A Full Integration with Film History: A Tribute to Ingmar Bergman

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36-40 (Article) Published by Wayne State University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/frm.0.0000 For additional information about this article https://muse.

1 A Full Integration with Film History: A Tribute to Ingmar Bergman Astrid Söderbergh Widding Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Volume 49, Number 1, Spring 2008, pp (Article) Published by Wayne State University Press DOI: For additional information about this article No institutional affiliation (27 Jul :19 GMT)

2 02FW49.1-Essays 2/7/08 2:34 PM Page 36 Bergman on the set of Fanny and Alexander. Photo: Arne Carlsson, Courtesy of Svenska Filminstitutet/Svensk Filmindustri.

3 A Full Integration with Film History A Tribute to Ingmar Bergman Born: July 14, 1918, Uppsala, Uppsala län, Sweden Died: July 30, 2007, Fårö, Gotlands län, Sweden Astrid Söderbergh Widding Ingmar Bergman was not only Sweden s but also one of the world s most important filmmakers of the twentieth century. He was an artist with extraordinary breadth, also an author, dramaturge, and director of theatre and opera. Music was the foremost inspiration throughout his life. In Sweden, Bergman s position, not least as a filmmaker, was undeniably paradoxical. On the one hand, he was hailed and canonized, whilst on the other, constantly questioned and regarded as being too complex, too private, and too theatrical. Following his death, his notability is fully recognized. From an international perspective, the picture of Bergman is uniform, synonymous with Swedish film. What made Bergman unique was, not least, the long span of his working career, which was framed by two periods of writing: the first as a screenwriter in the 1940s and then, toward the end of his career, writing deeply personal works which, having left filmmaking behind him, allowed others to direct. But perhaps the most striking fact is that his films, however headstrong, integrate fully with film history, from the silent era when Victor Sjöström s Framework 49, No. 1, Spring 2008, pp Copyright 2008 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan

4 Framework: The Journal of Cinema & Media 49.1 films were an enormous influence, and through the following decades. Bergman was one of those directors who, with an insatiable voracity, fed off film, eagerly watching films over and over again, and allowing himself to be inspired by what he had seen to make his own. For Bergman, the 1940s was the most important decade for experimentation, when he learned his craft through testing, discarding, and trying anew. It could well be that none of the earlier films from Crisis to Prison or Thirst, are particularly distinguished in themselves, but in them he experiments with style, for example, flashbacks or themes and central narratives that deal with alienation, all of which recur in his later films. In reality the films of the 1940s present the key to Bergman s breakthrough. It takes years of apprenticeship to achieve mastery, a luxury very few filmmakers are granted in such a costly enterprise. International recognition came in the 1950s after some considerable difficulties, amongst which Bergman left Svensk Filmindustri for Sandrews in order to make Sawdust and Tinsel with its stark portrayal of the artist s suffering which lay close to his own heart. But after films such as The Seventh Seal, Smiles of a Summer Night, or Wild Strawberries, which reaffirmed Swedish film internationally, restraint was at last cast aside. Most strikingly, perhaps, is that Smiles of a Summer Night, a comedy, won the director s prize at Cannes. The difficult and introspective brooding had evidently added strings to his bow, as the classic lift scene in Waiting Women had shown three years earlier. The contrast between the light colors and the commanding lightness of tone with darker passages often dominated interpretations of the director s work which became evident in the 1950s. Another turning point came in 1960 when Bergman discovered Fårö, the significance of which can only be measured in retrospect. It is as if the barren island landscape, which became the setting for a long series of films beginning with Through a Glass Darkly, revealed an expression that had lain dormant in scenes set by the sea in earlier films, such as Sawdust and Tinsel and The Seventh Seal, and had at last found a home. Bergman s narratives were finally anchored in their appropriate element. It was during this decade that it became clear that Bergman s films had started to challenge filmic conventions. In a period which produced a new international generation of filmmakers for whom documentary simplicity was the order of the day, Bergman continued to make such deeply personal films as Winter Light, The Silence, Persona, Hour of the Wolf, and The Shame as if the rest of the world ceased to exist. In certain respects these were extremely unfashionable films, and it was no coincidence that during these years Bergman s premières gave rise to fierce media debates. During this period he produced some of his masterpieces, where Bergman s art finally asserted its distinctive character. The intensive psychological dramas, the aesthetics of close-ups, the personal regime, consistently put Bergman s character in place, driven to storytelling perfection. 38

5 A Full Integration with Film History The 1970s were, nevertheless, on Bergman s part, with the exception of The Magic Flute, a decade of psychological introspection from Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage, or the TV series Face to Face to Autumn Sonata and From the Life of the Marionettes. These films are claustrophobic and agonizing, not always successful but exceptionally suggestive, although the director s confidence in the spirit of the age had hardly increased. Finally, in with Fanny and Alexander, Bergman announced his retirement from filmmaking, a decision he adhered to with the exception of a handful of shorter films. In this monumental fresco, he returns to his most central motifs and characters the child, the good and the bad father, problems of religion, art, burlesque but everything shifted into a new context. In Fanny and Alexander he finally reconciles the demons, or rather expels them permanently from his world. Taking all this into consideration and relating it to the whole of Bergman s films, his capacity as a director stands clear. Occasionally his manuscripts appear overly theatrical, but in his directing, these weaknesses are extinguished by the presence of the actors whose spontaneity allows their delivery to appear completely natural. It may be that occasionally his camera angles seem far-fetched or close-ups overassertive, but in the film as a whole they are totally integrated. Few filmmakers have the ability to produce a united body of work, where the flaws and details that stand out as strange contribute to a harmonious whole. Perhaps they point towards Bergman s innermost driving force: a strong and never wholly delivered anxiety in proportion to the language of words, in other words, people s capacity to communicate. It is part of the Bergmanesque paradox that he simultaneously communicated in a totally unusual fashion. First and foremost was the power of his own artistic achievements, which he conveyed to a worldwide public. Letters from all over the world, both before and after his death, evidenced how his films had affected and changed people s lives in a radical way. During later years, after he withdrew to a quiet life on Fårö, he became involved in Swedish cultural life. He brought attention to himself in rather surprising ways. For example, the annual Bergman prize, less well known outside Sweden, which is awarded to filmmakers, actors, or technicians in the film industry, for which he acted as juror. Also, for the first time this year, a debut prize was awarded in his name. Bergman still held some control over film production from behind the scenes! There were consequences: as soon as he became aware of a planned DVD version of Sjöström s The Phantom Carriage, he hastily intervened to stop the venture. One of his last public appearances was when FIAF (the International Federation of Film Archives) held its world congress in Stockholm in 2003 and presented Bergman with a prize for his contribution to film restoration. Bergman, who otherwise never left Fårö, went to the Swedish Film Institute 39

6 Framework: The Journal of Cinema & Media 49.1 to collect the prize and made a speech, evidently moved to be rewarded as a faithful old servant of film preservation. Cinematography remained the love of his life, alongside the many changes in his private life. Bergman s donation to the public of his private archive for research until 2056 an archive managed by the Ingmar Bergman Foundation was his final, magnificent act of communication, his legacy to posterity. In June, UNESCO included the archive amongst Memories of the World, acknowledging the global significance of the future understanding of one of the greatest personal artistic achievements. Astrid Söderbergh Widding is Professor of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University and Chair of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation. She has published extensively on European art cinema and on film and aesthetics. 40

FILM FESTIVAL. Free Entry OCTOBER 2018 KAMPALA VENUES SHOWING. Century Cinemax Goethe Zentrum Alliance Française. Kampala Film School

FILM FESTIVAL. Free Entry OCTOBER 2018 KAMPALA VENUES SHOWING. Century Cinemax Goethe Zentrum Alliance Française. Kampala Film School FILM FESTIVAL Celebrating Ingmar Bergman 15 th - 19 th OCTOBER 2018, KAMPALA SHOWING 15 th october 2018 - The Seventh Seal (Century Cinemax - 6:00pm) 16 th october 2018 - Persona (Century Cinemax - 6:30pm)