Thirteen Ways of Looking at Ingmar Bergman

I: Pessimist.

As in, you can't possibly win against this guy.

II: Qualified Optimist.

On the other hand, the final image of The Seventh Seal is not of that guy, Death, leading his victims in a dance, but rather of this healthy new family making its way toward a new life.

III: Crank.

Would-be cinephiles who believe Citizen Kane is "boring" have a strong ally in Bergman. "It's a total bore...Above all, the performances are worthless." Magnificent Ambersons? "Also terribly boring." Welles as a whole? "To me he's just a hoax."

For what it's worth, in 1960 Welles was quoted in L'Express thusly: "Bergman est emmerdant." "Emmerdant" is often translated into English as "irritating." But the original French has more, um, tang, given that "merd" in the middle.

Bergman on Godard: "[A] fucking bore."

IV: Theologian.

The miracle in The Virgin Spring.

Feeling God's silence in Winter Light.

V: Solipsist.

One sometimes heard the complaint that Bergman's films are peopled with characters who can't see past the bridge of their own noses, and that they're reflections of Bergman's own self-absorption. That we rarely if ever hear anyone bemoaning the lack of "social engagement" in, say, Samuel Beckett's work is, among other things, indicative of how cinema is still regarded as a stepchild of the fine arts in some respects. (Bergman says he came to the conclusion "Politics—never again!" in the wake of an infatuation with Hitler that was shattered after the Nazi's crimes against humanity came to light. He did not stick to it altogether—in 1950 he made an anti-communist thriller This Can't Happen Here, which he subsequently blocked from all retrospectives of his work. It's pretty much impossible to see—so much for Joe Queenan's claim that he sat through the entirety of Bergman's oeuvre last March—but J. Hoberman has a detailed accoung of it in his excellent book The Red Atlantis.)

Well, what can one do? The self, and one's negotiation/war with it, is one of Bergman's great themes. As in Beckett, some of Bergman's most powerful scenes are of one person in a room, or two people in a room. And the same thing over and over again. Talking about the terribly exposed, intimate ending of Saraband, Bergman's final film, and of the characters of Johan and Marianne, Liv Ullman said to me, "It's a cry of helplessness: 'I want to be touched once, I am a child, I am here.' And Marianne recognizes that. Because I do believe that Marianne always loved Johan. Like I would say that I've always loved Ingmar but could never live with him or be with him. But I do recognize him so much and I see so much, what he is—it's crazy." At the end of our talk, she assumed Bergman's voice to explain the film: " 'This was my story, you know, a story that I couldn't get on with my parents and with my children, and I make this film again and again about the guilt and how I can't allow myself to be touched...This is my soul.' I was thinking of that today, and I'm very moved by that."

VI: Comedian.

Smiles of A Summer Night is kind of Lubitschean, don't you think?

VII: Lover.

How rapturously he photographed Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Lindblom...

VIII: Misogynist.

Reaching a culmination of sorts in one of his latest, sourest films, Autumn Sonata. "[A] hysterical diatribe...It is common knowledge that Ingrid Bergman tried to rebel against the burdens of guilt and wickedness heaped upon her character; her own personal history might suggest that on some level (conscious or unconscious) Bergman was using the actress herself in a particularly cruel and malicious way.”—Robin Wood

Bergman has his own perspective on Ingrid in his autobiography, implying that the sisterly solidarity she found among Liv Ullmann and the other females of the cast and crew opened her eyes in a way.

XI: Horror Film Director.

Yes, we all know Wes Craven's notorious, harrowing Last House on the Left is a loose adaptation of The Virgin Spring. But it doesn't end there. For what are The Hour of the Wolf (above), The Serpent's Egg, From the Lives of Marionettes or even Shame if they're not horror films?

X: His own harshest critic.

He calls The Seventh Seal "uneven."

XI: The most retiring filmmaker ever.

He announced his first retirement from the cinema in 1982, after Fanny and Alexander. Shot two films in 1983. Several more, mostly for television, followed.

XII: Musician.

"My love of music is scarcely reciprocated," he wrote in his autobiography. And yet the monologue on The Magic Flute in Hour of the Wolf was so acute that Bille August saw fit to put it in the mouth of composer Martin in August's 2001 film A Song for Martin. And Bergman's own Magic Flute is one of the three greatest opera films—the other two being Syberberg's Parsifal and Losey's Don Giovanni.

XIII: Inimitable creator.

"Today, we are aswarm with Antonioni imitators, but no one seems to want to be the new Bergman," Michael Atkinson notes. That's partly because nobody can be the new Bergman. And not just for the obvious reason.

Unlike a lot of younger filmmakers today, Bergman was a highly, richly cultured individual. He knew the Bible backward and forward, Shakespeare too; fine art, music, and so on. All of his knowledge did more than inform his work—his work is suffused with it, it gains much of its texture and heft from it. Of course, Antonioni is similarly cultured, but his depth in this area doesn't play so much upon the surface of his work; it motivates the form, rather than thickens it. Today's young filmmakers aren't, for the most part, as polyglot. For a lot of them, all the culture they've got is film. And Antonioni's got a signature style that's accessible to them, and seems imitable: shoot some architecture and negative space, have characters disaffectedly utter banalities, and you think you've got it. To emulate Bergman, you've got to know what he knew, and knowing that...go on to be yourself.

Comments

[Griff]

THE MAGICIAN could also qualify as a horror film.

While there may well have been antipathy between Bergman and Welles -- the most theatrical of great filmmakers! -- it was widely reported in 1977 that Bergman sought to cast Welles in the small role of the priest in THE SERPENT'S EGG. [When Welles proved either unavailable or otherwise engaged, Bergman attempted to cast John Huston in the part; James Whitmore eventually played the role.]

[Andrew O'Hehir]

Awesome & hilarious, Glenn. I'll link to this if I can work it in today.

[Mike]

Great article.

You could have also just listed FANNY & ALEXANDER. It fits in with many of your categories:

Horror/ghost story (especially the Swedish TV version, downright creepy)

Theological (The Bishop - say no more)

Lover (brother Gustav was, in the words of his own mother, "oversexed"!)

Misogynist (here, though, the claim falls short. Emilie and Mother are two powerful female characters that define strength in a host of situations)

Creator (you are absolutely spot-on. The true beauty of Bergman's work is in knowing that there will never be another)

[Noriko-chan]

Losey's Don Giovanni sucks. It's boring, humourless, unMozartean and has a fugly Don Giovanni with a mediocre voice. And terrible wigs. And the worst "Goign to hell" effect. And the Commendatore has no voice.

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