that he chose the comedy form as better suited for a costume film. In February 1973, a musical by Steven Sondheim titled A Little Night Music based on Bergman’s Sommarnattens leende opened in New York. Swedish premiere took place in Göteborg’s Stora Teatern on 11 January 1974. A Little Night Music was in turn made into a movie, directed by Harold Prince and starring, among others, Elizabeth Taylor.
Reception Reception of Sommarnattens leende was very favorable. Bergman supporter Nils Beyer considered it one of the best Swedish films ever. His review is important since it recognized Bergman as an auteur before the term became fashionable. Nevertheless, Sommarnattens leende elicited a rather intense negative press debate after the jury in FIB (Folket i Bild) gave the film several awards (Best direction, Best script, Best film, Best actor, and Best supporting actor). Hanserik Hjertén wrote an open letter to Ingmar Bergman in Expr., 3 February 1956, p. 4, charging him with pornography. Bergman was asked to respond, and did so with a limerick (same date): Det var en gång en sköka uti Mykene Skicklig och vacker, nota bene Som hade som sin gäst Stadens överstepräst Men allt är ju rent för de rene.
[There once was a broad in Mykene Clever and beautiful, nota bene Who had as her guest The City’s high priest But then, all is pure to the pure]
Hjertén persisted; in an article titled ‘Bergmanfallet eller sommarnattens falska leende’ [The Bergman Case or the False Smile of the Summer Night], Filmfront 4, no. 1 (1956), pp. 4-5, he accused Bergman of making egocentric and hysterial films. In the meantime Olof Lagercrantz, influential editor of Stockholm paper DN had jumped on the bandwagon with an editorial protest (‘Ett filmpris’, 10 March 1956, p. 4), in which he referred to Bergman’s film as ‘the bad fantasy by a young man with acne, the obscene dreams of an immature heart, a boundless contempt for artistic and human truth’ [en finnig ynglings dåliga fantasi, ett omoget hjärtas fräcka drömmar, ett gränslöst förakt för konstnärlig och mänsklig sanning]. To Lagercrantz, Bergman did not have ‘enough wit to fill a doll’s thimble’ [nog av ande att fylla en dockas fingerborg]. Anti-Bergman critic Viveca Heyman supported Hjertén (and Lagercrantz) in
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Arbetaren, 14 March 1956, p. 4. Lasse Bergström, member of the FIB jury, responded on FIB’s behalf in Arbetaren, 16 March 1956; this was followed with repartees by Heyman and L. Matthias, Arbetaren, 16 March 1956, p. 4, and again in same paper, 22 March 1956, p. 4. This in turn elicited responses from film critics Mauritz Edström and Gunnar Oldin, and finally Heyman again, same paper, 26 March 1956, p. 4. Comments were also made by Nils Beyer in MT, 11 March, p. 3; C.J. Björklund in Scen och Salong no. 4 (1956), p. 27; and by Thorsten Eklann in UNT 22 March 1956, p. 5 (see also Eklann’s positive comment, same paper, 16 January 1956, p. 7). In an editorial in Vecko-Journalen no. 17 (1956), p. 15, film critic Stig Ahlgren called Sommarnattens leende ‘A Swedish pilsner film in a champagne bottle’ [en svensk pilsnerfilm på champagnebutelj]. Swedish comedian, filmmaker, and vaudeville artist Povel Ramel made a parody of the dinner sequence at Mrs Armfeldt’s estate in his film Ratataa eller The Staffan Stolle Story (1956). However, Sommarnattens leende led to Ingmar Bergman’s international breakthrough as a maker of sophisticated film comedy. Isabel Quigly in The Spectator described Bergman’s film as ‘a series of dazzling stills, lit by a silvery Scandinavian light’. The film was awarded the Special Jury Prize for its ‘poetic humor’ at Cannes Film Festival in spring 1956. Released in the U.S. in late 1957, Smiles... was viewed as a risqué comedy, Swedish style. A review by J. O’Neill, Jr., in Washington Daily News (22 February 1958, p. 12) was used in its entirety as an advertisement for U.S. distributors. Sample quote: ‘Smiles of a Summer Night, a Swedish smorgasbord of sex, sin and psychiatry, is available – for the grown-ups please – at...’. The Legion of Decency labelled the film ‘immoral’ (class C). Contributing to the reaction was probably the fact that English subtitles in the British and American distribution copies of Smiles... were inaccurate and sparse. Harmless pieces of dialogue, such as a giggling exchange in a bedroom scene between Anne and Petra, were left untranslated, suggesting frivolities that supposedly had been silenced by the censor.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm/Göteborg press, 27 December 1955; BLM no. 1 (1956), pp. 83-84; FIB no. 3 (1956), p. 42; Perspektiv no. 6 (1956), p. 273; Teatern 22, no. 1 (1956): 13, 16; Vi no. 3 (1956), pp. 4-5; Vecko-Journalen no. 2 (1954), p. 4.
Foreign Reviews Arts 1956: 573; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 61 (July 1956), pp. 40-42; Cinéma 73, no. 181 (November 1973): 44-45; Critisch Film Bulletin 12, no. 4 (April 1959): 28-29; Films and Filming 3, no. 2 (November 1956): 26; Filmkritik no. 3 (1958), pp. 49-51; Filmforum, November 1958, p. 6; Image et son, no. 109 (February 1958), p. 10; Kael, Pauline. I Lost It at the Movies (Boston: Little, Brown & co., 1965), pp. 105-108; Kosmorama no. 20 (October 1956), p. 45; Monthly Film Bulletin November 1956, pp. 138-139; Motion Picture Herald, 2 January 1958, p. 698; New York Herald Tribune, 24 December 1957, p. 6; New York Times, same date, p. 11:3; New York Times Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3030;
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Chapter IV Filmography Positif, no. 18 (November 1956), pp. 26-28; Sight and Sound 26, no. 2 (Autumn 1956): 98; Spectator, 28 September 1956, p. 418; Time, 27 January 1958, pp. 90-91.
Longer Studies and Special Issues include the following Baron, James. ‘The Phaedra-Hippolytus Myth in Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night’. Scandinavian Studes 48, no. 2 (Spring 1976): 169-180; Brown, Anita. ‘Undermining the Gaze: Voyeurism in Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night’. Unpublished paper, Ohio State University Germanics Dept., Spring 1992; Grabowski, Simon. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 29, no. 2 (Winter) 1970: 203-207. (argues that Bergman’s use of still photographs of Anne Egerman can provide a key to the film’s stylization); Lefèvre, R. ‘Sourires d’une nuit d’été’. Image et son no. 233 (November) 1969: 179-91; Livingston, Paisley. Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art, 1982, (Ø 1384), pp. 110-142; Simon, John. Includes perceptive discussion of Smiles of a Summer Night in his book Ingmar Bergman Directs, 1972, (Ø 1218), pp. 108-143.
Fact Sheets L’Avant-scène du cinéma 454 (July 1996) is a special 102 pp. issue on Sommarnattens leende including French text of the film, sequence and dialogue outlines, a compilation of press clippings from original release of film in 1956 and from later retrospective showings in France (pp. 72-76). Issue also includes an article by David Alman, ‘Les jeux de l’humor’, pp. 1-6; De Filmkrant 207, January 2000, p. 6. Credits and brief critique of Glimlach van een zomernacht; Film a sogetto. Centro S. Fedele della Spettacolo, Milan (10 January 1965), 10 pp. An Italian fact sheet on Sorrisi di una notta, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography; Svensk Filmografi, 1950-1959, pp. 501-05; Télé-Ciné no. 62 (December 1956), F. 289 (10 pp) is a fact sheet in French, ed. by J. d’Yvoire;
See also Annotations on Film (Melbourne), Term 1 (1964), p. 5; Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 99-112; Cinema (Bucharest) 10, no. 2 (February 1972): 11; Le cinéma moderne (Lyon: Serdoc, 1964), pp. 146-50; Filmorientering (Norw. Film Inst., C. Jacob A Rawlings) no. 99 (March 1966); Films and Filming 8. no. 7 (April 1962): 38; Image et son 226 (March) 1969: 31-36; Kael, Pauline. In Movie Comedy, ed. S. Brown and E. Weiss (New York: Grossman, 1972), pp. 281-283; Mast, Gerald. In his The Comic Mind (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1973), pp. 313-316; Svensk Filmografi, 1950-1959, pp. 501-05; Variety, 16 May 1956, p. 6, 24 July 1957, p. 6.
Awards 1956
1962
Sommarnattens leende received FIB’s film trophy (FIB = Folket i Bild, Swedish cultural magazine) in March. For reaction in DN, see above commentary. Special Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival for ‘its poetic humor’. See Cahiers du cinéma, no. 60 (June 1956), pp. 13-14. Cinéma 62, no. 66 (May 1962): 108, chose Sommarnattens leende/Sourires d’une nuit d’été to represent year 1955 in an annual selection of best films.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record 224.
SISTA PARET UT, 1956 [Last couple out], B/W Director Screenplay
Alf Sjöberg Ingmar Bergman & Alf Sjöberg from a story by Bergman
Synopsis The film opens on a Saturday in May in a Stockholm senior high school. The last class is dismissed, and Bo Dalin, an 18-year-old student, walks home with his girlfriend Kerstin. But they cannot agree on how to spend the evening; Kerstin wants to go to a party that her friend Anita is giving, and Bo wants to attend the opera. Returning home, Bo eavesdrops on his parents who are having a violent argument and learns that his mother has a lover, Dr. Fårell. Bo takes his younger brother Sven with him to visit his grandmother, who lives in the same apartment complex as Dr. Fårell. He gets the keys to the apartment where his mother and her lover usually meet. Arriving there, he finds his mother waiting. He persuades her to return home with him, but in the evening she departs together with Dr. Fårell. Depressed, Bo goes to the opera, but is too unhappy to stay very long. He drifts over to Anita’s party where he meets Kerstin. The party is getting rowdy, and Kerstin and Bo decide to leave. Bo accompanies Kerstin home. He has no intention of staying but when Kerstin’s mother arrives suddenly, she misunderstands the situation and accuses Bo of seducing her daughter. The two argue, and Bo leaves deeply hurt. He goes back to Anita, a girl without a family. But scared of her rootlessness, Bo returns home. Contrary to his earlier decision, he goes back to school on Monday morning. His father provides some paternal support.
Credits Production company Director Screenplay Photography
Svensk Filmindustri Alf Sjöberg Ingmar Bergman, Alf Sjöberg from a story by Bergman Martin Bodin
Cast Bo Bo’s grandmother Kerstin Kerstin’s mother Anita Bo’s father Bo’s mother Dr. Fårell Teacher
Björn Bjelfvenstam Märta Arbin Bibi Andersson Aino Taube Harriet Andersson Olof Widgren Eva Dahlbeck Jarl Kulle Hugo Björne
Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 98 minutes 8 November 1956 12 November 1956, Fontänen, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm)
Commentary As in Hets from 1944, also directed by Sjöberg, this film has an unmistakable adolescent Bergman quality to it, with a young man torn between idealism and resentment, and depicting a parental crisis where the wife has a lover. The script dates back to Bergman’s earliest writing efforts; see (Ø 73 and 97) in Chapter II.
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Chapter IV Filmography 225.
DET SJUNDE INSEGLET, 1956 [The Seventh Seal], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman from his play Trämålning [Wood Painting], 1955
Synopsis The setting of Det sjunde inseglet is 14th-century Sweden, a country ravaged by the Black Plague. The Knight Antonius Block and his squire Jöns are returning home after ten years in the Crusades. The film opens with oratorio music and a shot of the grey sky, against which can be seen a lonely bird. A voice reads from the Book of Revelations, putting the title of the film in its biblical context. The Knight is seen kneeling on the shore. The Squire is asleep. Suddenly, the black-robed figure of Death appears. He has come to claim the Knight who asks for a respite by challenging Death to a game of chess. The Knight and the Squire ride past a covered wagon in which Jof the juggler, his wife Mia, their small son Mikael, and their companion Skat are all asleep. Jof is a visionary. In the early morning he sees the Virgin Mary walking in a rose garden. The Knight and the Squire arrive at a church. While Block goes to pray, Jöns, a non-believer, strikes up a conversation with a church painter, whose murals depict the dance of death and penitents flogging themselves. Unaware that Death has taken the confessor’s place, the Knight is tricked into revealing his chess game strategy. He also expresses his frustration in his search for a God that does not speak to him. Outside the church, a young girl is tied to the stocks. She is thought to be a witch and will later be burned at the stake. Next, the Knight and Jöns come to a farm where Jöns rescues a young woman from a former priest, Raval, now turned thief. The woman, who remains silent until the very end of the film, joins the Knight and the Squire for the rest of the journey. The next stop is outside a tavern where Jof, Mia, and Skat are performing. They are interrupted by a train of flagellants whose somber singing of Dies Irae ends the sequence. In the meantime Skat has taken off with Lisa, wife of a smith, Plog. After a palaver, Lisa returns to Plog, and Skat performs a mock suicide. Moments later, his life ends for real as Death saws down the tree in which Skat has taken refuge for the night. Having enterered the tavern, Jof is approached and tormented by Raval to the cheers of other tavern guests. Jöns appears amd marks Raval’s face with a knife. Jof escapes and returns to Mia, who has been befriended by the Knight on a sunny hillside. They are later joined by Jöns and the silent woman he rescued earlier. Mia offers them a bowl of milk and wild strawberries. The Knight vows to remember the moment, then leaves to resume his game of chess with Death. Later, the Knight and his companions, now including Jof, Mia, and their child as well as Plog and his wife, encounter Raval who is dying from the plague. They witness the burning of the witch, whom the Knight asks for objective proof of the devil’s existence. The Knight gives her a sedative to soothe her fear and pain. The Knight has one more encounter with Death at the chess board. Jof spots them and escapes with his family while the Knight overthrows the chess pieces to distract Death’s attention. Death announces that the Knight will be checkmated at their next meeting. Later that night, Antonius Block and his companions arrive at the Knight’s castle and are greeted by his wife, who prepares supper and reads to them from the Book of Revelations. A knock on the door announces Death. While the Knight prays, the others stand up to face ‘the stern master’. In the meantime, Jof and Mia have sensed ‘the Angel of Death’ sweeping by their wagon. At dawn, Jof sees the Knight and his companions in a silhouetted Dance of Death across the horizon. Film ends as Jof, Mia, and their child walk off towards a new day.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Credits Production company Production manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props (Studio manager) Sound Special sound effects Music Orchestration Choreography Costumes Make-up Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Ingmar Bergman Lennart Olsson Ingmar Bergman from his play Trämålning [Wood Painting], 1955 Gunnar Fischer P.A. Lundgren Carl-Henry Cagarp Aaby Wedin Evald Andersson Erik Nordgren Sixten Ehrling Else Fisher Manne Lindholm Nils Nittel (Carl M. Lundh, Inc.) Lennart Wallén Katarina (Katherina) Faragó
Cast Antonius Block, the Crusader Jöns, the Squire Death Jof Mia Jonas Skat Plog, the smith Plog’s wife, Lisa Tyan, the accused witch Karin, Knight’s wife Mute girl Raval Doomsday monk Church painter Monk outside church Merchant in tavern Tavern hostess Peasant in tavern Merchant in tavern Old man at tavern Soldiers involved in witch burning Cripple Mikael, Jof and Mia’s son Flagellants
Pregnant young woman
Max von Sydow Gunnar Björnstrand Bengt Ekerot Nils Poppe Bibi Andersson Erik Strandmark Åke Fridell Inga Gill Maud Hansson Inga Landgré Gunnel Lindblom Bertil Anderberg Anders Ek Gunnar Olsson Lars Lind Benkt-Åke Benktsson Gudrun Brost Tor Borong Harry Asklund Josef Norman Ulf Johanson, Sten Ardenstam, Gordon Löwenadler Karl Widh Tommy Karlsson Siv Aleros, Bengt Gillberg, Lars Granberg, Gunlög Hagberg, Gun Hammargren, Uno Larsson, Lennart Lilja, Monica Lidman, Helge Sjökvist, Georg Skarstedt, Ragnar Sörman, Lennart Tollén, Caya Wickström Mona Malm
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Chapter IV Filmography Dark-haired woman Old man watching procession Other men in crowd scenes
Catherine Berg Nils Whiten Tor Isedal, Gösta Prüzelius, Fritjof Tall
Filmed on location at Östanå, Viby, Skevik, Gustafsberg, and Skytteholm outside of Stockholm; at Hovs hallar in southwestern Sweden; and at Råsunda Film Studios, Stockholm, beginning 2 July 1956 and completed 24 August 1956. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 95 minutes 12 December 1956 16 February 1957, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 13 October 1958, Paris, NYC
Commentary Original film title was Riddaren och döden [The Knight and Death]. Bergman’s first mention of a project to make a film set in the Middle Ages is in an interview in AB, 26 July 1954, p. 8. On this occasion he also refers to his one-act play Trämålning, on which Det sjunde inseglet was to be based. An article in Expr., 3 February 1957, p. 15, compares the play and the film. Trämålning (Wood Painting) has been published both in Swedish and English (see Ø 90). It has also been produced on stage (see Ø 424, 425) and on the radio (Ø 283). In radio program ‘Tidsspegeln’, produced by Erik Goland and transmitted 26 February 1957, Bergman is interviewed about the film. Later Bergman writes about the shooting in Bilder/ Images. My Life in Film (1990), pp. 233-38, and talks about it in Bergman om Bergman/Bergman on Bergman (1971, pp. 121-22/114-15). A reportage from the shooting of the film appeared in ST, 5 July 1956, p. 4. Max von Sydow discusses his role as the Knight in E. Sörenson’s biography Loppcirkus. Max von Sydow berättar, pp. 90-94. The screenplay has never been published in Swedish but is included in Four Screenplays by Ingmar Bergman (Ø 110); see list of foreign translations in Chapter II (Ø 98). The script to Det sjunde inseglet was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 14-18, 1961, illustrated with photographs from the film. Bergman introduced the script with a short ‘message’ to the magazine’s readers. An excerpt from the script appeared in FIB no. 51 (1956): 20-21, 53. L’Avant scène du cinéma no. 410, March 1992, contains the manuscript in French. A 15-minute American film parody of The Seventh Seal (and Wild Strawberries) entitled Da Duwe [The dove] was made in 1972 by Sidney Davis, George Coe, and Anthony Lover (CoeDavis Ltd. Productions; Pyramid Distributors). Humorous references to the film appear in Woody Allen’s Love and Death (1980).
Reception Det sjunde inseglet opened in Stockholm with pomp and circumstance. All major reviews recognized the film as an ambitious undertaking, but reaction ranged from Robin Hood’s panegyrics in ST, 17 February 1957, p. 13, to Hanserik Hjertén’s advice in Arbetaren, 19 February, p. 4, that Ingmar Bergman should stop filming for a while. On the whole, Bergman the image maker was praised, and Bergman the scriptwriter lambasted. See Ivar Harrie, Expr., (2 March 1957, p. 4) and responses in GHT (1 March 1957, p. 7) by actor Keve Hjelm and author Bengt Anderberg; Bergman’s writing style was also critiqued by Harry Schein, BLM 26, no. 4 (April 1958): 350-353. Det sjunde inseglet elicited a media debate about Ingmar Bergman’s originality as an artist. John Landquist (AB, 25 February 1957, p. 3) charged Bergman with plagiarizing Strindberg’s
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Folkungasagan/The Saga of the Folkungs. Landquist aired his views again on Swedish radio in a discussion with filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman (26 February 1957; typescript in SR Archives, Stockholm). Bergman declined to comment. See also comment by Marianne Höök in SvD, 28 February 1957, p. 5. The Strindberg-Bergman connection was also discussed by L.-O. Franzén in Ghöteborgske spionen, no. 1 (1957), pp. 13-14, and by Paul Patera in Arbetaren, 19 March, pp. 4-5. Religious and philosophical implications of Det sjunde inseglet aroused little interest in Sweden. Influential reviewer Carl Björkman (DN, 17 February 1957, p. 20) declared that he found Bergman’s metaphysical worries monotonous. A. Svantesson in Svensk Kyrkotidning, no. 11 (1957), pp. 163-164, attacked the film for conveying ‘the emptiness ecstasy of the Fifties’ [femtiotalets tomhetsextas], a nihilistic state of angina temporis. A television production of Trämålning, planned to air on Easter Sunday 1963, was stopped by Henrik Dyfverman, head of TV Drama Department at SR/TV and was moved to a later date (22 April 1963). See AB, ‘Dödsdans och pest stötande’ [Dance of death and plague are offensive], 20 March 1963. In 1999, a poll in Swedish magazine Filmrutan (no. 4, 1999) asked Swedish film critics to list the best feature films of the century. None of Ingmar Bergman’s films scored any top place. Best among his works was Det sjunde inseglet as number 26 (after such films as Singing in the Rain, The Wild Bunch, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, Taxi Driver, Barry Lyndon). However, in yet another poll confined to listing the ten best Swedish filmmakers and films of the century, Bergman topped the list, but now Gycklarnas afton, Smultronstället, and Persona got more votes than Det sjunde inseglet. The Seventh Seal established Bergman as an international filmmaker and auteur of rank. The film was referred to as ‘Bergman’s Faust’ by Eric Rohmer (Arts, 23-29 April 1957, p. 4), who became one of Bergman’s most ardent admirers (see Ø 982, French Reception). The film was called ‘the first truly existential film in the history of the cinema’ by Andrew Sarris in Film Culture, no. 19 (April) 1959: 51-61. In the UK Films and Filming (April 1958, pp. 18-19) chose The Seventh Seal as ‘the film of the month’, and in same journal’s February 1963 issue (pp. 37-38) Peter Cowie termed The Seventh Seal one of ‘the great films of the century’, listing as its special qualities: historical authenticity, universal theme, and original imagery. Several monographs and longer articles have been published on the film (see below).
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 17 February 1957; FIB no. 21 (1957), p. 21; Teatern no. 2 (1957), p. 12; Vi no. 9 (1957), p. 4; Vecko-Journalen no. 9, pp. 40-41.
Foreign Reviews Arts, 23 April 1958; Bianco e nero, February–March 1961, pp. 121-127; Cahiers du cinéma no. 72 (July 1957) and no. 83 (May 1958), pp. 43-46; Cinéma 58 no. 28, pp. 115-16; Cinema Nuovo, no. 143 (January-February 1960), pp. 45-46; Daily Telegraph (London), 8 March 1958, p. 11; Film Ideal, no. 68 (1964), p. 26; Film Quarterly, no. 3 (Spring 1959), pp. 42-44; Films and Filming 5, no. 7 (April 1958), pp. 22-23; Films in Review 9, no. 9 (November 1958), pp. 515-517; Filmfacts no. 42 (19 November 1958), pp. 194-195; Filmkritik no. 2 (1962), pp. 70-74;
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Chapter IV Filmography Image et son no. 112 (May 1958), p. 16; Kosmorama no. 48 (February 1960), pp. 12-13; Monthly Film Bulletin, May 1958, pp. 59-60; New York Herald Tribune, 14 October, sec. 2, p. 5; New York Times, same date, p. 44:1; New York Times Film Reviews, 1913-1968, pp. 3088-3089; New Statesman, 8 March 1958, p. 303; Positif, no. 25-26, 1957; Saturday Review, 18 October 1958, p. 58; Sight and Sound 28, no. 4 (Spring 1958), pp. 199-200; La stampa (Turin), 10 October 1968. n.p.; Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), 16 April 1962, n.p. (Roos).
Longer Studies and Special Issues Anderson, John Drew. ‘Individualism, Communion, and Significance in The Seventh Seal’, MA thesis: Pacific Lutheran University, 1972. 54 typed pp.; Bragg, Melvyn. The Seventh Seal. BFI Film Classics, 1993, 72 pp. Monograph on the film. Reviews: Film Quarterly, no. 1 (Fall) 1994: 38-39; Positif, no. 408, 1994: 75-77; and Skrien, (August–September) 1994: 79; Cebollado, Pascual. Ingmar Bergman y El septimo sello. (Madrid: ABC del Cine, 1960). 104 p. Monograph on the film; Douchet, Jean. ‘Le septieme sceau: une analyse’. Videocassette issued by Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 1991. VHS; Ericsson, Arne. ‘Film är inte litteratur’ [Film is not literature], SDS, 8 March 1957, p. 4 Approach to The Seventh Seal as a musical piece of four symphonic movements and a coda; Gessner, Robert. ‘The Obligatory Scene’, in The Moving Image (New York: E.P. Dutton, pp. 20311); reprinted in Focus on The Seventh Seal (Ø 1220), pp. 127-132; Grandgeorge, Edmond. Le septième sceau, Ingmar Bergman. (Paris: Nathan, 1992). 127 p; Holland, Norman. ‘Iconography in The Seventh Seal’. Hudson Review 12, no. 2 (Summer 1959): 266-270; reprinted in part in Journal of Social Issues 20, no. 1 (January 1964): 71-96; and in Renaissance of the Film, ed. by Julius Bell. New York, 1970, pp. 239-243; Liggera, Joseph and Lanayre. ‘Going Roundabout: Similar Images of Pilgrimage in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and Bergman’s The Seventh Seal’. West Virginia University Philological Papers 35, 1989, pp. 21-27; Malmnäs, Eva Sundler. ‘Art as Inspiration’. In Ingmar Bergman and the Arts. Nordic Theatre Studies, Vol 11, 1998: 34-45. (Traces Dance of Death motif in The Seventh Seal to its medieval representations in mural art and engraving); Merjui, Darius. ‘The Shock of Revelation’. Sight and Sound 7, no. 6 (June) 1997: 69. (Iranian filmmaker writes about the impact of Bergman’s film on his own conception of cinema as art); Osterman, Bernt. ‘De stora frågornas sorti och Antonious Block’ [Exit the big questions and AB]. Finsk Tidskrift, 3/1989: 177-86. (Analysis of film using Wittgenstein’s philosophy); Pressler, Pressler. ‘The Ideal Fused in the Fact: Bergman and The Seventh Seal’. Literature/Film Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1985), pp. 95-101; Slayton, Ralph E. ‘Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal’. Diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1972, 220 pp. (Analyzes film and play/script as allegory for stage and screen). Univ. Microfilm International 1980, no. 7331294; Sonnenschein, Richard. ‘The Problem of Evil in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal’. West Virginia Philological Papers 27, 1981, pp. 137-143;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Steene, Birgitta. ‘The Milk and Strawberry Sequence in The Seventh Seal’. Film Heritage 8, no. 4 (Summer 1973); pp. 10-18; —. ‘Det sjunde inseglet: Filmen som ångestens och nådens metafor [The Seventh Seal: Film as metaphor of angst and grace]. Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959, pp. 592-595; —. ‘Från subjektiv vision till tidsdokument och arketyp: Ingmar Bergmans Det sjunde inseglet i mentalitetshistorisk belysning’ [From Subjective Vision to Time Document and Archetype: Bergman’s The Seventh Seal in the Light of Mentality History’. In Nordisk litteratur och mentalitet, ed. by Malan Marnersdottir and Jens Cramer. Annales Societatis Scientiarum Færoensis XXV, Torshavn: 2000, pp. 493-99.
Special Issues and Study Guides on The Seventh Seal L’Avant-Scène du Cinéma, no. 410 (March 1992), pp. 1-94. Special issue on Le septième sceau. With credits, filmography and bibliography; Burvenich, J. ‘Het zevende zegel’. Media C 50, n.d., pp. 1-13. Fact sheet analysis of sequences dealing with natural sounds/music, characters, excerpted dialogue; Film a sogetto, Centro Fedelle Spettacolo, Milan (25 March 1958), 5 pp. An Italian fact sheet on Il settimo sigillo, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography; Films and Filming 9, no. 4 (January 1963): 25-29. Special section on The Seventh Seal; Folkuniversitets Filmbyrå, Uppsala, 1969. Study guide (in Swedish) with teacher and student manuals. 11 & 15 pp respectively; Image et son no. 331bis (numéro hors series), 1978, pp. 229-34. Contains study material and excerpts from French reviews of the film; Koskinen, Maaret. ‘Det sjunde inseglet: en filmhandledning’. Zoom 1/1998, pp. 37-9. Brief study guide (in Swedish) for high school students; Lumière du cinéma, November 1977 and L’Avant scène du cinéma, March 1992 are special issues on Le septième sceau; Steene, Birgitta, ed. Focus on the Seventh Seal, 1972, ( Ø 1220). Extensive source book on the film in English; Télé-Ciné, no. 77 (August-September) 1958, fiche 333, 13 pp. A special issue on the film, including biographical note, synopsis of script, and an analysis of its dramatic structure and religious implications. Many religious discussions of Bergman’s work in the cinema include analyses of The Seventh Seal. See special group item, Ø 997. Film Classics (Rockleigh, N.J.) brought out a video cassette of The Seventh Seal in its Great Directors Series. 1992, 1995. Paired with Night is My Future (Musik i mörker).
See also Filmnyheter 11, no. 17 (1956): 4-6, and no. 18 (1956): 1-3; Sight and Sound 26, no. 4 (Spring 1957): 173; Cinéma 57 no. 18 (May 1957), pp. 30-33; Positif no. 25-26 (1957), pp. 24-25; Variety, 29 May 1957, p. 22, and 22 October 1958, p. 6; Image et son, no. 119 (February 1959), ii–vii; Etudes cinématographiques, no. 10-11, Autumn 1961, pp. 207-216; Cine cubano 4, no. 22 (1964), pp. 55-60; T. Wiseman, Cinema (London: Cassel, 1964), pp. 146-147; Filmorientering (NFI), no. 107 (November 1966); Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 36-39;
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Chapter IV Filmography B. Crowther, The Great Films: Fifty Golden Years of Motion Pictures (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967), pp. 218-222; Röster i Radio-TV no. 13 (1981), pp. 88-89; J.C. Stubbs, Journal of Aesthetic Education 9, no. 2 (1975): 62-76 (script excerpt and study questions); E. Törnqvist. Filmdiktaren Ingmar Bergman, 1995, pp. 22-42; Robin Wood, Ingmar Bergman, 1969, pp. 82-95; Bergman on Bergman, (Ø 788), pp. 112-119; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959, (Ø 1314), pp. 589-592.
Awards 1957
226.
Cannes Film Festival; Jury’s Special Prize (shared with Andrzej Wajda’s Kanal). For more prizes, see film title in varia, segment C.
SMULTRONSTÄLLET, 1957 [Wild Strawberries], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
The Swedish title is difficult to convey in English. Literal translation would point to a spot where smultron or wild strawberries grow. Since these berries are rare in Sweden, places where they grow are often kept a secret in the family. But the word smultronstället also carries symbolic meaning and refers to a person’s ‘jewel of place’, a favorite or special retreat. Bergman’s beloved Fårö could be his ‘smultronställe’ in life. A ‘smultronställe’ is often a place associated with a sense of roots and self-identity. Bergman’s title carries this meaning for Isak Borg, the film’s main character.
Synopsis Set in present-day Sweden, Smultronstället depicts one day in the life of a medical professor in his seventies (Isak Borg), who is about to receive a jubilee degree at the University of Lund for his long service to medical science. A set of daydream reminiscences and nightmare sequences interrupt the account. The first of these occurs early, after Borg has introduced himself as an old pedantic widower. Finding himself wandering alone in a surreal landscape, Borg encounters a hearse. A coffin slides off, its lid opens and a corpse bearing his likeness tries to pull him in. Driving to Lund with Marianne, his daughter-in-law, Borg stops at a big country house where he and his large family used to spend their summers when he was a child. In a reverie, Isak, still an old man, witnesses a breakfast gathering from his youth. He sees his sweatheart Sara picking wild strawberries while being courted by Isak’s brother, Sigfrid. A young girl wakes him up. Her name is also Sara, and she is the look-alike of Isak’s sweetheart. Sara is hitchhiking with two boyfriends, Anders and Victor. All three join Isak and Marianne in the drive south. Stopping for gas, Isak meets the Åkerman couple whom he knows from the time he was a country doctor in the area. They praise him for the work he did, and Isak wonders to himself if he should not have stayed there. At an outdoor luncheon Isak recites a poem by 19th-century Swedish poet and bishop Johan Wallin, a recitation Marianne helps him to finish. Anders and Victor have an argument about God. Afterwards Borg and Marianne leave to visit his old mother who is 95. The visit is a chilling experience, especially for Marianne, who believes she sees the same emotional atrophy in old Mrs. Borg as in her own husband Evald, who does not want to have children. Back on the road Isak’s car narrowly escapes colliding with a VW, driven by an engineer Alman and his wife Berit, an actress. The two join the group for a short while but carry on an argument until Marianne asks them to leave the car.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Marianne has taken over the driving, and Isak falls asleep. In a nightmare he is examined by Mr. Alman. He fails the test and is found ‘guilty of guilt’. Alman brings him to witness how his wife, dead since many years, is seduced by her lover. Awake again, Isak finds himself alone with Marianne in the car, now parked by the roadside. She tells him of her marital problems: she is pregnant and does not want to abort the child. In a flashback we witness her discussion with Evald on this matter. This sequence is followed by a return to the present, with Sara and her boyfriends presenting a bouquet of wild flowers to Isak. Arriving in Lund, Isak and his travel companions are greeted by Agda, Isak’s housekeeper, who has flown there, as was also the original plan for Isak. Evald and Marianne are reconciled. The academic ceremony at which Isak Borg becomes a jubilee doctor is stately and solemn. But Isak’s thoughts wander; he decides to write down the strange events of the day. At night, Isak is serenaded by Sara and her friends before they continue to Italy. As he is about to fall asleep, he has a comforting vision: young Sara, his sweetheart of long ago, takes him by the hand and leads him to a lake where he sees his parents on an outing in an idyllic countryside. They wave at him. The film ends as Isak Borg falls asleep.
Credits Production Company Production manager Location manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Music Arrangement Music
Costumes Make-up Mixing Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Sven Sjönell Ingmar Bergman Gösta Ekman Ingmar Bergman Gunnar Fischer Gittan Gustafsson K.A. Bergman Aaby Wedin Eric Nordgren Johann Sebastian Bach, ‘Fugue in Ess Minor’ ‘Royal Södermanland Regiment March’ (Carl-Axel Lundwall) ‘Marcia Carolus Rex’ (W. Harteveld) ‘Parademarsch der 18:er Husaren’ (Alwin Müller) ‘Under rönn och syren’ (Z. Topelius/Herman Palm) Millie Ström Nils Nittel, Carl M. Lund, Inc. Sven Rudestedt Oscar Rosander Katherina Faragó
Cast Isak Borg Sara Marianne Evald Borg Anders Viktor Isak’s mother Agda, Isak’s housekeeper Sten Alman
Victor Sjöström Bibi Andersson Ingrid Thulin Gunnar Björnstrand Folke Sundquist Björn Bjelfvenstam Naima Wifstrand Jullan Kindahl Gunnar Sjöberg
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Chapter IV Filmography Berit, his wife Karin, Isak’s wife Her lover Henrik Åkerman, gas station owner Eva, his wife Aunt Olga in breakfast sequence Uncle Aron Sigfrid Sigbritt Charlotta Angelica Anna Kristina and Birgitta, the twins Hagbart Benjamin Elisabet, Isak’s mother’s nurse Chancellor, University of Lund Isak’s father Bishop Jakob Hovelius Professor Carl-Adam Tiger
Gunnel Broström Gertrud Fridh Åke Fridell Max von Sydow Anne-Marie Wiman Sif Ruud Yngve Nordwall Per Sjöstrand Gio Petré Gunnel Lindblom Maud Hansson Eva Norée Lena Bergman, Monica Ehrling Per Skogsberg Göran Lundquist Vendela Rudbäck Professor Helge Wulff Ulf Johanson Gunnar Olsson [cut] Josef Norman [cut]
Filmed on location at Vida Vättern and the Gyllene Uttern Inn (at Lake Vättern), at the university town of Lund, and at Dalarö and Ägnö in Stockholm; indoor shooting at Råsunda Film Studios, Stockholm, beginning 2 July 1957 and completed 27 August 1957. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 90 minutes 6 December 1957 26 December 1957, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 22 June 1959, Beekman Theater NYC
Commentary In Bilder/Images (1990), pp. 11-24, Bergman outlines the personal background of Smultronstället. In Bergman om Bergman, pp. 159-160 (Eng. ed. pp. 131-33) he relates the genesis of Smultronstället to an early morning visit to his grandmother’s living quarters in Uppsala many years after she died. (See Chapter I.) In Bilder he claims the story was made up. The screenplay was serialized in Swedish in FIB 25, no. 7 through no. 16, 1958, and also appeared as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 16-20/1962, illustrated with photographs from the film. Its first publication as a script was in Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (see Ø 110). It has never been published in book form in Swedish. For articles during the shooting of the film, see DN 5 July 1957, p. 12; ST, 1 August, p. 9; SvD, 16 July, p. 14; KvP, 16 August, pp. 10-11; Filmnyheter 12, no. 18-20 (1957): 16-19. At the release of the film, Svensk Filmindustri (SF) published a program in Swedish, English, and German, 14 pp., available in SFI library. It contains a Bergman interview with himself titled ‘Dialog’, a presentation of Bergman, Sjöström, and Gunnar Fischer, and a plot synopsis. For an assessment of the Sjöström-Bergman relation, see Bergman om Bergman, pp. 144-45/ Bergman on Bergman, pp. 131-133 (Ø 788) and Bilder (Ø 198); Ingrid Thulin in Cinéma 60, no. 45 (April 1960), pp. 38-39; and Bengt Forslund in Filmrutan 25, no. 3 (Autumn) 1982: 2-7. In an article in Sight and Sound (Spring 1960), Bergman honors Sjöström. He also comments on his
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record talent in Gösta Werner’s film Victor Sjöström (SFI, 1981). L’Avant-scène du cinéma, no. 331-332 (1984), 98 pp., is a special Sjöström issue, with a discussion that includes his role as Isak Borg. At a revival of the film in 1981, Expr. (7 December 1981, pp. 24-25) and again in 1988 (16 July 1988, pp. 16-17) carried interviews with actors Bibi Andersson and Gunnar Björnstrand reminiscing about the shooting of Smultronstället. See also comments by assistant director Gösta Ekman in Interviews, 1993 (Ø 927) and a presentation in Röster i Radio-TV, no. 50, 1981, p. 62 ff.
Reception Smultronstället received very fine reviews in Sweden. Critics praised the script, acting, and photography, and saw the film as the meeting of two generations in Swedish filmmaking. Earliest foreign reception of film focussed on Victor Sjöström’s performance. See for instance New Yorker, 25 July 1959, p. 44, and Films and Filming 5, no. 3 (December 1958): 24. A number of American reviews expressed puzzlement at the story and found the film mystifying. See Films in Review 10, no. 4 (April 1959): 231-232, and NYT, 23 June 1959, p. 37:1. In retrospect, Smultronstället has elicited a great many longer articles and has been regarded, beyond doubt, as one of Bergman’s major films. The analyses have concerned both the narrative structure and the psychological content of the film.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 27 December 1957; Beklädnadsfolket no. 3, 1958, p. 22, 31; FIB no. 4 (1958), p. 50; Ord och Bild. ‘Ny film’, no. 2, 1958: 150; Teatern, no. 1, 1958, pp. 14-15; Vi, no. 3 (1958), p. 50; Vecko-Journalen no. 2 (1958), p. 36.
Foreign Reviews Arts, 22 April 1959, n.p.; Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 95 (May 1959); Cinéma 58, no. 27 (May) 1958: 79-83; Film News 31 (February-March 1974): 23; Films and Filming 5, no. 3 (December) 1958: 24; Filmfacts 2, no. 28 (12 August 1959): 157-159; Filmkritik no. 7 (1961), pp. 355-359; Filmkritik Jahrbuch 3 (1962): 30-32; Monthly Film Bulletin, December 1958, pp. 151-152; New York Herald Tribune, 23 June 1959, p. 15; New York Times, same date, p. 37:1; New York Times Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3133; Positif no. 31 (November) 1959): 59-60; Reporter, 9 July, pp. 37-38; Sight and Sound 28, no. 3 (Winter 1958/59): 35; Village Voice, 1 July 1959, pp. 6, 11; Télé-Ciné no. 82 (April-May) 1959: 9.
Monographs Diane Borden and L. Letter, Wild Strawberries: A Critical Commentary (New York: Syllabus Press, 1975) (a basic close reading of the film); Pierre and Kersti French. Wild Strawberries. London: BFI, 1975. 78 pp. (the most concise monograph study of the film);
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Chapter IV Filmography Margareta Wirmark, Smultronstället och Dödens ekipage (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1998).
Articles Albano, L. ‘Il visible e il non visible’. Filmcritica (June-July) 1986: 272-282; Andersson, Lars Gustaf. ‘Ingmar Bergmans Smultronstället och Homo Viator motivet’ [Bergman’s Wild Strawberries and the Homo viator motif]. Filmhäftet no. 63 (1988), pp. 26- 39; Archer, Eugene. ‘Rack of Life’. Film Quarterly 13, no. 1 (Fall 1959), pp. 44-47; (notes the Proustian flashback structure of the film); Béranger, Jean. Cinéma 58, no. 27 (May 1958), pp. 79-83 (on Smultronstället and the journey motif); Blake, Richard A, SJ. ‘Salvation without God’. Encounter 28, no. 4 (Autumn 1967): 313-26 (discusses Lutheran concept of salvation in Wild Strawberries); Bolin, Asta. ‘Bakvänd predikan’ [Sermon in reverse]. Vår lösen, no. 2, 1958, pp 69-71; Denitto, Dennis. ‘Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries: A Jungian Analysis’. In CUNY English Forum, ed. by Saul Brody and Harold Schechter. Vol. 1, 1985, pp. 45-70; Eberwein, R. ‘The Filmic Dream and Point of View’. Literature/Film Quarterly 8, no. 3, 1980: 197203; Erikson Erik H., ‘A Life History. Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries’. In Vital Involvement in Old Age by Erik Erikson et al. New York: Norton, 1986, pp. 239-292. Reprinted from Dædalus 105:2 (Spring) 1976: 1-28 see item Ø 1281; Greenberg, Harvey. ‘The Rags of Time’. American Imago 27, no. 1 (Spring) 1970: 66-82. Reprinted in Kaminsky (Ø 1266), pp. 179-194. With a response by Seldon Bach, pp. 194-200. (A close psychoanalytical reading of Wild Strawberries); Holland, Norman. ‘A Brace of Bergman’s’. Hudson Review 12, no. 4 (Winter 1959/60): 570-577 (on Wild Strawberries and parenthood); Hoveyda, F. in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 95 (May 1959), pp. 40-47. (Focus on dream sequences); Koskinen, Maaret. ‘En odyssé i minnets landskap’ [An odyssey in the landscape of memory]. DN, 18 August 1990, p. B2; (On Smultronstället as a road movie; cf. Béranger and Andersson above); —. ‘Minnets spelplatser. Ingmar Bergman och det självbiografiska vittnet’ [Locations of memory. Bergman and the autobiographical witness]. Aura IV, no. 4, 1998: 15-33; Malmberg, Carl-Johan. ‘Åldrad och återfödd’ [Old and reborn]. Chaplin 234, 1991, p. 15; McCann, Eleanor. ‘The Rhetoric of Wild Strawberries’. Sight and Sound 30, no. 34 (Winter 196061): 44-46; (charging Bergman with using a set of clichéd oxymora in Wild Strawberries); Rhodin, Mats. ‘Väl börjat, hälften vunnet: Tankar kring prologen i Smultronstället’ [Well begun, half won: Thoughts about the prologue in Wild Strawberries]. Aura IV, no. 4, 1998, pp. 4-14; Scheynius, I. ‘I det undermedvetnas labyrint’. [In the labyrinth of the subconcious]. Filmrutan XXVIII, no. 4, 1985: 6-8. (on Isak Borg’s psychological quest; cf. Archer above); Solomon, S. in The Film Idea (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972), pp. 344-347; (discussion of the dialogue and visual context of Borg’s and Mariannne’s first conversation in the car); Steene, Birgitta. ‘Archetypal Patterns in Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman’. Scandinavian Studies 37, no. 1 (February) 1965: 58-76; Törnqvist, Egil. ‘Long day’s journey into night: Bergman’s TV version of Oväder compared to Smultronstället’. In Kela Kvam, ed. Strindberg’s Post-Inferno Plays. Lectures given at the 11th International Strindberg Conference (Copenhagen: Munksgaard/Rosinante, 1994), pp. 186195. Törnqvist discusses the same subject in his book Between Stage and Screen, 1995, pp 128136; Tulloch, J. ‘Images of Dying’. Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 2 (1978): 33-61;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Winston, D. in his The Screenplay as Literature (London: The Tantivy Press, 1973), pp. 96-115.
Special Issues and Fact Sheets L’Avant-scène du cinéma no. 331-332 is a special issue on Smultronstället; Film a sogetto. Centro Fedelle dello Spettacolo, Milan (10 July 1962), 14 pp., is an Italian fact sheet on Smultronstället, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography; Image et son, no. 314 bis, 1979, is a fiche on Les fraises sauvages; Kastalia (Dutch). ‘Smultronstället’. (Amsterdam: Kastalia, 2001). 50 pp. Presentation in connection with film festival: Schrijvers Kiezen Film; Télé-Ciné published a fiche on Les fraises sauvages: no. 85 (October 1959), F. 356 (12 pp).
See also Filmnyheter 12, no. 18-20 (1957): 1-3; Films and Filming 4, no. 9 (June 1958): 31-32; Cinema Nuovo, no. 144 (March–April 1960), pp. 169-178 (excerpted dialogue and commentary) and no. 151 (MayJune 1960), pp. 210-224; P. Tyler, Classics of the Foreign Film (New York: Citadel Press, 1962), pp. 232-235; Kauffmann, A World of Film (Ø 1011), pp. 270-273; Cairo Cineclub Bulletin, 23 March 1967, n.p.; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 42-45; Kosmorama 24, no. 137 (Spring) 1978: 58-59; Filmrutan, 13, no. 1 (January) 1970: 37-40 (about music in the film); Filmorientering (NFI) no. 100 (March 1966); Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959, pp. 654-657. See also Peter Cowie, Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1982, pp. 156-166; J. Donohoe (Ø 1321); F. Gado, The Passion of Ingmar Bergman, 1986, pp. 211-227; Lundell and Mulac (Ø 1374); E. Törnqvist, Filmdiktaren Ingmar Bergman, 1993, pp. 43-61; E. Murray includes Wild Strawberries in his selection of Ten Film Classics (New York: Frederick Ungar, pp. 102-120; James Limbacher brought out a video recording based on reviews of Wild Strawberries; see Journal of Popular Film and Television, XX, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 86.
Awards Smultronstället remains to date Ingmar Bergman’s most decorated film. It was nominated for an Oscar in category ‘Best Story or Screenplay written directly for the screen’. (Prize went to Pillow Talk). See list in Varia, C.
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NÄRA LIVET, 1958 [Brink of Life/Close to life], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman and Ulla Isaksson, based on her short story ‘Det vänliga, det värdiga’ [Kindness, dignity] in her 1954 book Dödens faster [The aunt of death].
Nära livet takes place in the maternity ward of a modern Swedish hospital, where three women share the same room. Cecilia Ellius is a professional woman who suffers a miscarriage in the third month of her pregnancy; Stina Andersson is a 25-year-old wife of a workman, whose baby is overdue; and Hjördis Pettersson is a 19-year-old pregnant unmarried girl who wants to have an abortion.
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Chapter IV Filmography The attitudes of the three prospective fathers are reflected in the women’s different feelings about childbirth. Anders Ellius sees little point in bringing children into the world and finds Cecilia’s fear of losing the child hysterical; she blames herself for her miscarriage. Stina’s husband is all excited about the baby, and Stina is happy and impatient about the arrival of the child. Hjördis’ boyfriend never comes to visit her, and she does not want to bear his child. The film opens with Cecilia’s arrival in the hospital. She is left alone in the examination room, where she miscarries. For the rest of the film she is in bed. Hjördis wanders listlessly in the hospital corridors. She meets with a social worker who tries to persuade her not to have an abortion. After a long wait Stina is ready to give birth. Her delivery is long and painful. The midwife calls for the doctor, but his intervention is fruitless: the baby is stillborn. Back in the ward, Hjördis tries to befriend Stina but receives a slap in the face. Stina is depressed and embittered. When the doctors make their round, she asks for an explanation for the stillbirth but receives no answer. Medical expertise finds the tragedy a mystery. Hjördis is persuaded to call her mother who invites her home to have the child. She accepts and decides against having an abortion. Cecilia in the meantime has become fond of both Stina and Hjördis, and no longer cowers in self-accusation before her husband.
Credits Production company Production manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Props (Studio manager) Sound Make-up Editor Continuity Medical adviser
Nordisk Tonefilm Gösta Hammarbäck Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman and Ulla Isaksson Max Wilén Bibi Lindström Gunnar Lundin Lennart Svensson Nils Nittel Carl-Olov Skeppstedt Ingrid Wallin Dr. Lars Engström
Cast Cecilia Ellius Stina Andersson Hjördis Pettersson Anders, Cecilia’s husband Greta Ellius Harry, Stina’s husband Sister Britta Dr. Nordlander Gran, social worker Sister Mari Dr. Larsson Dr. Thylenius Night nurse Hjördis’s friend Maud, assistant nurse A nurse A doctor Woman with newborn baby
Ingrid Thulin Eva Dahlbeck Bibi Andersson Erland Josephson Inga Landgré Max von Sydow Barbro Hiort af Ornäs Gunnar Sjöberg Anne-Marie Gyllenspetz Sissi Kaiser Margaretha Krook Lars Lind Gun Jönsson Monica Ekberg Maud Elfsiö Kristina Adolphson Gunnar Nielsen Inga Gill
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Father with injured child
Bengt Blomgren
Filmed on location at South Hospital, Stockholm, and at Nordisk Tonefilm Studios, Stockholm, in 1957. Exact dates not available. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Nordisk Tonefilm Ajay Film Co./Janus Films, Inc. 84 minutes 19 March 1958 31 March 1958, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 8 November 1959, Little Carnegie, NYC
Commentary The script was published by Ulla Isaksson in FIB (Folket i Bild), beginning in no. 19 (2 May 1958), pp. 10-11, 48, and continuing through no. 25. The script was also serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 37-41/1961, illustrated with photographs from the film. Vi, no. 12 (1958), pp. 20-21, 44, contains an interview with Bergman and Ulla Isaksson on their collaboration. Bergman added the character of Hjördis Pettersson (young girl who wants an abortion) to Isaksson’s original story. Bergman researched the film in the Söder (South) Hospital in Stockholm and also consulted a medical adviser. He writes about the shooting of the film in Bilder/Images. My Life in Film, 1990, pp. 311-314.
Reception All Stockholm critics praised the film, some in superlative language. Many felt that Bergman’s collaboration with novelist Ulla Isaksson meant an improvement: ‘Bergman’s pretentious language has been replaced by a poet’s’ [Bergmans pretentiösa sprsåk har ersatts av en diktares], Arbetaren, no. 14 (5-11 April 1958), p. 9. Also approving was the usually critical Bergman reviewer Viveka Heyman in Beklädnadsfolket no. 7 (1958), p. 18. Many welcomed Nära livet’s realistic style and subject matter. A number of brief press interviews were made with doctors, social workers and nurses, who were asked to comment on the film. See Arbetet, 17 April 1958, p. 7. See also Perspektiv, no. 5 (May 1958): 224 and Films in Review 10, no. 10 (December 1959): 624-25. After a showing on Swedish TV, Nils Petter Sundgren argued in Röster i Radio/TV, no. 12 (1968), pp. 10-11, 48, that Nära livet shares its ascetic style with Bergman’s later films but that the realistic setting links it with his earliest production. Foreign reception of Nära livet was respectful. Most critics treated it as a semi-documentary about childbirth or as an auteur movie (especially in France). See E. Rohmer, Arts, 11 March 1959, p. 8, and Image et son, no. 189, 1959, pp. 101-105. A curiously sexist assessment appeared in Sight and Sound 30, no. 4 (Spring 1961): 90-91, by John Russell Taylor, never much of an Ingmar Bergman supporter: ‘Close to Life is a superior woman’s picture, i.e., a film calling for some intelligence but not too much.’
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 1 April 1958; FIB no. 17 (1958), p. 28; Vi no. 15 (1958), p. 7.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma, no. 85 (July 1958), pp. 13-14, and no. 94. (April 1959), pp. 48-51; Cinéma 58 no. 28 (June 1958), pp. 10-12 and no. 29 (1958), pp. 33-35; Cinéma 59, no. 59 (May 1959), pp. 100-2; Cinema Nuovo, no. 144 (March-April 1960), p. 155;
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Chapter IV Filmography Critisch Film Bulletin, April 1959, pp. 255-56; Film Quarterly 13, no. 3 (Spring 1960): 49-50; Films and Filming 7, no. 7 (April 1961): 25; Filmfacts, 9 December 1959, pp. 271-72; Image et son no. 122-123 (May-June) 1959: 32; Monthly Film Bulletin, April 1961, p. 45; Newsweek, 23 November 1959, p. 116; New York Herald Tribune, 9 November 1959, p. 13; New York Times, same date, p. 36: 2; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3155; New Yorker, 21 November 1959, pp. 172-73; Positif, no. 30 (July 1959); Télé-Ciné, no. 78 (October 1958).
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 18-19; Filmnyheter, no. 7 (14 April) 1958, pp. 1-3; FIB, 4 April 1958, pp. 10-11, 60; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 84 (June 1958), pp. 26-27; Films and Filming (July 1958), p. 11; Variety, 21 May 1958, p. 16; Film Journal, no. 22 (October 1963). pp. 14-18; Image et son no. 189 (December) 1965: 101-105; Motion, no. 1 (Summer 1961), pp. 18-20; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314), pp. 683-686; R. Wood. Ingmar Bergman, 1969, pp. 124-133;
Awards 1958: 1958:
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Best Director and Best Actress (jointly to Ingrid Thulin, Eva Dahlbeck, Bibi Andersson and Barbro Hjort af Ornäs) Cannes Film Festival. Venice: Film Critics Award (out of competition).
ANSIKTET, 1958 [The Magician/The Face], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
In view of the original film title, ‘The Face’, and Bergman’s great emphasis on face vs. mask, nakedness vs. camouflage, the American title ‘The Magician’ might seem unfortunate in its suggestion of hocus pocus. However, when juxtaposing this title and Bergman’s discussion of himself as an illusionist using a modern variation of the old magic lantern, ‘The Magician’ becomes an appropriate name for the film, referring not only to the main character’s deceptive tricks, but also to the magic potential of his art.
Synopsis Ansiktet is set in Sweden in July 1846. Albert Emanuel Vogler arrives with his ‘health theatre’ at the middle-class home of Consul Egerman. With him are his disciple Aman-Manda, his manager Tubal, an herb-collecting old woman called Granny, the coachman Simson, and the actor Spegel, whom the troupe has found en route in a state of delirium tremens. Spegel has collapsed and is presumed dead.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record At the Egerman house, Vogler, who is said to be mute, is examined by Dr. Vergerus, the town’s medical counsel. Vergerus dismisses Vogler’s muteness as a hoax. Humiliated, Vogler joins the rest of the troupe in the kitchen, where Tubal and Granny sell love potions to Sofia Garp, the cook, and to Sara and Sanna, two maids. Later Sanna, frightened by the troupe, is consoled by Granny, who sings her an old ballad. Sofia is attracted to Tubal, and Sara flirts with Simson. Suddenly the ‘dead’ Spegel comes sweeping into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of liquor. In Vogler’s bedroom, Aman-Manda, now unmasked as Mrs. Vogler, is visited by Dr. Vergerus. Vogler appears in the room and becomes enraged at seeing Vergerus there. When alone with Aman-Manda, Vogler removes his wig and false beard, and confesses to his wife that he fears the public whose scrutinizing eyes make him feel powerless. The next day a performance takes place in the Egerman living room. It consists of two numbers: Mrs. Starbäck, wife of the town’s chief of police, is put in a trance and reveals her husband’s gauche manners; and Egerman’s coachman, Antonsson, is tied with the invisible chain. Powerless and fettered, Antonsson tries to strangle Vogler and apparentely succeeds. Antonsson dashes out and is later found dead, having hanged himself. Dr. Vergerus decides to perform an autopsy on Vogler, who – having feigned death – has substituted the body of Spegel, now really dead, for his own. The autopsy takes place in the attic where Vogler proceeds to play a number of frightening tricks on Vergerus until the medical doctor screams in fright and stumbles down the stairs. Later, as he meets the unmasked Vogler in the hallway, he denies having been affected by the ‘seance’ in the attic and continues to ridicule the troupe. But the tables are turned once more as Vogler and his companions are suddenly called to the Royal Palace. Granny and Tubal decide to stay behind, but young Sara joins the troupe. The film ends as Vogler’s Health Theatre departs in triumph to gallant music suggesting royal pomp and circumstance.
Credits Production company Production manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Studio manager Props Sound Music Orchestration Costumes Make-up Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Ingmar Bergman Gösta Ekman Ingmar Bergman Gunnar Fischer P.A. Lundgren Carl Henry Cagarp K.A. Bergman Aaby Wedin Erik Nordgren Eskil Eckert-Lundin Manne Lindholm, Greta Johansson Carl M. Lundh, Inc. Oscar Rosander Katherina Faragó
Cast Albert Emanuel Vogler Aman/Manda, his wife and assistant Tubal Granny Dr. Anders Vergerus
Max von Sydow Ingrid Thulin Åke Fridell Naima Wifstrand Gunnar Björnstrand
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Chapter IV Filmography Spegel Sara Sanna Consul Abraham Egerman Mrs. Ottilia Egerman Police Chief Frans Starbäck Mrs. Henrietta Starbäck Simson Antonsson Rustan Sofia Garp Customs officials
Bengt Ekerot Bibi Andersson Birgitta Pettersson Erland Josephson Gertrud Fridh Toivo Pawlo Ulla Sjöblom Lars Ekborg Oscar Ljung Axel Düberg Sif Ruud Frithiof Bjärne, Arne Mårtensson, Tor Borong, Harry Schein
Filmed at Råsunda Film Studios, Stockholm, beginning 30 June 1958 and completed 27 August 1958. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 100 minutes 13 December 1958 26 December 1958, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 27 August 1959, Fifth Ave. Theater, NYC
Commentary On the frontpage of Bergman’s shooting Script II to Ansiktet there is a crossed-over quote from the ‘Sound and Fury’ monologue in Act V in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It is the same passage that Bergman refers to in the original title of his TV film Larmar och gör sig till (In the Presence of a Clown). Filmnyheter 13, nos. 16-18 (1958), published a series of interviews with the actors in Ansiktet. See also interview with Bergman during making of film in L.-O. Löthwall: ‘Ett nytt ansikte’ [A new face]. Svenska Morgonbladet 28 August 1958, pp. 1, 4. In Cahiers du cinéma, no. 88 (October 1958), pp. 12-20. Jean Béranger reports on a meeting with Bergman during shooting of the film; reprinted in English in Focus on The Seventh Seal (Ø 1220). Bergman was also interviewed on Swedish public radio about the film; see ‘Biodags’, SR, 23 September 1958. In ‘Biodags’, SR, 20 January 1959, Torsten Jungstedt and Marianne Höök discuss the film. Max von Sydow talks in retrospect about the film in Elisabeth Sörenson’s biography Loppcirkus, 1989, pp. 96-100 (Ø 1493). SF published a 14-page program in English on Ansiktet (SF: Stockholm 1959). Bergman writes about Ansiktet in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 161-172.
Reception In Sweden Ansiktet elicited a lively press debate. In a learned article in SvD, 4 January 1959, p. 4 (reprinted in Kosmorama no. 43 (March 1959), pp. 151-153), Stig Wikander compared Bergman’s film to the gnostic legend of Simon Magus. See Birgitta Steene, Ingmar Bergman, 1968, p. 85 for resumé in English. Carl-Eric Nordberg in Vi (no. 3 1959, p. 14) interpreted Vogler as a Christ figure, and H. Lindström in UNT (15 January 1959, p. 4) contrasted Bergman’s illusionist to the 19th-century hypnotist Mesmer, as did Gunnar Eddegren in Gaudeamus, no. 1, 1959, p. 4. Åke Runnquist in BLM 28, no. 9 (November 1959): 784-787, saw Vogler as Bergman’s persona in his role as public artist. Cf. Bergman’s statement in Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), p. 127. Jurgen Schildt wrote an open letter to Bergman, titled ‘Brev till Ingmar Bergman’, asking him about his face and mask. See Vecko-Journalen 49, no. 15 (April) 1958: 22, 44.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record In Filmrutan 2, no. 2 (1959): 5-7, Bengt Forslund summarized the Swedish discussion of Bergman’s film. Bergman responded in a reported telephone interview (SvD, 13 January, p. 16): ‘My reply is my film. What the viewer gets out of it is his personal business’ [Mitt svar är min film. Vad åskådaren får ut av den är hans personliga ensak]. In U.S., Variety (14 January 1959, p. 16) considered The Magician a rather exclusive product, and Time (7 September 1959, p. 78 [Am. Ed., p. 60]) termed it Bergman’s least successful film to date: ‘’Just what this Gothic hoedown signifies is anybody’s guess.’ Henry Hart in Films in Review 10, no. 8 (October 1959): 486-89, saw the film as ‘the impetuous outpouring of a demonic poet’. Most extensive American critiques of The Magican are: Norman Holland, ‘A Brace of Bergmans’, Hudson Review 12, no. 4 (Winter 1959/60): 573-577; Vernon Young’s review in Film Quarterly 13, no. 1 (Fall 1959): 47-50, slightly abridged in Cinema Borealis: Ingmar Bergman and the Swedish Ethos (306), pp. 174-87, and reprinted in Kaminsky (Ø 1266), pp. 201-214.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö press, 27 December 1958; FIB no. 4 (1959), p. 38; Ord & Bild no. 1 (1959), pp. 71-73; Teatern no. 1 (1959), pp. 11-12; Vi no. 3 (1959), p. 14, Vecko-Journalen no. 2 (1959), pp. 4-5.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma no. 101 (November 1959), pp. 45-46; Cinéma 59, no. 40 (October 1959), and no. 41 (November-December 1959), pp. 130-132; Cinema Nuovo, no. 141 (September-October 1959), pp. 430-431; Filmfacts, 30 September 1959, pp. 203-205; Filmkritik, no. 11 (1960), pp. 323-325; Films and Filming 6, no. 2 (November 1959): 20-21; Films in Review 10, no. 8 (October 1959): 486-489; Image et son no. 126 (December 1959), p. 19; Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1959, p. 146; Nation, 26 September 1959, p. 180; New Statesman, 17 February 1961, p. 272; New York Herald Tribune, 28 August 1959, p. 9; New York Times, same date, p. 27:1; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1969, pp. 3145-3146; New Yorker, 5 September 1959, pp. 76-77; Positif, no. 31 (November 1959); Sight and Sound, 28, no. 3-4 (Autumn-Winter 1959): 167-68.
Fact Sheets Film a sogetto, Centro S. Fedelle dello Spettacolo, Milan (11 July 1962), 88 pp., Italian fact sheet on Il volto, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography. Télé-Ciné no. 86 (Nov-Dec 1959). F. 354 (16 pp), special issue on Le visage.
See also Cowie, Peter. Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1982, pp. 173-178; Etudes cinématographiques, no. 10-11 (Autumn 1961), pp. 207-216; Film Ideal, 15 December 1961, pp. 5-9;
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Chapter IV Filmography Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 46-48. International Film Annual 1959, pp. 91-102; Kauffmann, A World of Film (Ø 1011), pp. 273-275; Kosmorama, 24, no. 137 (Spring) 1978: pp. 51-54; National Review, 22 April 1961, pp. 257-258; Svensk filmografi, 1950-1959 (Ø 1314), pp. 727-730. Tulane Drama Review 5, no. 2 (December 1960): 94-101; Variety, 20 January, 16 March, 6 July, pp. 11, 15, and 26, respectively. Educational Dimensions Corporation (Great Neck, N.Y.) issued a cassette analysis of The Magician in agreement with Janus Films Inc, in 1973. Several book-length studies of Bergman’s filmmaking pay particular attention to Ansiktet as a film portraying Bergman’s view of the artist. See: Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Ritual of Art, 1982, pp. 66-109, and Birgitta Steene, Måndagar med Bergman, 1996, pp. 33-37.
Awards 1959:
229.
Venice Film Festival: Special Jury Prize; Pasinetti Award, (Best Foreign Film); Cinema Nuovo Award; Acapulco Film Festival: Unspecified Award.
JUNGFRUKÄLLAN, 1960 [The Virgin Spring], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ulla Isaksson
Synopsis Jungfrukällan is based on a 13th-century Swedish ballad called ‘Töre’s Daughter in Vänge’, which relates the rape and murder of a young maiden, Karin, and the miracle – the welling forth of a fresh spring – that occurs on the spot of her death. The ballad ends by telling of the subsequent violent revenge by Karin’s father, Töre. The film opens as Ingeri, Karin’s dark-haired foster sister who is big with child, prepares the morning meal. Blond Karin wakes up and gets ready to ride to church with candles for the Virgin Mary. Ingeri accompanies Karin on her ride to church. But in the forest she stays behind to consult with an old sorcerer who practices pagan charms. Karin rides on alone through the pastoral landscape. She meets three shepherds, and innocent of their motives, she offers to share her lunch with them. The meal was prepared by Ingeri, who in a fit of envy has put a toad between two loaves of bread. As Karin begins to cut the bread, the toad jumps out. This becomes the incitement for the shepherds to violate Karin. She is raped by two of them and afterwards killed with a blow to her head. The youngest shepherd, who did not rape her, gets sick and vomits. Ingeri has watched the violent deed from a distance. The shepherds collect Karin’s expensive clothing and ride on. Unwittingly, they arrive at the house of Karin’s parents. They are received hospitably and invited for supper. During the meal the youngest shepherd gets sick again. After supper the two older shepherds try to sell Karin’s clothing to her mother, who recognizes her daughter’s robe but says nothing. Instead, she notifies Töre, who begins to prepare for revenge. Going outside he fells a birch tree with his bare hands and beats his body with the twigs. Ready to kill, Töre wakes up the shepherds. He overcomes the two oldest ones while the young boy rushes to Karin’s mother for protection. She is willing to save him, but Töre dashes him against the wall. After the killings, Töre sets out with his household to find the body of young Karin. When they come upon it in the forest, Töre kneels and promises God to build a church on the site. As
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record he prays, a spring wells forth at the spot where Karin’s smashed head has been resting on the ground.
Credits Production Company Production manager Location manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Music
Costumes Make-up Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Carl-Henry Cagarp Ingmar Bergman Lenn Hjortzberg Ulla Isaksson Sven Nykvist P.A. Lundgren Tor Borong Aaby Wedin Erik Nordgren & Alexander Surkevitz ‘I himmelen, i himmelen’ (rev. text: Ingmar Bergman) ‘Tiggarens visa’ (text/music: Ingmar Bergman/Erik Nordgren) Marik Vos Börje Lundh Oscar Rosander Ulla Furås
Cast Karin Ingeri Töre Märeta, Töre’s wife Shepherd/rapist Mute shepherd Shepherd boy Bridge keeper Frida, housekeeper Simon of Snollsta Farmhands Stand-in for Birgitta Vallberg & Gunnel Lindblom
Birgitta Pettersson Gunnel Lindblom Max von Sydow Birgitta Vallberg Axel Düberg Tor Isedal Ove Porath Axel Slangus Gudrun Brost Oscar Ljung Tor Borong, Leif Forstenberg Ann Lundgren
Filmed on location at Styggeforsen and Skattungsbyn, Dalarna and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 14 May 1959 and completed in late August 1959. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 88 minutes 19 January 1960 8 February 1960, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 14 November 1960, Beekman Theater, NYC
Commentary Ingmar Bergman first toyed with the idea of writing his own screenplay based on the medieval ballad, ‘Töres dotter i Vänge’ [Töre’s daughter in Vänge], which he had read as a student. He
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Chapter IV Filmography later turned to Ulla Isaksson as a collaborator. She conceived of the story as a novel and changed the order of events by placing the miracle at the very end, after Töre’s revenge, and explains the change in the American preface to her novel The Virgin Spring (New York: Ballantine Books, 1960, p. vi): ‘It is of great importance that the spring wells forth when all need it. In that sense the film is very Lutheran. That this possibility exists is the very meaning of the film.’ The English preface to Isaksson’s book was actually an 8-page program issued by Svensk Filmindustri (SF) in English and French (available in SFI archives). French version, titled ‘La Ballade de la fille de Töre à Vänge’ was published in a special issue on the film in Cinéma 60, no. 51 (November-December 1960), pp. 33-43. This issue also contains a brief note from Bergman’s diary during the shooting of the film. L’Avant-Scène du cinéma 444 (July) 1995 includes the full manuscript in French (La source). A long segment of the script in English, with a concluding synopsis, appeared in Continental Film Review, December 1959, pp. 14-15. Ulla Isaksson talks about her novel in ‘Boken jag minns’ [The book I remember], Expr. 3 December 1972, (läsbilagan/reading supplement), and discusses her collaboration with Bergman in NYT, 13 November 1960, sec. 2, p. 9 (‘Source of a Spiritual Spring’). The same statement appears in French in the above-mentioned special issue of Cinéma 60. Reportages from shooting of Jungfrukällan appeared in DN, 22 May 1959, p. 14; in Hemmets Journal no. 44 (1959), pp. 6-7, 50-51 (by Arne Sellermark), and in Expr., 22 May 1959, p. 22. An interview with the actors appeared in DN, 10 February 1960, p. 12. Gunnar Oldin interviewed Ingmar Bergman about Jungfrukällan on Swedish TV (SVT) on 14 February 1960. An interview with Jean Béranger, published in Danish translation, appeared in Kosmorama, no. 49 (October 1959), pp. 14-17. In the American release of the film, less than ten seconds of the rape scene was cut.
Reception Next to Tystnaden/The Silence (1963), Jungfrukällan became Bergman’s most controversial film in Sweden. In an editorial on 10 February 1960, two days after the Stockholm opening, SvD (p. 9) reported the decision by the Swedish Film Censorship board not to cut anything in the submitted version of the film. Agreement was unanimous; the board denied rumors that Ingmar Bergman had threatened to withdraw his film if any cuts were made. A public request that the Swedish attorney general examine the rape sequence was denied. On 12 February 1960, an editorial comment by Olof Lagercrantz in DN (p. 5) started a month-long debate on Jungfrukällan. To Lagercrantz, Ingmar Bergman was a master of histrionics and not an authentic artist. Lagercrantz charged Swedish reviewers, who praised the film, with a loss of critical acumen. Among the many responses to Lagercrantz’s editorial, see AB, 26 February (p. 3), and 4 March 1960, (p. 3); DN, 13 February (p. 4), 16 February (p. 5), and 2 March 1960 (p. 5); ST, 15 February 1960 (p. 4); and SDS, 7 March 1960 (p. 4). An editorial comment in Arbetet, 13 March 1960, p. 2, concluded that Bergman lacked artistic integrity when he chose to ‘arrange brutally murdered people in such exquisitely aesthetic settings’ [att arrangera brutalt mördade människor i så raffinerat estetiska positioner]. SvD, 21 February 1960, p. 14, published a public poll on audience response to the film. Two issues crystallized during the Swedish discussion of Jungfrukällan. One concerned Bergman’s standing as a film artist: was he an authentic artist or a sensationalist? The other matter focussed on violence and censorship, but dwelt more on the rape scene than on Töre’s savage vengeance. For discussions of the rape sequence, see AB, 9 February 1960, p. 2 (review), and Vecko-Revyn, 11 March 1960, p. 15. Kristianstadsbladet, 17 January 1961, claimed that the real rape was the artistic violation of the ballad source. Stig Ahlgren in Vecko-Journalen, no. 8 (19 February 1960), p. 15, did not object to the muchpublicized rape scene but questioned the use of a toad in the bread prepared by Ingeri, arguing
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record that what we witness is not rape but a caricatured cult act, toads being the devil in disguise. Ahlgren claimed to have seen ecstacy in Karin’s eyes as she is raped by the shepherd who wears a Mephistopheles mask. Ahlgren’s folklore reference was elaborated on in a newspaper essay by historian Sven Ulric Palme (ST, 8 October 1960) in which he discusses the medieval use of toads as host in witch sabbaths. In Scandinavian folklore, troll women who had sex with the devil gave birth to toads. Toads and frogs were represented in medieval drawings as a metamorphosed uterus and were thought to have special sexual power. The Swedish debate of Jungfrukällan/The Virgin Spring was summarized in Sight and Sound, Spring 1960: 66-67. Other issues raised about Jungfrukällan concerned its literary and philosophical parallels. Jörn Donner in BLM 19, no. 3 (March 1960): 254-59, related its artistic vision to that of Strindberg, Hjalmar Bergman, Pär Lagerkvist, and Swedish poets of the Forties. B. Andresen in Arbetaren, 17 March, p. 11, saw the film as Bergman’s (rather than Ulla Isaksson’s) expression of a religious and moral vision. Birgitta Steene in Ingmar Bergman, 1968, pp. 94-97, discusses The Virgin Spring as a Kierkegaardian credo quia absurdum est. [Excerpted in Kaminsky, 1975 (Ø 1266), pp. 215-221]. Cf. this to Stanley Kauffmann, New Republic, 5 December 1960, pp. 21-22, pp. 179-82, who refers to Bergman in a derogatory way as ‘a cinema Kierkegaard’; and Brendan Gill, New Yorker, 19 November, pp. 152-54, who calls the film ‘supernatural mumbo-jumbo’. U.S. reviews were mixed. New York Herald Tribune, 15 November 1960, p. 17, thought The Virgin Spring was ‘Bergman’s most lucid film’, while NYT, same date, p. 46:1, felt that the film was more ‘brutal and less sophisticated than earlier Bergman’. Educational Dimensions Corp. (Great Neck, N.Y.) issued a cassette analysis of The Virgin Spring (and The Magician) in agreement with Janus Films, Inc., 1973. Title on the container is ‘Two Films by Ingmar Bergman’. The journal Granta, LXIV, no. 1204 (26 November 1960) contains a special write-up on The Virgin Spring (BFI info). In France, the film marked the beginning of the Cahiers group’s disenchantment with Bergman. (See Ø 982.) See also Agence France-Press, no. 12 (17 May 1960) for a compilation of international reviews of Jungfrukällan/La source in connection with its showing at the Cannes Film Festival. Cuadernas de Cine Club Mercedes no. 1 (May 1963), 50 pp., contains sample reviews in Spanish. L’Avant Scène du Cinéma no. 444 (July 1995), is an issue devoted to La source in connection with a Bergman revival in Paris.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm/Uppsala press, 9 February 1960; Teatern no. 2 (1960), pp. 1-2, 16; Vi no. 8 (1960), p. 22.
Foreign Reviews Arts, 14-21 December 1960, n.p; Cahiers du cinéma no. 116 (February 1961), pp. 51-53; Chaplin, no. 9 (March 1960), pp. 62-63; Cinéma 61, no. 53 (February 1961), pp. 98-100; Definition no. 3 (1961), pp. 26-31; Filmkritik no. 7 (1960), p. 1955, and no. 10 (1960), pp. 292-295; Film Ideal, 1 December 1961, pp. 22-26; Films and Filming 8, no. 10 (July 1961): 26-27 Filmfacts 9 December 1960, pp. 277-279; Films in Review 11, no. 9 (November 1960): 556-557;
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Chapter IV Filmography Film Quarterly 13, no. 4 (Summer 1960): 43-47; Kosmorama no. 49 (April 1960), pp. 154-155: New Republic, 5 December 1960, pp. 21-22; New York Herald Tribune, 15 November 1960, p. 17; New York Times, same date, p. 46; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3223; New Yorker, 19 November 1960, pp. 152-154; Positif, no. 38 (March 1961), p. 78; Spectator, 9 June 1961, p. 839; Télé-Ciné no. 91 (September-October 1960), pp. 39-40; Time, 5 December 1960, p. 63 (A.E. p. 40); Variety, 24 February 1960, p. 6.
Longer Articles and Special Issues Ambjörnsson, Ronny & Anna-Karin Blomstrand. ‘Jungfrukällan. Saknar innhållet intresse?’ [The Virgin Spring. Does the content lack interest?]. Götheborgske Spionen, no. 4, 1960, pp. 18-19; Madden, David. ‘The Virgin Spring: Anatomy of a Mythic Image’, Film Heritage 2, no. 2 (Winter 1967): 2-20; Palme, Sven Ulric. ‘Fotnot till Jungfrukällan’ [Footnote to the Virgin Spring], ST, 8 October 1960, p. 4; Pechter, William. ‘The Ballad and the Source’, Kenyon Review, Spring 1961, pp. 332-335; also in Filmkultura, no. 4, 1983: 37-41; Stolpe Sven. ‘En vårnatt i Dalarne’ [A spring night in Dalecarlia], Vecko-Journalen no. 7 (12 February) 1960, pp. 26-27); Young, Vernon. ‘UCLA Art Films’, Los Angeles 1961. 4-page program analysis of film.
See also Cine cubano, no. 21 (1964), pp. 57-59; Cinéma 59, no. 40 (October 1959): 93-100; Cinéma 60, no. 46 (May 1960): 85-88; Etudes cinématographiques, no. 10-11 (Autumn 1961), pp. 207-216; Film Ideal, no. 85 (1 December 1961), pp. 22-26; Filmnyheter, no. 1 (January 1960), pp. 4-7; Films and Filming, April 1962, pp. 13-15; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969, pp. 48-51; Motion, no. 1 (Summer 1961), pp. 18-29; N. Silverstein, ‘Ingmar Bergman and the Religious Film’, Salmagundi II, no. 3 (Spring-Summer 1968): 53-66; Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 65-66; Temas de cine, no. 26 (January-February 1963), pp. 29-33; Variety, 13 February 1960, p. 4.
Awards Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. After Jungfrukällan received an Oscar, SR (Sveriges Radio) interviewed Bergman in ‘Dagens eko’, 18 April 1961. Golden Globe Award by Hollywood Foreign Press Association. For more awards, see Varia, C.
1961:
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record 230.
DJÄVULENS ÖGA. 1960 [The devil’s eye], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis The theme of the film is an ‘Irish’ motto invented by Bergman: ‘A young woman’s chastity is a stye in the Devil’s eye.’ Designed in four acts like a stage play, the film is introduced in a theatre by a speaker dressed in formal attire, who provides a Brechtian commentary during three ‘intermissions’. The main action is set in Hell and in a vicarage in the Swedish countryside. The actual plot concerns the legendary Don Juan who has spent 300 years in Hell. One day, the head of ‘this inverted parish’ gets a stye in his eye. The reason is that a young girl of 20, BrittMarie, remains a virgin though she is engaged to be married. Don Juan, whose punishment in Hell is to remain forever aroused and never sexually fulfilled, is ordered by Satan to return to Earth, accompanied by his jovial servant Pablo. The two men emerge from the underground into an earthly paradise. The pastoral beauty intensifies their agony, for they realize the temporal nature of their visit and become aware once more of what they have forfeited in an earlier life through their lecherous living. Arriving at the vicarage they meet Britt-Marie. She is the daughter of the parson, a totally naive and innocent man, and his frustrated wife, Renata. During a stormy night, Don Juan seduces Britt-Marie while Pablo devotes himself to her mother. His mission accomplished, Don Juan must return to Hell. But this time – unlike his earlier erotic escapades – Don Juan has actually fallen in love with the object of his seduction, which in turn causes consternation among the Devil and his advisors, since it spells defeat for the infernal principles that rule the underworld. Still another defeat occurs for Satan when the parson, contrary to all infernal calculations, forgives his wife for her infidelity. However, in a final flashback to the vicarage on the occasion of Britt-Marie’s wedding, Satan learns that the young girl lies to her husband during their wedding night. This is a minor victory for the forces of Hell, and the stye disappears from the Devil’s eye.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Music Costumes Make-up Mixing Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Lars-Owe Carlberg Ingmar Bergman Lenn Hjortzberg Ingmar Bergman, from a Danish radio play by Oluf Bang, Don Juan vender tilbage [Don Juan Returns], 1940 Gunnar Fischer P.A. Lundgren Karl-Arne Bergman Stig Flodin Erik Nordgren, selections from sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, played by Käbi Laretei Mago (Max Goldstein) Börje Lundh Olle Jakobsson Oscar Rosander Ulla Furås
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Chapter IV Filmography Cast Don Juan Britt-Marie The Parson Pablo Speaker Renata Satan Count Armand de Rouchefoucauld Marquis Guiseppe de Maccopazza An old man Jonas, Britt-Marie’s fiancé A demon Woman with veil Demon keeping watch The hairdresser Doctor giving enema Cosmetics doctor Assistant to tailor Maid Tailor The Metamorphosis Expert Negro masseur
Jarl Kulle Bibi Andersson Nils Poppe Sture Lagerwall Gunnar Björnstrand Gertrud Fridh Stig Järrel Georg Funkquist Gunnar Sjöberg Torsten Winge Axel Düberg Allan Edwall Kristina Adolphson Ragnar Arvedson Börje Lundh Lenn Hjortzberg John Melin Arne Lindblad Inga Gill Sten-Thorsten Thuul Svend Bunch Tom Olsson
Filmed at Råsunda studios, Stockholm, beginning 19 October 1959 and completed 1 January 1960. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 86 minutes 8 October 1960 17 October 1960, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 30 October 1961, Beekman Theater, NYC
Commentary The script of Djävulens öga was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 50-52/1960 and nos. 1-2/1961, illustrated with photographs from the film. Life, 15 and 22 February 1960, published a pictorial reportage by Lennart Nilsson from shooting of The Devil’s Eye. Similar reportage appeared in Swedish in Vecko-Journalen, no. 10, 1960, pp. 16-24. Text-based reportages also appeared in Röster i Radio/TV, no. 52 (1959), pp. 10-13 (Matts Rying); and in ST 6 December 1959, p. 21.
Reception Djävulens öga was well received by Swedish critics who regarded the film as an entertaining intermezzo in Bergman’s production. Carl Björkman (DN, 18 October, p. 18) called it ‘a placebo in a Swedish vicarage park’ [ett lusthus i en svensk prästgårdspark]. Foreign opinion also tended to view the film as an interlude in Bergman’s career, though Cinéma 62, no. 63 (February 1962), pp. 102-3, published a review that denounced not only the film, but Ingmar Bergman as a filmmaker.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 18 October 1960; FIB no. 47 (1960), p. 19; Vi no. 44 (1960), p. 4; Vecko-Journalen, no. 43 (1960), p. 9.
Foreign Reviews Bianco e nero, no. 11-12 (November-December 1961), pp. 82-85; Cinéma 62, no. 63 (February 1963); Film (Hannover), no. 4 (April 1966), p. 35; Filmfacts, 8 December 1961, pp. 283-284; Filmkritik no. 4 (1966), pp. 204-205; Films and Filming 10, no. 5 (February 1963): 37-38; Films in Review 12, no. 12 (December 1961): 620-621; Image et son no. 148 (February 1962), p. 36; Kosmorama no. 51 (December 1960), pp. 74-75, and no. 53 (April 1961), pp. 151-152; Monthly Film Bulletin, no. 2 (February 1963), p. 16; New York Times, 31 October 1961, p. 27:4 and NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3286; New Yorker, 4 November 1961, pp. 207-208; Positif no. 45 (May 1962), p. 72; Spectator, 11 January 1963, p. 45; Time, 22 September 1961, p. 116; Variety, 9 November 1960, p. 19.
Longer Articles Törnqvist, Egil. ‘Ingmar Bergman and Don Juan’. In Sormova, Eva (ed). Don Juan and Faust in the XXth Century. Prague: Department of Czech Theatre Studies, 1993, pp. 244-49. Proceedings from Theatre Conference, 27 September – 1 October 1991. (Article deals primarily with the Don Juan motif in Bergman’s film but with some references to same motif in his theatre productions of Molière’s Don Juan.)
See also Kauffmann, A World of Film (Ø 1011), pp. 280-282; P. Gilliatt. Unholy Fools (New York: Viking Press), 19 pp. 244-245; Cinéma 60, no. 46 (May 1960), pp. 85-88; Ord & Bild 69, no. 10 (December 1960): 521-527; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969, pp. 51-52; Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 78-79.
231.
SÅSOM I EN SPEGEL, 1961 [Through a Glass Darkly], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
The film title is a direct quote from the Bible (Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, 13:12). English translation uses King James’ version.
Synopsis The film occurs during a 24-hour period on an island in the Baltic. It concerns a family of four: Karin, a young woman who suffers from schizophrenia; her husband Martin, a medical doctor; her younger brother Minus; and their father David, a novelist and widower.
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Chapter IV Filmography The film opens as these four characters emerge from a swim. Minus and Karin go to fetch milk at a nearby farm. Minus reveals his uneasy feelings about sexuality. Karin tells him of voices that speak to her. The scene changes to a rowboat in which Martin and David discuss Karin’s illness. David reveals having made a suicide attempt during a recent stay in Switzerland and claims it filled him with a new sense of love. David’s homecoming is celebrated with an outdoor dinner during which David presents gifts, obviously bought at the last moment. He also reveals his intent to leave soon, this time as a tour guide in Yugoslavia. His children are unhappy about this announcement. David leaves the table and goes inside, where he breaks down crying. After dinner Karin and Minus put on a play for David: a poet promises to follow the Princess of Castille into the realm of death. But he regrets his promise, and the princess departs alone. David is visibly shaken by the play. Karin and Martin retire to bed. Early the next morning Karin wakes up to the shrieks of seagulls. Worried, she goes to the attic where she communicates with her voices. Her posture suggests sexual rapture. Later, she falls asleep in her father’s study after David has tucked her in. Martin appears at the window and asks his father to go fishing. After they have left, Karin wakes up. Rummaging around in David’s desk, she comes upon his diary, in which he has written about his fascination with her illness. Later in the day, Martin and David leave in the motorboat to go to the city. Karin helps Minus with his Latin lesson, then takes him to the attic. Suddenly she asks him to leave her alone. Waiting outside the room, Minus hears Karin talk to imaginary voices. A scene from within the attic shows Karin standing against its papered wall. When the sun’s rays hit the wallpaper pattern, it seems to move and come alive. Karin recovers her sense of reality briefly, but soon voices call on her again, and she withdraws to the hull of an old, stranded ship. There Minus finds her and comforts her. There is a suggestion of incest. Later when David and Martin return from the city, Martin makes arrangements to have Karin moved to a hospital. The final sequence begins with David, Martin and Minus discovering Karin in the attic again. She asks Martin to kneel beside her. A helicopter arrives to pick her up and is seen descending outside the window. The air vibrations from its rotating wings force a closet door to open in the attic. The sound from the helicopter is deafening, and Karin cowers in a corner of the room, screaming hysterically. David and Martin overpower her, and she receives a tranquillizing injection. Quieted she reveals her vision to them: God emerged from the closet in the shape of a huge spider and tried to penetrate her. The film ends with Karin’s departure. Minus listens to David talking about the human love that surrounds Karin. The positive implication of this is shown in Minus who seems overwhelmed that his father has confided in him: ‘Father spoke to me’.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Lars-Owe Carlberg Ingmar Bergman Lenn Hjortzberg Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist P.A. Lundgren Karl-Arne Bergman Stig Flodin
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Sound effects Music Costumes Editor Continuity
Evald Andersson Erik Nordgren; J.S. Bach, Suite no. 2, D minor for cello, played by Erling Blöndal Bengtsson Mago (Max Goldstein) Ulla Ryghe Ulla Furås
Cast Karin Martin David Fredrik, called Minus
Harriet Andersson Max von Sydow Gunnar Björnstrand Lars Passgård
Filmed on location on the island of Fårö and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 12 July 1960 and completed 16 September 1960. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 89 minutes 4 October 1961 16 October 1961, Fontänen and Spegeln (Stockholm) 13 March 1962, Beekman Theater, NYC
Commentary Bergman discusses the film in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 243-256. Såsom i en spegel was the first Bergman script to be published in book form in Sweden. See (Ø 124), Chapter II. Bergman held a press conference on 13 July 1960, announcing his intention to shoot his next film on Fårö. The working title was Tapeten [The Wallpaper], based on an idea that had been omitted in Bergman’s film Prison: a mad painter thought the wallpaper in his room moved. Cf. Holden below. As this motif remained in Bergman’s mind, he searched for a new name for his film and almost opted for Bekänna färg [Show your hand] but remembered that this title had already been used by Swedish novelist Olle Hedberg. At the time of the press conference Bergman viewed Såsom i en spegel as the last film in a trilogy, the first two being Smultronstället and Jungfrukällan. All three works dealt, step by step, with the idea of atonement (försoningstanken): ‘The God problem has always been my concern and is perpetually present to me. Here in [Through a Glass Darkly] I have found a solution’ [Gudsproblemet har alltid varit angeläget och ständigt närvarande för mig. [...] Här har jag kommit till en lösning]. See SvD, 14 July 1960, p. 11, and ST, same date, p. 9. The press conference was also covered by Philip Scheuer in Los Angeles Times (1 August, sec. 4, p. 13) who reports on reasons for Bergman to abandon earlier plans to shoot the film in color. In a Swedish newspaper write-up a few weeks before the press conference, it was reported that the so-called Color Film Club (consisting of Bergman and his collaborators), which had experimented with color for some months, had decided with eight votes against two to shoot Bergman’s next film in black and white (see ‘Ingmar Bergmans färgfilmklubb röstade svartvitt för “Tapeten”.’[Bergman color film club voted black and white for ‘The Wallpaper’], DN, 16 June 1960, p. 14). Report also states that during the shooting, footage in color would be done as an experiment, and that Bergman would begin to give color a dramatic role in his filmmaking as soon as he ‘felt comfortable with the new medium’ [kände sig hemmastadd med det nya
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Chapter IV Filmography mediet]. For a report of the shooting of Såsom i en spegel, see Jean Béranger, Cinéma 62, no. 69 (September-October 1962), pp. 41-45. There were other specific challenges in photographing the film. See Sven Nykvist, ‘A Passion for Light’ in American Cinematographer, April 1972. Nykvist had taken over as Bergman’s main cinematographer with Jungfrukällan. In Såsom i en spegel he (and Bergman) began to develop a new ‘chamber film’ style. For an explanation of the term, see the following: Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), p. 168; Spectator, 16 November 1962, p. 761; and Birgitta Steene, Ingmar Bergman, 1968, p. 96. Cf. Chapter III, pp. 22-23. In an interview in DN, 19 January 1962, p. 24, Bergman talks about the importance of the new intimate format of Såsom i en spegel and how it changed his approach to his characters: ‘Earlier I played the guardian. [...] My fictional people were not left alone; I interfered with their actions and their destinies. Since Through a Glass Darkly I can let them live their own lives’ [Förr spelade jag förmyndare. [...] De människor jag diktat upp fick inte vara i fred, jag lade mig i deras handlande och deras öden. Sedan ‘Såsom i en spegel’ låter jag dem leva sitt eget liv].
Reception Swedish critical reception of Såsom i en spegel was enthusiastic. Reviewers stressed Bergman’s masterly control of the medium and labeled the film his most essential work to date. But questions were raised about whether the film was not too exclusive, both in its preoccupation with the role of the artist and its examination of religious issues. See Sven E. Olsson in ‘Bergman som Guds spegel’, Götheborgske Spionen, no. 9-10, 1961, pp. 46-47. Reaction to the film in the U.S. was mixed. Time (23 March 1962, p. 67) called it Bergman’s most mature creation to date, and Arthur Knight in Saturday Review (17 March 1962, p. 34) felt it surpassed Bergman’s previous work in its clarity and directness. But Stanley Kaufmann (New Republic, 16 March 1962, pp. 26-27, reprinted in A World on Film, pp. 282-284) found the film confusing, its themes undefined, and its resolution unconnected to the plot. Vernon Young in Film Quarterly 15, no. 4 (Summer 1962): 52-3, regretted that Bergman had relinquished his visual talent and created a movie that was basically uncinematic. Over the years Bergman critics have frequently singled out Through A Glass Darkly, especially its ‘forced’ ending, as a target. See Ø 1680.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 17 October 1961; BLM 39, no. 9 (November 1961): 760-762; Chaplin, no. 23 (November 1961), pp. 210-211; FiB, no. 44 (1961), pp. 28-29; Vi, no. 43 (1961), p. 16; Expr., 5 November 1961, p. 4.
Foreign Reviews Arts, 5 September 1962; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 137 (November 1962), pp. 48-50; Christian Century, 3 October 1962, p. 1198; Cinéma 62, no. 69 (September-October 1962), and no. 70 (November 1962): 106-108; Le Figaro, 19 September 1962, p. 6; F-Dienst 30, no. 7 (March 1977), p. 12 a-d; Film Quarterly 15, no. 4 (Summer 1962): 52-53; Filmfacts, 13 April 1962, pp. 59-61; Films and Filming 10, no. 4 (January 1963): 47-48; Films in Review April 1962, pp. 230-31;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Filmkritik no. 8 (1962), pp. 375-78; Jeune Cinéma, no. 8 (June-July) 1965; Le monde, 19 September 1962, p. 4; Monthly Film Bulletin, January 1963, p. 5; Movie, no. 6 (January 1963), pp. 30-31; New Republic, 26 March 1962, pp. 26-27; New York Herald Tribune, 14 March 1962, p. 21; New York Times, same date, p. 45:1 and NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, pp. 3311-3312; New Yorker, 17 March 1962, p. 123; Saturday Review 17 March 1962, p. 34, and 18 May 1963, p. 37; Sight and Sound 32, no. 3 (Winter 1962/63): 38-39; Temps Modernes, no. 198 (November 1962); Time, 23 March 1962, p. 67; Variety 3 January 1962, p. 3.
Longer Discussions Most longer discussions of Såsom i en spegel are parts of essays on what became known as The Trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence). See the following: Buzzonetti, R. Revista del cinematografo 36, no. 6 (July 1964): 255-58 (analysis of philosophical progression of the Trilogy); Cohen, Hubert L. Ingmar Bergman. The Art of Confession, 1993, (Ø 1546), pp. 171-82; Cowie, Peter. Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1982, (Ø 1381), pp. 196-202; Gado, Frank, The Passion of Ingmar Bergman, 1986, (Ø 1432), pp. 267-80; Gervais, Marc. Ingmar Bergman. Magician and Prophet, 1999, (Ø 1657), pp. 72-77; Gibson, Arthur. The Silence of God, 1969, pp. 77-133; Persson, Göran. Chaplin, no. 40 (October 1963), pp. 239-241; Schlappner, Martin. ‘Die Trilogie der Anfechtung’ in author’s Filme und ihre Regisseure. (Bern: H. Huber, 1963, 1967), pp. 63-78. Also issued in 1966 under title Bilder des Dichterischen Themen und Gestalten des Films; Sjöman, Vilgot. L-136: Dagbok, 1963, (Ø 1100), passim; Steene, Birgitta. ‘Archetypal Patterns...’, 1965 (Ø 1129), pp. 96-113; Wood, Robin. Ingmar Bergman, 1969, (Ø 1185), pp. 106-139;
Special Studies French, Tony. ‘Suffering into Ideology: Bergman’s Såsom i en spegel (Through a Glass Darkly)’. CineAction, no. 34 (June 1994): 68-72. (Ideology referred to in title is ‘a suspect ideology of Love out of someone else’s anguish’); Holden, D. F. ‘Three Literary Sources for Through a Glass Darkly’. Literature/Film Quarterly II, no. 1 (Winter 1974): 22-29 see Ø 1252 Lundell, Torborg and A. Mulac. ‘Husband and Wives in Bergman’s Films’. Journal of the University Film Association 1(Winter) 1981: 23-37. (Analysis of student response to Bergman’s film); Steene, Birgitta in ‘Bergman’s Movement towards Nihilism’. In The Hero in Scandinavian Literature, ed. by Robert Rovinsky and John Weinstock. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975, pp. 87-105.
Fact Sheets and Special Journal Issues Cineforum, no. 14 (April 1962), a special issue on Como in uno specchio, contains a review of the film by Stig Björkman; bio-presentation of Bergman; and excerpts from the script. Part of the same material appears in Cinema Nuovo, no. 159 (September–October 1962), which also
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Chapter IV Filmography has an article entitled ‘L’aut-aut di David nell’opera di Bergman’ by G.A. (Guido Aristarco) on Kierkegaardian aspects of the film; Film a Sogetto, Centro S. Fedelle dello Spettacolo, Milan (22 April 1965), 16 pp., is an Italian fact sheet on Come in uno specchio, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography. Media C, 105, no date, pp. 1-7, is a dossier with credits and other information on the film. Brussels: Cedoc-Film and Amsterdam: Centraal Filmberaad, n.d.; Télé-Ciné, no. 120 (March 1965), pp. 1-11, is devoted to A travèrs le miroir; W. Zurbuch edited a special program for West German release of the film, issued by Nora Filmverleih, July 1962, 11 pp.
See also Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 160-72; Sw.ed., pp. 174-186; La Biennale 7, no, 48 (1963): 29-44; Etudes cinématographiques, no. 46-47 (1966), pp. 3-13 and 42-56; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969, pp. 52-56; Kosmorama, no. 56 (February 1962), pp. 91-97, and Kosmorama, 24, no. 137 (Spring) 1978:59-61; Röster i Radio-TV no. 42 (1970), pp. 22-23; Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 102-105, including retrospective evaluation by Jörn Donner; Western Humanities Review, no. 1 (Winter 1964), pp. 65-66. After Såsom i en spegel received an Oscar as Best Foreign Film, SR (Swedish Public Radio) discussed the matter briefly in ‘Dagens eko’, 10 April 1962.
Awards 1962:
232.
American Motion Picture Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Foreign Film For additional awards, see Varia, C.
LUSTGÅRDEN, 1961 [The Garden of Eden], Eastmancolor Director Screenplay
Alf Kjellin Buntel Ericsson (joint pseudonym for Ingmar Bergman and Erland Josephson)
Synopsis For several years Samuel Franzén, a high school teacher in a small Swedish town around the turn of the last century, has had an affair with Miss Fanny, a waitress at the local hotel. His colleague Mr. Lundberg has a mistress, Miss Astrid who manages the town bookstore. Both men are anxious not to reveal their liaisons, though the whole town knows about them. When the bookstore receives a few copies of a romantic collection of poetry, ‘Secrets of the Heart’, Mr. Lundberg spreads the rumor that Mr. Franzén is the author. The book sells out in no time. At first Franzén denies having anything to do with the book, but encouraged by Miss Astrid, he reveals his poetic ambitions and his affair with Miss Fanny. He sends for Miss Fanny’s 20-year-old daughter, who has been living with her grandmother, and proudly introduces Fanny to the townspeople. But they frown upon the whole matter, and Franzén begins to regret his action. Hurt and disillusioned by her lover’s ambivalent attitude, Miss Fanny decides to leave town. Miss Astrid and Mr. Lundberg have an argument and break off their liaison. In the meantime Fanny’s daughter falls in love with the local pastor and becomes secretly engaged.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Mr. Franzén soon discovers he needs Miss Fanny and asks her to marry him. Mr. Lundberg approaches Miss Astrid, and they are reconciled. But Miss Fanny refuses to marry Mr. Franzén. She prefers that they go back to their old arrangement.
Credits Production company Production manager Director Artistic advisor Screenplay Photography Architect Music Sound Editor
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Alf Kjellin Ingmar Bergman Buntel Ericsson (joint pseudonym for Ingmar Bergman and Erland Josephson) Gunnar Fischer P.A. Lundgren Erik Nordgren Lars Lalin Ulla Ryghe
Cast David Franzén Fanny Anna, her daughter Lundberg Ellen Astrid Emil, young Pastor Liljedahl Wibom Innkeeper Berta Ossian The volunteer Bishop Mayor Principal Principal’s wife Postmaster Dr. Brusén Policeman
Gunnar Björnstrand Sickan Carlsson Bibi Andersson Stig Järrel Hjördis Petterson Kristina Adolphson Per Myrberg Gösta Cederlund Torsten Winge Lasse Krantz Fillie Lyckow Jan Tiselius Stefan Hübinette Sven Nilsson Rolf Nystedt Sten Hedlund Stina Ståhle Lars Westlund Ivar Uhlin Birger Sahlberg
Filmed on location at Vadstena, Arboga, Skänninge, and at Råsunda Studios in Stockholm, beginning early summer 1961 and completed late summer 1961. Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 93 minutes 5 December 1961 26 December 1961, Fanfaren and Röda Kvarn (Stockholm)
Commentary The script of Lustgården was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 3-7/1962, illustrated with photographs from the film.
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Chapter IV Filmography Though Lustgården was not directed by Ingmar Bergman but by Hollywood emigré Alf Kjellin during a return visit to his native Sweden, Bergman was engaged in the project and particulary sensitive about it, this being his first attempt to use color film. He insisted that SF buy new projectors for the opening of the film at Röda Kvarn to avoid ‘piss yellow and cadaver blue shades’ [pissgult och likblått ljus]. The press showing, however, took place on the Råsunda Film-Teknik premises and was apparently a disaster. In an interview in connection with a 1970 TV showing of the film, Bergman commented on the event: ‘It was a terrible day: snow storm and slush. A bitter northerly wind, grey and dark, a weather for catching colds. Walking across the backyard at Film Teknik I saw the critics streaming out. [...] It was an extraordinary gathering of black ravens who had watched our little summer comedy. And I said to myself: This film is dead!’ [Det var en ohygglig dag, storm och snöglopp. En hård nordostan, förkylningsväder och gråmörkt. Jag kom över gården utanför Film-Teknik när kritikerskaran strömmade ut. [...] Det var en enastående samling svarta korpar som hade sett vår sommarlätta lilla komedi. Och jag sa till mig själv: ‘Den filmen är död’!]. Bergman was right but claims he has retained a certain faiblesse for the film, referring to it in the same interview as ‘an almost white sin, the easiest one to forgive’ [en nästan vit synd, den lättaste att förlåta] (Röster i RadioTV, no. 13, 1970, p. 17). Erland Josephson comments briefly on the origin of the pseudonym Buntel Ericsson in the memoir collection Rollen, Sanningslekar, Föreställningar, 1990, p. 368 (from Sanningslekar). (See Ø 1498.) The film has never been released internationally.
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NATTVARDSGÄSTERNA, 1963 [Winter Light/The Communicants], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
The American title, Winter Light, is well chosen in terms of the landscape and mood of the film, which is shot in a bleak, wintry light. The British title, The Communicants, is the dictionary meaning of the Swedish title, but seems very abstract in comparison to the poetic Swedish word, a compound noun meaning ‘guests at the last supper’.
Synopsis The film, set in the present, opens with a service in Mittsunda church where Tomas Eriksson, a middle-aged widower, is officiant. Only a few parishoners are present, among them the local schoolteacher Märta Lundberg, who is in love with Tomas; fisherman Jonas Persson and his wife; Fredrik Blom, the church organist; Algot Frövik, the church warden; and the sexton Mr. Aronsson. After the communion, fisherman Persson and his wife come to see the pastor. Persson is depressed, and his wife suggests that he come back to church alone later. Märta Lundberg arrives with hot coffee and sandwiches. Tomas shows only irritation. Märta leaves. Tomas ponders the photographs of his dead wife, then opens a letter that Märta has sent him earlier. The camera shifts to a long close-up of Märta’s face as she recites the letter, in which she reveals her agony over her unrequited love for Tomas. She gives an account of how she, a nonbeliever, began to pray for a cure of her eczema after Tomas had failed to do so. She ends by asking Tomas to use her. Though visibly upset over the letter, Tomas who has a bad cold dozes off, his head and arms resting on the table. Jonas Persson suddenly appears. He reveals his angst, but Tomas can only respond by talking about his own anguish, his feeling that God has abandoned him.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Jonas Persson leaves, and Märta returns. Tomas breaks down coughing and crying in Märta’s arms before the altar. An old woman enters and informs them that Jonas Persson has shot himself down by the rapids. Tomas leaves in the car to help take care of Jonas’s body. Märta later joins him; together they head back to the schoolhouse where Märta lives in an upstairs apartment. While Märta goes to fetch some medicine, Tomas stays below in the classroom. A boy comes in to get a book; he has a brief and stilted conversation with Tomas. When Märta returns, Tomas again shows his irritation over her concern for him. Märta cries but later (upon Tomas’s request) accompanies him to the church at Frostnäs for the afternoon service. On the way there, Tomas pays a visit to Mrs. Persson and informs her of her husband’s death. Back in the car, Tomas begins to tell Märta of his past, but the noise from a passing freight train drowns his voice. The last part of the film takes place inside the church at Frostnäs. The rheumatic Algot Frövik comes to talk with Tomas. Frövik has read the Gospels and has come to the conclusion that his own prolonged physical suffering is probably comparable to the physical pain endured by Christ on the cross. Christ’s real suffering, says Frövik, was his sense of being abandoned by all those he loved, including God himself. While Frövik talks to Tomas, Märta listens to the organist Blom, who advises her to leave and seek employment elsewhere. The church bells, calling the congregation to service, stop ringing, but no one has come to church. Under such circumstances Tomas could cancel the service but decides to conduct it. His decision comes at the same time as Märta, kneeling in a pew, asks for peace of mind for both of them. The film ends as Tomas pronounces the words of the church ritual: Holy, holy, holy, Thy Name be Honored, in Heaven as on Earth.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Assistant directors Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Sound effects Music Costumes Make-up Props Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Lars-Owe Carlberg Ingmar Bergman Lenn Hjortzberg, Vilgot Sjöman Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist P.A. Lundgren Stig Flodin Evald Andersson Nos. 508, 14, 520, 400 in Swedish hymn book from 1937; Postludium (Johan Morén) Mago (Max Goldstein) Börje Lundh Karl-Arne Bergman Ulla Ryghe Katherina Faragó
Cast Pastor Tomas Ericsson Märta Lundberg Jonas Persson Karin Persson Algot Frövik Fredrik Blom, organist Knut Aronsson, sexton
Gunnar Björnstrand Ingrid Thulin Max von Sydow Gunnel Lindblom Allan Edwall Olof Thunberg Kolbjörn Knudsen
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Chapter IV Filmography Old woman in church Johan Åkerblom, farmer Hanna Appelblad, baker Doris, her five-year-old daughter Johan Strand, schoolboy Stefan Larsson, policeman Persson’s daughter Persson’s son A man Two boys
Elsa Ebbesen-Thornblad Tor Borong Bertha Sånnell Helena Palmgren Eddie Axberg Lars-Owe Carlberg Ingmari Hjort Stefan Larsson Johan Olafs Lars-Olof Andersson, Christer Öhman
Filmed on location in Dalarna, Skattunge Church in Orsa, and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 4 October 1961 and completed 14 January 1962. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 80 minutes 19 November 1962 11 February 1963, Fontänen and Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 13 May 1963, Beekman Theater, NYC
Commentary The script to Nattvardsgästerna was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 6-10/1963, illustrated with photographs from the film. The script was published in book form in En filmtrilogi (1963), later issued in paperback as Filmberättelser 1 (1973). Bergman writes about the film in Bilder/Images (1990), pp. 256-274. He describes Nattvardsgästerna, filmed only in fog and cloudy weather, in a way that confirms a common (nonSwedish) view of his filmmaking as a whole: ‘Det är den svenska mänskan vid den svenska verklighetens slut och den svenska väderlekens lågpunkt’ [It is the Swede at the end of Swedish reality and at the low point of Swedish weather]. Reportage from filming of Nattvardsgästerna appeared in DN, 19 January 1962, p. 14. Filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman who followed the entire shooting of the film later published his extensive notes as L-136: Dagbok; see (Ø 1100). In a series of TV programs called ‘Återsken’ (Reflections) by Lennart Ehrenborg, an excerpt from the shooting of Nattvardsgästerna was shown in segment 14 (SVT, 18 October 1979). SR (Swedish Public Radio) reported on the same subject in ‘Dagens eko’, 3 October 1961 (Bergman interviewed by Lennart Swahn). The shooting of Nattvardsgästerna seems to have been troublesome for actor Gunnar Björnstrand, a Catholic convert cast as a doubting Protestant minister. See Lillie Björnstrand, Inte bara applåder, 1975 (Ø 1263); same matter also discussed in Expr., 25 October 1975, p. 18, and by Bergman in Bilder/ Images (1990), p. 264. Björnstrand’s daughter Gabriella touched on the subject in Expr., 2 December 2003, p. 4. (See Ø 1685.)
Reception Nattvardsgästerna has remained a film with a rather narrow but special appeal. Variety, 20 March 1963, p. 6, summed it up: ‘An extremely moving and fascinating film for the religiously aware, and a somewhat boring one for the religiously indifferent.’ In his review of the film in DN (12 February 1963, p. 14), Mauritz Edström – though praising the film’s artistry – referred to Bergman as a ‘religiously infected’ person, oscillating between faith and doubt whose world view had few contemporary followers. For a similar mixed response to film, see Chaplin, no. 35 (February 1963), pp. 55-58, which contains two reviews of the film, one by Lutheran pastor
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Ludvig Jönsson, the other by agnostic author Margaretha Ekström. See also review by Robin Hood, titled ‘Bergman, vad rör oss prästerna?’ [B., what concern to us are the priests?], ST, 12 February 1963, p. 32, followed by interview comments by four ministers of the Swedish Lutheran State Church (a fifth minister, Bergman’s own father, declined to answer). Bergman responded on Swedish Radio, 25 February 1963; see comment entitled ‘Ingmar Bergman och kritiken’ by Robin Hood in ST, 26 February 1963, p. 22. See also discussion by theologians M. Lönnebo and P.O. Lundberg in UNT, 27 February 1963, p. 2; and between Leif Furhammar and T. Henriksson in Ergo (Uppsala University student publication), no. 5 (1963) pp. 6-7. In an interview, Göteborg bishop Bo Giertz commented on Nattvardsgästerna as a deeply degrading document on the church (GP, 13 February 1963, p. 14). Articles appeared in church publications Vår kyrka, no. 9, 1963: 9, 24; and Evangeliskt drama, nos. 1 & 4, 1963. A debate on religious implications of the film was published in the Lutheran state church magazine Svensk Pastoral Tidskrift, nos. 10, 13 and 15, 1963. In SvD, 21 April 1963, p. 4, theologian Hans Nystedt interpreted Nattvardsgästerna as a religious parable with Märta Lundberg, the schoolteacher, portrayed as a Christ figure. To Sven E. Olsson in Scen och salong 48, no. 4 (1963): 22-23, the pastor’s role depicted a psychological transference of the concept of God from father-fixation to mother-dependence. Bengt Landgren published an article in DN, 6 July 1973 (p. 3) comparing Bergman’s Nattvardsgästerna and the modernist work of Swedish poets Gunnar Ekelöf and Erik Lindegren. J. Jönsson, B. Lidström and L. Lönnroth wrote a joint reception study of Swedish public response to Nattvardsgästerna: ‘Ingmar Bergmans film Nattvardsgästerna’ (with summary in English). Available at Department of Literature, Lund University, 1969, 110 typed pp. The most thorough discussion of Nattvardsgästerna outside of Sweden took place in Italy and the U.S. In Bianco e nero 24, no. 5 (May 1963): 51-55, Mario Verdone analyzes the film as an extension of literary works by Scandinavian writers Ibsen, Kaj Munk, and Strindberg. Renzo Renzi in Cinema Nuovo, no. 163 (May-June 1963), pp. 166-168, saw Luci d’inverno as a paradoxical film about atheism played out in a religious setting. In Cinema Nuovo, no. 166 (November-December 1963), pp. 443-445, Guido Oldrini discussed Tomas Ericsson’s crisis in terms of the Protestant emphasis on individual salvation rather than on symbolic congregational rites. See also group item ‘Religious Approaches to Bergman’s Filmmaking’ (Ø 997). Film a Sogetto, Centro S. Fedelle dello Spettacolo, Milan (23 April 1965), 16 pp, is an Italian fact sheet on Luci d’inverno, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography. With the exception of Henry Hart in Films in Review 14, no. 5 (May 1963): 299-301, for whom Winter Light redeemed all previous Bergman films, American press reception of the film was rather negative. Time, 24 May 1963, p. 98 (A.E. p. 40), referred to Bergman as ‘Sweden’s cinematic poltergeist haunting the dark and chilly corridors where Man loses God’; and Judith Crist in the New York Herald Tribune, 14 May 1963, p. 13, called Winter Light ‘bleak and cold in its abstract ideas’, while Brendan Gill in the New Yorker, 18 May 1963, pp. 169-73, dismissed the film as ‘the latest installment of Ingmar Bergman’s running debate with God’. A Dutch reassessment of the film was published in 1988 by Willem Jan Otten, ‘Fantomen op kousevoeten’ in N.R.C. Handelsblad, 7 October 1988.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 12 February 1963 (AB, 11 February); BLM 32, no. 2 (February 1963): 158-61; Vi no. 7 (1963), p. 11.
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Chapter IV Filmography Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma, no. 168 (July 1965), pp. 88-89; Cineforum, no. 17 (July 1962): 681; Cinéma 65, no. 97, pp. 112-14;. Cinema Nuovo, no. 166 (November-December 1963), pp. 443-45; F-Dienst XXX/11, May 1977, p. 10 a-d; Filmfacts, 23 May 1963, pp. 85-87; Filmkritik no. 3 (1963), pp. 135-38; Films and Filming 9, no. 9 (June 1963): 27-28; Films in Review 14, no. 5 (May 1963): 299-301; Jeune cinéma, no. 8 (June-July 1963), pp. 21-23; Kosmorama no. 67 (October 1964), pp. 35-36; Monthly Film Bulletin, June 1963, p. 79; New Republic, 11 May 1963, pp. 26-27; New York Times, 14 May 1963, p. 32:1 and NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, pp. 3386-87; Newsweek, 27 May 1963, p. 103-4; Saturday Review, 18 May 1963, p. 37; Sight and Sound, Summer 1963, p. 146; Times (London), 1 May 1963, p. 5.
Longer discussions Lacy, Allen. ‘The Unbelieving Priest: Unamuno’s Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr and Bergman’s Winter Light’. Literature/Film Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1982): 53-61; Schreckenberg, E. ‘Wenn Filme Texte sind’. Filmbulletin no 196, 1994: 44-51; Simon, John. Extensive analysis in Ingmar Bergman Directs 1972, (Ø 1218), pp. 145-206; Törnqvist, Eqil. ‘Från manus till film. – Ingmar Bergmans Nattvardsgästerna’, 2003 (Ø 1690). Young, Vernon. ‘Films to Confirm Poets’. Hudson Review 16, no. 2 (Summer 1963): 262-264 (reprinted in On Film: Unpopular Essays on a Popular Art (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972), pp. 214-16).
See also Chaplin, no. 35 (1963), pp. 52-55, and no. 37 (1963), pp. 224-38; Hubert Cohen. Ingmar Bergman. The Art of Confession, 1993, pp. 182-94; J.-L. Comolli, Cahiers du cinéma, no. 156 (June 1964), pp. 30-39; Jörn Donner in Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969, pp. 138-40; M. Estève, Etudes cinématographiques, no. 47-47 (1966), pp. 56-75; Frank Gado, The Passion of Ingmar Bergman, 1986, pp. 280-94; Marianne Höök, SvD, 4 October 1961, p. 5; Britt Hamdi, Vecko-Revyn, no. 10 (1962), pp. 19-23; Image et son, no. 192 (March 1966), pp. 99-102, and no. 226 (March) 1969, pp. 56-58; Torsten Jungstedt, ‘Biodags’, Sveriges Radio (SR), February, 1962; Kosmorama, no. 56 (February 1962), pp. 97-99; Birgitta Steene, Ingmar Bergman, 1968, pp. 102-108; Télé-Ciné, no. 124 (October 1965), pp. 21-29; Ingrid Thulin, American Film, no. 3 (1972), pp. 15-27 (interview); Leif Zern, Se Bergman, 1995, pp. 130-36.
Awards 1964:
David O. Selznick Silver Laurel. For additional awards, see Varia, C.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record 234.
TYSTNADEN, 1963 [The Silence], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis The setting of Tystnaden is an imaginary foreign country. Two sisters, Anna and Ester, are on their way home to Sweden with Anna’s young son Johan, when Ester’s illness forces them to interrupt their journey and check into a hotel in a city named Timoka. Except for the opening on the train and a sequence in a cabaret hall and bar, the film takes place in the hotel. Soon after arriving there, Anna and Johan take an afternoon nap, while Ester, in an adjacent room, starts drinking. She learns a few words in the foreign language, such as kasi, hand, and naigo, face, from an old waiter who brings her another bottle of liquor. The radio is on, playing Bach. Ester goes to see Anna and Johan, caressing them in their sleep. Returning to her room, she falls down on her bed and begins to masturbate. Johan wakes up at the sound of air raid sirens. He dresses, puts a toy pistol in his belt, and goes exploring in the hotel corridors. A painting depicting a satyr seducing a woman catches his attention. Later, he pretends to shoot down an electrician who is repairing a light fixture in the ceiling. He spies on the old waiter but is discovered and invited to share a piece of chocolate with him. The waiter gives him a set of photographs showing a woman, presumably his wife, on a bier. When alone, Johan hides the pictures under the hotel carpet. Johan discovers a room occupied by a group of dwarfs. He joins them in their funmaking and is dressed up in a girl’s frock. The game is interrupted by the arrival of the leader of the troupe, who sends Johan out of the room. In the meantime, Anna has gone to a cabaret hall where the dwarfs are performing. Across the aisle from her, a couple is copulating. She leaves and goes into a bar, where she attracts the attention of a waiter. When she returns home, she is questioned by Ester about her whereabouts. Angered, Anna tells her a story about making love in a church. Soon afterwards, Anna is ready to leave again. She quarrels with Ester; Johan is sent out of the room. Left alone, Ester has a severe attack of suffocation. Drinking and smoking, she finally collapses on the floor. The old waiter brings her fresh bedding and food. Johan comes to her bed and shares her meal. He draws a picture of a sad face, then performs a pantomime with two hand puppets, a man and woman fighting. Johan is in bed reading Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time. Ester, coming in to check on him, learns of Anna’s meeting in the hotel with the café waiter. Upset, Ester goes in search of her sister. A bitter scene ensues. Anna is enraged and hysterical. Ester leaves but collapses outside the room. The dwarfs pass her, now dressed up in strange costumes, including a bride, a groom, and the figure of Death. The last sequence in the hotel depicts Ester resting in bed, with Anna and Johan visible in the adjacent room. Bach is heard on the radio. Johan comes to borrow cigarettes from Ester for his mother. Soon afterwards Anna announces that she and Johan are leaving to go home. Ester will stay behind. Johan says goodbye to his aunt and embraces her. She gives him a list of words in the foreign language. The film ends as Johan is seen lip reading the list silently on the train, while his mother opens the window to let the rain wash over her face. The last shot is a close-up of Johan, his lips barely moving.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Lars-Owe Carlberg
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Chapter IV Filmography Director Assistant directors Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Sound effects Music
Costumes Make-up Props Editor Continuity
Ingmar Bergman Lars-Erik Liedholm, Lenn Hjortzberg Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist P.A. Lundgren Stig Flodin Ivan Renliden Excerpts from J.S Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’; R. Mersey’s ‘Mayfair Waltz’, ‘Club Cool’, ‘Coffee Bean Calypso’, ‘Jazz Club’, and ‘Rock in the Rough’. ‘Sing, Baby, Sing’ (text/music: Yellen/Pollack) Marik Vos Lundh Gullan Westfeldt Karl-Arne Bergman Ulla Ryghe Katherina Faragó
Cast Ester Anna Double for Lindblom Johan Old waiter Anna’s lover Electrician in corridor Woman in cabaret Her lover Usher Cabaret doorman Bar owner Newspaper salesman Dwarfs Their manager
Ingrid Thulin Gunnel Lindblom Kristina Olavsson Jörgen Lindström Håkan Jahnberg Birger Malmsten Olof Widgren Lissi Alandh Leif Forstenberg Birger Lensander Nils Waldt Eskil Kalling Karl-Arne Bergman The Eduardini Eduardo Gutierrez
Filmed at Råsunda Studios, Stockholm, beginning 9 July 1962 and completed 19 September 1962. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 96 minutes 4 July 1963 23 September 1963 Fontänen and Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 3 February 1964, Rialto and Translux East, NYC
Commentary The script’s working title was ‘Tiimoka’, an Estonian word meaning ‘Belonging to the Executioner’. Bergman discusses the genesis of the film in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 104-112. He talks briefly about the film in a radio interview in program ‘Filmkrönika’ [Film Chronicle]. Swedish Public Radio, 20 September 1963.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record The script of Tystnaden was published in book form in En filmtrilogi (1963), later issued in paperback as Filmberättelser 1 (1973). The script was also serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 4-8/1967, illustrated with photographs from the film. Variety ran several notices on the actual running time of The Silence, the first one on 6 October 1963, p. 6, listing the length as 105 minutes. This was corrected to 96 minutes in the issue of 19 February 1964, p. 17. American distributor of The Silence, Janus Films Inc., lists length at 95 minutes, but only a few frames were cut. Rumor that ten minutes of the original film were cut in U.S. is apparently false. The February 19, 1964 issue of Variety also reports that Bergman edited a special ‘international’ version of the film, which Janus Films, Inc. refused to accept. The same commentary appears in Svensk Filmografi 6 (Ø 1314), p. 154.
Reception Tystnaden caused more discussion, both in Sweden and abroad, than any previous Bergman film. Becoming a test case for the Swedish Censorship Board, it passed uncut; from then on ‘pornography of violence’ rather than ‘explicit eroticism’ was the key criterion in censoring films to be released in Sweden. But the head of the Censorship Board later revealed that he would have censured the film, if he alone had been in charge of the decision. (See SvD 3 November 1963, p. 12.) The Swedish Ombudsman of Justice received several complaints on the issue (See ST, 29 October 1963, pp. 1, 24, and DN, same date, p. 16). It also caused a debate in the Swedish Riksdag, 30 October and 3 December 1963 (printed protocols A4, no. 35, pp. 33-39, and B5, no. 31, pp. 32-34). An editorial in Expr., 3 November 1963, p 2., claimed that Tystnaden had made the Censorship Board an impossible institution. The public debate followed three directions: (1) a moral approach, which either condoned or condemned the film; (2) an assessment of Bergman as a ‘film dictator’ whom no one dared oppose; and (3) a gender approach charging Bergman with sexism and hostility towards women’s liberation. See the following press sources: Dagen, 27 September 1963, pp. 1, 12; 28 September, pp. 1, 10; and 4 October 1963, pp. 1, 12; ST, 2 October 1963, p. 7; same paper, 7 October 1963, p. 7; 9 November 1963, p. 7, and 13 November 1963, p. 7; Expr., 16 October and 25 November 1963, p. 4. Norwegian paper Morgenbladet (Oslo) carried on a debate about Tystnaden during the same period of time, in which, among others, the Swedish author Sven Stolpe participated, claiming that Bergman’s film might serve as a warning and a deterrent against decadence. See Kurt Almkvist’s article ‘“Tystnaden” och Hermesstaven’ [The Silence and the Hermes staff] in Horisont XI, no. 1, 1964: 10-12. Two influential editorial voices – Bo Strömstedt (Expr., 3 November 1963) and Olof Lagercrantz (DN, 29 October 1963) – defended the film; for the latter this represented a shift in attitude towards Bergman’s filmmaking, the reason being that ‘Bergman did not try to force a pattern of salvation on the viewer’. Lagercrantz’ assessment of Tystnaden as a non-religious work of art was attacked in an article by Torsten Strömner (‘Ingmar Bergmans nihilism’) in the journal Origo 4, no. 1, 1964, p. 24. On 17 November 1963 (p. 18), AB tried to summarize the vast number of articles and letters to the editor that the film had elicited. On 14 January 1964, (p. 20), the same paper reported that the film had been seen in Sweden by 1.4 million people and had been sold to 19 countries. Swedish public reaction to Tystnaden is the subject of a sociological paper by Jan Ekecrantz, ‘Tystnaden och publiken: En sociologisk studie’, University of Uppsala Department of Sociology, 1964, typescript, 50 pp. Swedish magazine Året runt, no. 17 (1964), pp. 10-11, 66, 68, 70, published an interview with Bergman about the film and its reception. Swedish media discussion was reported in Films and Filming, December 1963, pp. 53-55; Time, 15 November 1963, p. 72 (A.E. p. 60) (very glib); NYT, 1 December 1963, sec. 2, p. 5; and by Martin Ripkens in ‘Kein Licht im Winter’. Filmkritik, no. 1, 1964, pp. 43-45.
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Chapter IV Filmography Bergman reports on receiving hate mail and threatening phone calls about Tystnaden. See Bergman on Bergman, p. 179. He discusses the film in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 104-112. Tystnaden caused a controversy in a number of countries after its foreign release in 1964, especially in West Germany, where it was discussed in the Bundestag and became a test case for West German Censorship Board. See Film (München) 2, no. 6 (1964): 13-20, no. 7 (1964): 4-5, and Filmkritik no. 2 (1965), pp. 99-102. Die Information: Nachrichten für die Film Wirtschaft, 31 March 1964, 10 pp, contains a report of the Bundestag discussion on the film. Atlas Filmhefte, no. 32 (1964) is a special issue on Das Schweigen, which contains the West German censorship statement, releasing the film uncut; also a synopsis of the plot; two unsigned articles on the film and one signed by I. Flatow; and excerpted West German reviews. There were several German interviews with Bergman on the same subject: ‘Ingmar Bergman bricht Schweigen’. Weltwoche, 20 March 1964; Michael Salzer, ‘Das Schweigen soll für sich sprechen’. Welt am Sonntag, 29 March 1964; and Dieter Strunz, ‘Ballade der Einsamkeit’. Berliner Morgenpost, 25 March 1964. Variety, 25 March 1964 (p. 19), 27 May (p. 15), and 30 June (p. 21), also reports on West German debate and success of film. Gert H. Theunissen published a book-length study of West German public response to Tystnaden, titled Das Schweigen und sein Publikum (Cologne: M du Mont Schauberg, 1965), 187 pp. For the response to Tystnaden in Israel, the first foreign country to purchase the film, see Variety, 1 January 1964, pp. 2, 52. For reports on the film’s reception in the U.S., see AB, 21 March 1964, p. 18 (mostly on its economic success); NYT, 2 February 1964, p. 48; Variety, 8 July 1964, p. 11 (reporting on attempt by police chief in Braintree, Mass., to stop showing of the film). Critical response to The Silence in the U.S. ranged from Henry Hart’s dismissal of the film as ‘one of Ingmar Bergman’s sexploiters’ (Films in Review 15, no. 3 (March 1964): 176-78) to Stanley Kauffmann’s cautious assessment in New Republic, 22 February 1964, pp. 24-26, reprinted in his A World on Film, 1966, pp. 286-89: ‘Bergman is a director who knows more and more about less and less.’ The Argentinian distributor of Tystnaden received a one-year prison sentence (on probation) according to Expr., 4 December 1964, p. 5.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 24 September 1963 (reviews by Robin Hood in ST and Mauritz Edström in DN were translated by H. Lundberg in Atlas, no. 2 [1964], pp. 119-21); BLM no. 8 (October 1963), pp. 684-87; Chaplin, no. 40 (October 1963), pp. 239-41 (preceded by article by psychiatrist Göran Persson on the Trilogy, pp. 224-38); Perspektiv no. 10 (1963), pp. 460-61; Vi no. 40 (1963), pp. 18, 37.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma, no. 153 (March 1964), pp. 42-44, no. 154 (April 164), p. 48 and no. 168 (July 1965), p. 88; Cineforum, no. 32 (February 1964), pp. 122-30; Cinéma 64, no. 86 (May 1964), pp. 115-17; Cinema Nuovo, no. 168 (March-April 1964), pp. 117-22; Film Comment, 2 no. 3 (Summer 1964), pp. 56-58; Filmfacts, 12 March 1964, pp. 21-23; Filmkritik no. 3 (1964), pp. 133-35; Film Kritik Jahrbuch 65 (Emsderfen: Verlag Lechtl, 1965), n.p; Films and Filming 10, no. 9 (June 1964): 22; Kosmorama no. 66 (April 1964), pp. 166-69;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Le monde, 18 March 1964, p. 10; Monthly Film Bulletin, June 1964, p. 91; Movie, no. 12 (Spring 1965), p. 38; New York Herald Tribune, 4 February 1964, p. 10; New York Times, 4 February 1964, p. 28:1 and NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3444; New Yorker, 8 February 1964, pp. 106-8; Saturday Review, 8 February 1964, p. 23; Sight and Sound 33, no. 3 (Summer 1964): 142-43; Télé-Ciné no. 115 (February-April 1964), p. 45; Time, 14 February 1964, p. 70; Times (London), 23 April 1964, p. 5; Variety, 2 October 1963 (sign. Denk).
Longer Review Articles and Special Journal issues Abenius, Margit. ‘Tystnaden’. BLM 33, no. 10 (December) 1963: 820-822 (pursues religious symbolism in film and sees waiter as an obsolete and powerless God figure); Adams, Sidney P. ‘The Silence’. Film Culture 76 (June) 1992, pp. 35-38; Amis de la télévison, no. 237 (February 1976), pp. 46-47 (reassessment of film); L’Avant-scène du Cinéma, no. 37 (15 May 1964), pp. 1-50 (special issue with dialogue sequences); Blackwell, Marilyn Johns. ‘The Silence: Disruption and Disavowal in the Movement beyond Gender’. Scandinavica 35, no. 2 (November) 1996: 233-68; Brightman, Carol. ‘The Word, the Image and The Silence’. Film Quarterly 17, no. 4 (Summer 1964), pp. 3-11; reprinted in Kaminsky, 1975 (Ø 1266), pp. 239-52; Business Week, 22 February 1964, pp. 128-30 (on financial success of film); Buzzonetti, R. Revista del cinematografo 36, no. 6 (July 1964): 255-58 (analysis of philosophical progression of the Trilogy); Cineforum 4, no. 32 (February 1964): 120-73 (special issue on Il silenzio with excerpts from scenario; a review article by J. Burvenich; and discussion of music, sound, and silence in the film by E. Comuzio); Cinema Nuovo no. 186 (March-April 1967), pp. 104-7 (Guido Aristarco analyzes the film as a Borghesian form of atheism, producing no liberation from Christian dogma, but a deep sense of abandoment); Hamilton, J.W. ‘Some Comments About Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence and its Sociocultural Implications.’ Journal of Academy of Child Psychology, 1969, pp. 367-73; Hiroshi, K. ‘Symbolical Understanding of Ingmar Bergman’s Tystnaden’, Japan, 21 July 1966 (English transl., 4 pp., in SFI library); Kieslowski. ‘Kan Kieslowski lösa Tystnadens gåta’ [Can K solve the riddle of The Silence?] Chaplin, no. 254, 1994: 26-30. Also in Kinoerzählungen, ed. by Vernea Lueken. Munich: Hanser, 1995; Labraaten, B. ‘Meningen med ‘Tystnaden’’ [The meaning of ‘The Silence’]. Filmrutan 6, no. 4 (1963), pp. 123-25 (sees Johan as a contemporary Everyman figure and the old waiter as a naive representation of God; cf. Abenius above); Lee, Gordon. ‘Perceiving Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence through I Ching’. M.A. thesis, San Jose State University, 1995, 150 leaves; Lehman, B. ‘Analyse structurale: Le silence’. Institut national supériur des arts du spectacle et technique de diffusion, Brussels, June-August 1966, 32 pp. (structuralist study of Johan’s ‘conversion’ from innocence to insight);
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Some stills from Ingmar Bergman’s films can serve as emblematic samples of his filmmaking: the shot of the knight playing chess with Death in the Seventh Seal, the split face of the two women, Elisabeth and Alma, in Persona; and the pietà scene in Cries and Whispers when the maid Anna takes the dying Agnes in her lap. Photo shows Kari Sylwan as Anna and Harriet Andersson as Agnes. (Courtesy: SFI) Sammern-Frankenegg, F. ‘Learning “A Few Words in a Foreign Language”: Ingmar Bergman’s “Secret Message” in the Imagery of Hand and Face’. Scandinavian Studies 45, no. 3 (Summer 1977): 301-10; Sjögren, Olle ‘Kammarspels- och trilogibegreppen i Ingmar Bergmans filmtrilogi’ [Chamber play and trilogy concepts in Bergman’s film trilogy], Institute of Literary Science, University of Uppsala, 45 pp., available in stencil, SFI library; Steene, Birgitta. ‘Bergman’s Movement towards Nihilism’, in The Hero in Scandinvian Literature, 1975 (Ø 1269).
Fact Sheets Film a Sogetto, Centro S. Fedelle Spettacolo, Milan (30 July 1965), 20 pp. Italian fact sheet on Il silenzio, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography;
See also Abraham, H., Commonweal, 29 May 1964, pp. 209-12; Cinema (Zurich), no. 39 (1964), pp. 496-517; Cinéma 64, no. 85 (April 1964), pp. 83-88; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 155 (May 1964), p. 34, and no. 156 (June 1964), pp. 30-39;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Gado, Frank. The Passion of Ingmar Bergman, 1986, pp. 295-307; Gervais, Marc. Ingmar Bergman. Prophet and Magician, 1999, pp. 80-86; Hamilton, W., Motive, no. 2 (November 1966), pp. 36-44; Hartman, O. in Jordbävningen i Lissabon [Earthquake in Lisbon] (Stockholm: Raben & Sjögren, 1968), pp. 158-67; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 58-59; Koskinen, M., Spel och speglingar, 1993, (Ø 1552), pp. 104-117 & passim; Kosmorama 24, no. 137 (Spring) 1978: 59-61; Ladiges, P.M., Film (München), no. 6 (February-March 1964), pp. 43-44; Motbilder, 1978 (Ø 1317), pp. 239-45; Penlington, N., University College Quarterly (East Lansing), no. 3 (1966), pp. 30-33; Playboy, June 1964, pp. 61-68; Positif no. 61-63 (June-August 1964), pp. 133-34; Schlappner, M. in Filme und ihre Regisseure (Bern: Hans Huber, 1967), pp. 63-78; Steene, B. Ingmar Bergman, 1968, pp. 87-105; Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 152-54; Variety, 1 January 1964 (pp. 2, 52), and additional notices on 26 February (p. 18), 25 March (p. 19), 3 June (p. 21), 8 July (p. 11).
235.
FÖR ATT INTE TALA OM ALLA DESSA KVINNOR, 1964 [Not to speak about all these women/All These Women], Eastman Color Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman, Erland Josephson
Synopsis The plot catalyst is the death of Felix, a famous musician. Passing by his lit de parade are all the women of importance in his life and his manager Jillker. His biographer, Cornelius, places a manuscript on Felix’s body. In a flashback, Cornelius is seen arriving at Felix’s house to collect material for his biography. He meets Cecilia, the musician’s young cousin, and Adelaide, Felix’s wife, as well as Bumblebee who shows him the master bedroom. This results in an amorous affair, which is depicted as a dance to tango music to appease the censors. The next morning Cornelius wakes up in Bumblebee’s bed and discovers a woman dressed in black who is about to murder him, mistaking him for Felix. Cornelius escapes to warn Felix, but is refused access to the music room by Isolde, the chambermaid. As a last resort, Cornelius jumps out a window, only to encounter Adelaide firing shots at busts that resemble Felix. In the evening, he looks up Bumblebee but gets lost and ends up kissing Beatrice, Felix’s accompanist. The scene is photographed by Jillker. Apprehensive, Cornelius flees again, dropping his cigar, which touches off a spectacular fireworks display. The next day, Jillker persuades Cornelius to dress up as a woman in order to get close to Felix. He succeeds, though the viewers never see Felix. Cornelius learns that Felix will play his composition, ‘The Song of the Fish, or Abstraction No. 14’. Jillker now threatens to resign, but before he can put his threat into action, Felix dies. After Felix’s death, Cornelius examines his manuscript and is forced to admit that he has not captured Felix’s personality. He is accosted by Felix’s ‘widows’, and part of his manuscript disappears. A young man enters the scene. The women flock around him. Felix is already forgotten, and so is his biographer.
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Chapter IV Filmography Credits Production Company Production manager Studio manager Director Assistant directors Screenplay Photography Architect Propman Sound Sound effects Music
Orchestration Costumes Make-up Editor Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Allan Ekelund Lars-Owe Carlberg Ingmar Bergman Lenn Hjortzberg, Lars-Erik Liedholm Ingmar Bergman, Erland Josephson Sven Nykvist P.A. Lundgren Karl-Arne Bergman P.O. Pettersson Evald Andersson Erik Nordgren; selections from J.S. Bach, ‘Suite no. 3 in C major’ and ‘Suite no. 3 in D minor’; Beethoven’s ‘Adelaide’, Offenbach’s ‘La belle Hélène’; Massenet’s ‘Thaïs’, Frank Silver (music)-Irving Cohen (text): ‘Yes! We have no bananas’ Charles Redland Mago (Max Goldstein) Börje Lundh, Britt Falkemo, Cecilia Drott Ulla Ryghe Katherina Faragó
Cast Cornelius Bumblebee Isolde Adelaide Madame Tussaud Traviata Cecilia Beatrice Jillker Tristan A Young Man English radio reporter French radio reporter German radio reporter Swedish radio reporter Men in black Chauffeur Waitresses:
Jarl Kulle Bibi Andersson Harriet Andersson Eva Dahlbeck Karin Kavli Gertrud Fridh Mona Malm Barbro Hiort af Ornäs Allan Edwall Georg Funkquist Carl Billquist Jan Blomberg Göran Graffman Jan-Olof Strandberg Gösta Prüzelius Ulf Johanson, Axel Düberg, Lars-Erik Liedholm Lars-Owe Carlberg Doris Funcke, Yvonne Igell
Filmed on location at Norrviken’s Gardens, Båstad, southern Sweden, and at Råsunda Studios, beginning 21 May 1963 and completed 24 July 1963. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released
Svensk Filmindustri Janus Films, Inc. 80 minutes 28 May 1964
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Premiere U.S. opening
15 June 1964, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 5 October 1964, Cinema Village, NYC
Commentary The script was serialized as a novella in Swedish magazine Allers Familjejournal, nos. 25-29/1964, illustrated with photographs from the film. För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor, the first color film directed by Ingmar Bergman, was a costly enterprise, with his highest budget so far (1.7 million Swedish crowns). It was also a kind of ‘test case’ for his lab experimentation with color (ST 13 July 1963, p. 9; cf. Commentary to entry Ø 227, Såsom i en spegel). Bergman held a press conference about the film on 11 July 1963. On same occasion he was interviewed by news program ‘Dagens eko’, SR (Swedish Public Radio), 12 July 1963, 4 min.
Reception För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor did not fare well among Swedish press critics, who found it artificial, spiteful, and boring. Ingmar Bergman was interviewed about this in Se no. 26 (1964), pp. 32-33 (‘Jag gjorde filmen i hat och förakt’ [I made the film in hatred and disdain]). He claimed he had wanted to attack not just the critics but also a type of ‘puffed up’ [uppblåst] artist. Chaplin, no. 48 (1964), pp. 254-58, asked three critics (L. Krantz, T. Manns, and S. Björkman) to review the film; they were more generous than the daily press and called the film elegant, humorous, and seductive. See also DN, 19 June, p. 4. Film received SFI Quality Subsidy of Skr 153,535 in 1964. För at inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1964, but was no international success. See F. Kovac’s report in Films in Review, October 1964, p. 458. Only the French seem to have liked it, though Cinéma 64, no. 90 (November 1964), pp. 117-18, claimed that the film confirmed Bergman’s total lack of humor. In response to this, see Cinéma 65, no. 93 (February 1965), pp. 109-10. Mario Verdone gave it an extensive review in an article titled ‘Bergman ad Antonioni’. Bianco e nero, no. 8 (August-September) 1964, pp. 7-29. (För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor is discussed on pp. 7-10.) English and American critics were mostly negative, thus confirming Variety’s prediction (1 July 1964, p. 22) that All These Women ‘might sell because of Bergman’s name’ but that ‘there was not much chance of success’. Judith Crists’s review in the New York Herald Tribune, 6 October 1964, p. 19, is indicative of the U.S. response to the film: ‘If Homer nods, why not Ingmar Bergman? But the trouble is the Swedish master has not only nodded – he has fallen fast asleep.’ For a rare positive review of All These Women, see Tom Milne, Sight and Sound 34, no. 1 (Summer 1965): 146-47, who regarded the film as a complex statement on the function of art and the artist as a genius. Film a sogetto, Centro S. Fedelle dello Spettacolo, Milan (7 November 1965), 8 pp., is an Italian fact sheet on Per non parlare di tutte questa donne, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, plot synopsis, and a bibliography.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 16 June 1964
Foreign Reviews Bianco e nero, August-September 1964, pp. 7-10; Filmkritik, no. 10 (1964), pp. 527-28; Films in Review 15, no. 10 (December 1964): 637; New York Times, 6 October 1964, p. 35:1 and NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3497; Time, 9 October 1964, pp. 109-10;
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Chapter IV Filmography Variety, 1 July 1964, p. 22; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 161-62 (January 1965), pp. 144-45; Positif, no. 66 (January 1965), pp. 91, 145-46; Télé-Ciné no. 119 (January-February 1965), pp. 44-45; Filmfacts, 1 January 1965, pp. 337-38; Films and Filming 12, no. 9 (June 1965): 28; Monthly Film Bulletin, May 1965, pp. 68-69; Times (London), 1 April 1965, p. 5.
See also Cahiers du cinéma, no. 159 (October 1964), pp. 12, 16-18; Image et son, no. 176-177 (September-October 1964), pp. 174-76, and no. 226 (March 1969), pp. 59-60); Movie no. 13 (Summer 1965): 6-9; P. Cowie, Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1982, pp. 220-23; M. Doneux, APEC – Revue belge du cinéma, no. 4 (1975), no. 4 (1975), pp. 11-19; S. Kauffmann in A World on Film, pp. 289-90; J. Leirens, Amis du film et de la télévision, no. 228-29 (May-June 1975): 37; Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 178-80.
236.
PERSONA, 1966, B/W Screenplay Director
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis Persona opens with a precredit segment of projector noise and an image of an old projector coal lamp, followed by seemingly disconnected shots in rapid sequence: a shorn lamb, a crawling spider, an animated drawing of a girl rowing upside down, a nail driven into a hand, spikes on a railing, a snowy parklike setting. Next are interior shots of a morgue; there are distant sounds of hospital utensils and of dripping water. A boy and an older woman, both seemingly dead, lie on beds covered with sheets. A phone rings sharply; the boy wakes up and tries in vain to go back to sleep. Moments later, he gets up and begins to wipe the transluscent glass on a door; a woman’s face emerges slowly. The credits are displayed, interspersed with rapid shots from the precredit sequence and recurring flashes of the face of the boy. The film now shifts to a hospital. Alma, a young nurse, is being briefed by a doctor about the case of Elisabet Vogler, an actress who has withdrawn from her profession and her family, and has become mute. After having expressed doubts about her suitability as Mrs. Vogler’s nurse, Alma introduces herself to her patient, who does not respond. She turns on the radio to Bach music, Elisabet covers her face with her hand while the camera gradually darkens and obliterates her features. At home in bed, Alma gives herself a pep talk about her own life: she is engaged to be married, and she has a job she likes. Next Alma reads a letter to Elisabet from her husband. Mrs. Vogler tears to pieces an enclosed picture of her son. Later, alone in the room, she turns on the TV set. A newscast shows a monk in Vietnam burning himself to death. Horrified, Elisabet retreats into a corner of the room. The doctor talks to Elisabet about her condition, suggesting that her silence is just another role she has assumed, which she will soon discard. Upon the doctor’s advice, Alma and Elisabet move to the doctor’s summer place on an island. Bergman’s voice-over describes their life as harmonious. While Elisabet remains mute, Alma becomes more and more talkative. After an evening of drinking, she tells of a sexual orgy in which she took part. Later the same day she
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record made love to her fiancé, became pregnant, but had an abortion. At this point in her story, Alma breaks down crying, embraced by Elisabet. Sitting at the kitchen table, Alma tells Elisabet that they are look-alikes. Drowsy with wine, Alma hears Elisabet’s voice urging her to go to bed. That night, Elisabet visits Alma in her bedroom. But when Alma asks her about it the following day, Elisabet denies it. Driving to post some mail, Alma reads a letter from Elisabet to her doctor, which she has forgotten to seal. In it Elisabet talks about her recovery and about Alma’s devotion to her. The scene ends with a shot of Alma in a slick raincoat, her figure reflected in a pond. Back at the house, Alma deliberately neglects to pick up some broken glass on the patio. Observed by Alma, Elisabet steps on a piece and cuts herself. At this point of crisis, the film strip breaks; when the film starts again, it is in slow motion and out of focus. Once adjusted, it shows the two women, both dressed in black, reading on the beach. Alma is restless, Elisabet seems at peace. Entreating Elisabet to talk to her, Alma becomes hysterical, yet also realizes her own histrionic behavior. Indoors, in the kitchen, she threatens Elisabet with a pot of boiling water and is triumphant when she elicits a frightened response. Next, Elisabet is seen walking fast on the beach, pursued by the stumbling Alma who asks for her forgiveness. Elisabet ignores her, and the scene ends with Alma crouching alone among the rocks. The same night, Mr. Vogler visits the two women. Alma takes Elisabet’s place in bed. The second half of the film consists of scenes within an obscure narrative context. Alma and Elisabet are seen, seated at a table. Alma slits her arm, and Elisabet sucks her blood. In the next scene, Alma comes into the room dressed in a nurse’s uniform. On the table in front of Elisabet is the torn picture of her son. Sitting opposite her, Alma begins to speak about Elisabet’s feelings for her child. Next, the camera projects the same scene from Elisabet’s angle, now focusing on Alma’s face. At this point, Alma’s composure breaks down as she begins to deny her likeness to Elisabet. The scene ends with the merging of the two faces into one. The next scene takes place in the hospital room. Alma asks Elisabet to speak the word nothing. Mrs. Vogler’s silence is broken. The scene then shifts back to the summer house where Alma is carrying in garden furniture and locking up the house. Later, she departs alone by bus. The film screen flickers. A brief shot shows Elisabet in a film studio. The projector lamp dies, the arc lamp is extinguished, the amplifier switched off. The film has ended.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Sound effects Mixing Music Costumes Make-up Editor
Svensk Filmindustri Lars-Owe Carlberg Bo A. Vibenius Ingmar Bergman Lenn Hjortzberg Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist Bibi Lindström Karl-Arne Bergman P.O. Pettersson Evald Andersson Olle Jakobsson Lars Johan Werle. Excerpts from J.S. Bach, ‘Violin Concerto in E major’ Mago (Max Goldstein) Börje Lund, Tina Johansson Ulla Ryghe
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Chapter IV Filmography Continuity
Kerstin Berg
Cast Elisabet Vogler Alma The doctor The husband The boy
Liv Ullmann Bibi Andersson Margaretha Krook Gunnar Björnstrand Jörgen Lindström
Filmed on location on the island of Fårö and at Råsunda Studios, Stockholm, beginning 19 July 1965 and completed 15 September 1965. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Lopert Pictures 84 minutes 31 August 1966 18 October 1966, Spegeln (Stockholm) 6 March 1967
Commentary Persona had several working titles: ‘Sonat för två kvinnor’ [Sonata for two women]; ‘Ett stycke kinematografi’ [A piece of cinematography]; ‘Opus 27’; ‘Kinematografi’. Bergman was interviewed on Swedish Public Radio, 15 July 1964 (‘Dagens Eko’) about his early plans for the film. He discusses the genesis of the film in Bergman om Bergman/B on B (Ø 788), pp. 212-21/195-98, and writes about Persona in Bilder (Images. My Life in Film), 1990, pp. 44-65. On 21 April 1965, Variety (p. 25) reported on Ingmar Bergman’s delay in shooting Persona because of prolonged illness. The same news was published by Gerhard Meissel, ‘Um Ingmar Bergman wird es still.’ Tagesspiegel, 23 May 1965. At a press conference on Persona on 15 July 1965, Bergman introduced ‘the gals’, i.e., Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson (see Stockholm press, 16 July 1965). For the Ullmann-Bergman relationship during shooting of Persona, see Peter Cowie, Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1982, pp. 228-31. In connection with the opening of Persona, Bergman was interviewed on Swedish TV by Gunnar Oldin, 26 October 1966 (transcript available, SFI). Almost forty years later he comments on the film in a TV interview by Marie Nyreröd, SVT, April 8 2004, stating that he favors Persona, together with Viskningar och rop/Cries and Whispers, as his most successful challenge of the film medium. The script to Persona was published in book form in 1966, later issued in paperback in Filmberättelser 2 (1973). See (Ø 153), Chapter II. A television spoof on Persona reportedly appeared in the late 1970s on Canadian SCTV. Search for details has been unsuccessful, but SCTV apparently ran a whole series of Bergman parodies.
Reception Reviews of Persona in Stockholm press were respectful, labeling the film a new artistic victory for Bergman, though hard to analyze. For a resume in English of the Swedish response, see W. Wiskari, ‘Ingmar Bergman Tries New Theme’, NYT, 20 October 1966, p. 52. Film in Sweden, no. 3 (1966-67), pp. 1-13, contains excerpted reviews from the Swedish press and a presentation of the film in English, French and German. On 23 October 1966, Olof Lagercrantz commented in DN (Sunday Sect., p. 2, not signed) on what he called the ‘Person(a)kult’ among Swedish film critics. Two months later, Chaplin, no. 68 (1966), p. 366, used the same coined word in a
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record headline reporting the foreign reception of Persona. The critical implication was that Bergman’s reception had reached the stage of idolatry. Swedish press discussion of Persona lasted into December 1966 and focussed on two issues: (1) the symbolic meaning of the film and (2) the legitimacy of its subjective premises. In SvD (28 October 1966, p. 5) theology professor Stig Wikander analyzed Persona as ‘a gnostic quest for divine nothingness’, contrasting it to Ansiktet, where God descended on earth in Albert Vogler’s person. On 19 November 1966, theologian Hans Nystedt responded (‘Ingmar Bergman, religionen och rollerna’, SvD, p. 4), suggesting that Bergman might be influenced by Hjalmar Sundén’s book Religionen och rollerna [Religion and role-playing, Stockholm: Diakonistyrelsen, 1959] according to which our early religious impressions, coded in our brain, dictate our perception of the divine. To Nystedt, Ingmar Bergman’s religious background was coded in Persona, with Elisabet Vogler representing God or Christ and Alma being our human consciousness. The film reveals God as an illusion; Elisabet disappears from Alma’s reality, and Alma (Bergman’s persona) can return to work. For related discussion, see theologian Olof Hartman in Vår lösen 58, no. 1 (1967): 56-60. Swedish Persona debate among film critics coincided with the political consciousness-raising of the 1960s, during which Bergman’s filmmaking was to become a frequent target. See Torsten Manns in Chaplin no. 67 (1966), p. 301, and C.-E. Nordberg in Vi, no. 40 (22 October) 1966, p. 10. Nordberg, making a comparison to engagé writer Sara Lidman, wrote that unlike Bergman, Lidman ‘calls out, protests, forces us to listen. Silence [such as the muteness of Mrs. Vogler] is the language of defeat’ [ropar, protesterar, tvingar oss att lyssna. Tystnaden är nederlagets språk]. Demand for social commitment and realism in art also dictated a critical exchange on Persona in literary magazine BLM 36, no. 10 (December 1966): 788-91, between filmmaker Jonas Cornell and critic Leif Zern. Both rejected Persona and other Bergman films as being too hermetic and incapable of exploring the contextual origin of the traumas affecting the characters. Zern revaluated Persona in his 1993 book Se Bergman. Persona was also the subject of a ‘revaluation’ by Lars-Olof Franzén in DN, 10 July 1973. Franzén, part of the 1960s critique of Bergman, now focussed on Elisabet Vogler as an irresponsible artist and vampire and on Alma as an audience representative who learns to revaluate and free herself from a Romantic view of the artist. In France, Persona redeemed Ingmar Bergman to the critics. Cahiers du cinéma, no. 188 (March 1967), p. 20 (transl. Cahiers du cinéma in English no. 11 [September 1967], pp. 30-33), termed it Bergman’s ‘most beautiful film’ and Nouvel observateur’s M. Cournot (5 July 1967, n. p., SFI clipping) suggested that in Persona the cinema might, after 60 years of errors, have found a promising form. In marked contrast to the Swedish debate, Marcel Martin in Cinéma 67, no. 119 (September-October 1967): 73-81, argued that Persona was an example of l’art engagé reflecting the anguish of our contemporary world. Martin saw Persona as a study of the double, expressing itself either as a divided self (the schizophrenic motif) or as a multiple self (the maternity motif). In US, Persona’s pre-credit sequence was shown with cuts (image of erect penis), and Bibi Andersson’s monologue about a sexual encounter was edited in the English translation. A restored copy of the film was released in 2001 with 30% more text; see Variety, 16 April 2001, p. 6. Though some American reviewers of Persona were puzzled by the film and dismissed it as a work about ‘lesbians and lesbianism’ (Films in Review 18, no. 4 (April 1967): 244-246) or as another example of Bergman’s total lack of affinity for the medium (A. Sarris, Village Voice, 23 March 1967, p. 25, reprinted in Confessions of a Cultist. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971, pp. 289-92), most critics were impressed. Time, 17 March 1967, p. 104 (Am. Ed., p. 63), viewed Persona as a study in accidie, or what medieval theologians termed total indifference to life.
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Chapter IV Filmography Most American discussions focussed on the psychological rather than metaphysical implications of the film. For sample reviews, see M. Harris in Take One 1, no. 8 (December-January 1968), pp. 24-26, and J. Hofsess in Take One 1, no. 12 (July-August 1968), pp. 26-28. In his article ‘Landmarks in Film History; Bergman’s Persona’ (Horizon 16, no. 3, Summer 1974: 88-95), Stanley Kauffmann proposed three different approaches to Persona: (1) deciphering or mapping out the story; (2) studying narrative technique and thematic development; and (3) discussing the film as a tragedy of consciousness. In his book Sex, Psyche etecetera in the Film (New York: Horizon, 1968), pp. 114-31, Parker Tyler uses Persona to challenge both Kracauer’s and Susan Langer’s theories of film as either a specific physical mode or a dream mode; in Persona Bergman uses a dream mode not to make a surrealistic picture ‘but to inflect the meaning of the ordinary physical world.’
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 19 October 1966; Torsten Manns, ‘Persona’. Chaplin 8 (no. 67), November 1966, p. 301; Carl-Eric Nordberg, ‘Ingmar Bergman och det gåtfulla leendet’ [Bergman and the enigmatic smile]. Vi 49, 1966, p. 10.
Foreign Reviews Bianco e nero, February 1967, pp. 77-80; J. Crist in The Private Eye, the Cowboy and the Very Naked Girl (New York Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968), pp. 234-36; Film (Hannover), no. 9 (1967), pp. 32-33; Film Comment, 4, no. 2-3 (Fall-Winter 1967), pp. 63-65; Film Heritage 3, no. 3 (Spring 1967), pp. 28-32; Film Quarterly 20, no. 4 (Summer 1967): 52-54; Films and Filming, no. 3 (December 1967), pp. 20-21; Filmfacts, 15 April 1967, pp. 59-61; Filmkritik 11, no. 9 (1967): 507-8; Image et son, no. 210 (November 1967), pp. 134-36; Jeune Cinéma no. 25 (October 1967), pp. 38-39; Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1967, pp. 169-70; Movie, no. 15 (Spring 1968), pp. 22-24; New Leader, 8 May 1967, pp. 30-31; New Republic, 6 May 1967, pp. 32-33 (Pauline Kael, review also in Film 67/68 and in author’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, pp. 171-172); New York Times, 7 March 1967, p. 46:2; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, pp. 3665-3666; New Yorker, 11 March 1967, pp. 180-181; Newsweek 20 March 1967, p. 63; Positif, no. 88 (October 1967), pp. 45-47; Saturday Review, 18 March 1967, p. 40; Télé-Ciné, no. 135 (November 1967), pp. 40-41; Times (London), 21 September 1967, p. 8; Variety, 30 November 1966, p. 6. In general, one can discern in both the Swedish and foreign reception of Persona three main areas of interest: (1) the psychological implications of the film; (2) the self-reflexive nature of Persona, and (3) comparative studies.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Psychological Motifs Barr, A.P. ‘The Unraveling Character in Bergman’s Persona’, Literature/Film Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1987), pp. 123-36; Baudry, J-L. Person. ‘Personne, Persona’, Filmkritik 11, no. 1 (November 1967): 607-10; also published in French under the title ‘Masque, surface et profondeur’, Les lettres françaises, 19 July 1967, p. 11; Casebier, A. and J. Manley. ‘Reductionism without Discontent: The Case of Wild Strawberries and Persona’, Film/Psychology Review 4, no. 1 (Winter-Spring 1980): 15-25; Fredericksen, Don. “Notes on Bergman’s Persona. Jung and the Classical Notion of Personare.” Images: The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication, I: 1-2 (Poland), 2003; and “The Use of Two Images from Popular Consciousness in Bergman’s Persona”. Images: The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts, and Audiovisual Communication, I: 4, 2005. See also same author’s monograph Bergman’s Persona. Poznan: Adam Mickiewicz University Classics of Cinema series, 2005, 130 pp. Author is film scholar and practicing Jungian psychologist. Houston, Beverly and Marsha Kinder. ‘Self-Exploration and Survival in Persona and The Ritual: The Way In’, in Self & Cinema: A Transformalist Perspective (Pleasantville: Redgrave, 1980), pp. 1-40; Koskinen, Maaret. ‘Vid spegeln: Lacan och Persona’. Filmhäftet 57, 1987, pp. 13-21; Michaels, Lloyd. ‘The Imaginary Signifier in Bergman’s Persona’. Film Criticism 2, no. 2-3 (Winter- Spring 1978): 72-86, reprinted in same 11, no. 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1986-87), pp. 127-32; Manley, J. ‘Artist and Audience, Vampire and Victim: The Oral Matrix of Imagery in Bergman’s Persona’. Psycho-Cultural Review 3, no. 2 (Spring 1979): 117-39; Sontag, Susan. Review article on Persona, first published in Sight and Sound 36, no. 4 (Autumn 1967): 186-91, and reprinted in Styles of Radical Will (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giraux, 1969), pp. 123-45; in S. Kaminsky (ed) (Ø 1266), pp. 253-69, and Lloyd Michaels (ed) (Ø 1660), pp. 62-85. This is the most referenced article on Persona.
Meta-filmic Aspects Boyd, D. ‘Persona and the Cinema of Interpretation’. Film Quarterly 37, no. 2 (Winter 1983-84), pp. 10-19; Campbell, Paul N. ‘The Reflexive Function of Bergman’s Persona’. Cinema Journal 19, no. 1 (Winter 1979): 71-85; Fredericksen, Don. ‘Modes of Reflexive Film’. Quarterly Review of Film Studies 4, no. 3 (Summer 1979): 299-320; Jones, C. J. ‘Bergman’s Persona and the Artistic Dilemma of the Modern Narrative’. Literature/ Film Quarterly 5, no. 1 (Winter 1977): 75-88; Jordan, Paul T. ‘Persona: Bergman’s Metaphor for the Artistic Experience’. M.S. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1979, typescript, 104 pp.; Kawin, Bruce in Mindscreen, 1978, pp. 102-32; Livingston, Paisley in Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art, 1982, pp. 180-220; Michaels, Lloyd. ‘Reflexivity and Character in Persona’. In The Phantom of the Cinema: Character and Modern Film (Albany: State University of New York, 1998): 33-46; Vierling, David L. ‘Bergman’s Persona: The Metaphysics of Meta-Cinema’. Diacritics 4 (1974): 4851.
Comparative Studies Boyers, Robert. ‘Bergman’s Persona: An Essay in Tragedy’. Salmagundi 2, no. 4 (Fall 1968): 3-31, reprinted in Excursions: Selected Literary Essays (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1977), pp.
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Chapter IV Filmography 47-70. Boyers compares Alma in Persona to the tragic protagonist in Electra, King Oedipus, King Lear, and Hamlet; Johns, Marilyn. Unpublished dissertation ‘Strindberg’s Influence on Bergman’s Det sjunde inseglet, Smultronstället and Persona’. (University of Washington, 1977), pp. 199-225; Murphy, Katheleen. ‘Children of the Paradise’. Film Comment 26, no. 6 (November-December 1990), pp. 38-39, 42. Compares Persona with Angeloupolos’s film Landscape in the Mist; Orr, John. ‘The Screen as Split Subject 1: Persona’s Legacy’. In author’s The Contemporary Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1998, pp. 70-90; Patera, Paul. ‘Persona-grata? nongrata!’, Tidspegel no. 5-6 (1966), pp. 30-36, 45. Compares the film to Strindberg’s play Den starkare (The Stronger); Scholar, Nancy. ‘Anaïs Nin’s House of Incest and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona: Two Variations of a Theme’. Literature/Film Quarterly 7, no. 1 (Winter 1979): 47-59; Steene, Birgitta. ‘Bergman’s Persona through a Native Mindscape’ in Michaels, 1999 (Ø 1660), pp. 24-43. Compares film to Strindberg’s dramaturgy; Törnqvist, Egil. Between Stage and Screen. Ingmar Bergman Directs (Amsterdam UP, 1995), pp. 137-48, and Filmdiktaren Ingmar Bergman, 1993, pp. 62-74. Comparative reference to Göran Sonnevi’s poem ‘Om kriget i Vietnam’; Wheeler, Winston Dixon. ‘Persona and the 1960s Art Cinema’, in Michaels, 1999 (Ø 1660), pp. 44-61.
Monographs on Persona Blackwell, Marilyn Johns. Persona. The Transcendent Image (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Michaels, Lloyd, ed. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (Cambridge UP, 1999) (Ø 1660)
Special Journal Issues on Persona L’Avant-scène du cinéma, no. 85 (October 1968), 58 pp. Contains script and French reviews; Cineforum, no. 61 (January 1967), pp. 23-70. Script, credits, review by J. Paillard and two articles by E. Comuzio, one a survey of Bergman’s production, the other a study of the use of sound in Persona. Film a sogetto, Centro S. Fedelle dello Spettocolo, Roma (20 April 1968) 22 p., is an Italian fact sheet on Persona, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, and plot synopsis.
Additional Studies on Persona Burdock, Dolores. ‘Persona: Facing the Mirror Together’. In Close Viewings: An Anthology of New film Criticism, ed. by Lehman-Peter. (Tallahassee: Florida UP, 1990), pp. 23-38; Fischer, Lucy. ‘The Actress as Signifier’. In Shot/Countershot. Film tradition and Women’s Cinema. (Princeton UP, 1989): 70-80; Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. ‘Feminist Theory and the Performance of Lesbian Desire’. In Michaels, 1999 (Ø 1660); Habernoll, Kurt. ‘Alma und Elisabeth/Persona’. Abend, 29 December 1966; Holmberg, Jan. ‘En stillbild ur Ingmar Bergmans ‘Persona’. Chaplin, xxxix, no. 2 (269), 1997: 41; Kauffmann, Stanley. Figures of Light. New York: Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 13-18; Leiser, Erwin. ‘Das Schweigen des Künstlers’. Die Weltwoche, 9 December 1966; Orr, Christopher. ‘Scenes from the Class Struggle in Sweden. Persona as Brechtian Melodrama’. In Michaels, 1999 (Ø 1660), pp. 86-109; Persson, Göran. ‘Bergman’s Persona: Rites of Spring as a Chamber Play’. CineAction 40 (May 1996): 22-3; Simon, John. Ingmar Bergman Directs, 1972: 208-310;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Törnqvist, Egil. ‘En bilddikt – Persona’. In Filmdiktaren Ingmar Bergman. (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Arena, 1993): 62-74; Vineberg, Steve. ‘Persona and the Seduction of Performance’. In Michaels, 1999 (Ø 1660): pp. 110-129; Wood, Robin. ‘Persona Revisited’. CineAction 34 (June 1994): 59-67. All post-1966 book-length studies of Ingmar Bergman’s filmmaking treat Persona as an important film in the Bergman canon. In fact, the film has elicited more analyses than any other Bergman work. See for instance: Cohen, Hubert. Ingmar Bergman. Art as Confession, 1993, pp. 227-249; Gado, Frank. The Passion of Ingmar Bergman, 1986, pp. 320-344; Grafe, Frieda. ‘Der Spiegel ist zerschlagen’. Filmkritik 12, no. 11 (November) 1968: 760-772; Koskinen, Maaret. Spel och speglingar, 1993, pp. 225-232; Steene, Birgitta. Ingmar Bergman, 1968, pp. 114-122; Teghrarian, S. ‘The Cracked Lens: The Crisis of the Artist in Bergman’s Films of the Sixties’. Diss, 1976 (Ø 1298).
See also Cahiers du cinéma no. 189 (April 1967), p. 51; Chaplin 215-216, 1988 (Ø 1452), essays by Björkman (pp. 81-83) and Dickstein (pp. 112-15, 157); Cinéma 66, no. 111 (December 1966), pp. 31-45; Cinema Nuovo 16, no. 185 (January-February 1967): 33-45; Etudes cinématographiques, no. 327 (1967), pp. 672-74; Film Culture 48-49 (Winter-Spring 1970), pp. 56-60; Filmrutan 9, no. 4 (1966): 228-29; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 60-63; Kosmorama 13, no. 80 (July 1967): 222-23 and 24, no. 137 (Spring 1978), p. 62; Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (1314), pp. 290-98, including a close reading of the film by Maria Bergom-Larsson.
Awards National Film Society prize for Best Film, Best Script (2nd prize), Best Direction, Best Photo (3rd prize), Best Actress (Bibi Andersson). For additional awards, see Varia, C. Persona also placed high on numerous ‘Best film of the year’ polls throughout the world. 1967:
237.
STIMULANTIA, 1967 (Segment entitled Daniel), B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Credits Production company Production manager Director Screenplay Photography Speaker Music Editor
Svensk Filmindustri Olle Nordemar Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Käbi Laretei plays W.A. Mozart, ‘Ah, vous dis-je, Madame’ Ulla Ryghe
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Chapter IV Filmography Filmed in and around Bergman’s home (at the time) in Djursholm, Sweden, 1963-65. Distribution Running time Released Premiere
Svensk Filmindustri 15 minutes 22 March 1967 28 March 1967, Spegeln (Stockholm)
Never released abroad.
Commentary The concept behind Stimulantia – eight short films on a common theme, directed by eight different Swedish filmmakers – was Ingmar Bergman’s. The final product, however, does not have much thematic cohesiveness but ranges from a filmatization of Guy de Maupassant’s short story ‘The Necklace’ to a documentary film about Chaplin’s childhood in London. Bergman’s own contribution, entitled Daniel, is a 16mm film about his and Käbi Laretei’s son Daniel Sebastian Bergman, photographed from birth to age 2. Bergman juxtaposes a suite of soft, pastoral family pictures, including wife, son, and mother-in-law Alma Laretei, and references to a film that was never made but which was to deal with human warmth and closeness vs. a judgmental view of life based on a concept of God as a punitive deity. Bergman narrates the film.
Reviews Swedish press, 29 March 1967. See also: Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 318-20.
238.
VARGTIMMEN, 1967 [Hour of the Wolf], B/W Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Title refers to the hours between 3 and 5 a.m. when, according to Swedish folklore, most people die, and most babies are born.
Synopsis After an opening ‘into-the-camera’ monologue by Alma, pregnant wife of the painter Johan Borg, the greater part of the film is a flashback, beginning with Alma and Johan arriving on an isolated island. Johan is possessed by images of haunting demons, which he draws in his sketchbook. He is tense and sleepless; Alma stays awake with him until dawn, past the hour of the wolf. In the morning, Alma sees an old woman, who may be real or a vision. The woman tells her about Johan’s diary, which Alma begins to read; the film depicts Johan’s encounters with Baron von Merkens, owner of an estate on the island, and with Johan’s former mistress, Veronica Vogler, who disappears as quickly as she materialized. Johan is then pursued by a curator, Heerbrand. A short household scene with Alma going through the budget is followed by a long and central dinner party sequence at the Baron’s estate. In rapidly shifting shots around the table, the camera captures the artificiality of the guests; Alma and Johan are ill at ease. Later, Lindhorst, an archivist, puts on a puppet performance of a scene from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which leads to a brief exchange about the role of art and the artist. After a walk in the park, Johan and Alma are invited by Mrs. von Merkens to view Johan’s portrait of Veronica Vogler. On their way home, Alma reveals to Johan that she has read his diary and is worried about his health. Johan rejects her, and Alma runs away crying. Later at home, Johan tells her about a childhood trauma: he was locked in a dark closet. This episode is followed by a visualized
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record account of Johan fishing from a rock, an overexposed surreal sequence. Johan is attacked by a young boy, fights him off and kills him. The boy’s head bobs up and down in the water. Heerbrand comes to visit Johan and Alma. Inviting them to a party, he leaves them a small gun. Alma is anxious, Johan urges her to leave. He aims the gun at her and shoots. In the next sequence, Johan returns to von Merkens. Old Mrs. von Merkens directs him to Veronica’s room. Baron von Merkens tells him of his jealousy, then climbs the wall upside down, like a fly. In another surreal scene, an old lady pulls off a rubber mask and drops her eyeball in a cocktail glass, like an olive. Heavily made up and dressed in a silk robe, Johan finds Veronica nude on a bier. Seemingly dead, she comes to life under his caresses while all the grotesque faces of von Merkens’ household are present, laughing in ridicule at Johan. Alma’s narrative resumes. After shooting her, Johan ran away from the house. He later returned and wrote for hours in his diary. Then he packed his knapsack and left. Alma has not seen him since. She now goes in search of him and encounters the demons that have been plaguing her husband. She sees him, briefly, deep in the forest, attacked by birds. But the next moment, the place is empty, and Johan is gone. The film ends with Alma talking to an invisible listener. She asks if a woman who lives for a long time with a man she loves might not become like him? Or has she lost Johan because she did not love him enough? Her monologue ends in mid-sentence.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Sound effects Mixing Music
Costumes Make-up Editor and Continuity
Svensk Filmindustri Lars-Owe Carlberg Bo A. Vibenius Ingmar Bergman Lenn Hjortzberg Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist Marik Vos-Lundh P.O. Pettersson Evald Andersson Olle Jakobsson Lars Johan Werle. Also: excerpts from J.S. Bach’s Saraband in Partita no. 3 in A minor and W.A. Mozart’s The Magic Flute Mago (Max Goldstein), Eivor Kullberg Börje Lundh, Kjell Gustavsson, Tina Johansson Ulla Ryghe
Cast Alma Borg Johan Borg Baron von Merkens Corinne, his wife Old Mrs. von Merkens Ernst von Merkens Lindhorst Heerbrand Old lady in Alma’s ‘vision’/ Old woman with rubber face Boy in fishing sequence
Liv Ullmann Max von Sydow Erland Josephson Gertrud Fridh Gudrun Brost Bertil Anderberg Georg Rydeberg Ulf Johanson Naima Wifstrand Mikael Rundquist
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Chapter IV Filmography Kreisler Veronica Vogler Maid Tamino Corpse in the morgue
Lenn Hjortzberg Ingrid Thulin Agda Helin Folke Sundquist Mona Seilitz
Filmed on location at Hovs hallar in southwestern Sweden and Råsunda Studios, beginning 23 May 1966 and completed 23 November 1966. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening Original title
Svensk Filmindustri Lopert Pictures Corp. 89 minutes 27 September 1967 19 February 1968, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 9 April 1968, 34th Street East Theater, NYC Människoätarna [The Cannibals].
Commentary The script to Vargtimmen was published in paperback in Filmberättelser 2 (1973). Ingmar Bergman writes about the genesis of the film in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 25-38. He began to write the script in 1964 and planned for a production in 1965, at which time its name was Människoätarna [The Cannibals] (see SvD, 29 August 1964, p. 10). But because of Bergman’s illness in the spring of 1965, the production was postponed until after the completion of Persona. See report in SvD, 23 April 1965, p. 14. In a later TV interview on 18 February 1968, the day before the opening of Vargtimmen, Bergman revealed that part of his difficulty in completing the script and starting the shooting of the film had to do with the very personal anchoring of the story. For texts related to this interview, see Cineforum 9, no. 77 (September 1968): 449-52; Cahiers du Cinéma no. 203 (August 1968): 48-58; and Nuevo film (Montevideo), Autumn-Winter 1969, pp. 29-34. Bergman held a press conference in Rome about Vargtimmen on 26 February 1968, which was reported on the Swedish Radio (Kvällseko/Evening news). At its release on 27 September 1967 Vargtimmen was 2,455 meters long. On 9 February 1968, the film was cut to 2,395 meters (a cut of approx. 2 minutes). This cut was not done by the Censorship Board and corresponds roughly to the length of a prologue, last shown in public in a new print of the film at the New York Bergman Festival in May-June 1995. In it Bergman explains to Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann about the background of the film: he had received a diary from the widow of an artist on the Frisian Islands. This story is most likely a piece of fiction. Cf. Koskinen, Ingmar Bergman. Allting föreställer, Ingenting är, 2001, p. 207, note 30.
Reception Swedish press reacted to Vargtimmen as to a cinematic déjà vu. Though recognizing Bergman’s virtuosity as a filmmaker, the critics had reservations about the portrait of the self-absorbed artist Johan Borg. Göran O. Eriksson in BLM 38, no. 3 (March 1968): 212-14, found that Bergman overestimated the importance of the artistic self, which was considered an obsolete theme in today’s world. See also Gunnar E. Sandgren ‘Bergman behöver en manusförfattare’ [Bergman needs a scriptwriter]. KvP, 29 April 1968, p. 4. P.O. Enquist in Chaplin, no. 80 (1968), p. 108, likened Bergman to a dangerous mamba in a bourgeois living-room who did not bite the real enemy (the bourgeoisie), but merely crawled into a corner, wailing in self-pity because someone stepped on its tail as a child. Mauritz Edström in DN (20 February, p. 12) and C.H. Svenstedt in SvD (same date, p. 10) voiced views also found frequently in American and British responses. To Edström, an identification with the film was possible only if the viewer let himself be manipulated by Ingmar Bergman’s vision, while Svenstedt resented Bergman’s pontification of his
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record message, which allowed for no intellectual response. See also Stig Ahlgren: ‘Vem är rädd för vargtimmen’[Who is afraid of the hour of the wolf?], DN, 10 March, p. 4. The somewhat unengaged Swedish newspaper response to Vargtimmen might be juxtaposed to several longer analyses of the film. Theologian Hans Nystedt continued his examination of religious symbolism in Ingmar Bergman’s work with an article on Vargtimmen in SvD, 31 March 1968, p. 4. In Vecko-Journalen, no. 16 (1968), p. 45, Stig Ahlgren related the film to Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. Asta Bolin in Teater och moral (Stockholm: Proprius, 1968), pp. 94-104, discusses the film with Max von Sydow, who sees Borg’s situation as both a personal and an existential crisis. American reviews of Hour of the Wolf were mostly negative. Variety, 28 February 1968, p. 22, referred to the film as ‘the selected works of Ingmar Bergman’ and added: ‘Anthologies are almost always disappointments.’ Henry Hart in Films in Review 19, no.5 (May 1968): 306-8, called the film degenerate. Stanley Kauffmann in New Republic, 20 April 1968, p. 30 (reprinted in Figures of Light, pp. 62-65), was rebuffed by its coldness: ‘The most we can feel is a hospital visitor’s pity.’ Andrew Sarris in Village Voice, 30 May 1968, pp. 45-46, claimed that ‘von Sydow the actor seems to bring out the worst in Bergman the thinker [...] a yearning, yawning mysticism’. John Simon in New Leader, 22 April 1968, pp. 30-31 (reprinted in Movies into Film, New York: Dell, 1972, pp. 230-33), regarded the film as a failure in its attempts to merge the real and surreal. Later, however, Hour of the Wolf became a favorite film among psychoanalytical film scholars in the US (see references below). In Europe the subjectivity of the film dominated the critical commentaries and echoed the Swedish discussion of Ingmar Bergman as a narcissistic Romantic artist. Anders Troelsen in Kosmorama saw the film as ‘the extreme expression of an isolated artistic position where the artist does not let himself be distracted by any audience considerations’. Jean-Louis Comolli in Cahiers du cinéma was more intrigued by the film’s structure as subjective dream than by Bergman’s position as an artist. Ecran found a superior masochistic temperament nourishing the film but also a Scandinavian filmmaking tradition focusing on the ‘fantastique’. René Prédal in Jeune Cinéma viewed L’heure du loup as one more excursion into Bergman’s subjective universe, at the same time a resume and a deepening of his developed themes of angst and fear, but pointed out Bergman’s handling of Johan’s hallucinations as a macabre farce suggesting the labyrinthian (though less precisely designed) world of Robbe-Grillet’s Last Year at Marienbad but also an incarnation of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. Bernard Cohn in Positif felt that with this film Bergman opposed ‘the contradictions of a creator who fights against himself ’. With the exception of Comolli, French attention was either film-historically comparative or focussed on Bergman’s creative persona, whereas relatively little attention was paid to his use of a subjective camera with its optically disfigured faces, unrealistic lighting, bleached flashbacks and dizzily revolving movements. The British called Hour of the Wolf a return to the old Bergman of chiaroscuro and angst. Never before, wrote Monthly Film Bulletin, ‘has he so displayed [...]his taste for the flamboyant techniques of expressionism, surrealism and Gothic horror’. Philip Strick in Sight and Sound emphasized the exaggerated theatricality of the film and pointed to its structure as ‘a succession of deceptive curtain-raisings, each leading us into deeper darkness... until we can conjure demons out of nothing.’ Strick concluded that ‘in the hour of dawn, Bergman’s imagination remains the finest, and the most disturbing, of all the cinema’s modern visionaries’. In the largely very positive British reception of Hour of the Wolf, Films and Filming summed up: ‘Rich and orderly, superbly cinematic, this is among the most important films of Bergman; more than compulsive viewing: imperative.’ A very different response indeed to the Swedish and American reviews.
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Chapter IV Filmography Swedish Reviews BLM 38, no. 3 (March 1968): 212-14; Chaplin 10, no. 80 (March 1968): 108-9; Kvällsposten, 29 April 1968, p. 4; Stockholm press, 20 February 1968; Vi, no. 9 (1968), p. 10.
Foreign Reviews Cahiers du cinéma, no. 203 (August 1968): 58-59; Cinema (Beverly Hills) 4, no. 3 (Fall 1968): 40-41; Cineforum 8 (1968): 417-25; Ecran, no. 17 (July-August 1973), p. 22; Filmfacts, 15 May 1968, pp. 122-24; Filmkritik 12, no. 4 (April 1968): 277-79; Films and Filming 14, no. 12 (September 1968), pp. 32-33; Jeune cinéma, no. 32 (September 1968), pp. 33-35; Kosmorama, no. 137 (1978), pp. 63-65; The Listener, 18 July 1968, pp. 92-93; Monthly Film Bulletin, August 1968, pp. 115-16; Movie, no. 16 (Winter 1968-69), pp. 9-12; New York Times, 10 April 1968, p. 50:2, and NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3749; New Yorker, 20 April 1968, pp. 163-65; Positif, no. 98 (October 1968), pp. 53-55; Saturday Review, 13 April 1968, p. 50; Sight and Sound 37, no. 4 (Autumn 1968): 203-4; Times (London), 11 July 1948, p. 11.
Comparative Studies Rosen, Robert. ‘Enslaved by the Queen of the Night: The relationship of Ingmar Bergman to E. T.A. Hoffmann’. Film Comment 6, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 26-31; Gantz, Jeffrey. ‘Mozart, Hoffmann and Ingmar Bergman’s Vargtimmen’, Literature/Film Quarterly 8, no. 2 (Spring 1980): 104-15. Both Rosen and Gantz discuss Hoffmann’s stories ‘Der Sandman’ and ‘Der goldene Topf ’; Blokker, Jan in Vrij Nederland, 29 June 1968, n.p. Compares the film to Strindberg’s Inferno; Gyllström, Katy in Nya Argus 61 (1968), pp. 170-72. Compares Johan Borg in Vargtimmen to Sarastro in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Psychological Studies Buntzen, Linda and C. Craig. ‘Hour of the Wolf’. Film Quarterly 30, no. 2 (Winter 1976): 23-34; Corliss, Richard and Jonathan Hoops. ‘Hour of the Wolf: The Case of Ingmar Bergman’. Film Quarterly 21, no. 4 (Summer 1968): 33-40; Houston, Beverley and Marsha Kinder in Close-up: A Critical Perspective on Film (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972): 273-79.
Vargtimmen as part of a Second Trilogy For discussions of Vargtimmen as part of a second Bergman trilogy, see: G. Braucourt’s analysis in Cinéma 68 no. 128 (August-September 1968), pp. 89-91, suggesting that Toutes ses femmes, Persona and L’heure du loup form a thematic threesome about the power of art (music, theater, painting); Sergio Areceo’s view in Filmcritica, no. 190 (August 1968), pp. 570-76, that L’ore del lupo forms a trilogy of Nostalgia together with Persona and Daniel.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record See also Cahiers du cinéma, vol 2. 1960-1968 (ed J. Hillier), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986, pp. 313-16 (transl. of Cahiers’s review in no. 203); Cinema (Kansas City) 6, no. 2 (March-April 1968): 17-18; Film Culture, no. 48-49 (1970), pp. 58-60; Film 68/69 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969), pp. 130-36. Contains John Simon’s New Leader review and Richard Schickel’s in Life; Schickel’s review also in his Second Sight (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), pp. 175-79; Klas Viklund in Filmhäftet, no. 62 (May) 1988, pp. 40-42; Kosmorama (debate) 126, Summer 1975, p. 174; Image et son, no. 226 (March) 1969: 63-66; Passek, J.L. ‘L’heure du loup’. Dossiers du cinéma: films I, 1971, pp. 117-120 (synopsis/credits, review); Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 366-68.
Awards See Varia C.
239.
SKAMMEN, 1968 [Shame], B/W Screenplay Director
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis Skammen takes place on an island threatened by invasion. Jan and Eva Rosenberg, two musicians, have left the mainland after their orchestra was disbanded because of a civil war. They now live in a farmhouse and try to make a living by selling berries and vegetables. The film opens with soundtrack transmissions of foreign language voices, wartime noises, and studio directives. The first sequence depicts Jan and Eva facing another day. Jan is preoccupied with a dream he has had and with a bothersome wisdom tooth. Eva goes over the household budget, somewhat impatient with Jan’s self-absorption. En route to town with a delivery of lingonberries, Jan and Eva argue about his failure to repair the radio, their only contact with the outside world. They stop at a stream, where Eva buys fish from Filip, a friend, who reports rumors of an invasion. On the ferry, they meet Mayor Jacobi and wife, and agree to get together soon for a musical evening. Having delivered the berries in town, the Rosenbergs visit an antique dealer, who has just been drafted. While he goes to fetch a bottle of rare vintage wine, Jan and Eva listen to the delicate music of Bach on a music box made of Meissen china. Back home they share a meal of fish and wine. Eva brings up the topic of children and pleads that Jan go and see a doctor. The pastoral scene is suddenly interrupted by shrill sounds of aircraft. A parachuter falls from the sky and lands in a tree. Eva wants to run to his rescue, but Jan grabs a gun to defend himself. Suddenly, their house is surrounded by soldiers, and they are being interrogated in a televised interview. When it is over, Eva confesses she is glad they have no children. Next, the house is rocked by bombardments. Afterwards, Jan and Eva collect their few belongings and pack the car. In a ludicrous scene, Jan tries to shoot their chickens. En route across the island they see fires and dead people, including the corpse of a small child. The road is blocked; they return home, surrounded by the noise of fighting. Jan takes out his violin and tells the story of its maker, Papini, a contemporary of Beethoven.
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Chapter IV Filmography Travelling to the country store, Jan and Eva are arrested with other customers and taken to a schoolhouse for interrogation. The televised interview is shown, with Eva’s voice replaced by that of a woman propagandist. They are pushed into a room where some people have been tortured. Later, they are picked out from a crowd by Jacobi. He has joined the invaders and releases them with an apology. After this event, Jan’s and Eva’s relationship deteriorates. A sequence depicting them digging potatoes reveals their tension, which escalates from abusive language to physical fighting. Jacobi visits them, bringing them gifts, and talks to them about ‘the holy freedom of art, the holy gutlessness of art’. Jan gets drunk and falls asleep; Jacobi gives Eva a large sum of money and talks about his mother. While they are in the greenhouse making love, Jan wakes up, stumbles into the bedroom, and finds Jacobi’s money on the bed and pockets. The house is surrounded by Filip, head of a resistance unit. Jacobi wants to buy himself free, but Jan denies having seen the money. The house is searched and destroyed. Filip gives Jan a pistol to execute Jacobi. Jan is obliging, but fumbles in his aim. The soldiers have to finish the killing for him. A long take depicts Jan and Eva standing outside the ruins of their home with expressionless faces. They continue to live in the greenhouse. One day they find a young deserter there, who is given food and drink by Eva, while Jan interrogates him. The boy is later killed by Jan after having revealed the departure of a boat of refugees. Jan and Eva are on their way to the sea. Jan is pulling a small cart with their belongings, Eva stumbling behind. On the seashore they meet Filip; Jan buys two seats in the open boat. The next sequence shows the boat drifting amidst a sea of dead bodies from a torpedoed warship. Food and drink are running out. (The printed screenplay suggests a nuclear fallout. The survivors in the boat are quenching their thirst ‘with contaminated water’.) During the night, Filip commits suicide by slipping silently over the railing. Jan is awake but does not intervene. The film ends as Eva tells Jan of a dream she has had, seeing herself walking down a street with houses on one side and a lovely park on the other. A high wall of roses is suddenly set on fire by a roaring aircraft. Eva feels she should remember something important that has been said, but fails to do so.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Sound effects Mixing Music Costumes Make-up Editor Continuity Military advisors Pyrotechnical advisor
Svensk Filmindustri Lars-Owe Carlberg Brian Wikström Ingmar Bergman Raymond Lundberg Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist P.A. Lundgren Lennart Engholm Evald Andersson Olle Jakobsson Excerpts: J.S. Bach’s ‘Brandenburg concerto no. 4’ Mago (Max Goldstein), Eivor Kullberg Börje Lundh, Cecilia Drott Ulla Ryghe Katherina Faragó Lennart Bergqvist, Stig Lindberg Rustan Åberg
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Cast Eva Rosenberg Jan Rosenberg Jacobi Mrs. Jacobi Filip Olsson Fredrik Lobelius, antique dealer Oswald, victim in schoolhouse Interrogation officer Doctor Peters, clerk Man with dislocated shoulder Aide at interrogation Officers Man condemned to death TV interviewer Soldiers Secretary Woman bringing food in schoolhouse Johan, young deserter People in the boat
Liv Ullmann Max von Sydow Gunnar Björnstrand Birgitta Valberg Sigge Fürst Hans Alfredson Ingvar Kjellson Frank Sundström Ulf Johanson Bengt Eklund Gösta Prüzelius Frej Lindqvist Lars Amble, Willy Peters Åke Jörnfalk Vilgot Sjöman Per Berglund, Nils Fogeby Karl-Axel Forssberg Brita Öberg Björn Thambert Georg Skarstedt, Barbro Hiort af Ornäs, Lilian Carlsson, Börje Lundh, Eivor Kullberg, Karl-Arne Bergman
Filmed on location on the island of Fårö and in town of Visby (Gotland), beginning 12 September 1967 and completed 23 November 1967. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening Original titles
Svensk Filmindustri Lopert Pictures 102 minutes 26 June 1968 29 September 1968, Spegeln (Stockholm), 23 December 1968, Fine Arts, NYC Kriget [The war], Skammens drömmar [Dreams of Shame]
Commentary In 1961 author Pär Rådström wrote in a review of Såsom i en spegel (BLM 30, no. 9, p. 760) that Ingmar Bergman ‘is obviously ashamed of being an artist and his god is the Bergmanian God of Shame’ [Ingmar Bergman skäms tydligen över sitt konstnärsskap och hans gud är den bergmanska Skammens Gud]. Refractions of this statement may have filtered down to Bergman’s 1968 film Skammen with its portrait of the demoralization of an artist (Jan Rosenberg). For Bergman’s comments on the genesis of Skammen, see Film World, no. 3 (1968), pp. 25-26. The script of Skammen was published as a paperback in Filmberättelser 2 (1973). In Bilder/ Images, 1990, pp. 298-301, Bergman discusses his reaction to the reception of the film and his own critical view of it 20 years later. On 9 September 1967, Ingmar Bergman held a press conference about Skammen on Fårö for a team of journalists arriving in a chartered plane. On the same day he was interviewed about the shooting on Swedish Public Radio (Dagens Eko, 9 September 1967). For a report on the press conference, see E. Sörenson, SvD, 10 September, pp. 1, 14; L.-O. Löthwall, Film och Bio, no. 2 (1967), pp. 27-30; and rest of Stockholm press, 10 September 1967. An interview billed as an
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Chapter IV Filmography exclusive one by André Prevost in the Canyon Cryer, 21 March 1968, seems to be largely based on the Skammen press conference. It may be compared to an interview in Les lettres françaises, 13 March 1968, pp. 19, 21. Report from the shooting of Skammen was published by L.-O. Löthwall in Allers, no. 35 (1968), pp. 24-25, 60, 62, 64, 66, and no. 36, pp. 26-27, 82-84. On 2 June 1968, DN, Sunday section pp. 1, 7, published the first pictures and an excerpt from the film, which had its world premiere at Sorrento Film and Theatre Festival in Italy in June 1968.
Reception Skammen was shown to the Swedish press on 21 August 1968, the same day the Russians marched into Czechoslovakia. This may have intensified the political debate about the film. In retrospect, Bergman was to claim that had events in Czechoslovakia preceded his making of the film, it might have changed his focus. See Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), p. 229. Bergman discussed his role as a filmmaker in tune with the times in a Swedish TV interview, 29 September 1968; see N.-P. Sundgren, ‘Ingmar Bergman om Skammen’, Röster i Radio-TV 46 (1968), pp. 56-57. He insisted that his examination of the artist had broader psychological implications. But critics saw Skammen as one more portrait of a maladjusted artist. Lars Forssell in BLM 38, no. 8 (October 1968): 605-6, charged Ingmar Bergman with ‘some sort of constitutional blindness, a reflection of a 19th-century individualistic view of the artist that began with Werther and ended with Oscar Wilde’ [någon slags konstitutionell blindhet, en återspegling av en individualistisk 1800-talssyn på konstnären som började med Werther and slutade med Oscar Wilde]. Cf. C.-E. Nordberg in Vi, no. 40 (1968), p. 10; M. Edström in DN, 30 September 1968, p. 6; J. Schildt in AB, same date, p. 12; N. Beyer in Arbetet, 30 September 1968, p. 12, and E. Leiser in Expr., 8 October 1968, p. 4. All these critics expressed concern about a film they regarded as obsolete in its theme about the collapse of the artist, and too abstract and imprecise in its depiction of the reality of war. Ingmar Bergman added further fuel to the debate by publishing a brief interview with himself under the old pseudonym of Ernest Riffe in Expr., 25 September 1968, p. 12, and in Chaplin, no. 84 (October 1968), p. 274. He declared himself a non-political person who only belonged ‘to the Party of Scared People’ [de räddas parti] (see Ø 136). This echoes Sundgren TV interview (29 September 1968), referred to above. The Swedish debate about Skammen was ideologically inflamed and culminated with a condemnation of the film by author Sara Lidman, spokesperson for NLF (National Liberation Front) supporters in Sweden during the Vietnam War. According to Lidman, by failing to take political sides Skammen gave latent support to those pro-American forces who wished to prolong the war and who refused to see it as a Vietnamese war of liberation. See AB, 6, 13, and 19 October 1968 (pp. 1, 5, 4 respectively). The response to Lidman’s article was lively (same paper, 10 October (p.4), 12 October (p.4), and 16 October (p.5), and included brief interviews with Bergman who called the attack on his film irrational and brutal. See AB, 8 October 1968, p. 48. In the Sara Lidman debate, Skammen served as a catalyst for the politically divisive situation among Swedish intellectuals at the time. To gain an idea of the range of opinion expressed, one might compare Bo Strömstedt in Expr., 2 November 1968, p. 4; Gunnar Tannefors in Se, no. 39 (1968), pp. 66-7; and Ulla Thorpe in AB, 29 October 1968, p. 5. Strömstedt defended Bergman’s integrity as an artist; Tannefors spoke up for Bergman’s right to be politically indifferent; Thorpe called Skammen ‘a dangerous, reactionary film’ [en farlig, reaktionär film]. See also opinions expressed by some leading Swedish filmmakers and intellectuals in AB, 20 October 1968, sec. 2, pp. 1-3, who voiced critique of Bergman’s film for avoiding a real political situation
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record (Vietnam War). AB debate was commented on in UNT 26 October 1968, p. 11. Bergman responded to this debate and the leftist political climate among younger filmmakers and intellectuals in an interview conducted by Jan Aghed and published in French Positif no. 121 (November 1971): 41-46. See (Ø 794), Interview chapter. One of the most thoughtful Swedish essays on Skammen was published by Torsten Bergmark in DN, 6 October 1968, p. 4. Entitled ‘Ingmar Bergman och den kristna baksmällan’ [Bergman and the Christian hangover], the article claims that Skammen unveiled a new trend in Bergman’s work. While earlier films revealed the vacuum left by a dying religious faith, Jan in Skammen, though victim of the same kind of Christian hangover, is a faithless person drawn with a great deal of self-criticism. Eva, Jan’s wife, on the other hand, shows Bergman’s ‘new solidarity’. This article was reprinted in Motbilder (Ø 1317), pp. 246-50, and Film og Kino, no. 9 (December 1968), pp. 276-77, 297. Much of the foreign discussion of Skammen revolved around a genre question: Could Bergman’s film be classified as a war film, or was the war it depicted simply a metaphor for the filmmaker’s own brand of existential anguish? L. Seguin in ‘Le cinéma dans la politique’, Positif, no. 113 (February 1968), pp. 3-27, discussed La honte as a nonpolitical film, comparing it to Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Cf. this view to J. Belmans in Cinéma 72, no. 162 (January 1972), pp. 65-85, who claims that La honte is an apolitical, existential movie, like Le septième sceau. U.S. reaction to Shame varied from Pauline Kael’s glowing review in The New Yorker, 28 December 1968, pp. 56-59 (reprinted in Going Steady, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970, pp. 214-21), seing the film as a new, more socially oriented departure for Bergman, to Andrew Sarris’s acerbic dismissal of Shame as ‘boom-boom theatrics’ (Village Voice, 2 January 1969, p. 39). Hollis Alpert in Saturday Review, 25 January 1969, p. 22, contended that Shame’s source was a Swedish neutrality complex, i.e., a pervasive national guilt for having stayed out of World War II. Several reviewers compared Bergman’s film to Godard’s Weekend: See Los Angeles Times, 6 February 1969, p. 12; Time, 10 January 1969, p. 60 (Am. ed., pp. 58-9); and Cinema (Beverly Hills) 6, no. 2 (Fall 1970): 32-39. The comparison is developed at some length in Robin Wood, Ingmar Bergman, 1969, pp. 143-183. Wood’s discussion of Shame is the most extensive one in English, together with P. Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Ritual of Art, 1982, pp. 221-31, and James Maxfield: ‘Bergman’s Shame: A Dream of Punishment’, Literature/Film Quarterly, January 1984, pp. 34-41.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 30 September 1968 (Expr. 29 Sept.); Chaplin, see under Roth-Lindberg, longer articles below; Vi, no. 40 (1968), p. 10; Vecko-Journalen, no. 40 (1968), p. 38.
Foreign Reviews Artforum, no. 4 (1969), n.p., reprinted in M. Farber’s Negative Space (London: Studio Vista, 1971), pp. 222-24; The Brighton Film Review, no. 14 (November 1969), pp. 3-4; Cinéma 69, no. 136 (May 1969), pp. 135-36; Cinema Nuovo, no. 199 (May-June 1969), pp. 211-13; Esquire, March 1969, p. 32; Film (Hannover), no. 3 (1969), p. 30; Film Heritage 5, no. 3 (Spring 1969): 1-5, 22; Film Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Fall 1969): 32-34; Filmfacts, 15 January 1969, pp. 427-28;
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Chapter IV Filmography Filmkritik 13, no. 4 (April 1969): 237-43; Films and Filming 14, no. 7 (April 1969): 38; Films in Review, January 1969, pp. 51-52; Hudson Review 22, no. 2 (Summer 1969): 295-306; Image et son, no. 229 (June-July 1969): 109-13; Jeune Cinéma, no. 40 (June-July 1969), pp. 33-36; Kosmorama, no. 88 (December 1968), pp. 60-61; Les lettres françaises, 23 April, pp. 18-19; The Listener, 27 February 1969, pp. 288-89; Monthly Film Bulletin, no. 4 (April 1969), p. 76; Movie, no. 17 (Winter 1969-70), pp. 32-34; New Leader, 20 January 1969, pp. 27-29; New Republic, 4 January 1969, pp. 24, 34; New York Times, 24 December 1968, p. 14.1; NYT Film Reviews, 1913-1968, p. 3812; Positif, no. 108 (September 1969), pp. 49-51; Sight and Sound 38, no. 2 (Spring 1969): 89-92; Variety, 16 October 1968, p. 26.
Review Articles and Special Issues on Shame Cineforum 9, no. 83 (March 1969): 110-296. Contains an analysis of the film (pp. 177-83) by Örjan Roth-Lindberg, also printed in Swedish in Chaplin, no. 84 (October 1968), pp. 275-77. Issue also includes a survey of Bergman’s work by E. Comuzio, and a complete scenario of La vergogna; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 215 (September 1969), pp. 49-58, has several items on Bergman in connection with the presentation of La honte, among them an interview article by L.-O. Löthwall, also printed in Film och bio, no. 1 (1968), pp. 10-18; in Take One 2, no. 1 (September-October 1968), pp. 16-18; and in Films and Filming 15, no. 5 (February 1969): 4-6; Film a sogetto, Centro S. Fedelle dello Spettacolo (Roma), 8 pp., is an Italian fact sheet on La vergogna, listing openings worldwide, credits, review excerpts, and a plot synopsis; Kosmorama no. 137 (Spring) 1978: 65-66. Article by Kaare Schmidt who emphasizes the private nature of the film and sees it as an explicit depiction of Bergman’s universe with its dichotomy between life’s meaning (‘faith, art and love’) and life’s conditions (undermining of this trinity through institutionalized conventions); Sight and Sound 38, no. 2 (Spring 1969), pp. 89-92 has a review article by Jan Dawson.
See also Film 68/69 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969), pp. 23-32, containing reviews by J. Simon in New Leader, H. Alpert in Saturday Review, and W. Shed in Esquire; Film in Sweden, no. 3 (1968), pp. 3-7; S. Kauffmann in Figures of Light, pp. 125-28; Bruce Kawin in Mindscreen..., 1981, pp. 133-42 (Ø 1372); Kosmorama, no. 110 (September 1972), pp. 259-61; Positif, no. 121 (November 1970), pp. 34-40; Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 401-6; Variety, 5 April 1967, p. 15.
Awards 1968:
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film, Best Direction, Best Script (2nd place), Best Photo (2nd place), Best Actress (Liv Ullmann). See also Varia, C.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record 240.
RITEN, 1969 [The Ritual], B/W Screenplay Director
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
See also Riten as TV film in Media chapter V (Ø 329)
Synopsis Riten, made for Swedish television but also released abroad in the same version as a feature film, depicts an encounter between three traveling artists and a 60-year-old judge, Ernst Abrahamsson, whose task it is to interrogate them about an alleged act of obscenity in their vaudeville show. The artistic trio, ‘Les riens’, consists of 56-year-old Hans Winkelmann, the troupe’s manager; 24-year-old Thea Winkelmann, his wife; and 35-year-old Sebastian Fisher, Thea’s lover. The film is divided into nine scenes, five of which take place in Judge Abrahamsson’s office, while the rest are set in a hotel room, a church, and a cabaret theater. Judge Abrahamsson meets with each artist in turn. In rejecting a bribe from Hans Winkelmann to keep Thea from being interrogated, the Judge gains the upper hand but loses control of the situation in meeting Sebastian and Thea. Sebastian accuses him of being dirty and smelling bad from excessive perspiration. Taking off his jacket and tie, Abrahamsson makes a series of desperate confessions. Asking Sebastian about his religious faith, he receives the reply that an artist is his own god and keeps his own demons and angels. Sebastian tells the judge of a performance number that he and Hans Winkelmann do together, about a man who is seized by an insatiable appetite, eats his family and servants, then cuts out a piece of an old man who is God himself. Thea’s interrogation opens on a polite note. She relates a religious game she plays. Abrahamsson tries to get to the point, i.e., the vaudeville number on which he is to rule. Thea breaks down, rolls on the floor, begins to undress, and pulls down the judge, who is both angry and consoling. Suddenly conscious of his situation, he calls on Hans Winkelmann, who arrives and quiets Thea. The crucial episode is a re-enactment of the number on which the obscenity charge rests. Hans calls it a ritual game and a magic formula. He wears an enormous phallus, while Sebastian has put on big breasts, and Thea is dressed in a transparent frock and a stylized wig. She holds a drum in her lap. Sebastian puts a long knife at her feet. Before they begin their performance, the judge makes a confession: He really wanted to become a musician, but under parental pressure he studied law instead. Expressing admiration and envy of the troupe, and telling them he is a willing spectator to their act, the judge receives such a hard blow from Sebastian that he begins to nosebleed. Hit a second time, he seems to have a seizure. Hans Winkelmann explains the ritual act, and the trio performs it while the judge makes weak statements to the effect that he understans the ritual. He is dying.
Credits Production company Production manager Studio manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Sound Special effects Mixing
Cinematograph AB Lars-Owe Carlberg Lennart Blomqvist Ingmar Bergman Christer Dahl Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist Lennart Engholm, Berndt Frithiof Nils Skeppstedt Olle Jakobsson
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Chapter IV Filmography Architect/Costumes Props Make-up Editor Continuity
Mago (Max Goldstein) Karl-Arne Bergman Börje Lundh, Cecilia Drott Siv Kanälv Birgitta Särnö
Cast Thea Winkelmann Hans Winkelmann Sebastian Fisher Judge Abrahamsson A priest
Ingrid Thulin Gunnar Björnstrand Anders Ek Erik Hell Ingmar Bergman
Though conceived for television Riten was shot in the studios at Filmstaden, Stockholm, beginning 13 May 1967 and completed 20 June 1967. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Premiere U.S. opening
Cinematograph AB/Sveriges Television Janus Films, Inc. 72 minutes 25 March 1969 (Swedish TV) 18 September 1969, New York Film Festival, Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Available at NYC Museum of Television and Radio, no. T:37471.
Commentary The script of Riten was published in paperback form in Filmberättelser 3 (1973). Bergman writes about its genesis, based on his drafts, in Bilder/Images (1990), pp. 173-183.
Foreign Reception (film version) In the U.S., Variety, (21 May 1969, p. 18) expressed doubt that ‘Ritorna’ (sic!) would be shown on either American television or in movie houses on account of its explicit language. The screen version was submitted to the New York Film Festival in 1969 and had a limited commercial run in the U.S. The following English-language discussions of the film deserve attention: P. Cowie in Focus on Film 5 (Nov-Dec 1970): 7-13; Jan Dawson in Monthly Film Bulletin, June 1971, pp. 124-25; Judith Gollub in Cinema Journal 10, no. 1 (Fall 1970): 48-50; B. Houston and M. Kinder in Self & Cinema: A Transformalist Perspective (Plesantville: Redgrave, 1980), pp. 1-70; and, in particular, P. Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Ritual of Art, 1982, pp. 143-67.
Foreign Reviews Bianco e nero, January-February (1971), pp. 56-58; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 215 (November 1969), p. 44; Cinéma 72, no. 170 (November 1972), pp. 127-8; Ecran 72, no. 8 (September-October 1969), pp. 48-9; Etudes cinématographiques, no. 337 (1972), pp. 244-46; Film (Hannover), no. 7 (July 1971), p. 26; Filmkritik, no. 1 (1970), pp. 35-36; Films and Filming 17, no. 10 (July 1971): 55-56; Le nouvel observateur, 10 July 1972, p. 51; Monogram, no. 2 (Summer 1971), pp. 21-22; Monthly Film Bulletin, June 1971, pp. 124-25; New York Times, 19 September 1969, p. 55:1, and NYT Film Reviews, 1969-1970, p. 74;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Positif, no. 110 (November 1969), p. 57, and no. 254-55 (May 1982), p. 82; Sight and Sound 41, no. 3 (Summer 1971): 162-63; Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), 17 May 1969, p. 16; Télé-Ciné, no. 180 (July-August 1973), pp. 33-5; Time, 26 September 1969, pp. 94, 96; Times (London), 30 April 1971, p. 10; Variety, 21 May 1969, p. 18.
See also APEC – Revue belge du cinéma 12, no. 4 (1975): 5-16; Bergman on Bergman (Ø 788), pp. 237-43; Cinéma 69, no. 139 (September-October 1969): 142; Skoop, no. 3 (December-January 1970), pp. 28-29.
Awards Riten was an entry at the 1970 Mar del Plata Film Festival.
241.
EN PASSION, 1969 [A Passion/The Passion of Anna], Eastmancolor Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Bergman uses the word ‘passion’ in both a secular and a religious sense, implying earthly love as well as the passion of Christ. Hence the literal British title, A Passion, is preferable to the American title, The Passion of Anna.
Synopsis En passion opens with its production nummer, L-138. The first shot is of a herd of sheep grazing peacefully on the island where Andreas Winkelman, introduced by Bergman’s voice-over, is working on the roof of his house. Anna Fromm (lit. Anne Pious) stops by to use the telephone. Here Bergman interrupts the action and, in the first of a series of interviews with the actors, he asks Max von Sydow to interpret his role as Andreas Winkelman. Anna Fromm leaves her handbag behind; in it Andreas finds a letter written by Anna’s husband, whose name is also Andreas, who speaks of the inevitable dissolution of their marriage. Next, Andreas finds a puppy hanging in a tree, the first of a series of similar sadistic acts on the island. The culprit is never found, but a poor old bachelor, Johan Andersson, is made a scapegoat by the islanders. Anna Fromm is staying with Elis and Eva Vergérus. During an overnight visit, Andreas gets to know his neighbours. Elis is an architect whose hobby is portrait photography. He collects shots of people taken off guard, which he files under different categories. Elis incorporates Andreas W. in his collection and makes him reveal his past, which includes check forgery, drunken driving, and police assault. At a Vergérus dinner, Anna talks about her happy marriage, but no one believes her. At night, she is plagued by nightmares. Interviewed by Bergman, Liv Ulmann describes Anna as a fanatic truthseeker, but also as a person who falsifies reality when people around her do not respond to her. During one of her husband’s business trips, Eva stays with Andreas and tells him about Anna’s past: her husband and son were killed, and Anna was hurt in an auto accident. In her analysis of Anna, Bibi Andersson sees her as suicidal but believes she will survive the present crisis with a new sense of self. Anna Fromm and Andreas Winkelman move in together. Violence creeps into their everyday life. A bird flies against the window pane and is killed. They watch the execution of a soldier in
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Chapter IV Filmography Vietnam on TV. On the island, there are more reports of killed animals; the hunt for Johan Andersson accelerates. Anna’s and Andreas’s relationship deteriorates until Andreas loses selfcontrol and attacks Anna physically. Someone has set fire to a barn on the island, and a horse has burned to death. Anna picks up Andreas at the barn. In the car, on the way back, Andreas asks to be free and accuses Anna of telling lies, at the same time revealing that he has read the letter in her purse. Anna seems to lose control of the car, and Andreas grabs the wheel, accusing her of attempting to kill him as she killed her former husband. Anna replies that she has come to ask for forgiveness. Full of ambivalence, Andreas, now outside the car, does not know which way to turn. He sinks down on the road while the camera pulls back until Andreas is no more than a speck in the empty landscape. Bergman’s voice declares: ‘This time his name was Andreas Winkelman.’
Credits Production company Production manager Location manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Props Sound Sound effects Mixing Music Costumes Make-up Editor Continuity Speaker
Svensk Filmindustri/Cinematograph Lars-Owe Carlberg Brian Wikström Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist P. A. Lundgren Karl-Arne Bergman, Jan Söderkvist Lennart Engholm Ulf Nordholm Olle Jakobsson Excerpts from J.S. Bach, ‘Partita no. 3 in A minor’ and from Allan Gray’s ‘Always Romantic’ Mago (Max Goldstein) Börje Lundh, Cecilia Drott Siv Kanälv Katherina Faragó Ingmar Bergman
Cast Andreas Winkelman Anna Fromm Eva Vergérus Elis Vergérus Johan Andersson Verner His wife Katarina, girl in daydream Johan’s sister Policemen Women in nightmare
Max von Sydow Liv Ullmann Bibi Andersson Erland Josephson Erik Hell Sigge Fürst Svea Holst-Widén Annicka Kronberg Hjördis Petterson Lars-Owe Carlberg, Brian Wikström Barbro Hiort af Ornäs, Malin Ek, Britta Brunius, Brita Öberg, Marianne Karlbeck
Filmed on Fårö, beginning September 1968 and completed at end of December 1968. Original titles Distribution U.S. distribution
L-182; Annandreas. Svensk Filmindustri United Artists
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
101 minutes 10 October 1969 10 November 1969, Spegeln (Stockholm), 6 June 1970
Commentary The script of En passion was published as a paperback in Filmberättelser 2 (1973). See (Ø 153), Chapter II. Bergman discusses the genesis of En passion in Bilder/Images (1990), pp. 304-310. It was a complicated production with some politicized activity by a member of the film team and rare tension between Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist.
Reception In marked contrast to their response to Skammen a year earlier, Swedish reviewers of En passion defended Bergman’s right to produce films according to his own professionally defined premises. AB (11 November 1969, p. 25) wrote that ‘within the narrow framework of the psychological chamber play, Bergman demonstrates the only mastery that the Swedish cinema possesses’ [inom det psykologiska kammarspelets smala ram demonstrerar Bergman det enda mästerskap som den svenska filmen äger]. Expr. (same date, p. 32) argued that Bergman’s island landscape could not be dismissed as uninteresting ‘except possibly by Mao’ [utom möjligen av Mao]. Not many critics cared for the Brechtian interviews with the actors, but they were unanimous in praising En passion for its depiction of human suffering. In SvD, 1 December 1969, p. 4, Hans Nystedt continued his previous discussion (see commentaries in Ø 233 and 236) of the religious implications in Bergman’s films, interpreting Anna Fromm as a negative Christ figure whom Andreas Winkelman must fight off, just as Alma did with Elisabet Vogler in Persona. Most foreign reviewers of En passion preferred it to Skammen, or in the words of P. Houston (Spectator, 23 May 1970, p. 687): ‘Rather a Vietnam in the Bergmanian soul than in allegorical Sweden.’ Others, like Andrew Sarris in Village Voice, 4 June 1970, pp. 55, 61, continued to denounce Bergman: ‘Never before has Bergman seemed to spew forth so much undigested clinical material to so little artistic purpose.’ In America two groups of Bergman critics could now be discerned: (1) those who preferred his more traditional Fifties films and (2) those who liked his more modernist Sixties pictures. Peter Harcourt in Cinema (Beverly Hills) 6, no. 2 (Fall 1970): 32-39, spoke for the first group, deploring Bergman’s renunciation of classical narrative form for the fragmented structure of A Passion. For a representative of the second group, see Richard Schickel in Life, 24 July 1970, p. 8 (reprinted in Second Sight: Notes on Some Movies, 1965-70 [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972], pp. 314-16). Schickel praised A Passion for being ‘austere, enigmatic and free from the baroque symbolism of Bergman’s earlier work’. The most exhaustive discussions of A Passion in English are Hubert Cohen, Ingmar Bergman. The Art of Confession, 1993, pp. 298-316; Peter Cowie in Petric, Film and Dreams, 1981 (Ø 1378), pp. 147-53; Frank Gado. The Passion of Ingmar Bergman, 1986, pp. 376-390; Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Ritual of Art, 1982, pp. 167-79; and Vernon Young, Cinema Borealis, 1972, pp. 256-83. (A Passion was one of the few Bergman films approved of by Young.)
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press. 11 November 1969; Chaplin, no. 94 (October 1969), pp. 321-22, and no. 97 (January 1970), pp. 16-17; Filmrutan, no. 1 (1970), pp. 36-37; Vi, no. 47 (1969), p. 14.
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Chapter IV Filmography Foreign Reviews Cinéma 70, no. 150 (November 1970), pp. 130-32; Films and Filming 16, no. 1 (October 1970): 41-42; Films in Review, no. 7 (August-September 1970), p. 443; Image et son, no. 243 (November 1970), pp. 138-9; Jeune cinéma, no. 48 (June-July 1970), pp. 45-6; Kosmorama, no. 98 (September 1970), pp. 228-9; Listener, 6 August 1970, p. 191; Monthly Film Bulletin, September 1970, p. 181; New York Times, 7 June 1970, p. 11:1; NYT Film Reviews, 1969-1970, pp. 171-72; New Yorker, 13 June 1970, pp. 103-8; Positif, no. 121 (November 1970), pp. 34-40; Sight and Sound 40, no. 4 (Autumn 1970): 216-17; Skoop 6, no. 7 (May 1970): 36-39; Télé-Ciné, no. 166 (October-November 1970), p. 32; Time, 8 June 1970, p. 74 (A.E. p. 62); Times (London), 31 July 1970, p. 13; Variety 6 May 1970, p. 22.
Special Journal Issues and Fact Sheets on En Passion L’Avant-scène du cinéma, no. 109 (December 1970), 37 pp. With excerpted reviews, complete script, and filmography; Film in Sweden, no. 3 (1969), pp. 1-7, contains a presentation of En passion in English, French, and German; Filmfacts XIV/20 (15 May) 1972, pp. 507-510 contains synopsis and credits of film; United Artists issued a 22-page program with excerpted translations of Swedish reviews in connection with the American opening of The Passion of Anna.
See also American Scholar, no. 4 (Autumn 1970), pp. 678-91; APEC – Revue belge du cinéma 12, no. 4 (1975): 11-19; Film 70/71 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971), pp. 163-72 (with P. Gilliatt’s New Yorker review and R. Schickel’s in Life); Film og Kino, no. 7-8 (1970), pp. 150-53; Filmcritica, no. 212 (January 1970), pp. 48-54; S. Kauffmann: Figures of Light, pp. 267-71 (his New Republic review); Kosmorama 24, no. 137 (Spring) 1978: 66-67; New York Times Magazine, 9 May 1970, p. 13:2; Positif, no. 118 (June 1970), p. 13; Sight and Sound, Summer 1970, p. 122; J. Simon: Movies into film (New York: Dell, 1972), pp. 239-46; Skoop 7, no. 4 (1971): 36-40; Svensk filmografi, 1960-1969 (Ø 1314), pp. 491-96.
Awards See Varia, C.
242.
FÅRÖ-DOKUMENT, 1969/70, B/W and Eastmancolor See Media chapter (Ø 370).
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record 243.
RESERVATET, 1970 [The Sanctuary], Color See media chapter (television section) (Ø 331, 332, 333).
244.
BERÖRINGEN, 1971 [The Touch], Eastmancolor Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis Beröringen opens in a Swedish hospital. Karin Vergerus, a married woman in her late thirties, arrives for a viewing of her dead mother. On her way out, she begins to cry. A man asks her, in English, if he can help, but she declines. Karin is married to Andreas, a surgeon. They live with their two children in a tastefully furnished villa that Andreas has inherited from his parents. David Kovac, the foreigner who spoke to Karin at the hospital, has received medical attention from Andreas and is invited to the Vergerus home for dinner. Karin and David, an archeologist, begin to see each other, meeting in David’s almost empty apartment in town. One day David tells Karin of his past: his parents were Jewish, and the family lived in Berlin until David was 14, when they moved to Switzerland. All his relatives are dead, except for a sister, six years younger. When Karin arrives late for a meeting, David loses control and strikes her while abusing her verbally, telling her to go back to her smug middle-class life. Karin leaves, but David pursues her; they continue their tense relationship. One day several months later, Andreas comes to talk to David about rumors that have reached him through anonymous letters. David is aloof and tells Andreas to exploit Karin’s sense of loyalty to her marriage. Andreas is embarrassed and expresses his sympathy for David, which he has felt ever since he met David for the first time, after a suicide attempt. Irritated, David denies that his injury was self-inflicted. The night after Andreas’s visit, Karin stays at David’s apartment. But she cannot fall asleep and returns home. Some time later, Karin is out shopping with her 14-year-old daughter when David intercepts them. Karin agrees to meet him by the church where David is doing archeological excavation. Their meeting focusses on a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary that has been found. David tells Karin that long before the statue was walled into place in the church, an unknown insect had begun eating at it. Its larvae have been dormant in it for 500 years. Now when the statue has been brought into the light, the larvae have awakened and are destroying the statue from within. Karin explains to David that he is like a child to her – and a threat. Though she might be able to live both a married life and that of a mistress, she cannot cope with David’s self-hatred. Soon thereafter, David leaves without saying goodbye. Karin pursues him to London and finds out that he lives with his sister, who claims that the two of them are inseparable. Karin leaves. Several months later, David shows up again. He has received an appointment to a Danish university and suggests to Karin that they move there together. But Karin feels an obligation to her family. David calls her a coward. The film ends with their parting.
Credits Production company Production manager Location manager Director Screenplay Photography Sound
Cinematograph/ABC Pictures Lars-Owe Carlberg Lotti Ekberg Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist Lennart Engholm
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Chapter IV Filmography Music
Architect Props Costumes Make-up Hairdressing Editor Continuity
Jan Johansson (arrangement) C. M. Bellman’s ‘Liksom en herdinna’ (Like a Sheperdess) is the theme music of the film; Also: ‘Allelucia Ave Maria’ (Wm. Byrd); ‘Miss Hopkins’ (Peter Covent); ‘Victimae Paschali laudes’ (Latin hymn) P.A. Lundgren Stefan Bäckström Mago (Max Goldstein) Cecilia Drott, Bengt Ottekil Börje Lundh Siv Kanälv-Lundgren Katherina Faragó
Cast Karin Vergerus Dr. Andreas Vergerus Anders Vergerus, son Maria Vergerus, daughter David Kovac Karin’s dead mother Holm, a doctor A nurse Matron at hospital Sara, David’s sister Stewardess Neighbors of Vergerus Pass-control official Dr. Vergerus’s secretary Archaeologist Museum curator Beggar Woman on the stairs Museum clerk Bellboy in London Speech maker at dinner Guests at dinner party
Bibi Andersson Max von Sydow Staffan Hallerstam Maria Nolgård Elliot Gould Barbro Hiort af Ornäs Åke Lindström Mimmo Wåhlander Elsa Ebbesen-Thornblad Sheila Reid Fylgia Zadig Karin Nilsson, Anna von Rosen Dennis Gotobed Margaretha Byström Erik Nyhlén Alan Simon Per Sjöstrand Aino Taube Ann-Christin Lobråten Bengt Ottekil Harry Schein Alf Montán, Sture Helander, Torsten Ryde, Lars-Owe Carlberg, Börje Lundh, Jan-Carl von Rosen, Kenne Fant
Filmed on location on island of Gotland, in London, and at Film-Teknik Studios, Stockholm, beginning 14 September 1970 and completed 13 November 1970. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Swedish Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri ABC/Cinerama Releasing 114 minutes 18 August 1971 30 August 1971, Spegeln (Stockholm) 14 July 1971, The Baronet, NYC
Commentary The script of Beröringen was published in paperback in Filmberättelser 3 (1973). See (Ø 153), Chapter II.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record On 23 August 1970, p. 19, AB reported that Dustin Hoffman had been approached for the part of David Kovac. But on 5 September 1970, Bergman introduced Elliot Gould as the U.S. actor who would play the role. See SvD, 6 September 1970, p. 14. An article in Expr., 28 September 1970, p. 44, reports that ABC, the American producer of the film, had staked 2 million dollars on The Touch, enough money to make ten Swedish feature films. Peter Cowie, Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1982, p. 271, reports a figure of one million dollars. During the shooting of Beröringen, Bergman allowed fairly extensive press coverage: See ‘Morgoneko’ [Morning news], Swedish Public Radio, 7 August 1970, and Stig Björkman’s documentary film on the making of The Touch (Ø 796), as well as Björkman’s article in Film in Sweden, no. 2 (1971), pp. 7-8. For interviews with Bergman at this time, see Expr., 10 October 1970, Sunday Section pp. 6-7, and 14 March 1971, p. 6; Daily Telegraph Magazine, 12 March, pp. 7-8; Los Angeles Times, 10 January, Calendar sec., pp. 1, 22-23, and New York Herald Tribune, 10 January 1971, p.1; Skoop, no. 9-10 (1971), pp. 22-25. Life, 15 October 1971, pp. 60-74, carried pictoral reportage from shooting of The Touch. The film was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in July 1971 to mixed reviews. In an interview in Expr., 29 September 1971, p. 4, Bergman criticized Swedish press reports from the Berlin festival. See also interview with Bergman in AB, 28 June 1971, p. 9, and Bibi Andersson’s defense of the film in DN, 4 July 1971, p. 12. Andersson objected to critics who called the film banal and argued that banality of subject was not identical with artistic superficiality. Hanserik Hjertén responded in DN, 9 July 1971, p. 9. See also Expr., 6 July, p. 24 (J. Sima), and Arbetet 15 July, p. 9 (S.E. Olsson). A majority of reviewers, both in Sweden and abroad, were in fact puzzled by Bergman’s use of a middle-class soap opera plot. To Brenda Davis in Films and Filming, no. 5 (February 1972), pp. 54-55, Bergman had sold out to an international audience in choosing a ‘trivial’ plot for The Touch. In a review in Chaplin, no. 113 (February 1972), p. 66, B. Widegren suggested that Bergman might be burnt out as an artist and that he was only successful in depicting religious anxieties and not the ordinary problems of a middle-class housewife. K. Klynne in Chaplin, no. 112 (January 1972), pp. 28-29, charged Bergman with an obsolete view of women. Among those who wrote positively about Bergman’s portrayal of Karin Vergerus are the reviewers in AB, 19 September 1971, p. 5, and Expr., 17 October 1971, p. 4. There was a considerable range of opinion in the English and American reviews of The Touch. Jan Dawson in Monthly Film Bulletin, October 1971, pp. 205-6, referred to the film as ‘probably the most memorable and the most moving portrait of a lady that Bergman has given us’. Molly Haskell in Village Voice, 29 July 1971, p. 47, agreed, while Stanley Kauffmann in New Republic, 21 August 1971, p. 35, described the film as a story about ‘a lady with a bad taste in lovers’. In many of the negative reviews of the film, there was a feeling that Elliot Gould was a wrong choice for the role as David Kovac, and that American backing as well as the film’s bilingualism (Swedish and English) was responsible for its failure. See New York Times, 18 July 1971, p. 11:1; New Yorker, 24 July 1971, pp. 57-59; Sight and Sound 41, no. 4 (Autumn 1971): 224. While Beröringen was criticized for its trite plot it was also questioned for breaking out of the soap opera genre by introducing visually significant symbolism, most specifically the wormeaten Madonna statue. Both Teodor Kallifatides in Chaplin (no. 109) and Poul Einer Hansen in Kosmorama (no. 107) rejected the statue as an overexplicit sign, while Erik Jan Kwakernaak in Kosmorama (no. 110, p. 261) saw it as emblematic of Karin as the maternal woman who breaks out of the bourgeois family to give her love to a rootless and motherless man. Several later articles have explored the religious implications of the film: See Gay, Olsson, and Scherer under ‘Longer Articles’ below. With time The Touch has been redeemed by critics but only by incorporating it into the religious-existential sphere of Bergman’s other filmmaking.
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Chapter IV Filmography Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 31 August 1971 (Expr. 27 June); Chaplin, no. 109 (1971), p. 239; Vi, no. 37 (1971), p. 39; Vecko-Journalen, no. 37 (1971), p. 27.
Foreign Reviews Cinéma 71, no. 160 (November 1971), pp. 130-33; Filmfacts 14, no. 20 (1971): 507-10; Film Quarterly 25, no. 2 (Winter 1971/72): 58-59; Films and Filming, no. 209 (February 1972), pp. 54-55; Focus, no. 9 (Spring-Summer 1973), pp. 10-13; Jeune cinéma, no. 58 (November 1971), pp. 32-34; Kosmorama, no. 107 (February 1972), pp. 124-26; Monthly Film Bulletin, October 1971, pp. 205-6; New Leader, 9 August 1971, p. 25; New Republic, 21 August 1971, p. 35; New York Times, 15 July 1971, p. 22:1; NYT Film Reviews, 1971-1972, p. 98-9; New Yorker, 24 July 1971, pp. 57-59; Sight and Sound, no. 4 (Autumn 1971), p. 224; Times (London), 7 October 1971, p. 11; Variety, 7 July 1971, p. 6; Village Voice, 29 July 1971, p. 47.
Longer Studies and Special Journal Issues Gay, James. ‘Cursed be My Tribe: A Second Look at The Touch’. Sight and Sound 42, no. 1 (Winter 1971-72): 42-43. (Gay argues that The Touch is a religious film dealing explicitly with a conflict between Judaism and Christianity); Olsson, Lars. ‘Beröringen’. Filmrutan, no. 3 (1971), pp. 110-12. (Olsson sees David Kovac’s role as that of a divine lover, a Christ figure); Scherer, Paul. ‘The Garden of Eden Theme in Bergman’s The Touch’. Scandinavian Studies 57, no. 1 (Winter 1985): 45-58. (Emphasizes the religious context of the film); Wood, Robin. ‘Ingmar Bergman et Le lien.’ Positif 137 (April) 1972: 27-34 (Relates The Touch to Bergman’s earlier filmmaking); Wexman, Virginia. ‘Character, Action and Symbol in Ingmar Bergman’s The Touch’. Focus: Chicago’s Film Journal 9 (Spring 1973): 11, 48; L’Avant-Scène du Cinéma, no. 121 (January) 1971: 67-71, is a supplement focussed on Le lien (The Touch), containing a statement by Bergman about the film (‘It’s a love story between adults, written by an adult. We’ve been offered enough love stories about young people recently’.). Issue also includes excerpted reprint from Bergman’s interview article (under pseudonym of Ernest Riffe) in l’Express, 5 March 1964; statements by cinematographer Sven Nykvist; by actress Bibi Andersson, first printed in France-Soir, 17 November 1971; and by Julien Seymour, first published in Lui, September 1971; plus excerpted reviews from leading French press.
See also Cowie, Peter. Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1980, pp. 270-75; Fabricius, J. and E. Kwakernaak, Kosmorama, no. 110 (September 1972), pp. 259-61 and 261-63; Solomon, S. in The Film Ideal, 1972, pp. 228-36 (Ø 1219);
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record van der Verg in Skrien, no. 29-30 (Spring 1972), pp. 34-35; Variety, 1 November 1972, p. 26; Svensk filmografi, 1970-1979 (Ø 1314), pp. 129-32.
Awards 1972:
245.
Bibi Andersson won Best Actress Award for her role in The Touch in 1972 Belgrade Film Festival.
VISKNINGAR OCH ROP, 1972 [Cries and Whispers], Eastmancolor Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Bergman got the idea for the film’s title from a Swedish music critic who referred to Mozart’s music as ‘whispers and cries’.
Synopsis The setting of Viskningar och rop is an old manor house in central Sweden around the early 1900s. All the main characters are women: three sisters and a maid. Two of the sisters, Karin and Maria, have come to visit Agnes, the third sister, who is dying of cancer at age 37. She is tended to by her servant Anna, with whom she has lived alone for many years. The opening sequence depicts the manor house at early dawn. Inside the house, clocks are ticking, and voices are heard whispering. All the rooms are painted red. Maria, fully dressed in white, has fallen asleep in a chair. In the next room, Agnes is waking up to a new day of pain. The film is composed of scenes depicting the death of Agnes and its aftermath. Between these scenes are flashbacks revealing the reveries or actual memories of the four women. Each flashback is signalled by a dissolve to red. In one, Maria comes upon her husband after he has tried to stab himself; she makes little attempt to help him. This scene follows shortly after Maria has had a brief tête-à-tête with the doctor who attends Agnes. The second flashback depicts Karin and her husband at the dinner table. During the meal, eaten in near silence, Karin fumbles with a wineglass and breaks it. Later in the bedroom, she will use the splinter of glass to mutilate herself by cutting her vagina. When her husband enters the room, Karin smears her face with blood. Other flashbacks reveal Agnes’s frustrated love for her mother and Anna’s memories of her dead daughter. Agnes’s death is slow and painful. When she is conscious and reasonably at ease, her two sisters help comb her hair and read to her. But when she is ravaged by pain and dying, both Karin and Maria shun her. It is Anna who comforts her. Agnes is laid to rest by two old women. Her minister prays at her bedside to a hypothetical God and begs her to be a messenger for the living by asking for God’s grace and a meaning to life. After Agnes’s death, Karin tries to focus on practical matters. Maria seeks her out. For a brief moment, which is silent except for a few bars on a cello, the two sisters caress and touch each other. Later Karin tries to resume the rapport she has had with her younger sister, but Maria now excuses herself, saying that her husband is waiting. During the night following Agnes’s death, Anna hears faint sounds after she has gone to bed. They come from Agnes’s room. When Anna goes there, she discovers that the dead woman has been crying. She summons first Karin and then Maria to the bedside, but both turn away in disgust and fear. Finally, Anna climbs into Agnes’s bed and takes her body in her arms. The two women form a pietà picture. Agnes’s fear subsides, and she goes to rest.
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Chapter IV Filmography After the funeral, the sisters and their husbands are ready to leave. They discuss what to do with Anna and decide to let her pick a memento from Agnes’s belongings. Anna wants nothing. Maria presses some money into her hands. Anna curtsies silently. The film ends with a flashback. Anna reads from Agnes’s diary; the passage is visualized, and Agnes’ voice takes over. All four women are strolling together in the park, parasols in hand. This is the only time we see the women outdoors. The three sisters sit down in a rocker, and Anna swings them gently back and forth. It is a moment of epiphany. Agnes declares she is grateful that life has given her so much.
Credits Production company Production manager Location manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Mixing Music
Costumes Make-up Props Editor Continuity
Cinematograph/Svenska Filminstitutet Lars-Owe Carlberg Hans Rehnberg Ingmar Bergman Arne Carlsson Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist Marik Vos Owe Svensson Sven Fahlén, Owe Svensson F. Chopin, Mazurka in A-minor, no. 4, opus 17, played by Käbi Laretei; J.S. Bach, Sarabande no. 5 in D minor, played by Pierre Fournier Greta Johansson Börje Lundh, Cecilia Drott, Britt Falkemo Gunilla Hagberg Siv Lundgren Katherina Faragó
Cast Agnes Anna Karin Maria and the mother Maria’s daughter Maria’s husband The doctor Karin’s husband Isak, the pastor Storyteller in Agnes’ flashback Agnes as child Karin as child Maria as child Anna’s daughter Women tending to Agnes’s dead body Spectators at laterna magica showing
Harriet Andersson Kari Sylwan Ingrid Thulin Liv Ullmann Linn Ullmann Henning Moritzen Erland Josephson Georg Årlin Anders Ek Inga Gill Rosanna Mariano Monika Priede Lena Bergman Malin Gjörup Karin Johansson, Greta Johansson, Ingrid von Rosen, Ann-Christin Lobråten, Börje Lundh, Lars-Owe Carlberg
Filmed on location at Taxinge-Näsby estate, Mariefred, Sweden, beginning 7 September 1971 and completed 29 October 1971.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released World premiere Swedish opening
Svensk Filmindustri New World Films 90 minutes 5 August 1972 21 December 1972, Cinema I Theater, NYC 5 March 1973, Spegeln (Göteborg, Uppsala, Stockholm), Camera (Malmö)
Commentary The script of Viskningar och rop was published in paperback in Filmberättelser 3 (1973). See (Ø 153), Chapter II. Bergman writes about the genesis of Viskningar och rop in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 83-103. Several interviews took place with Bergman during shooting of the film. See AB, 12 December 1971, pp. 8-9 (J. Andersson); Bohusläningen, 15 January 1972, p. 4 (B. Steene), SvD, 14 September 1971, p. 3 (E. Sörenson); Femina, 9 July 1972, pp. 18-20, 65 (A. Sellermark), VeckoJournalen no. 43 (1971), pp. 4, 38-39 (M. Zetterström). For interviews prior to opening, see ‘Eko’ [Echo]. Swedish Public Radio (SR), 6 September 1972, and same news program after presentation of the film at Cannes (SR, 19 May 1973), and in ‘Kulturbilagan’, SR, 6 March 1973 (10 minute commentary and interview with Bergman). L-O. Löthwall, Bergman’s press agent for Viskningar och rop published ‘Excerpts from a Diary about Ingmar Bergman’s Viskningar och rop outside Stockholm 1971’, in Film in Sweden, no. 2 (1972), pp. 3-13 (English and French versions). This article originally appeared in Chaplin, no. 114 (March 1972), pp. 88-89. Related material was printed in AB, 12 December 1972, Sunday section, pp. 1, 8-9. See also Joyce Haber, Los Angeles Times, 27 October 1971, sec. 4, p. 14 for reportage from Cries and Whispers (contains some errors); Ernie Anderson, Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 11 February 1973, p. 3, for good account of mood and work routine of a Bergman production; and Cinéma Québec III, no. 1 (September 1973): 13-15, for reportage based on interview with Bergman, including his comments on the film. In May 1973 Ingmar Bergman made a rare appearance at Cannes film festival, where Viskningar och rop was shown out of competition. For résumés of the Cannes press conference, see AB, 20 May, p. 1; Cinéma Quebec 3, no. 1 (September 1973), pp. 13-15; Cue, 2 July 1973, p. 2 (with glowing assessment of Bergman at age 55); Filmmakers Newsletter 6, no. 12 (October 1973), pp. 14-18; Image et Son, no. 278 (November 1973): 102-104; SDS (Malmö), 20 May 1973, p. 10; Village Voice, 7 June 1973, pp. 79-80 (A. Sarris objecting to showing of Cries and Whispers at Cannes); Variety, 9 May 1973, p. 197 and 30 May 1973, pp. 2, 71. Viskningar och rop was also shown at Bergen Arts Festival, 4 June 1973.
Reception In Sweden, where Viskningar och rop premiered on 5 March 1973 (half a year after its American opening), Bergman’s film led to an unusually long press debate. Actually, the film had been a bone of contention even in its pre-production stage because of the way it was financed. Bergman did not want a private producer – in an interview in AB, 3 December 1971, p. 28, he advocates socializing the film industry – but tapped three sources: his own personal funds, actors’ investment of their salaries in the film, and half a million Swedish kronor from the SFI. (See report from press conference, Expr., 7 September 1971, p. 12.) It was the SFI support that created controversy. Many felt that Bergman was big enough a name to be able to find financing elsewhere – if necessary outside Sweden – and should not sap the SFI production funds, which should go to lesser known filmmakers. See N.-P. Sundgren, ‘Bergmans pengar’ [Bergman’s money], Expr., 17 October 1971, p. 4, and Harry Schein, the same title, Expr., 20 October 1971, p. 4. See also DN, 15 (p. 18), 21 (p. 19), and 22 October (p. 20). For a postscript to the
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Chapter IV Filmography discussion, see Björn Vinberg, ‘Alla tjänar en hacka på Bergmans succéfilm’ [Everyone earns a penny on B’s successful film], Expr., 14 March 1973, p. 32. After every major American studio had turned down U.S. distribution rights to Cries and Whispers – even though Bergman reportedly asked for only $75,000 in down payment – Roger Corman’s recently formed independent company New World Films acquired the film and released it towards the end of 1972 to a glowing set of reviews. On 21 October 1972, the New Yorker printed the script (pp. 38-51). See NYT, 17 February 1973, p. 11:1 for report that Cries and Whispers was the only foreign film in the U.S. in the previous 14 months to gross a substantial profit. Los Angeles Times ran a report by Wayne Warga on Roger Corman and Cries and Whispers, 25 February 1973, Calendar, p. 1, 23. Swedish debate about Bergman’s film focussed once more on his role as an artist. Though some reviewers (see Hanserik Hjertén, DN, 6 March 1973, p. 12, and Åke Janzon in SvD, 6 March 1973, p. 10) accepted Bergman as ‘a psychological visionary’ and a bourgeois film poet who depicted ‘a kind of reserve [...] the closed milieu [...] the holy autonomy of the soul’ [ett slags reservat [...] den slutna miljön [...] själens heliga autonomi], others issued a call for an ideological rather than an aesthetic approach to Bergman’s filmmaking. See I.M. Eriksson and S. Skagen in DN, 6 April 1973, p. 4. The article was reprinted in Motbilder, 1978, pp. 251-55 (Ø 1317). Excerpts also appeared in the special Hvisken og rop issue of the Norwegian journal Fant, no. 26 (Summer 1973), p. 44, together with a review (p. 45) and an analysis by O. Foss, ‘Viskningar och rop: film og samfunn’ [Cries and Whispers: Film and society], pp. 46-53. Foss refers to the film as ‘a rhapsody of petrified Bergman themes’. Sölve Skagen commented again on the film a year later in Fant, no. 27 (Spring 1974), pp. 26-34. See MacGuffin no. 9, pp. 42-47 for comments on Eriksson and Skagen article. Other critical voices spoke up in Filmrutan 16, no. 1 (1973): 26-30 (L. Lundgren and A. Munkesjö); in DN, 17 April, p. 6 (I. Sjöstrand); DN, 21 April, p. 4 (A-M Narti); DN, 26 April, p. 4 (G. Bodegård), and Expr., 19 April, p. 4 and 27 April 1973, p. 4. Overall, it was the psychological implications of Viskningar och rop that came to dominate the discussion, a fact deplored by Eriksson and Skagen in a closing statement, DN, 12 May 1973, p. 5. Bo Landberg published a Swedish essay on Bergman’s film in 1981, ‘Ingmar Bergman’s Viskningar och rop: Ett drama om ensamhet-gemenskap-trygghet’ [Bergman’s Cries...: A drama of loneliness-togetherness-security] (Göteborg: St. Lukasstiftelsen, 1981), 38 pp. Cries and Whispers became a focal film in a critique of Bergman’s portrayal of women, most notably in Joan Mellen’s feminist attack in Film Quarterly XXVI, no. 5 (Fall 1973): 2-11. See (Ø 975) for listing and response. In London, Cries and Whispers opened in February 1973 to mostly lukewarm reviews. Wrote C. Hudson in Spectator, 10 February 1973, p. 176: ‘[Cries] mooches and slouches through the well-trodden range of obsessions we have come to regard as evocative of Nordic gloom’. But Philip Strick in Sight and Sound thought the film was Bergman’s and Nykvist’s greatest collaboration, though he too (somewhat more tolerantly) recognized the familiar Bergman themes and landscape. Canadian Séquences (no. 74, October 1973: 31-34) printed a glowing review of the film, calling it Bergman’s best script and a film that would make film history.
Swedish Reviews Stockholm press, 6 March 1973 (Expr., 5 March); Chaplin, no. 122 (1973), pp. 84-85.
Foreign Reviews Amis du film et de télévision, no. 209 (October 1973), pp. 8-9; Catholic Film Newsletter, 15 January 1973;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Cinéma 181 (November 1973), pp. 35-38; Commentary, no. 55 (May 1973), pp. 81-84; De Telegraaf, 18 May 1973; Ecran, no. 15 (May 1973), pp. 9-12; F-Dienst XXVII/2, 22 January 1974, pp. 16-17, and XXX/16, August 1977, p. 10; Filmfacts 15, no. 241 (1972): 601-06; Image et son, no. 279 (December 1973), pp. 98-106; Japanese Film Journal 19, no. 4 (1975): 243-45; Kosmorama 20, no. 117 (December 1973), pp. 56-57; Listener, 15 February 1973, p. 223; Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 17 January 1973, p. B-1; Monthly Film Bulletin, XL/470 (March) 1973, pp. 61-62; Nation, no. 3 (January 1973), pp. 93-94; New Leader, 22 January 1973, pp. 22-24, 35; New Republic, 3 February, pp. 24, 35; New York, 1 January 1973, pp. 64-65; New York Review of Books, no. 20 (8 March 1973), pp. 3-4; New York Times, 22 December 1972, p. 16:1; New York Times Film Reviews, 1971-72, pp. 350-51; New Yorker, 6 January 1973, pp. 50-54; Sight and Sound, 1973, p. 110; Sketch (Beiruth), 29 March 1974, pp. 56-7; Der Spiegel, no. 10 (4 March) 1974, p. 115; Time, 8 January 1973, p. 53 (A.E. p. 33); Times (London), 9 February 1973, p. 13; Village Voice, 28 December 1972, pp. 49, 56; Women & Film, no. 3-4 (1973), pp. 55-6; Variety, 20 December 1972, p. 18.
Longer Articles Adams, Sitney P. ‘Color and Myth in Cries and Whispers’. Film Criticism XIII, no. 3 (Spring) 1989: 37-41; also in Swedish as ‘Liksom en saga av Bröderna Grimm’. Chaplin, XXXI, no. 3 (222), 1989: 124-125, 164-166; le Fanu, Mark. ‘Bergman: the politics of melodrama’. Monogram (G.B.), formerly The Brighton Film Review, no. 5 (1974), pp. 10-13; Mellen, Joan. ‘Bergman and Women: Cries and Whispers’. Film Quarterly, XXVI, no. 5 (Fall 1973): 2-11; Rice, Julian. ‘Cries and Whispers: The Complete Bergman’. Massachusetts Review 16, no. 1 (Winter 1975): 147-58.
Fact Sheets and Journal Issues L’Avant-Scène du Cinéma, no. 142 (December 1973), pp. 3-55. Special issue of Cris et chuchottements, including script, credits, review excerpts, and illustrations. Boesten, D. J. ‘Cries and Whispers’. Media C 174, 1975, pp. 4-30. Dossier includes credits and listing of takes; a brief Bergman biography and filmography; script presentation of characters, and analysis calling film ‘a Christus film’ with explanation of names, color symbolism, clocks and mirrors, as well as its political implication (class structure). Concludes with excerpted press voices; Cinéma Québec XXXIX, no. 4-5/326-327 (July-October 1990). Contains review article by André Leroux, ‘Cris et chuchottements de Bergman. Au bout de l’éblouissement’, pp. 15-16 and an
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Chapter IV Filmography interview based on Cannes press conference by Jean-Pierre Tadros, ‘Un film pour vous divertir’, pp. 13-15; Parmentier, E. ‘Cries and Whispers’. Filmfacts XV/24, (15 January), 1974: 601-06. Synopsis and extracts from reviews.
See also Lee Bobker. Elements of Film (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975), passim; P. Cowie. Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1980, pp. 275-82; Dreamworks 1, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 54-67; L’Express, 8-14 October 1973, pp. 79-86; Film 72/73, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), pp. 42-51. Contains Hollis Alpert review in World Magazine; Paul D. Zimmerman’s in Newsweek, and Pauline Kael’s in New Yorker); Film a doba, no. 8 (August 1973), pp. 432-34; Japanese Fantasy Film Journal, no. 4 (1975), pp. 243-45; Kosmorama, no. 137 (178), pp. 66-67; New York Times, 27 May 1973, sec. 2, p. D11 (second review); Svensk filmografi, 1970-1979 (Ø 1314), pp. 189-92; Télé-Ciné. no. 214 (January 1977), p. 13; Chr. Braad Thomsen. ‘Bergman har lavet sit livs mesterværk’ [B has made his life’s masterpiece]. Aktuelt (Danish), 31 March 1973, p. 37; Village Voice, 11 January 1973, pp. 65, 70.
Awards National Society of Film Critics for Best Script and Best Photography; New York Critics’ Award for Best Film, Best Script, Best Director and Best Actress (Liv Ullmann); Oscar for Best Photography; For additional awards, see under film title in Varia, C. 1972:
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SCENER UR ETT ÄKTENSKAP, 1974 [Scenes from a Marriage], Eastmancolor (16 mm) Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Scener ur ett äktenskap was originally conceived as six 50-minute scenes for television, shot in 16 mm. A four-hour commercial film version, i.e., a 16 mm blown-up version of the original six TV scenes, had a limited showing abroad. A Swedish film version, 170 minutes, had a brief circulation in Sweden. The version with which most filmgoers are familiar is a two and a halfhour (155 minute) screen version, edited for foreign consumption. The release date of the two film versions was 1974. The TV version was first aired in 1973. For the original TV version, see Media chapter V (Ø 334) which includes more commentaries and a record of the reception of original TV transmission.
Synopsis First scene, ‘Innocence and Panic’, opens with an at-home interview where Johan and Marianne pose as the ideal couple for a ladies journal. The scene shifts to a dinner they give for their friends, Peter and Katarina. The gathering breaks up when the guests begin to insult each other. Afterwards, Johan and Marianne congratulate themselves on their own marriage. (The TV version also includes an episode where Marianne, who is pregnant, seeks an abortion. In the commercial film version, Marianne’s pregnancy is omitted.)
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record The second ‘scene’, titled ‘The Art of Sweeping under the Carpet’, begins with a mild but unsuccessful revolt by Marianne: she decides to cancel the weekly Sunday dinner with her parents. Later, in her office, she sees Mrs. Jacobi, who has wanted to divorce her husband for 15 years on the grounds that her marriage is loveless. In the meantime, Johan receives a call from his mother in his lab. His collegaue, Eva, comes in and partakes in an experiment: a TV monitor records her efforts to hit a point of light on a screen in a darkened room. She fails, somewhat irritated. Later she criticizes a collection of poems that Johan has given her to read. Marianne and Johan have lunch together. They begin a discussion about outspokenness and eroticism in marriage, which they continue in the evening after a theatre performance of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Marianne suggests that their lack of sexual desire for each other might be the result of too much talk about it. The third scene, ‘Paula’, takes place in Johan’s and Marianne’s summer house where Johan reveals having an affair with another woman, Paula, with whom he is leaving for Paris the next day. Marianne pleads with him to stay, but Johan wants to break away from a life filled with middle-class commitments. They make love but in the morning Johan packs and leaves. Distraught, Marianne calls a couple they know, only to find out that Johan’s affair has been known among their friends for some time. The fourth scene, ‘The Valley of Tears’, occurs a year later. Johan comes to Marianne’s home for dinner. He mentions an offer he has had from an American university and reveals that Paula is not going to accompany him. He wants to make love to Marianne, but she refuses. Instead, she reads him a passage from her diary, but Johan falls asleep. Later, she shows him a letter that Paula has written to her, predicting that Johan will go back to his family. Johan leaves, saying that Paula’s epistle is an act of histrionics. The next to the last scene, ‘The Illiterates’, takes place in Johan’s office. Marianne comes to present and sign the divorce papers. They start drinking. Johan has a cold, Marianne is in a good mood and seduces him. While Johan talks about his professional difficulties, Marianne appears indifferent and tells about her new sense of freedom. Soon they begin to argue and accuse each other of the flaws in their marriage. The verbal insults change into a violent physical attack by Johan. Afterwards, they sign the divorce papers, and Marianne leaves. Several years have gone by when the final scene takes place, titled ‘In the middle of the Night, in a dark House somewhere in the World’. Both Johan and Marianne have remarried, but meet on the twentieth anniversary of their own marriage. They drive to a friend’s cabin and talk about their lives. Johan is upset because his life seems meaningless; Marianne claims that she is finally free, if not happy. During the night, Marianne wakes up after a nightmare. The foghorn sounds ouside. She talks to Johan about her sense of confusion and of not being loved. Johan tells her he loves her in his own unimaginative way. They go back to sleep, holding hands.
Credits Production company Production manager Director Screenplay Photography Architect Sound Mixing Costumes
Cinematograph AB Lars-Owe Carlberg Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist (Eastmancolor) Björn Thulin Owe Svensson, Arne Carlsson Owe Svensson Inger Pehrsson
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Chapter IV Filmography Make-up Editor Continuity
Cecilia Drott Siv Lundgren Ulla Stattin
Cast Marianne Johan Mrs. Palm, journalist Peter Katarina Eva Gunnel Lindblom Mrs. Jacobi Arne, Johan’s colleauge Marianne’s mother Eva, 12 years old Her sister Voice-over as a press photographer
Liv Ullmann Erland Josephson Anita Wall Jan Malmsjö Bibi Andersson Barbro Hiort af Ornäs Bertil Norström Wenche Foss Rosanna Mariano Lena Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Filmed on location in Stockholm and at Fårö, beginning 24 July 1972 and completed 3 October 1972. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Swedish film opening U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri (film version) Donald Rugoff TV version: 282 minutes; Swedish film version: 170 minutes; American film version: 155 minutes 28 October 1974, Camera (Västerås) 21 September 1974, Cinema 1, NYC
Commentary In a reportage in DN (30 August 1972), taped by Thorleif Hellbom at Bergman’s Dämba studio on Fårö, Bergman talks about a productive 3-month period [April-June 1972], during which he wrote the script to Scener ur ett äktenskap. Same material appeared in Röster i Radio TV, no. 15, 1973, under the title ‘Det var bara roligt’ [It was nothing but fun]. Material also appeared in Danish Politiken, 13 May 1973, p. 42, under the headline ‘Et par måneders arbejde men et livs erfaring’ [A couple of months work but the experience of a lifetime]. In an interview article by Elisabet Sörenson in SvD, 6 April 1973, p. 8, Bergman talked about the genesis of his characters as ‘a kind of spring cleaning in a closet in which I had stored other people’s and my own experiences’ [en slags vårstädning i en garderob där jag hade lagrat andra människors och mina egna erfarenheter], adding, however, that he did not speak through Johan and Marianne: ‘It surprised me a lot when I wrote about them that they could say things all on their own. The most amazing things’ [Det förvånade mig mycket när jag skrev om dem att de kunde säga saker av sig själva. De mest överraskande saker]. In a later interview article by Aino and Arne Sellermark, Bergman said about the genesis of the entire series that ‘It started on my old couch’ [Det började på min gamla soffa], Allers, no. 39 (1974), pp. 47-8. See also Expr., 17 May 1973, p. 25. In an interview by Göran Sellgren titled ‘Första TV-serien för Bergman’ (DN, 4 May 1972) Bergman revealed that Scenes... was a continuation of his ‘bourgeois tragi-comedies’ The Touch and Reservatet. The main theme in all three works was ‘the certainty with which bourgeois ideology corrupts people’s emotional life’ (den visshet med vilken den borgerliga ideologin korrumperar människors känsloliv). See also Bergman’s remarks about the TV series, listed in Chapter II (Ø 152).
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record On 27 August 1974, Expr. (p. 24) reported that Bergman had sold a cut-down version of Scener ur ett äktenskap for commercial distribution in the U.S. Bergman said: ‘It hasn’t lost anything in the operation. I’ve always been unsentimental about my films, have never seem them as untouchable’ [Den har inte förlorat något på operationen. Jag har alltid varit osentimental om mina filmer, har aldrig sett dem som oantastliga]. Apart from the cut of the abortion segment, the most drastic difference between the TV and film versions is the omission of an entire episode depicting Marianne’s visit to her mother. Swedish film version (170 minutes) of Scener ur ett äktenskap had a selective showing in Sweden on a try-out basis, but got only a limited response (see Expr., 23 October 1974, p. 34).
Foreign Reception American evaluations of the shorter (155 minute) film version of Scenes from a Marriage echoed the mixed US response to The Touch a few years earlier. While John Simon in Esquire, no. 1 (January 1975), pp. 12, 16, compared Scenes ‘to the great literary tracts on love by writers like Stendhal, Kierkegaard, Ortega y Gasset’, Marcia Cavell in New Leader, 28 October 1974, pp. 2324, referred to Bergman’s film as ‘a high-class soap opera missing both the mundane and the metaphysical’. Molly Haskell interviewed Liv Ullmann for Village Voice, 21 November 1974, pp. 137-47, reprinted in Women and the Cinema, ed. K. Kay and G. Peary (E.P. Dutton, 1977), pp. 117-33. In France reviewers noted Bergman’s development from the symbolic and metaphysical films of the Fifties and Sixties to the realism of Scenes. They remarked in particular on two things: that Bergman had a talent for simplicity and richness of dialogue and for narrative density; and that Scenes marked a peak in his ability to present an ‘invisible mise-en-scène’ (See Jeune Cinéma, Positif, Cinéma 75 listed below).
Foreign Reviews America, 10 August and 12 October 1974, p. 56 and p. 195, respectively; Amis du film et de la télévision, no. 234 (November 1975), p. 17; L’Avant-scène du cinéma, no. 162 (October 1975), pp. 41-46; Cinéma 75, no. 196 (March 1975), pp. 115-18; Cineforum, no. 144 (May 1975), pp. 363-77; Ecran, no. 34 (March 1975), pp. 60-62; F-Dienst XXVIII/6, 18 March 1975, pp. 10-11, and XXX, 22, 25 October 1977, pp. 12 a-d; Film Heritage 10, no. 2 (Winter 1975): 43-44; Film Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Winter 1974-75): 48-53. New Republic, 12 October 1974, pp. 22, 33 (repr. in Before my Eyes, pp. 66-69); Films and Filming 21, no. 5 (February 1975): 39-40; Films in Review, October 1974, p. 501; Japanese Fantasy Journal 19, no. 1 (1975), pp. 404-5; Jeune cinéma, no. 85 (March 1975), pp. 29-32; Jump Cut, no. 5 (January-February 1975), pp. 1-2; Kosmorama, no. 115-116 (August 1973), pp. 228-30, and no. 117 (November 1973), pp. 62-63; Los Angeles Times, 18 November 1974, p. 1; Ms. 3, no. 2 (August 1974): 60-61, 82; Monthly Film Bulletin, January 1975, pp. 16-17; New Republic, 12 October 1974, pp. 22, 33 (repr. in Kauffmann’s Before my Eyes, pp. 66-69); New York, no. 7 (September 1974), pp. 68-69; New York Times, 22 September 1974, sec. 2, pp. 1, 15; New Yorker, 23 September 1974, pp. 96-98; Partisan Review, no. 4 (1974), pp. 581-85;
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Chapter IV Filmography Positif, no. 167 (March 1975), pp. 64-66; Product D II/9, 2 October 1974, p. 34; Sight and Sound 45, no. 1 (Winter 1974-75): 57-58; Télé-Ciné, no. 197 (March 1975), p. 28; Times (London), 29 November 1974, p. 17; Village Voice, 26 September 1974, p. 84, and 13 January 1975, p. 69.
Longer Studies and Review Articles (film version) Buxton, Paul. ‘Scenes from a Marriage. A Special Project in Directing’. MA thesis. Rhode Island College, 1990. 45 typewritten pp; Keyser, Lester. ‘Bergman and the Popular Audience’ in Kaminsky, 1975 (Ø 1266), pp. 313-23; Librach, Ronald S. ‘Marriage as Metaphor: The Idea of Consciousness in Scener ur ett äktenskap’. Scandinavian Studies 49, no. 3 (Summer 1977), pp. 283-300; Steene, Birgitta. ‘Scenes from a Marriage’. Movietone News, no. 40 (April 1975), pp. 19-21 and no. 41 (May 1975), pp. 15-18; Westerbeck, C. Jr. ‘Pillow Talk’ Commonweal, 20 December 1974, pp. 264-70, and ‘Divorce Swedish Style’, 3 January 1975, pp. 300-301.
Awards 1974: 1975: 1976:
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Hollywood Foreign Press Association Golden Globe; National Society of Filmcritics awards for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Screenplay; Film Journalists’ Association Film Festival (Brussels); David di Donatello Award, Taormina, to Liv Ullmann; Bild und Funk Bambi Award for Best Foreign Actress.
TROLLFLÖJTEN, 1975 [The Magic Flute], Eastmancolor Director Text
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman, after a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder
For the reception of the original TV transmission (including controversy over production support), see media chapter V (Ø 335).
Synopsis The story focusses on Prince Tamino and Princess Pamina, daughter of the evil Queen of Night and Sarastro, by some considered a wizard, by others a good and wise man. The film opens as Tamino is attacked during a hunt by a bestial dragon and saved at the last moment by three women who are in the Queen of Night’s service. They return to tell their mistress of the incident. She sends Tamino a medallion of her daughter. As planned, the prince falls in love with Pamina. During a visit the Queen of Night promises Tamino her daughter in marriage if he returns Pamina from her father, who has kidnapped her. The Queen gives Tamino a magic flute and a companion, Papageno. Soon Tamino and Papageno lose each other, and while the latter finds Pamina and flees with her from her guardian, Monostatos, Tamino arrives at Sarastro’s palace. Pamina’s and Papageno’s flight is thwarted by Sarastro as he returns from a hunt. He is aware of Pamina’s and Tamino’s love for each other – Papageno has given Pamina a picture of Tamino and her love for him is instant – and sets a scheme in motion. He captures Tamino and sends him away with Papageno. During a meeting with his council of priests, Sarastro reveals his intention to give his daughter to Tamino. First, however, the prince and his companion must endure three trials.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Taken to the Temple of Trials, Tamino forfeits a chance to turn back. He persuades Papageno to stay by promising him a beautiful wife. In the Temple of Trials, Tamino and Papageno are forbidden to talk. Papageno forgets himself and loses his prospective fiancée, Papagena, who has appeared as an old woman. Pamina, who has been sent by her mother to kill Sarastro, approaches Tamino but doubts his love for her when he does not answer her. She attempts suicide but is saved by three boys who return her in a balloon to Tamino. Tamino is now ready for his last trial: to wander through fire and water. Together, and with the help of the magic flute, Tamino and Pamina endure the elements and reach their goal. They are greeted by Sarastro and his people, who have chased away the Queen of Night. Because of his hatred for his wife, Sarastro does not consider himself worthy to reign and gives the rulership insignia to Tamino and Pamina. The film ends as Papageno and Papagena (with an instant hoard of offspring) join Tamino and Pamina in celebration of happiness and love.
Credits Production company Production manager Location manager Director Assistant director Photography Architect Music Sound Mixing Orchestration Choreography Costumes Make-up Editor Continuity
Cinematograph/SverigesTelevision (SVT, channel 2) Måns Reuterswärd Ann-Marie Jartelius Ingmar Bergman Kerstin Forsmark Sven Nykvist Henny Noremark W.A. Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte Helmut Mühle (music), Peter Hennix (dialog) Bengt Törnkrantz Eric Ericson and SR/Symphony Choir Donya Feuer Karin Erskine, Henny Noremark Bengt Ottekil, Britt Falkemo, Cecilia Drott Siv Lundgren Katinka (Katherina) Faragó
Cast Tamino Pamina Papageno Papagena First lady Second lady Third lady Sarastro Queen of Night Monostatos The speaker First priest Second priest Two guards Three boys in the balloon Seven girls
Josef Köstlinger Irma Urrila Håkan Hagegård Elisabeth Erikson Britt-Marie Aruhn Kirsten Vaupel Birgitta Smiding Ulrik Cold Birgit Nordin, assisted by song pedagoque Ulla Blom Ragnar Ulfung Erik Sædén Gösta Prüzelius Ulf Johanson Hans Johansson, Jerker Arvidson Urban Malmberg, Ansgar Krook, Erland von Heijne Lisbeth Zachrisson, Nina Harte, Helena Högberg, Elina Lehto, Lena Wennergren, Jane Darling, Sonja Karlsson
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Chapter IV Filmography Nine priests
Girl in the audience Listeners in the audience
Einar Larson, Siegfried Svensson, Sixten Fark, SvenErik Jacobsson, Folke Jonsson, Gösta Backelin, Arne Hendriksen, Hans Kyhle, Carl Henric Qvarfordt Helene Friberg Daniel Bergman, Ingmar Bergman, Erland Josephson, Sven Nykvist, Ingrid Bergman, Lisbeth Zachrisson, Janós Herskó, Magnus Blomkvist, Donya Feuer, LarsOwe Carlberg
Bergman’s filmed TV version of Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte was shot on a replica of an 18thcentury stage. Sets and machinery were a faithful, though diminished reconstruction of the 18th-century Drottningholm Court Theatre outside Stockholm, where Bergman had first planned to shoot the film. This theatre, the only intact stage of its kind in Europe, is similar in structure to Theater auf der Weiden outside Vienna, where Mozart’s opera opened on 30 September 1791. Bergman’s Trollflöjten was recorded at the Circus Theatre in Stockholm, beginning 6 April 1974, and filmed at Filmhuset, Stockholm (Studio 1), beginning 16 April 1974 (not counting extensive preparations over a 3-year period) and completed in July 1974. Distribution US. distribution Running time Released Television premiere Cinema premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri Surrogate Co./Carmen F. Zollo 135 minutes 26 September 1975 1 January 1975 4 October 1975, Röda Kvarn (Stockholm) 11 November 1975, Coronet, NYC
A documentary about the production of Trollflöjten was produced by Katinka Faragó and Måns Reuterswärd. See Varia, A.
Commentary In interviews, Bergman mentions his lifelong love of Mozart’s opera and refers to it as ‘the world’s best musical’ [världens bästa musikal]. At age 12 he tried using it for his puppet theater but could not afford to buy the records. Singling out the 12 beats he used in the puppeteer sequence in Vargtimmen (Tamino’s search for Pamina) as ‘one of civilization’s greatest moments’, Bergman added in an interview in Vecko-Journalen, no. 47 (20 November 1974), pp. 9-10, 47: ‘Mozart got those notes from God of course. Or if you want to translate that into comprehensible language, you can say that he got it from his genius or from a collective human experience or from a sublimated fear of death’. [M. fick det från Gud naturligtvis. Eller om du vill översätta detta begripligt, så kan man säga att han hämtat dem ur sin genialitet eller ur en samlad djupt mänsklig erfarenhet eller ur en sublimerad dödsfruktan.]. In Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 350-359, Bergman writes about the genesis of his filmatization of Mozart’s opera and about episodes in the making of the film. For Bergman’s views on Mozart, see also interviews in AB, 2 January 1975, p.18; Film und Ton 22 (December 1975): 64; Röster i Radio-TV, no. 1-2 (1974/75), pp. 4-5, 67; two-page program issued at the Cannes Film Festival, 9-23 May 1975, where Magic Flute was shown out of competition; and an article by Jan Aghed and Carlhåkan Larsén in SDS, 31 December 1974, p. 10 (same material appears in authors’ interview article in Positif, no. 177 (January 1976), pp. 59), in which Bergman compares Mozart’s opera to Winnie the Pooh (i.e., story and wisdom combined, written for a 10-year-old by an adult). Bergman defines ‘morality of love’ as opera’s main theme and justifies changes he made in the libretto as an attempt to make this theme
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record more explicit. He also defends his choice of singers: ‘The most important thing for me was that the singers had natural-born voices, not artificial ones. [...] There are synthetic voices that sound wonderful, but you can’t see in the faces that anybody is singing’ [Det viktigaste för mig var att sångarna hade naturliga röster, inte konstlade. [...] Det finns syntetiska röster som låter underbara men man kan inte se i ansiktena att någon sjunger]. Costumier Henny Noremark spent eleven months preparing the costumes. In 1976 she was nominated for an Academy Award, but the film was not submitted for competition. Helene Friberg, the young girl in the audience, whose face and reactions to the performance form a visual leitmotif in the film, is not Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann’s daughter, as was often stated erroneously in British and American reviews.
Foreign Reception The Magic Flute opened as a commercial film in the U.S in early November 1975. American critics were soon outdoing each other in laudatory assessments. See New Republic, 29 November 1975, p. 22, reprinted in Kauffmann: Before my Eyes, pp. 69-72 (‘On the Day of Judgement of Nations, a lot will be forgiven Sweden for having wanted and produced such a celebration’); Newsweek, 24 November 1975, pp. 113-14 (‘a sugar plum for anyone’); Time, 24 November 1975, pp. 82-84 (‘This is an occasion. Genius is served, [...] Mozart is enhanced, Bergman is triumphant’); Village Voice, 17 November 1975, p. 102 (‘ A model of a musical ensemble as well as theatrical inspiration’). Bergman’s choice of singers became a bone of contention among reviewers. John Simon in New York, 24 November 1975, pp. 81-82 was critical, and Robert Craft in New York Review of Books, 27 November 1975, pp. 16, 18 argued that Bergman fell between two chairs by picking good-looking singers who were neither professional actors nor first-rate opera performers. Peter Cowie in High Fidelity Magazine 25, no. 6 (June 1976): 66-70, discussed this and other musical problems in Magic Flute. In this context, the interview with music director Eric Ericson in SvD, 4 January 1975, p. 9, is also of interest. Ericson, who was asked by many before the filming ‘to defend Mozart’, felt that there was never any need to do so: ‘Working with Bergman was a new and fine experience for me and the orchestra’ [Att arbeta med Bergman var en ny och fin erfarenhet för mig och orkestern]. See also an interview with Sven Nykvist discussing the filming of Magic Flute in American Cinematograper 56, no. 8 (August 1975): 894-99.
Foreign Reviews America, 24 January 1976, pp. 55-56; Amis du film et de la télévision, no. 234 (November 1975), p. 17; Bianco e nero, January-February 1977, pp. 108-10; Cinema nuovo, May-June 1977, pp. 210-11; Dissent 23, no. 2, (1976): 213-15; Ecran, no. 42 (December 1975), pp. 48-50; Film Quarterly 30, no. 1 (Fall 1976): 45-49; Films and Filming 22, no. 6 (March 1976); Filmkritika 28 (March 1975), pp. 108-11; High Fidelity and Musical America, no. 2 (February 1976), pp. 16-18; Jeune cinéma, no. 88 (July-August), pp. 33-34; Kosmorama, no. 125 (1975), pp. 61-62; Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1976, p. 35; National Review, 5 March 1976, pp. 217-18; New York Magazine, 24 November 1975, pp. 81-82; New York Times, 9 November 1975, pp. 2:1, D17, 12 November 1975, p. 50:1, and 16 November, p. 2: D15;
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Chapter IV Filmography New Yorker, 17 November 1975, pp. 169-74; Positif, no. 177, January 1976, pp. 3-5; Sight and Sound, no. 3 (Summer 1975), p. 159; Stuttgarter Zeitung, 10 January 1975; Variety, 15 January 1975, p. 45.
Longer Studies Carcassonne, P. ‘Tombeaux de Mozart’. Cinématographe, no 52 (November 1979), pp. 11-15 (comparison with Losey’s Don Giovanni); Donneux, M. ‘Bergman – Mozart. La flute enchantée (ou “La caméra enchanteresse”)’. APEC – Revue Belge du Cinéma, XIII, no. 4 (January 1976): 29-35; Hunter, R. ‘A meditation on theatre and love’, Australian Journal of Screen 7, no. 7 (1980), pp. 124-37 (on the theatrical style and the theme of power and love in The Magic Flute); Kauffmann, Stanley. ‘The Abduction from Theater. Mozart Opera on Film’, The Yale Review 81, no. 1 (January 1993), pp. 92-104 (comparison with Losey’s Don Giovanni and Sellars’s The Marriage of Figaro); Plus, Eric. ‘Die Zauberflöte verfilmd door Ingmar Bergman’. Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Amsterdam; Schupp, Patrick. ‘La flute enchantée’. Séquences, no. 84 (April 1976): 28-31 (refers to film as a Bergman-Mozart masterpiece); Törnqvist, Egil. ‘Transcending Bounderies: Bergman’s Magic Flute’. In Fridén, Ann Carpenter, ed. Ingmar Bergman and the Arts. Nordic Theatre Studies 11, 1998, pp. 84-97. Also in author’s Bergman’s Muses, 2003, pp. 65-79. (Argues that Bergman’s Flute, shot for the TV screen, is a television opera rather than an opera film and transforms, through an intricate viewer perspective, an old aristocratic opera genre with its upper-class theatre context into a democratic theatrum mundi).
Fact Sheets and Special Journal Issues Avant-Scène du Cinéma, no. 162 (October 1975), pp. 47-50. Dossier on La flute enchantée with credits and illustrations.
See also Donneux, M. Apec Cinéma, no. 4 (January 1975-76), pp. 29-35; Sarris, Andrew. Village Voice, 1 December 1975, pp. 121-23 (claims Bergman’s competition is not the opera, but a hifi record player); Kael, Pauline, in her collection of reviews When the Lights Go Down, pp. 72-75.
Awards French Film Critics Association Special Award Golden Globe Award as Best Film of the Year. For additional awards, see under film title, Varia, C. 1975:
248.
ANSIKTE MOT ANSIKTE, 1976 [Face to Face], Eastmancolor Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
See also Media Chapter (Ø 336) for presentation of Ansikte mot ansikte as TV series, its genesis and Swedish response.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Synopsis Originally conceived for Swedish television, Ansikte mot ansikte/Face to Face depicts the nervous breakdown and recovery of Jenny Isaksson, a psychiatrist in her late Thirties. The film is set in the old-fashioned apartment of Jenny’s grandparents in Stockholm, with some additional scenes taking place in a hospital, in an empty house, and at a party. Jenny has gone to live with her grandparents for the summer while a new house is being finished for her family. Her scientist husband is in the U.S. and her teenage daughter at summer camp. Jenny is substituting for the head of the psychiatric clinic at the hospital where she works. One of Jenny’s patients, Maria, confronts her, drooling and caressing her breast. Jenny dismisses the behavior as playacting. Later she gets an anonymous phone call; going to a house that she and her family have recently vacated, she finds Maria drugged on the floor. Two men accost Jenny, and one of them tries to rape her. At a party that the head psychiatrist’s wife is giving for her homosexual friends, Jenny meets Tomas, a gynecologist. They have dinner together and go to his place. When she returns to her grandparent’s apartment, Jenny sees a specter, an old woman dressed in black, with cold staring eyes. The woman appears without warning and continues to haunt Jenny until she is driven to a suicide attempt. Tomas discovers her, unconscious, and takes her to the hospital. As she is being brought back to life, Jenny hallucinates and imagines herself dressed in a long red robe and red cap, wandering through the psychic landscape of her childhood. She is seen searching for her parents, who were killed in an automobile accident. She relives her fears of a dark closet where she was locked up as a punishment. In yet another hallucinatory fragment Jenny is confronted by her patients; finds her grandfather crouched in a closet; pulls a rubber mask off a woman’s face, revealing open bleeding sores; and recommends aspirin and tranquillizers to her patients but feels uncomfortable with their attempts to touch her. In still another nightmare, Jenny is watching her own dead self in a nailed white coffin. The corpse is revived; Jenny sets the coffin afire while the body inside cries desperately. In a last hallucinatory scene Jenny assumes the voice of a reprimanding old woman who lectures her about her duties, and threatens to lock her up in the closet. As she begins to recover, Jenny’s husband comes to visit. He has rushed home from America but seems preoccupied with his work. Later their daughter Anna drops in, listens silently to Jenny’s explanations, and leaves. Tomas, who has attended to Jenny during her recovery, tells her he is leaving for Jamaica. Jenny returns to her grandparents. Her grandfather has had a stroke and is decrepit and senile, totally dependent upon the care of Jenny’s grandmother. Jenny is seen standing behind a curtain watching the two old people communicating silently. She comes to the conclusion that love emcompasses all, even death. The film ends as Jenny makes a phone call to the hospital, informing the receptionist that she will return to work shortly. There is also the prospect for her of a trip to the U.S.
Credits Production company Production manager Location manager Director Assistant director Screenplay Photography
Cinematograph Lars-Owe Carlberg Katinka (Katherina) Faragó Ingmar Bergman Peder Langenskiöld Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist
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Chapter IV Filmography Architects Sound/Mixing Music Costumes Props Make-up Editor Continuity
Anne Terselius-Hagegård, Peter Krópenin Owe Svensson W.A. Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor, K 475, played by Käbi Laretei Maggie Strindberg Anna Asp Cecilia Drott Siv Lundgren Kerstin Eriksdotter
Cast Dr. Jenny Isaksson Dr. Tomas Jacobi Grandpa Grandma Maria Elisabeth Wankel, psychiatrist’s wife Erik, Jenny’s husband Anna Woman specter Dr. Helmut Wankel Veronica, nurse Mikael Strömberg, actor Jenny’s mother Jenny’s father Rapists Boutique girls Piano player Ludde
Liv Ullmann Erland Josephson Gunnar Björnstrand Aino Taube Kari Sylwan Sif Ruud Sven Lindberg Helene Friberg Tore Segelcke Ulf Johanson Kristina Adolphson Gösta Ekman Marianne Aminoff Jan-Eric Lindqvist Birger Malmsten, Göran Stangertz Rebecka Pawlo, Lena Olin Käbi Laretei Bengt Eklund
Filmed at SFI studios, Filmhuset, beginning in April 1975 and completed 30 June 1975. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time U.S. premiere
Cinematograph Dino de Laurentiis, Paramount TV-version: 175 min.; Film version: 135 minutes 5 April 1976 (charity premiere)
Commentary Bergman made two versions of Ansikte mot ansikte/Face to Face: the TV-version and a shorter international film version. See interview in SvD, 28 January 1976, p. 9. (Ø 842). A reportage from the shooting of Ansikte mot ansikte appeared in Los Angeles Times Calendar, 15 June 1975, p. 51. Bergman talks to Charles Champlin of LA Times about the importance of tradition, continuity, and friendship in his filmmaking. Same subject appears in Continental Film Review XIV, no. 2 (December 1976): 34-35. At the time of his conception of Ansikte mot ansikte, Bergman had become intrigued by Arthur Janov’s psychological theories about ‘the primal scream’. He had met Janov during a brief visit to Los Angeles and mentions his relevance to the film in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 66-82. The international film version was originally scheduled to be distributed by ABC Pictures, the same company that backed The Touch. But ABC wanted Bergman to cut further the copy he had submitted, which he refused to do, though he later re-edited it to run for 135 minutes. This shorter version of Ansikte mot ansikte has never been shown in Sweden. It was released in the U.S.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record prior to the airing of the TV version in Sweden; this was arranged in order to make the film qualify as an Academy Award entry. Paramount, the final American distributor, printed an elaborate 44-page program, before releasing the film in the US. It included ‘a rare and private look at a day in Ingmar Bergman’s working world’. A glossier 292-page folder presenting the film with credits, biographies of crew and actors, and excerpts from the script was published by Beverly Hills Lion Films Co. A production handbook from the making of Ansikte mot ansikte was published in German: Produktionshandbuch zu Ingmar Bergmans ‘Von Angesicht zo Angesicht’, ed. by Ernie Anderson. (Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe, 1976), 125 pp. On 24 March 1976, SR/TV issued a five-page program including plot synopsis, film credits, and Bergman’s letter to the crew. The letter was also published in New York Times, 24 September 1975, p. 45, and became the preface to Swedish and American printed versions of the script, which is based on the TV manuscript.
Foreign Reception and Reviews V. Canby in NYT, 18 April 1976, sec. 2, p. 1, saw the film as a metaphor for Sweden – perfection on the surface, crisis underneath. Several American reviews of Face to Face, and a year later The Serpent’s Egg – i.e., films conceived before the Bergman tax debacle – attributed their content to the tax case and Bergman’s reaction to it. See B. Brody, Psychology Today 10, no. 4 (September 1976): 15, and J. Cocks, Time 12 April 1976, p. 97. A number of American reviewers stated that the powerful hallucinatory quality of the Bergman/Ullmann collaboration seduced the audience. Several argued, however, that Bergman was less successful when relying on an actor’s aura than when he made visual use of iconography and ritual enactment to capture audience attention, as in his medieval films. See the following commentators: J. Breslin, America, 7 August 1976, pp. 55-56; R. Hatch, Nation, 17 April 1976, pp. 475-76; D. Jacobs, Take One 5, no. 4 (October 1976), pp. 40-41; Samuel Raphaelson, Film Comment 12, no. 3 (May-June 1976): 46-49, 65; Andrew Sarris, Village Voice, 5 April 1976, pp. 133-34; Patrick Schupp, Séquences, no. 86 (October 1976): 48-49 (questioned cuts from script); C. L Westerbeck, Commonweal, 21 May 1976, pp. 333-34. American reviews of Face to Face were excerpted in SDS, 7 April 1976, p. 10. For additional foreign reactions, see: Cineforum 17, no. 161 (January 1977): 54-61; Ecran no. 50 (September 1976): 49-51; F-Dienst XXIV/12, 8 June 1976, pp. 14-15; Film und Ton 22 (December 1976): 64-65; Filmcritica 28 (March 1977): 123-24; Films and Filming 22, no. 3 (December 1976): 31; Films in Review 27, no. 5 (May 1876): 314-15; Monthly Film Bulletin, December 1976, p. 247; New Republic, 17 April 1976, pp. 22; New Statesman, 22 October 1976, p. 570; New York Times, 6 April 1976, p. 28:1, and 18 April 1976, p. 2:1; New Yorker, 5 April 1976, pp. 121-23; Positif, no. 183-184 (July-August), 1976: 82-83;
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Chapter IV Filmography Sight and Sound 46, no. 1 (Winter 1976-77): 55.
See also Finetti, U. ‘Uno psicologo d’inanzi all’imagine sullo specchio’, Cinema Nuovo, March-April 1977, pp. 115-17 (interview with Italian psychoanalyst Cesare Musatti about Face to Face); Kauffmann, Stanley. Before my Eyes, pp. 73-76 (New Republic review); Lauder, Robert. Christian Century 93, no. 39 (1976): 936-38; Michener, C. Film Comment 12, no. 3 (May-June 1976): 44-45; Variety, 14 April 1976, p. 32.
Awards 1977:
249.
Golden Globe as Best Foreign Film of the Year.
ORMENS ÄGG /DAS SCHLANGENEI/THE SERPENT’S EGG, 1977 Eastmancolor Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis The Serpent’s Egg takes place in Berlin in November 1923 during Hitler’s first, unsuccessful attempt to seize political power. The main characters are the former circus artists Abel and Manuela Rosenberg. Manuela used to be married to Abel’s brother Max. The two brothers are Canadian citizens born of Danish Jews. Abel returns to his shabby hotel room in Berlin to find his brother dead, an apparent suicide. When questioned by a fat cigar-smoking policeman, Commissary Bauer, Abel can provide no clue. He looks up Manuela, who works in the cabaret ‘Zum blauen Esel’, and gives her a letter that Max has left behind; the handwriting is illegible, except for one phrase: ‘The poisoning goes on all the time.’ Outside the cabaret hall, Abel runs into Hans Vergerus, a scientist who claims to recognize him from a summer vacation 26 years ago. Abel denies the acquintance. Abel witnesses the beating up of an old Jewish couple by young German soldiers. Later he turns up drunk at Manuela’s rooming house. After Manuela goes to her daytime work (as a prostitute), Abel searches her room and finds a small bundle of dollar bills. He meets the landlady, Frau Holle. Returning to his former hotel room, Abel finds the police waiting. Bauer asks him to come along to the morgue to indentify a young woman who has been found drowned. The badly beaten corpse is that of Grethe Hofer, Max’s fiancée. Abel recognizes other bodies shown to him but cannot name them. One has been murdered with painful injections; the other is a suicide. Abel is taken to the police station for interrogation; he reveals that he is an alcoholic and not interested in unexplained deaths or the current political chaos. Trying to escape, he is beaten and thrown into prison, where Manuela comes to visit. Bauer releases Abel, writing off his behavior as excessively neurotic. Abel follows Manuela to work and sees her enter a church. She prays with a minister; they ask for mutual forgiveness; God is no longer present to offer absolution. The police stage a razzia at the cabaret hall where Manuela worked and beat the proprietor unconscious. Manuela and Abel move to St. Anna’s Clinic, where Hans Vergerus has given Abel access to an apartment. Abel works in the archives and Manuela in the laundry room. Two doctors, Solterman and Fuchs, escort Abel to his job and leave him alone. Fuchs reveals that horrible experiments take place in the clinic under the surveillance of Hans Vergerus. After an argument with Manuela, Abel leaves the apartment. He is involved in a fracas with a Jewish couple. Later a prostitute picks him up. In her apartment, another girl and a black man are arguing about his impotence. Abel baits them with money. The man fails to make love to
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record the girl, who collects the money. Returning to the apartment, Abel discovers Manuela dead. Later he finds a movie camera is hidden in the wall. Pushing a door open, he enters an empty room and takes an elevator to the top floor. A shadow follows him. He is attacked and barely survives. Back at work, Abel asks Dr. Solterman to accompany him to the archives, where he beats him unconscious and steals his keys. He finds a projection booth and turns on the machinery: a picture of a woman sitting against a white wall appears. Hans Vergerus comes into the booth and explains the film. It is a study of a woman taking care of a brain-damaged child who cries night and day. This is followed by other sequences of people under extreme duress and torture, mostly involving injections with experimental drugs. Vergerus predicts than in ten years time, science will be ready to carry on his work. Knowing, however, that the police are about to discover his deeds, he commits suicide by swallowing cyanide. The police arrive, Vergerus is dying, and Abel is knocked unconscious. He wakes up in the prison hospital. Bauer tells him that arrangements have been made for his departure to Switzerland. Abel gets up and acts completely disoriented, behaving like one of the victims in Vergerus’s filmed experiments. Escorted to the railroad station he escapes and disappears in the crowd.
Credits Production company Executive producer Producer Director Screenplay Photography Architect Music Sound Costumes Choreography Editor Continuity
Rialto Film (Berlin)/Dino de Laurentiis Corp. (L.A.) Horst Wendlandt Dino de Laurentiis Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist Rolf Zehetbauer Rolf Wilhelm Karsten Ullrich, Charlotte Flemming Heino Hallhuber Petra von Oelffen Kerstin Eriksdotter
Cast Manuela Rosenberg Abel Rosenberg Commisary Bauer Hans Vergerus Parson Monroe Hollinger Frau Holle Frau Dorst Dr. Soltermann Dr. Silbermann A civil servant Frau Hemse Solomon Mikaela Stella
Liv Ullmann David Carradine Gert Fröbe Heintz Bennent James Whitmore Glynn Turman Georg Hartmann Edith Heerdegen Kyra Mladeck Fritz Strassner Hans Quest Wolfgang Weiser Paula Braend Walter Schmidinger Lis Mangold Grischa Huber
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Chapter IV Filmography Cabaret comedian Girls in uniform Mr. Rosenberg Mrs. Rosenberg Max Paramedic Woman with baby Student Experimental person Doctor Prisoner Wife Husband Comforter Woman in street Hostess Prostitutes Police officer Greedy man ‘Bride’ ‘Groom’
Paul Bürks Isolde Barth, Rosemarie Heinikel, Andrea L’Arronge, Beverly McNeely Toni Berger Erna Brunnell Hans Eichler Harry Kalenberg Gaby Dohm Christian Berkel Paul Burian Charles Regnier Günter Meisner Heide Picha Günter Malzacher Hubert Mittendorf Hertha von Walther Ellen Umlauf Renate Grosser, Hildegard Busse Richard Bohne Emil Feist Heino Hallhuber Irene Steinbeiser
Filmed in Bavaria Studios, Munich, beginning October 1976 and completed December 1976. Distribution Running time Swedish premiere German premiere U.S. opening
Dino de Laurentiis 119 minutes 28 October 1977, Grand (Stockholm), Victoria (Göteborg), Camera (Malmö) 28 October 1977 February 1978
Commentary Das Schlangenei/The Serpent’s Egg was Bergman’s first film made outside of Sweden and the first film made after his taking up residence in Munich, West Germany. The film was co-produced by German and American financiers (see Credits above). It was shot in the Bavaria Studios but released as an English-speaking film. The cinematographer was Sven Nykvist but a number of other crew members were German. Bergman writes about the genesis and progression of the film in Bilder/Images (Ø 188), pp. 190-208; it was a complicated undertaking both in terms of the setting (‘a Berlin that nobody knew any more’) and cast (finding a male main actor). In some reports, Bergman is quoted as saying that The Serpent’s Egg was written as a strange premonition of his own arrest in early 1976. However, in a French interview by M. Delain, ‘Bergman et le nazisme’, L’Express, 28 November 1977, pp. 18-23, Bergman dates his personal connection to the film story back to age 17, when he spent a summer with a pro-Nazi German family. There were a great many reportages from the shooting of The Serpent’s Egg. See: Blume, Mary. ‘The Bergman Mystique at Work’. Los Angeles Times Calendar, 20 March, pp. 1, 34; Janos, L. ‘A Day on the Bergmanstrasse’. Time, 14 February 1977, pp. 78-9 (Am. ed. pp. 42-3) (better researched than Blume’s);
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Jungstedt, Torsten. ‘Ormens ägg’. Swedish Public Radio (SR), 12 December 1976, 30 minute reportage from Bavaria Studio. With interviews with Sven Nykvist and Liv Ullmann; ‘Der Magiker und das Schlangenei’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 February 1977, Bild und Zeit section, p. 2; Sundgren, Nils Petter ‘Filmkrönika’. SVT, channel 2, 12 November 1976. (Televised interview with Bergman about the background of Ormens ägg. This interview was published in French under title ‘Rencontre avec Bergman’, Positif 204 (March) 1978, pp. 21-22). Jörn Donner’s film, The Bergman File, includes a live excerpt from Bergman’s press conference in Berlin on 19 November 1976. See also Finland Filmland, no. 1, 1978: 64-66; Stockholm press, 20 November 1976; Röster i Radio-TV, no. 51 (10 December) 1976, pp. 10, 60; and Variety, 1 December, p. 43. Interviews with Bergman during the production appeared in Vecko-Journalen, no. 49 (1976), pp. 6-7, and Expr., 20 February 1977, pp. 28-9. A program on Ormens ägg was issued by Fox-Stockholm Film (Swedish distributor), 28 October 1977. It contains an unsigned article on the historical background of the film, synopsis of the script, notices about Bergman’s shooting of the film, and information about his crew and leading actors. Another program, edited by J. Dawson and B. Frundt, was issued for the showing of The Serpent’s Egg at Berlin Film Festival in summer 1978. Positif, no. 204 (March 1978), pp. 18-27, contains a three-part presentation of L’oeuf du serpent by M. Sineux, N.-P. Sundgren and J. Jacobs, consisting of a review; a transcript of the Sundgren interview listed above; and a transcript of a documentary based on the shooting of the film, made by a West German TV team. Dino de Laurentiis also produced a documentary called ‘Secrets of a Genius’, first shown on Argentine television, 28 December 1977.
Reception The Serpent’s Egg received a great deal of critical attention. Reviews reveal both curious anticipation of the first film made by Bergman in exile and apprehension about his working in a foreign environment. On 29 October 1977 (p. 14), Lasse Bergström published a full-page glowing review of Ormens ägg in Expr., maintaining that Bergman had succeeded in absorbing resources of international filmmaking into his most recent work while guarding his own artistic integrity. Swedish reviews of Bergman’s films made in exile have been much more respectful and positive than elsewhere. See Åke Hedlund, ‘Svensk press och Ormens ägg’ [Swedish Press and The Serpent’s Egg], University of Stockholm undergraduate thesis, Spring Quarter 1978, ca. 30 pp. (typescript). The film was, however, a commercial flop in Sweden, and the Swedish distributor allegedly lost one million crowns on the project. The German response to Das Schlangenei was mixed but more critical than reviews in Sweden. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 October 1978, and Die Zeit, no. 45 (28 October), pp. 41-2; reprinted in Kinozeit (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1980, pp. 104-09). For a sample of the Dutch response, see Harry Hosman, ‘Bergmans angst en beklemming’. De Tijd, 10 February 1978. In France, L’Oeuf du serpent also had a mixed reception. But in a longer article on the film, ‘La métaphore éclatée. Notes sur l’utilization de l’éstétique et des thèmes expressionistes dans L’Oeuf du serpent’, Michel Serceau argued that form and thematic content were given a cohesive and original shape by Bergman. Serceau’s article appeared in a collection titled Ingmar Bergman: La mort, le masque et l’etre, ed. by Michel Estève (Paris: Lettres modernes Minard, 1983), pp. 83-94. In Canadian film journal Séquences (listed below), Maurice Elia claimed that Bergman should not be blamed for wanting to do something different. In the U.S., The Serpent’s Egg was termed ‘a major disaster’ (Molly Haskell, New York, 6 February 1978, pp. 73-74); a manipulative film lacking human warmth and depth (R. Hatch, Nation, 11 February 1978, pp. 155-56); ‘a baffling film... so obviously wrong-headed’ (Vincent
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Chapter IV Filmography Canby, NYT, 29 January 1978, p. 17); and a brutally offensive work (P. Kael, New Yorker, 30 January 1978, pp. 92-94). S. Kauffmann, New Republic, 4 February, pp. 26-7 (reprinted in Before my Eyes, New York: Harper & Row, 1980, pp. 76-79) listed three basic mistakes made by Bergman: (1) making the film in English, which he did not master; (2) using Liv Ullmann, for whom English is also a foreign language; (3) selecting David Carradine for the lead male part and subordinating Ullmann’s role to his. Many American reviews compared Bergman’s film unfavorably to Bob Fosse’s Cabaret.
Reviews Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö press, 29 October 1977; America, 11 February 1978, p. 103; Amis de la cinéma, February 1978: 7-9; Atlantic Monthly no. 2 (February 1978), pp. 90-91; Bianco e nero, May-June 1979, pp. 138-40; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 285 (February 1978), p. 45; Cine Cubano, no. 106 (1983): 87-88; Cinéma 78, no. 229 (January 1978), pp. 95-97; Cinéaste 8, no. 3 (Winter 1977/78), pp. 42-43; Cinemaction, July 1990, p. 88; Cinematograph, December 1977, pp. 29-30; Cinema Nuovo, March-April 1978, pp. 130-33; Ecran, no. 65 (January 1978), pp. 58-60; F-Dienst XXX/23, 8 November 1977, pp. 8-9; Film og Kino, February 1979; p. 19; Film Kultura, May-June 1980, pp. 49-52; Film et Télévisie, February 1978, pp. 34-36; Filmbulletin, January-February 1978, p. 34; Films and Filming, October 1978, pp. 34-5; Films in Review 29, no. 1 (January 1978): 51; Illustrated, October 1978, p. 65; Jeune Cinéma, no. 108 (February 1978), pp. 33-5; Lumière du Cinéma, no. 11 (January-February 1978), pp. 38-41; Monthly Film Bulletin, July 1978, p. 141; (subtitled ‘A real horror story’, review deals as much with Bergman’s tax problems as with film); National Review, 3 March 1978, pp. 289-90; New Leader, 7 February 1978, pp. 27-28; New Statesman, 27 October 1978, pp. 55-56; New York Times, 6 March 1978, pp. 70-71; Newsweek, 30 January 1978, p. 55; Positif 204 (March) 1978: 18-20; Saturday Review, 4 February 1978, p. 47; Séquences, no. 92 (April 1978), pp. 28-9; Sight and Sound, Summer 1978, p. 190; Skoop 14, no. 1 (February 1978), pp. 5-8; Skrien, no. 73 (March 1978), p. 35; Time, 30 January 1978, pp. 59-60; Village Voice 6 February,1978, p. 39; Variety, no. 13 (2 November) 1977, p. 17.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Longer Reviews and Studies/Fact sheets Cumozio, Emilio. ‘Ingmar Bergman. L’uovo del serpente’. Cineforum, September 1978, pp. 52235; Gehler, Fred. ‘Abel und der Kommissar’. Film und Fernsehen, no. 3, 1980, pp. 44-49 (Dossier on film); Larson, Janet K. ‘The Birth of Evil: Genesis According to Bergman’. Christian Century, 7-14 June 1978, pp. 615-19. (Larson sees The Serpent’s Egg as ‘an omnius-gatherum of detective thriller, documentary, Gothic fiction, political tract and psychiatric case study’ presented as a modern version of the Fall and Flood myths); Librach, Ronald S. ‘Through the Looking-Glass Darkly: The Serpent’s Egg’. Literature/Film Quarterly 8, no. 2 (Spring 1980), pp. 92-103. (Librach discusses Bergman’s use of dream structure – ‘The oneiric premise’ – and sees male sexual self-knowledge as the film’s principal theme); Malmberg, Carl-Johan. ‘Bergman ansikte mot ansikte med historien’ [B. face to face with history]. Filmhäftet, no. 15-18 (May 1978), pp. 106-16. (On Bergman’s roots in modernism affecting his view of history and his film style in Ormens ägg).
See also Chaplin no. 153 (1977), pp. 253-55; Cinematograph, no. 33 (December 1977), pp. 29-30; Filmfaust, no. 6 (December 1977), pp. 106-8; Image et son, no. 324 (January 1978), pp. 112-14, and no. 327 (April 1978), pp. 42-6; Cinématographie, no. 34 (January 1978), pp. 23-4; Kosmorama, no. 137 (Spring 1978), pp. 25-30; Intellect, no. 106 (June 1978), p. 489; Screen International, 18 March 1978, p. 10.
250.
HERBSTSONATE/HÖSTSONATEN, 1978 [Autumn Sonata], Eastmancolor Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis The first Bergman film to feature Ingrid Bergman, Höstsonaten depicts the encounter between a successful concert pianist, Charlotte, and her plain-looking daughter, Eva who is married to a parson and lives in rural Norway. Eva’s husband opens the film with a narration about his wife, who used to be a journalist but gave up her career. After several years of marriage, the couple had a son, Erik, who drowned at age 4. Charlotte’s longtime friend Leonardo has just died, and Eva invites her mother to the parsonage for a visit. It is the first time in seven years that mother and daughter have seen each other. Shortly after arriving, Charlotte is told that her spastic daughter Helena now lives in the house and is cared for by Eva. Charlotte, visibly upset, talks about Leonardo’s death. Later she visits Helena’s room. During dinner, where she appears in elegant red, Charlotte gets a concert offer from her agent on the phone. Always conscious of money, she cannot resist. After the meal, she persuades her daughter to play Chopin on the piano, then proceeds to play the same piece while discussing how it should be interpreted. Eva stares in absolute misery at her mother. Later, while Eva is out of the room (but eavesdropping), her husband talks confidentially about her. After doing her accounts in bed, Charlotte goes to sleep but wakes up screaming from a nightmare in which Helena touched her. She spends the rest of the night in the living room
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Chapter IV Filmography with Eva, who proceeds to accuse her mother of neglecting her family and egotistically pursuing her career. In flashbacks, we see Eva as a child, longing and waiting for her mother’s return. One of her memories focusses on Helena during an Easter visit to the island of Bornholm when Leonardo and Charlotte had come to join them. A rapport forms between Leonardo and Helena, who seems to be recovering. A scene showing Leonardo playing his cello, surrounded by all the family members, is bathed in soft warm light, and is the one moment of peacefulness in the film. But the following day Charlotte decides to leave early. Leonardo stays behind, but grows restless and soon follows Charlotte to Vienna. Helena has a relapse. Charlotte defends herself and refers to a summer when she gave up her music practice to spend time with her family. Eva now reveals her unhappiness that summer; she was 14 years old and unable to cope with her mother’s vitality and willpower. This part is told in the present and leads to Eva’s breakdown. Charlotte leaves the parsonage. Shots of her on a train with her agent Paul alternate with glimpses of Eva walking to the cemetery to visit Erik’s grave. She feels her son’s presence very strongly. The film ends with Eva writing a letter to her mother, asking her to forgive her. She shows the letter to her husband, stating that she doubts her mother will ever read it. As her husband peruses the letter, the camera shows Eva’s and Charlotte’s faces in turn on the screen. The film ends as Eva’s husband puts the letter back in the envelope to take to the post office.
Credits Production company Production manager Director Location manager Photography Architect Sound and mixing Music
Costumes Makeup Editor Continuity
Personafilm Katinka (Katherina) Faragó Ingmar Bergman Lena Hansson Sven Nykvist Anna Asp Owe Svensson Excerpts from F. Chopin’s Preludium no. 2 in A minor played by Käbi Laretei; J.S. Bach’s Suite no. 4 in E flat major performed by Claude Genetay; and G.F. Händel’s Sonata in F major, Opus 1, performed by Frans Bruggen, Gustav Leonhardt, Anne Bylsmå Inger Pehrsson Cecilia Drott Sylvia Ingemarsson Kerstin Eriksdotter
Cast Charlotte, concert pianist Eva, her daughter Helena, her daughter Eva’s husband Leonardo Eva as a child Josef Paul, Charlotte’s agent Charlotte’s secretary Piano teacher Uncle Otto
Ingrid Bergman Liv Ullmann Lena Nyman Halvar Björk Georg Lökkeberg Linn Ullmann Erland Josephson Gunnar Björnstrand Marianne Aminoff Mimi Pollak Arne Bang-Hansen
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Filmed on location at Molde, Norway, and at Norsk Film Studios, Oslo, beginning 20 September 1977 and completed 30 October 1977. Produced by Bergman’s own company Personafilm. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time Released Premiere U.S. opening
Svensk Filmindustri New World Films 93 minutes 8 August 1978 8 October 1978, (Spegeln) Stockholm 8 October 1978, The Baronet, NYC
Commentary A documentary from the shooting of Herbstsonate/Höstsonaten is on file at SFI. The Swedish Film Institute (SFI) decided first not to nominate Höstsonaten to the American Motion Picture Academy for an Academy Award as ‘Best Foreign Film’, arguing that the film was de facto a German production. But the new head of the SFI, Per Ahlmark, tried to change the decision and find a loophole in the Academy rules. See Variety, 14 February 1979, p. 33, but note Variety error in claiming that the Swedish government was behind the first decision not to nominate the film. SFI is a Foundation, not a Swedish government agency. On 19 September 1977, Bergman held a press conference on Höstsonaten in Oslo, also covered by Swedish SR/TV under the program title ‘Stjärnor mot stjärnor’ (Stars against stars). Bergman explained his choice of a mother/daughter rather than a father/son relationship; in traditional sex role patterns women’s relations tend to mask aggression, which surfaces only in moments of extreme tension; this Bergman wanted to explore on the screen. At the same press meeting, Ingrid Bergman revealed that her role was a fulfillment of an old promise: In 1965 she and Bergman had discussed filming Swedish author Hjalmar Bergman’s novel Chefen fru Ingeborg (Head of the Firm). In 1975 at the Cannes Film Festival, Ingrid Bergman reminded Bergman of this; two years later he had written the part of Charlotte in Höstsonaten for her. The Hjalmar Bergman project was rejected because its portrait of women seemed too obsolete. For good coverages of the press conference, see ‘To ganger Bergman-Ullmann i høstlig sonate’ [Two times B-U in autumnal sonata]. Arbeiderbladet (Oslo), 20 September 1977, p. 9; B. Wilson, ‘Man måste glömma för att rädda sin själ’ [One must forget in order to save one’s soul]. DN, 20 September 1977, p. 16; and GP, same date, p. 17. For interview with Ingrid Bergman and her impressions of working with Bergman during shooting of Autumn Sonata, see Emma Andrews, ‘The Bergman Principle’, Films Illustrated 7 (May 1978): 332-33. This interview was reprinted in Russian translation as ‘Kak sozdavalas. Osennjaja sonata’ in Iskusstvo Kino 10 (October) 1988: 141-147. In Kino (Sofia) 3, (July) 1993: 44-80 (a special Bergman issue), Bulgarian theatre director Stavri Karamfilov discusses his stage production of Höstsonaten.
Reception A few days after the Stockholm opening of Höstsonaten, a feminist debate began in the Swedish and Norwegian press. See the following: Bergom-Larsson, Maria. ‘Öppet brev till Ingmar Bergman’, [Open Letter to Ingmar Bergman], DN, 14 October 1978, p. 4; (objection to portrayal of Charlotte and urging Bergman to make a film about a father’s commitments). Asta Bolin responded in DN, 19 October, p. 6, with a reply by M. Bergom-Larsson in same paper, 26 October, p. 4; Tunbäck-Hansson, Monika, continued the debate in GP, 17 October, p. 2, and Kerstin Anér in same paper, 5 November, p. 2; Boström, Åsa, defended Bergman’s portrayal of motherhood in ‘Bergmans mödrar’ [Bergman’s mothers]. Filmrutan XXII, no. 1, 1979: 8-9.
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Chapter IV Filmography For Norwegian sample of debate, see C. Wiggen, ‘Nå er virkeligheten blitt reaksjonær!’ [Now reality has become reactionary]. Film og Kino XLVII, no. 1 (February) 1979: 48. For two particularly noteworthy reviews, see Hugo Wortzelius in UNT (20 October 1978, p. 13), and Artur Lundkvist in SvD, 7 November 1978, p. 10. Wortzelius felt that Bergman camouflaged himself in the mother’s role, while Lundkvist focussed on the film as a portrait of an artist’s lack of self-confidence in a mass society where (s)he is an outsider. Outside of Sweden, Höstsonaten got a varied response. Cahiers du cinéma, December 1978, pp. 48-49, called Sonate s’autonne ‘stupid and obsolete’ while Newsweek, 16 October 1978, p. 76, felt that Bergman had joined company with Ibsen, Strindberg, and Edvard Munch in turning an ordinary room into an arena of tragedy. S. Kauffmann in New Republic, 7 October 1978, pp. 2426 (reprinted in Before my Eyes, pp. 79-86), referred to the film as ‘a master working’, while Pauline Kael, New Yorker, 6 November 1978, pp. 165-71, called Autumn Sonata ‘a folie à deux by Ullmann and Bergman’. Canadian film journal Séquences (see below) thought the film was the work of ‘an artist who pulls us deeper and deeper into the interior of his hallucinating nightmares’. Raymond Lefèvre in Cinéma 78 felt the film bore a strong resemblance to Såsom i en spegel/Comme dans un miroir: four family members in a no exit situation, two children with an unresponsive parent.
Reviews Swedish Press, 9 October 1978 America, 28 October 1978, p. 288; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 295 (December) 1978: 48-9; Chaplin, no. 158 (May) 1978: 184-187; Cinéaste 9, no. 3 (March) 1979: 43-45; Cinéma 78, November 1978; Cinema Nuovo, November-December 1978, pp. 57-59; Cinematograph, no. 41 (November) 1978: 72-73; Commentary, no. 1 (January) 1979: 60-64; Ecran, no. 74 (November) 1978: 57-8; F-Dienst XXXI/24, 22 October 1978, pp. 16-17; Film et Televisie, December 1978, pp. 8-10; Film og Kino, (February) 1979: 20-2, 40; Film und Fernsehen, no. 7 (197), 1978, pp. 130-37; Filmbulletin, October-November 1978: R-F; Filmfaust 2, no. 11 (December) 1978: 64-65; Filmhäftet, no. 21-22 (December) 1978: 76-79; Filmrutan, no. 1, 1979: 8-9; Films and Filming, (April) 1979: 39; Films in Review 33, no. 9 (November) 1978: 569; Image et son, no. 333 (November) 1978: 139-40; Jeune Cinéma, no. 115 (December- January) 1978: 46-48; Monthly Film Bulletin XLVI, no. 540 (January) 1979: 7-8; Nation, 2 December 1978: 619-20; National Review, 24 November 1978: 1490-91; New Statesman, 23 March 1979: 419; New York, 9 October 1978: 113-14; Sight and Sound 48, no. 1 (Winter) 1978-79: 56; Skoop 14, no. 9, (December) 1978, pp. 51-54; The Listener, no. 2925 (5 September) 1985: 31;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Time, 16 October 1978: 112-13 (A.E. pp. 60, 62); Variety, no. 6 (13 September) 1978: 21; Vecko-Journalen, no. 41, 1978: 46; Village Voice, 16 October 1978: 71.
Longer Reviews and Studies Benayoun, Robert. ‘Fugue sur la futilité somptueuse de l’ art’. Positif 213 (December) 1978: 51-54; Bird, Michael. ‘Heuresis: The Mother-Daughter Theme in ‘A Jest of God’ and ‘Autumn Sonata’’. New Quarterly: New Directions in Canadian Writing 7, no. 1-2 (Spring-Summer) 1987: 267-273; Björkman Stig. ‘En värld av befriade känslor’ [A world of liberated feelings]. Chaplin XX, no. 5 (158) 1978: 184-187. Boorsma, Anne-Marie. ‘Herftsonate van Ingmar Bergman: een moeder dochter relatie verfilmd’. Diss. Leiden: Rijksuniversitet Leiden, 1988, 102 pp. Farago, France. ‘La mort comme propédeutique à la vie’. In Ingmar Bergman: La mort, le masque et l’etre, ed. by Michel Estève (Paris: Lettres modernes Minard, 1983), pp. 19-51; Gertner, R. ‘Autumn Sonata’. Motion Picture Product D, VI/9, 4 October 1978, pp. 33-34; Jensen, Nils. ‘Høstsonaten og rene linier’ [Autumn Sonata and pure lines]. Kosmorama XXV, no. 141 (Spring) 1979: 9-11; Leroux, André. ‘Sonate d’automne’. Séquences XXIV, no. 95 (January) 1979: 33-36; Simmons, Keith L. ‘Pain and Forgiveness: Structural Transformations in Wild Strawberries and Autumn Sonata’. New Orleans Review 10, no. 4 (Winter) 1983: 5-15; Törnqvist, Egil. Between Stage and Screen. Ingmar Bergman Directs, (Amsterdam: AUP, 1995) pp. 160-173.
See also Los Angeles Times, 15 October 1978, pp. 1, 34; R. Lauder, NYT, 3 December 1978, pp. 1, 13; Bernd Lubowski. Berliner Morgenpost, 9 December 1977; E. Kwakernaak, McGuffin 7, no. 29 (March 1979): 4-13; G. Millar, Listener, 5 April 1979, pp. 492-93; Peter Cowie. Ingmar Bergman. A Critical Biography, 1982, pp. 319-28.
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FÅRÖDOKUMENT 1979 [Fårö-document 79] 1979, Color (16 mm) See listing in media chapter, (Ø 338).
252.
UR MARIONETTERNAS LIV/AUS DEM LEBEN DER MARIONETTEN, 1980 [From the Life of the Marionettes] B/W & color Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis: Ingmar Bergman’s third film during his exile begins like a TV whodunnit with a murder sequence shot in flaming red. The victim is a prostitute, Katarina. The murderer is an upper middle-class German businessman, Peter Egerman. The rest of the film is a flashback examination of his life, a ‘protocol’ in black and white. In the final part of the film, the murder sequence is repeated, again shot in color, as Peter’s life comes full circle. Apart from the murder, the film has very little action. It is constructed as a series of conversations, tracing Peter Egerman’s attempt to come to terms with his marriage and with his sense of emptiness and alienation. The scenes are short and often interrupted; they are like
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Chapter IV Filmography fragments in an incomplete puzzle. No single character can provide the answer to Peter Egerman’s psychological short-circuit, which caused him to become a murderer. One by one, the people with whom Peter has been associated step before the camera to have their portraits rather than their stories unveiled. The film is virtually all close up, with a minimum of mise-en-scène and hardly any social frame of reference. We meet in turn Peter’s friend, a psychiatrist; his wife, who has the same name as the murdered prostitute; his mother; and his wife’s homosexual colleague, Tim (Thomas Isidor Mandelbaum). All of them are indirectly related to Peter’s catastrophe, or rather, each one implies a possible reason for his collapse and act of violence. The psychiatrist has betrayed his confidence and has had an affair with his wife. Katarina has exposed him to humiliation and taunting love-hatred. His mother reveals herself to be of a possessive nature. Tim, in disclosing his own despair and lonelineness, suggests Peter’s own latent homosexuality. There are also indications of childhood traumas still bruising the sensitive Peter. The final vignette shows him in his cell cuddling his childhood teddy bear.
Credits Production company Producers Production managers Location manager Director Assistant directors Screeenplay Photography Sound Architect Music Costumes Props Make-up Editor Continuity
Personafilm Horst Wendtlandt, Ingrid Bergman Paulette Hufnagel, Irmgaard Kelpinski Michael Juncker, Franz Achter Ingmar Bergman T. von Trotha, Johannes Kaetzler Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist Peter Beil Rolf Zehetbauer Rolf Wilhelm Charlotte Flemming Harry Freude, Barbara Freude-Schnaase Mathilde Basedow Petra von Oelffen Helma Flachsmeire
Cast Peter Egerman Katarina Egerman Mogens Jensen Katarina Cordelia Egerman, Peter’s mother Tim Mandelbaum Arthur Brenner, psychiatrist Nurse Secretary Interrogator Guard
Robert Atzorn Christine Buchegger Martin Benrath Rita Russek Lola Müthel Walter Schmidinger Heintz Bennent Ruth Olafs Gaby Dohm Karl Heintz Pelser Toni Berger
Filmed in Tobis Film Studios, Munich, using actors from Bayerische Staatsschauspiel; shooting beginning in October 1979. Completion date unavailable. Distribution U.S distribution
Tobis Film Swank Motion Pictures
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Running time First public screening TV screening German opening U.S. opening Swedish opening
104 minutes July 1980 at a small film festival in Oxford. 8 October 1980 in Paris. Film was shown on West German TV (ZDF/Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), 3 November 1980. 6 November 1980. 7 November 1980, Mann’s Fine Arts, Los Angeles. 24 January 1981, Grand (Stockholm), Sandrew (Göteborg, Malmö, and Uppsala).
Commentary Bergman writes about the film in Bilder/Images, 1990, pp. 208-220. Aus dem Leben der Marionetten was originally made for German television; Bergman calls it his only German film since it was conceived, financed, and shot in Germany. Bergman regrets that it was distributed elsewhere as a commercial feature film. In Assayas-Björkman interview book Tre dagar med Bergman (Ø 919), he calls the film one of his favorites. In an interview published in Cahiers du Cinéma no. 436 (October 1990), Ingmar Bergman explains the reason why Aus dem Leben..., which was originally planned in black and white, begins in color: West German TV channel ZDF which had bought transmission rights to the film worried that their viewers might switch TV channels if the film opened in black and white, thinking that their TV sets had malfunctioned.
Reception Swedish reviews were respectful but not enthusiastic. See Expr., 28 January 1981, p. 34, for speculation as to why the public failed the film. Torsten Manns in Filmrutan (no. 1, 1981, p. 31) suggested that audiences recognized (and were tired of) Bergman as a tamer of his own demons. Swedish poet/critic Artur Lundkvist discussed Marionetten... in SvD, 20 February 1981, p. 12, focusing on the film’s thematic ambiguity, i.e., Peter’s spleen and latent homosexuality. Neither in the U.S. nor in Europe was the film a box-office success. Some French reviewers even spoke of a fiasco. However, François Ramasse in a substantial essay on Marionettes... saw the film as the quintessence of Bergman’s work in the cinema and was fascinated by its ‘deconstructive narrative’. See ‘De la vie des marionettes’ in Ingmar Bergman: La mort, le masque et l’être, ed. by Michel Estève (Paris: Lettres modernes Minard, 1983), pp. 95-141. Michel Pérez in Le Matin called Marionettes... an admirable film from beginning to end, praising its cinematic economy and its resistance to easy solutions, social as well as psychoanalytical. For a sample of the (West) German reaction, see Anne Rose Katz, ‘Kostumierter Geschlechterkampf ’. Stuttgarter Zeitung, 2 October 1980. Mentions brilliant imagery but also lack of compassion. In the U.S., Variety (23 July 1980, p. 6) wrote an appreciative review, calling Bergman ‘the world’s best known minority-appeal filmmaker’ and praising Sven Nykvist’s cinemaphotography and Bergman’s ability to make ‘a contrived plot acceptable to viewer’. Time (17 November 1980, p. 109) thought Marionettes... was more interesting to analyze than to watch, while Newsweek (24 November, p. 58) was ready to nominate Bergman for the Nobel Prize.
Reviews Swedish press, 25 January 1981; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 318 (December 1980), pp. 45-47; Celuloide no. 328-329, November 1981: 14-15; Chaplin, no. 172 (1981, no. 1), p. 33; Cinéma, no. 262 (October 1980), p. 83;
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Chapter IV Filmography Cineforum, no. 203 (April 1981), pp. 55-60; Cinématographe, no. 62 (November) 1980: 57-58; L’Express, 27 September 1980, n.p.; Film Comment 17, no. 2 (March–April) Film og Kino, no. 5-6 (1981), pp. 190-191; Films, February 1982: 82; Film und Ton I, no. 4 (March 1981), pp. 30-40; Filmrutan XXIV, no. 1 (1981), p. 31; Hollywood Reporter, 7 November 1980, pp. 3-4; Image et son, no. 355 (November) 1980: 26-28; Jeune cinéma, no. 130 (November) 1980): 38-39; Le Matin, 8 October 1980; Le Nouvel Obervateur, 6 October 1981, p. 57; Levende billeder, March 1981: 40-41; Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 7 November, sec. D, p. 6; Monthly Film Bulletin XLVIII, no. 568 (May) 1981: 88; Nation, 29 November 1980: 57-58; New York, 17 November 1980: 80-82; New York Times, 9 November, sec. 2, p. 19; Positif, no. 236 (November 1980), pp. 63-5; Revue de cinéma hors series, no. 25, 1981: 100-101; Saturday Review, 5 January 1981: 84-85; Séquences, no. 108, (April) 1982: 29-30; Sight and Sound, Spring 1981, pp. 133-134; Skoop, November 1980: 218-219, 228; Variety, no. 12 (23 July) 1980: 18, 20; Vi, no. 5 (1981), p. 23; Village Voice, 12 November 1980, p. 51.
Longer Reviews and Studies Classon, Anders. ‘Den omöjliga friheten: En tolkning av Ingmar Bergmans film Ur Marionetternas liv’ [Impossible freedom: An interpretation of Bergman’s film From the Life of the Marionettes]. Department of Cinema Theatre Studies, University of Stockholm, Autumn 1981, ca. 210 pp. Undergraduate thesis exploring the theme of freedom in Marionetterna...; Kinder, Marsha. ‘The murderer motif in Bergman’s filmmaking from The Devil’s Wanton to Life of the Marionettes’. Film Quarterly 34, no. 3 (Spring) 1981: 26-37; Koskinen, Maaret. Ingmar Bergman: ‘Allting föreställer, ingenting är’, 2000, pp. 73-77; Pym, John. ‘All Ways Out Are Closed. From the Life of the Marionettes’. Sight and Sound L, no. 2 (Spring) 1981: 133-134; Skoop (XVI, no. 9 (November) 1980) has two reviews of the film, one by Charles Boost (pp. 1819), the other by Wim Verstappen (p. 28); Tobin, Yann. ‘Si ce meurtre sert mon film’. Positif 236 (November) 1980: 63- 65. A good French presentation, in addition to François Ramasse’s essay mentioned above; Troyan, D. ‘Plotting Transference and the Drive in “From the Life of the Marionettes”’, Spectator, no. 2 (1993): pp. 70-81. See also: AB, 25 November 1979, p. 35, and SvD, 14 October 1979, Sunday Sec, pp. 1, 4 (interviews with Christine Buchegger); S. Kauffmann, Field of View, pp. 66-68 (reprint of New Republic review).
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Awards 1980
253.
Tribute at Chicago Film Festival in connection with showing of Marionettes...
FANNY OCH ALEXANDER, 1982-83 [Fanny and Alexander], Eastmancolor Director Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Bergman edited a special commercial film version of Fanny and Alexander, which follows sequentially the longer five-hour television version but cuts or shortens several scenes: (1) In the Christmas sequence, Carl’s and his German-born wife’s nighttime confrontation is shorter and less violent; (2) the Christmas pageant performed by the Ekdahl ensemble at the theatre is shortened; the actors’ Christmas celebration on stage is omitted; (3) the Hamlet rehearsal when Oscar Ekdahl collapses is shortened; (4) the attempt by Carl and Gustaf Adolf Ekdahl to bargain with the bishop about the future of Emilie and the children is shortened; (5) the visualized desert walk when Isak reads from a Hebrew bible to the children after their rescue is omitted (actually Bergman made up the passage; it contains several references to earlier Bergman films, such as the flagellant sequence in The Seventh Seal. Justine, maid at the Vergerus, appears with stigmata on her hands. Alexander joins the procession). See also Media chapter (Ø 340) for additional reviews of TV version. Note, however, that most response material is included in this entry.
Synopsis Fanny and Alexander, pre-teen siblings, live in the university town of Uppsala. The time is 1907. Their parents, Oscar Ekdahl, head of the local resident theater, and Emilie, a leading actress in the company occupy one-half of a huge town house. Oscar’s mother, Helena Ekdahl, née Mandelbaum, a widow, lives in the other half. A connecting door, camouflaged by wallpaper, connects the two apartments. The script is divided into the following segments: (1) Prologue, (2) Christmas, (3) Death and Funeral, (4) Breaking up, (5) The Events of a Summer, (6) The Demons, and (7) Epilogue. The prologue describes the town and its inhabitants. The film, however, begins with 12-year-old Alexander exploring his grandmother’s apartment. Seated under his grandmother’s diningroom table, Alexander surveys the room, registers its ticking clocks, knick-knacks, and a statue that seems to beckon to him. The Christmas segment opens with a performance in the theatre of ‘The Play about Christ’s Joyful Birth’, followed by a Christmas dinner at Helena Ekdahl’s. Servants mingle with the family members; the atmosphere is joyous and warm. The evening ends for the Ekdahl children with a pillow fight with Maj, a servant girl. When all is quiet, Alexander gets up to play with his laterna magica, a Christmas present. He is joined by Fanny. In the meantime, Helena Ekdahl and Isak Jacobi, an old Jewish friend, talk through the Christmas night, while Gustaf Adolf Ekdahl, Oscar’s philandering brother, visits Maj. A third brother, Professor Carl Ekdahl, argues with his German-born wife. In the early morning hours, the whole extended Ekdahl family meet for coffee at Helena Ekdahl’s, then travel to church in sleds lit up by torches, an invocation of a traditional Swedish Christmas rite of the past. The ‘Death and Funeral’ segment begins with a rehearsal of Hamlet’s first meeting with his father’s ghost. Oscar Ekdahl collapses and is taken home, where he dies after a family leavetaking. During the ensuing funeral, Alexander protests his father’s death by mumbling obscene words. Officiating at the funeral is Bishop Edvard Vergerus. A little over a year after Oscar’s death, his widow Emilie marries Vergerus and moves into his home with the two children. The house, which they share with the bishop’s mother, sister, and bedridden aunt, is a stark contrast
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Chapter IV Filmography to the cluttered and boisterous Ekdahl home. The children hate their stepfather, especially Alexander, who is taken to task for telling lies at school. Next the story moves to Helena Ekdahl’s summer place. Maj visits her and expresses her worry about Fanny and Alexander. The children are confined to their barren-looking nursery. Alexander informs Justina, one of Vergerus’s servants, of the death of the bishop’s children from a former marriage, and claims that Vergerus is responsible for their drowning. Justina reports the tale to the bishop who punishes Alexander with the rod and locks him in the attic. Helena Ekdahl experiences the presence of her dead son, Oscar, and has a long talk with him about the family. Her fantasy is interrupted by the arrival of Maj, and later by the pregnant Emilie who tells her that the bishop has refused to grant her a divorce. Isak Jacobi rescues Fanny and Alexander by hiding them in a big chest he buys from Vergerus. At his home, he introduces them to Aron, who has a puppet theater, and Ismael, Aron’s brother, who is locked up because he can be mad and violent. At night, Alexander gets lost in the cluttered apartment, is scared by Aron acting as God, and ends up visiting Ismael. Emilie puts bromides in the bishop’s broth, then leaves him when he is almost unconscious. Ismael articulates Alexander’s wish to kill the bishop. Intercut are shots of Vergerus’s obese aunt catching fire from an overturned kerosene lamp. The fire spreads to the bishop’s bedroom. In the morning Emilie is informed by the police of her husband’s death. The following winter both Emilie and Maj give birth to baby daughters. At a family celebration, Gustaf Adolf Ekdahl delivers an homage to the ‘little world’ of family and friends. The film ends with Helena Ekdahl reading to Emilie from the preface to Strindberg’s A Dreamplay.
Credits Production company Executive producer Production manager Location managers Director Asisstant director Screenplay Photography Sound Music
Architect Props Costumes Make-up Special effects Editor Continuity
Cinematograph/Svenska Filminstitutet/Sveriges Television 1/Sandrews/Gaumont/Personafilm/Tobis Film Jörn Donner Katinka (Katherine) Faragó Brita Werkmäster, Eva Ivarsson Ingmar Bergman Peter Schildt Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist; Tony Forsberg (2nd-unit) Owe Svensson Robert Schumann, Piano quintet E major op. 45 (2nd movement) and, ‘Du Ring an meinem Finger’ from ‘Frauen, Liebe und Leben’ (sung by Christina Schollin); Benjamin Britten, Suites for cello op. 72, 80, and 87; Sw. hymns 51, 424; Finnish Cavalry March; March from ‘Aida’; Christmas songs Anna Asp Jan Andersson, Gunilla Allard, Christer Ekelund, Johan Husberg Kristina Makroff; Marik Vos (designer) Leif Qviström, Anna-Lena Melin, Barbro HolmgrenHaugen Bengt Lundgren Sylvia Ingemarsson Kerstin Eriksdotter
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Cast Ekdahl household Helena Ekdahl Oscar Ekdahl Emilie Ekdahl Alexander Ekdahl Fanny Ekdahl Carl Ekdahl Lydia, his wife Gustaf Adolf Ekdahl Alma, his wife Maj Kling Petra, Gustaf Adolf ’s elder daughter Jenny Putte Eva Miss Vega, cook Miss Ester, housekeeper Elida Lisen Siri Berta Mrs. Hanna Schwartz Aunt Emma Aunt Anna
Gunn Wållgren Allan Edwall Ewa Fröling Bertil Guve Pernilla Allwin Börje Ahlstedt Christina Schollin Jarl Kulle Mona Malm Pernilla Wallgren (August): Maria Granlund Emilie Werkö Kristian Almgren Angelica Wallgren Majlis Granlund Svea Holst-Widén Siv Ericks Inga Ålenius Kristina Adolphson Eva von Hanno Anna Bergman Sonya Hedenbratt Käbi Laretei
Jacobi household Isak Jacobi Aron Ismael
Erland Josephson Mats Bergman Stina Ekblad
Vergerus household Bishop Vergerus Blenda Vergerus Henrietta Vergerus Elsa Bergius, aunt Selma, maid Justina, maid Malla Tander, cook
Jan Malmsjö Marianne Aminoff Kerstin Tidelius Hans Erik Lerfeldt Marianne Nielsen Harriet Andersson Marrit Ohlsson
Theatre staff Karna Philip Landahl Hanna Schwartz Mikael Bergman Mr. Morsin Thomas Graal Grete Holm Johan Armfeldt Mr. Saleius
Mona Andersson Gunnar Björnstrand Anna Bergman Per Mattsson Nils Brandt Heinz Hopf Lickå Sjöman Åke Lagergren Sune Mangs
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Chapter IV Filmography Mrs. Sinclair Prompter Mrs. Palmgren Stage manager Theatre Orchestra
Maud Hyttenberg-Bartolotti Kerstin Karte Marianne Karlbeck Gus Dahlström Daniel Bell, Gunnar Djerf, Ebbe Eng, Folke Eng, Evert Hallmarker, Nils Kyndel, Ulf Lagerwall, Karl Nilheim
Others Young men helping Jacobi with chest: Krister Hell, Peter Stormare Priest at christening ceremony Olle Hilding Pauline Linda Krüger Esmeralda, ghost Pernilla Wahlgren Pastor at marriage ceremony Hans Strååt Police superintendent Carl Billquist The witness Axel Düberg Office manager Tore Karte Dr. Fürstenberg Gösta Prüzelius A student Patricia Gelin Rosa, the new maid Lena Olin Carl’s singing partners Lars-Owe Carlberg, Hugo Hasslo, Sven Erik Jacobsson Japanese women Viola Aberlé, Gerd Andersson, Ann Louise Bergström Filmed on location in Uppsala, Stockholm, (Södra Teatern), Värmdö-Tynningö and at SFI Studios, Stockholm, beginning 7 September 1981 and completed 22 March 1982. Distribution U.S. distribution Running time U.S. opening (film version) Swedish opening (film version)
Sandrews Embassy Pictures 188 minutes (TV version: 300 minutes at 25 fr/sec) 17 June 1983, Cinema 1 and Cinema 2, NYC 17 December 1982 at Grand, Stockholm
Commentary In the very extensive publicity around Fanny and Alexander, one might distinguish the following three subject areas:
1. Preliminary discussions, including finance: The first mention of the project appeared in SvD, 15 June 1979, p. 8, and Variety, 27 June 1979, p. 43. A note about the film in SvD, 2 January 1980, still talks about a preliminary plan for a 4-hour film; Expr., 14 March 1980, p. 32, mentions only a planned TV series. More articles appeared in October 1980 where the cost of the film was mentioned (most expensive Swedish film to date, finally about 40 million SEK). First production talks were held in late 1980. Two versions were still discussed, one for TV and one for the cinema. However, talks with Lord Lew Grade in England fell through when Grade insisted on a much shorter, 135 minute movie house version. See GP, 15 November 1980, pp. 1, 23, and Variety, 12 November 1980, p. 6, 30. In the end Bergman edited a 188 min commercial film version. In October 1980 Max von Sydow was contacted for the role as Bishop Vergerus. See Stockholm Expr., 23 October 1980, p. 48, and DN, 15 November 1980, pp. 1, 20. The latter article, titled ‘Allt groll är glömt’ [All rancunes are forgotten] suggests an old impasse between Bergman and Sydow. The DN article mentions that Liv Ullmann had been approached for the role as Emilie Ekdahl but had declined because of previous commitments. On 6 August 1981 the cast list was published. See Expr., same date, p. 20, for the most extensive Swedish presentation.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record In September 1981, Jörn Donner, as involved producer discussed the financial risk of F and A in an interview with Stefan Sjöström: ‘Vad har du i fickan Jörn?’ [‘What’s up your sleeve, Jörn?’], Expr., 29 September 1981, pp. 20-21. Donner reported on the financing of Bergman’s film in SvD, 15 December 1982, p. 17, and in an interview in Variety, 12 May 1982, p. 379. See also Jörn Donner, ‘Ingmar Bergman and the World’, Swedish Films (Stockholm: SFI, 1982), pp. 5-11 (also in French, pp. 11-17). Donner mentions the reservations expressed by the SFI board and the risk he took in pushing for SFI support of the film. SVT’s Channel 1 and Sandrews were involved early as co-producers, whereas French Gaumont delayed its decision.
2. Reports on genesis and shooting of Fanny and Alexander: Bergman writes about the making of the film (including its genesis and the shaping of the manuscript) in Bilder, (1990), pp 374-381. Shooting started in early September 1981. Throughout the entire filming until March 1982, there was frequent press coverage. See the following:
Swedish: DN, 9 October 1981, p. 6 SvD, 6 October 1981, pp. 1, 15; Expr., 17 September 1981, p. 12; and 31 October 1981, Sec. 2, pp. 1, 20-25; the last of these coverages, titled ‘Bergmans största filmäventyr’ [Bergman’s greatest film adventure], presents technical personnel, editor, and costumier; Upsala Nya Tidning, 18 September 1981, sec. 2, p. 1, reports on filming in Uppsala; DN’s På stan, 3-9 October 1981, p. 22, covers filming at Södra Teatern, Stockholm; L.-O. Löthwall reported on a 9-day visit to the set in Filmrutan 25, no. 4 (Winter) 1982: 2-15; Elisabeth Sörenson discussed the ordeal of shooting and editing the film in ‘Sju månaders slit – 16 timmar film’ [Seven months of hard work – 16 hours of film], SvD, 28 March 1982, Sunday section, p. 1; and ‘Blåste liv i film-Sverige’ [Blew life into film-Sweden], SvD, 17 December 1982, p. 17; Cecilia Hagen, Expr., 15 January 1982, pp.26-27, discusses the role of asssistant director Peter Schildt, as did Agneta Söderberg in an interview article in Expr., 12 April 1982, pp. 26-27, which also contains a report on Kerstin Eriksdotter’s part as scriptgirl, plus a resumé of props used for Fanny and Alexander; Agneta Söderberg and Jacob Forssell followed the shooting of the film for 7 months. Summaries of their impressions were published with long intervals in Expr., 20 December, 1982, pp. 4648; 28 December 1984, pp. 32-33; and 3 January 1985, pp. 26-27. Similar material is covered by Ingalill Eriksson under a Bergman title quote: ‘Jag har strävat som en kärlekens ardenner’ [I have striven like a foal of love], AB, 9 January 1982, p. 16; Ulf Sörenson’s ‘Avskedsspektakel med barndomsminnen’ [Farewell party with childhood memories], SvD 7 dagar, no. 50, 17 December 1982, pp. 24-27 (discusses the autobiographical background of the film); Nils Petter Sundgren interviewed Bergman on SVT, channel 2, on 14 May 1983 in a program titled ‘Ingmar Bergman tar farväl av filmen’ [Bergman bids farewell to filmmaking]. Swedish Public Radio’s Eko program on 17 and 18 December 1982 includes a 4-minute telephone interview with Bergman about world release of Fanny and Alexander. On December 18 the Eko program also included a brief studio talk with producer Jörn Donner and actress Ewa Fröling. SFI published several accounts from the set: 6 October 1981 (fact sheet release no. 31, 1981); 21 December 1981 (sheet no. 32); 9 December 1982 (sheet no. 38), and 16 December, 1982 (sheet no. 39).
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Chapter IV Filmography English: Ann-Sofi Lejefors. ‘Bergman in Close-Up’. Sweden Now, January 1983, pp. 36-40; Frederick and Lise Lone Marker. ‘God, Sex and Ingmar Bergman’, in Films and Filming, February 1983, pp. 4-9; reprinted in Skoop XXI, no. 4 (June-July) 1985: 21-23; Peter Cowie. ‘Bergman at Home’. Sight and Sound LI, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 178- 181, which gives a good summary of the difficult financing of the film and its unusually high cost, including expenses for close to one thousand costumes; also in NYT (‘Ingmar Bergman Bids Farewell to Movies’), 10 October 1982: 1; Ted Folke. ‘Return of the Master’, Now, no. 1 (1982), p. 27. Bruce A. Block talks with Sven Nykvist about the Academy Awards and the collaboration between him and Bergman in two interviews titled ‘Academy Award Nominees: Sven Nykvist, ASC’, and ‘Fanny and Alexander’. American Cinematographer LXV, no. 4 (April) 1984: 50-52, 54, 56, 58. On 16 September 1984, Arne Carlsson’s 110-minute-long documentary from the shooting, Dokument Fanny och Alexander, was shown at the Swedish Film Institute with comments by Bergman. See Elisabeth Sörenson, ‘I trollkarlens verkstad’ [In the magician’s workshop], SvD, 22 September 1984, p. 15, for a good resumé of the event. This documentary film was televised (SR/ TV) in connection with a re-run of Fanny and Alexander on Swedish television, August 18 1986, and has also had limited circulation abroad. It was reviewed in Variety, 26 February 1986, p. 7. The documentary is available on video from the Swedish Film Institute. American Film 14, no. 7 (May) 1989: 66, reviewed a video recording of Fanny and Alexander, distributed in the US by Nelson Orion House, 197 min.
3. Foreign Sales: Two weeks before the Swedish release of Fanny and Alexander, SFI advertised for foreign sales in Variety. Response was overwhelming; most European and Latin American countries bought the film unseen; the U.S. did so on an ‘option agreement’. The film was sold to roughly 30 countries, including India, Japan, and Taiwan. See AB, 10 December 1982, p. 41. About the economic success in Sweden and facts about the export of film, see Veckans Affärer, no. 1, 1983, p. 7, and comment by Jörn Donner, same paper, no. 5, p. 23.
Swedish Reception Reception of Fanny and Alexander (film and TV versions) was enthusiastic in Sweden, partly because of the rollicking mood of the film and partly because it was seen as Bergman’s farewell to filmmaking and the summation of his career and vision. Bergman’s rendering of Sweden in the early 1900s received much praise; Expr.’s Lasse Bergström (18 December 1982, p. 34) noted that the film brought out ‘the magic of this Oscarian world that knew little about equality but all the more about togetherness’ [denna oskariska värld av magi som visste så lite om jämlikhet men desto mer om samvaro], while AB’s Jurgen Schildt (same date, p. 39) viewed the film as ‘a bourgeois inferno with a touch of panopticon’ [ett borgerligt inferno med drag av panoptikon]. The old qualms about Bergman’s lack of social consciousness cropped up in both Jan Aghed’s SDS review (18 December 1982, p. 5) and in Stig Larsson’s critique of the film in ST (20 December 1982, pp. 44-5). Aghed noted the tone of reconciliation with life in the film, but also felt that Bergman’s idyllic and burlesque story ignored the social consequences of the patriarchal and sexist world portrayed in the film. Stig Larsson saw Bergman’s film as ‘a mature master’s ironic pastiche of his own oeuvre’ [en mogen mästares ironiska pastisch av sitt eget verk]; only as such could one accept the film’s exposure of Bergman’s antiquated themes. CarlEric Nordberg in Vi, no. 51/52 (1982, p. 47), on the other hand, felt that the melodramatic
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record aspects of the film were meant to be taken seriously and called F and A a showpiece and ‘a ghost parade of earlier Ingmar Bergman motifs’ [en spökparad av tidigare bergmanmotiv]. The discussion of the social relevance of Bergman’s film appeared also in the Swedish provincial press. In response to a positive review in Jönköpings-Posten on 7 February 1983, p. 5, Gunlög Järhult, same paper, 21 February, p. 6, questioned Bergman’s so-called ‘hymn to life’ and referred to Fanny and Alexander as ‘the cynical magician’s attempted flight into pseudo-joy, away from life’s seriousness and anguish and demands on social consciousness and responsibility’ [den cyniska och fullkomligt desillusionerade trollkarlens flyktförsök in i en skenglädje, bort från livets allvar och ångest och krav på all social medvetenhet, allt allvar]. See also same paper, 23 February 1983, p. 7, for reader response supporting this view. Borlänge Tidning, 23 April 1983, p. 12, printed an article by Gertrud Nordahl objecting to Bergman’s ‘sensationalism’ and ‘the transcendental murder of the bishop in real voodoo style’. [biskopens transcendentala mord i verklig voodoo-stil]. Nordahl questioned the ‘reverential attitude’ among Swedish critics reviewing Fanny and Alexander, an issue that was renewed after the television showing of the five-hour version of the film, beginning on 25 December 1984. See Kerstin Hallert and Hemming Sten, SvD, 29 December 1984, p. 18 and 3 January 1985, p. 18. Both referred to what they termed the ‘Dallas’ qualities of Fanny and Alexander and also questioned TV’s advertisement of the film as ‘family entertainment’ [familjeunderhållning]. But despite such critical reservations, Fanny and Alexander has remained a favorite Bergman film among Swedish audiences. See Steene, Måndagar med Bergman (Ø 1611), p. 143 ff. Several comparative comments and literaly references about Fanny and Alexander were published in the Swedish press. Stephan Linnér in KvP (1 February 1983, p. 14) juxtaposed the film to Lagerlöf ’s novel Gösta Berling’s Saga. Björn Nilsson in Expr., 13 January 1983, p. 4, compared Fanny and Alexander to Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata. See also Törnqvist under Longer Essays below.
Foreign reception Some critics abroad enjoyed the ‘rolicking opulence of mood, with miseries of Puritanism owing more to Dreyerian formalism than to Bergman angst’, to quote Monthly Film Bulletin, April 1983, pp. 83-4. SvD magazine 7 dagar (no. 3, 21 January 1983, p. 46) published the negative critique of London Observer correspondent Chris Mosey, who referred to Fanny and Alexander as a manifestation of Bergman’s usual ‘intellectual clichés’ and lack of narrative skill. Mosey saw Bergman as suffering from ‘a typical Swedish ailment, divorced from the rest of the world and traversing the same psychological landscape again and again, unable to change course’. For a response, see Kaj Wickbom, Smålandsposten, 8 February 1983, p. 2. U.S. response to the film was largely favorable. Variety gave the film version an A-rating, September 28, 1983, p. 148, but claimed that the TV version, reviewed earlier on December 22, 1982, was inferior. Critics noted that Bergman’s obsessions had been turned into a theatrical story. New Yorker called the film ‘a learning to live with your craziness movie’ and pointed out that in Ingmar Bergman, ‘banality is bound to seem deeply satisfying – wholesome’. In the Paris press all reviewers except Claire Gallois in Le Figaro (9 March 1983, n.p.) praised Fanny and Alexander as a masterpiece. Claude Baignères in Le Figaro, 12 March 1983, summed up Bergman’s position as an artist: ‘He is no longer of the cinema, but is a religion.’ Positif, no. 267 (May) 1983: 20-28, contains two reviews of the film and a survey essay by Jean-Paul Jeancolas, Robert Benayoun, and François Ramasse, titled ‘Ingmar apaisé. La somme d’une nuit’.
Reviews Stockholm press, 18 December 1982;
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Chapter IV Filmography For longer TV version, Stockholm press, 18 December 1983 (Expr., 20 December); Bianco e nero, January-March 1984: 131-138; Cahiers du cinéma 346 (April) 1983: 4-11; Cinéma 292 (April) 1983: 46; Cinematograph 88 (April) 1983: 33-35; Cineforum 231 (January-February) 1984: 37-46; Cinérevue, 10 March 1983: 48; Commentary 76, no. 3 (September 1983): 64-67; Corriera della Sera, 10 September 1983: 23, and La stampa (Rome), same date, n.p. (SFI clipping); Christian Century, 20-27 July 1983: 690; De Filmkrant, 22 March 1983, p. 5; Film a Doba, June 1986: 346-348; Film et Télévisie 312-313 (May-June) 1983: 11-13; Film og kino, no. 1 (1983): 24-26; Film & Fernsehen, February 1985: 33; Film Quarterly 37, no. 1 (Fall 1983), pp. 22-27; Filmcritica 341 (January-February) 1984: 14-22; Filmkritik, 28, no. 1-2 (1984), pp. 43-45; Filmkultura, October 1985: 70-74; Filmrutan, no. 1 (Spring 1983), pp. 20-21; Films and Filming, May 1983: 36-38; Films in Review 35, no. 7 (August-September 1983): 439-40; Hudson Review, no. 4 (1983): 706-09; Inquiry 6, no. 10 (September 1983): 45-47; Iskusstvo Kino, October 1988: 138-40; Jeune cinéma 151 (June) 1983: 42-44; Kino (September) 1983: 47-48; Kosmorama 163 (March) 1983: 4-9, 51; Le monde, 10 March 1983, p. 17; Levende billder, 15 February 1983: 4-8; MS, (September) 1983: 39-40; Monthly Film Bulletin, no. 591 (April) 1983: 83-84; Nation, 2 July 1983: 27-28; New Leader, 8-22 August 1983: 20-21; New Republic, 27 June 1983: 22-24; New Statesman, 22 April 1983: 28-29; New York Times, 17 June 1983, p. C8; 3 July, Sec.2, p. 1, and 31 July, Sec. 2, pp. 15-16; New Yorker, 13 June 1983: 117-21; Newsweek, 20 June 1983, p. 84; Revue du Cinéma 382 (April) 1983: 19-22; Rolling Stone, 18 August 1983: 32; Saturday Review, May-June 1983: 41-42; Séquences 114 (October) 1983: 38-42; Sight and Sound LII, no. 2 (Spring) 1983: 141; Skoop XIX, no. 2 (April) 1983: 29-30; Skrien 128 (Summer) 1983: 12-13; Der Spiegel, no. 44 (1983), pp. 266-68; Sunday Times (London), 24 April 1983, p. 43; Time, 20 June 1983: 75;
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Variety, 18 May 1982, p. 4; 8 December 1982, pp. 14-15, and 22 December 1982, pp. 14-15; Village Voice, 21 June 1983: 49; Z (Norwegian), no. 22, 1983: 38-39.
Longer Essays and Studies Aghed, Jan. ‘Sourires d’un cinéma d’hivers sur Fanny et Alexandre’. Positif 289 (March) 1985: 2225; Björklund, Per Åke & Monica Engebladh. ‘Haley contra Whitaker: Familjeteoristudier med hypotesanalys av Fanny och Alexander’ [H vs W: Family theory studies with hypothetical analysis of F & A]. Department of Applied Psychology, Lund University, 1986. 113 pp. Cf. Hafsteinsson below; Bundtzen, L.K. ‘Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander: Family Romance and Artistic Allegory’. Criticism, no. 1 (1987): 89-117; Jordan Daasnes, Camilla and Carlos Wiggen. ‘Ingmar Bergmans Fanny og Alexander: To kommentarer’. Vinduet (Oslo) 37, no. 1, 1983, pp. 43-46. (Two comments on Bergman’s film, one focussing on its use of music; the other on the patriarchal structure of Alexander’s world and the role of dream and fantasy); Estève, Michel. ‘Ingmar Bergman: La mort, le masque et l’etre’. Etudes cinématogragiques 131/34 (1983): 143-50. Together with Michel Sineux’s ‘Fanny et Alexandre: ‘Le petit théâtre d’Ingmar Bergman’ in same issue, Estève’s essay forms a comprehensive review article of Fanny and Alexander, discussing both theatrical and metaphysical aspects of the film; Hafsteinsson, Saemundur. ‘En familjeterapeutisk studie av Fanny och Alexander’ [A family therapeutic study of F & A]. Department of Applied Psychology, Lund University, 1987. 67 pp; Haverty, Linda. ‘Strindbergman: The Problem of Filming Autobiography in Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander’. Literature/Film Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1988): 174-180. (Autobiographical references in Fanny and Alexander include not only Alexander, Bergman’s alter ego as a child, but also Bergman’s identification with Strindberg via the Alexander-Ishmael connection and via a number of visual metaphors and verbal allusions); Hayes, Jarrod. ‘The Seduction of Alexander. Baudrillard, Literature/Film Quarterly 25, no. 1, 1987, pp. 40-48. (Argues that in its problematization of time and space, Fanny and Alexander intersects with the Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism, with its emphasis on transcending physical reality); Jensen, Nils. ‘Fanny og Alexander og alle de andre i Bergmans univers’ [F & A and all the others in B’s universe]. Kosmorama XXIX, no. 163 (March) 1983: 4-9, 51. (Discussion of artistic and thematic aspect of Bergman’s created world as reflected in F & A); Jostad, Morten. ‘“I den lilla världen”: Ekdahlerne og teatret. Noen aspekter ved Ingmar Bergmans Fanny og Alexander’ [In the little world: the Ekdahls and the theatre. Some aspects of Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander]. Samtiden (Oslo) 6 (1985): 40-46; Milberg-Kaye, Ruth. ‘Fanny and Alexander: A Kleinian Reading’. In Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature and Film, ed. by Maurice Charney and Joseph Reppen. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1987, pp. 180-191; Segal, A. ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’. American Film VIII, no. 8 (June) 1983: 55-61. (Discusses Fanny and Alexander in view of Bergman’s life and earlier production); Timm, Mikael. ‘Trollkarlen’ [The magician], Chaplin, no. 184 (1983), pp. 4-8. (Discusses Fanny and Alexander as a narrative film, in contrast to Bergman’s earlier style-oriented films); Koskinen, Maaret. ‘Teatern som metafor’ [The theater as metaphor], Chaplin, no. 189 (1983), pp. 260-63. (Contrasts ‘theatrical’ and ‘ filmic’ space in the film);
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Chapter IV Filmography Törnqvist, Egil. ‘Den lilla världen och den stora. Kring Ingmar Bergmans Fanny och Alexander.’ Chaplin special 25th anniversary issue, 1983, pp. 253-259 (Ø 1415). Also in English as ‘The Little World and the Big: Concerning Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander’. Chaplin, 25th Anniversary Issue, 1984, pp. 12-20; in Dutch as ‘De kleine wereld en de grote: Ingmar Bergmans Fanny en Alexander’. De Gids CIIL, no. 1 (March 1985): 75-80; and in German as ‘Die grosse und die kleine Welt’. In Gaukler im Grenzland: Ingmar Bergman, 1993 (Ø 1562). (Traces Shakespearean and Strindbergian elements in Fanny and Alexander). See also same author’s Between Stage and Screen. Ingmar Bergman Directs, 1995, pp. 174-187; Vos, Marek. Dräkterna i dramat: Mitt år med Fanny och Alexander [The costumes in the drama: My year with Fanny and Alexander]. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1984. 155 pp.; Wortzelius, Hugo. Reviews of Fanny and Alexander in Filmrutan XXVI, no. 1 (1983): 20-21. Same author also compares the long and short version of the film in Filmrutan XXVII, no. 2 (1984): 20-21.
See also Extensive microfiche file on Fanny and Alexander, SFI library; SFI fact sheet 282/82; S. Kauffmann: Field of View, pp. 68-71 (reprint of New Republic review); Svensk filmografi 1980-89, pp. 222-28. Hanif Kureishi in New Statesman & Society, July 7, 1989. Review of the book version of Fanny and Alexander, concluding that the printed version was ‘Bergman minus the magic’.
Awards 1983 Best Foreign Film 1983, New York Film Critics (awarded in 1984) For additional awards, see film title, Varia, C.
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EFTER REPETITIONEN, 1984 (After the Rehearsal), color Script Director
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
See also listing in Media chapter, (Ø 341), including Swedish reception of TV showing.
Synopsis Efter repetition has a single setting: an old theatre stage after an afternoon rehearsal when the actors have left and the aging director, Henrik Vogler, sits alone surrounded by old props with references to productions of Ibsen and Strindberg. A young actress, Anna Egerman, cast as Agnes in Vogler’s current staging of Strindberg’s Ett drömspel/A Dreamplay, surprises him. It is Vogler’s fourth staging of the play. Anna’s mother Rakel was an attractive actress who left the stage to raise a family. Rakel and Vogler were occasional lovers. When Anna’s and Vogler’s meeting takes place, the mother has been dead for five years. Also the father is gone. Most of the dialogue in the first half of the film is spoken by Vogler who expresses his views on actors, artistic morality, scenography, etc. Vogler’s thoughts on the theatre are echoes of Bergman’s own statements in interviews over the years. Vogler also talks about the fleeting borders between dream and reality, past and present. Suddenly, Rakel enters in search of her shoes. She is 46, drunk and seductive. The time goes back to when Anna was 12. Vogler has asked Rakel to play a small part in a new production. But alcoholic Rakel is in and out of institutions. Their conversation is bitter, ironic and tense. Rakel leaves as Vogler promises to visit her. The scene returns to Anna and Vogler. Anna tells Vogler that she is pregnant, later that she has had an abortion and will divorce her husband, Peter. Vogler ‘depicts’ in words his and Anna’s love affair, and Anna falls into her role. The make-believe affair ends with their parting
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record as friends. Vogler stays behind, alone. The church bells, which had been chiming, are now silent. Or the aging Vogler can no longer hear them.
Credits Production company Executive producer Unit manager Director Screenplay Photography Set Design Editor
Cinematograph for Personafilm Gmbh (Munich) Jörn Donner Eva Bergman Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Sven Nykvist Anna Asp Syliva Ingemarsson
Cast Henrik Vogler Anna Egerman Rakel Anna as 12-year-old Henrik as 12-year-old
Erland Josephson Lena Olin Ingrid Thulin Nadja Palmstierna-Weiss Bertil Guve
Distribution Running time Premiere US opening Released by
Cinematograph/SVT/SF 72 minutes 9 April 1984 (Swedish TV, Channel 1) 21 June 1984, Lincoln Plaza Cinema, New York Triumph Films (Columbia Pictures)
Commentary Bergman writes about Efter repetitionen in Bilder (1990), pp. 221-27, describing it as a troublesome shooting that had been intended as ‘a pleasant episode on my way towards death’ [en trevlig episod i min väg mot döden]. Instead, it was made with a certain frustration, and when it was finished, he wrote in his diary: ‘I don’t ever want to make films again’ [Jag vill aldrig mer göra film]. Jörn Donner, the producer of Efter repetitionen, published a foreword to the film prior to its showing on Swedish television. Referring back indirectly to the Swedish critique in the 1960s of Bergman’s preoccupation with the role of the artist, Donner stated: ‘I have compared the manuscript with the final result, noticing that something of the private aspect has disappeared in the end product. It is Ingmar Bergman’s secret to be able to pick out, from simple contrasts, what is universal and graspable for many people, not just for artists’. [Jag har jämfört manus med slutresultatet, och märker att något av det privata försvunnit ur slutprodukten. Det är Ingmar Bergmans hemlighet, att ur enkla kontraster plocka fram det som är allmängiltigt och fattbart för många människor, inte bara för konstnärer.] See AB, 5 April 1984 (‘Nytt mästerverk av Ingmar Bergman’) and Röster i Radio-TV, no. 14, 1984: 5-6. Efter repetitionen was never intended as a commercial feature film and was never shown as such in Sweden. It was sold as a TV film to BBC and to television companies in Germany, Canada et al. But the producer, Jörn Donner, also signed a movie contract with American Triumph Films, which Bergman tried to have cancelled. See report headlined ‘Bergman rasande. Donner sålde TV-film till biograferna’ [Bergman furious. Donner sold TV film for motion picture distribution], Expr., 4 April 1984. Shortly thereafter, the TV film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival to enthusiastic audiences. It was also shown at the San Francisco Film Festival in the same year before opening in New York in June 1984.
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Chapter IV Filmography In August 1997 Efter repetitionen was performed as a stage play at Södra Teatern in Stockholm by a visiting Russian company during the Strindberg Festival (see Ø 481 in theatre chapter).
Foreign Reception A year after its opening in New York, After the Rehearsal was also shown during Bergman’s visit to Paris in March 1985 to receive the Legion of Honor, which coincided with Dramaten’s guest performance of his 1984 production of King Lear. French reviewers were by and large respectful and some in awe at Bergman’s ‘come-back’ as a filmmaker after Fanny and Alexander. They were particularly intrigued by Bergman’s discussion (through his alter ego, Henrik Vogler) of the relationship between directing and acting, life and art, reality and illusion. See the following reviews: Télérama, March 1985: pp. 13-14; Lire, Ecoute, Voir, 18 March 1985; Libération, 7 March 1985, p. 26. There was a clear difference between the French and the American response to After the Rehearsal. Where the French were very positive to its thought content, American critics found the film talky and pretentious. The most vitriolic response came from John Simon, usually one of Bergman’s staunchest supporters, who gave After the Rehearsal a devastating F rating, referring to the film as ‘a pitiful self-parody’ based on a ‘trite script’, as unsuited to TV as to the cinema (National Review, 24 August 1984: pp. 56-59). Richard Corliss in Time, 9 July 1984, p. 82, was, however, intrigued by Bergman’s ability to work equally successfully in film, theatre, and television.
Foreign Reviews Box Office, September 1984, p. R 116; Cahiers du cinéma, no. 360-361, 1984: 42-43; no. 369, 1984: 12-14; and no. 370, 1984: Journal VIII; Christian Century, 29 August-5 September 1984: 812; Cinéma, no. 306, 1984, p. 23; and no. 315, 1984: 32-33; Cinéaste, no. 4, 1984: 60; Cineforum, no. 235 (June-July) 1984: 17-18; and no. 256 (August) 1986: 69-71; Cinématographe, April 1985: 65-67; Cinema Nuovo, 300, no. 2 (March/April) 1986: 49-50; and no. 3 (May-June) 1986: 34-38; De Filmkrant 38, September 1984, p. 15; Film et Televisie, November 1984: 14-15; Film og Kino, no. 5 (1984): 160. Films in Review, August-September 1984: 431; Iskusstvo Kino, no. 12, 1986: 153-55; National Review, 24 August 1984: 56-59; New Leader, 3 September 1984: 21-22; New Republic, 25 June 1984: 24-26. Also in S. Kauffmann’s Field of View, pp. 71-75. New York, 16 July 1984, pp. 46-48; New York Times, 21 June 1984: C14; and 1 July 1984, sec. 2: 13; Penthouse, September 1984: 54; Positif, no. 281-82, 1984: 89; and 289, 1984: 20-21. Revue de cinéma, no. 396, (July/August) 1984: 27-28; and Revue de cinéma, Hors series 31: 19-20; Segno di cinema, September 1984: 64; and September 1986: 109; Séquences, no. 117, 1984: 17; Skoop, November 1984: 28; and February 1986: 26-27; Skrien, no. 138, 1984: 16; Time, 9 July 1984: 82; 24 Images, Summer 1984: 32-33.
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Synopses, Credits, Commentaries and Reception Record Press Articles and Longer Essays Aghed, Jan. ‘Intense miniature sur Après la répétition’. Positif 289 (March) 1985: 20-21; Baignères, Claude. ‘Paradoxe du metteur en scene’. Le Figaro, 7 March 1985, p. 36; Biette, Jean-Claude. ‘La verité des planches’. Cahiers du cinéma, no. 370, Journal VIII. (Uses After the Rehearsal to argue that it possesses three features necessary to make it a good film: Forceful rapport with chosen subject; honesty towards the audience, treating it as an equal; and demonstrated independence in film écriture); Dannowski, Hans Werner. ‘Das Schweigen der Kirchenglocken. Gedanken zu den späten Filmen von Ingmar Bergman’. EDP Film III, no. 4 (April) 1986: 14-18. (A survey of Bergman’s late films. Title refers to ending of Efter repetitionen); Friedman, R.M.. ‘Die unmögliche Spiegelung – oder drei Reflexe von Schau-Spielerinnen im ‘kritischen’ Alter’. Frauen und Film 50-51, (June) 1991: 17-30. (Discussion includes Rakel’s role in Efter repetitionen). Grelier. Robert. ‘Après la répétition’. Revue du Cinéma 396 (July-August) 1984: 27-28; Lierop, Pieter van. ‘Na de repetitie’. Skoop XXII, no. 1 (February) 1986: 26-27. Reprinted from Utrecht Nieuwsblad, 23 August 1984. (Review article); Mango. Lorenzo. ‘La sospensione del tempo’. Filmcritica XXXVII, 363 (March-April) 1986: 169174. (Review article); Selvaggi, Catarina. ‘La poetica del nulla in “Dopo le prove”’. Cinema Nuovo 313, no. 3 (May/ June) 1988: 35-38, and 314/15, no. 4-5 (July-October) 1988: 53-56. (Two-part article on the ‘poetics of nothingness’ in Bergman’s filmmaking and on Efter repetitionen/After the Rehearsal as a study of characters who dream a dream that is the dream of the other); Törnqvist, Egil. ‘A Life in the Theater. Intertextuality in Ingmar Bergman’s Efter repetitionen’. Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 73, no. 1, (Spring) 2001, pp. 25-42. (Discusses film as a tele-play).
Fact Sheets L’Avant Scène du Cinéma 394 (July 1990): 1-75, is a special issue on Efter repetitionen, containing credits, excerpted reviews, and original text in French translation.
See also Alain Philippon’s interview with Erland Josephson, titled ‘Des histoires d’amour avec la caméra. Entretien avec Erland Josephson’. Télérama, March 1985, p. 15.
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KARINS ANSIKTE, 1985 [Karin’s Face], color, B/W and sepia Director Text
Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis Produced in 1983 but not released until 1985 (though shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984), the film was shot in color but is largely based on black and white stills from the family photo album. The subject is Ingmar Bergman’s mother Karin, maiden name Åkerblom.
Credits Production Director Screenplay Photography Sound Music Editor
Cinematograph Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman Arne Carlsson Owe Svensson Performed by Käbi Laretei Sylvia Ingemarsson
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Chapter IV Filmography Distribution Running time Premiere
Svenska Filminstitutet 14 minutes Swedish TV premiere on 29 September 1986. Crosslisted in media chapter (Ø 342)
Reviews Monthly Film Bulletin LV, 653 (June) 1988: 186 (Tom Milne).
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