Bergman, Ingmar

▪ Swedish film director

Introduction

in full  Ernst Ingmar Bergman 

born July 14, 1918, Uppsala, Swed.

died July 30, 2007, Fårö, Swed.

 Swedish film writer-director, who achieved world fame with such films as Det sjunde inseglet (1957; The Seventh Seal); Smultronstället (1957; Wild Strawberries); the trilogy Såsom i en spegel (1961; Through a Glass Darkly), Nattsvardsgästerna (1961; The Communicants, or Winter Light), Tystnaden (1963; The Silence); and Viskingar och rop (1972; Cries and Whispers). He is noted for his versatile camera work and for his fragmented narrative style, which contribute to his bleak depiction of human loneliness, vulnerability, and torment.

Life

      Bergman was the son of a Lutheran pastor and frequently remarked on the importance of his childhood background in the development of his ideas and moral preoccupations. Even when the context of his film characters' sufferings is not overtly religious, they are always implicitly engaged in a search for moral standards of judgment, a rigorous examination of action and motive, in terms of good and bad, right and wrong, which seems particularly appropriate to someone brought up in a strictly religious home. Another important influence in his childhood was the religious art Bergman encountered, particularly the primitive yet graphic representations of Bible stories and parables found in rustic Swedish churches, which fascinated him and gave him a vital interest in the visual presentation of ideas, especially the idea of evil as embodied in the devil.

      Bergman attended Stockholm University, where he studied art, history, and literature. There for the first time he became passionately involved in the theatre and began writing and acting in plays and directing student productions. From these he went on to become a trainee director at the Mäster Olofsgärden Theatre and the Sagas Theatre, where he produced a spectacularly unconventional and disastrous production of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg's Ghost Sonata. In 1944 he was given his first full-time job as a director, at Helsingborg's municipal theatre. Also, and more importantly, he met Carl-Anders Dymling, the head of the Svensk Filmindustri. Dymling was sufficiently impressed by him to commission an original screenplay, Hets (1944; Frenzy, or Torment). This was directed by Alf Sjöberg (Sjöberg, Alf), then Sweden's leading film director, and had an enormous success, both at home and abroad. Largely as a result of this success, Bergman was, in 1945, given a chance to write and direct a film of his own, Kris (Crisis), and from this point on, his career was under way.

      The films that Bergman wrote or directed, or both, in the next five years were, if not directly autobiographical, at least very much concerned with the sort of problems that he himself was encountering at that time: the role of the young in a changing society, ill-fated young love, and military service. At the end of 1948 he directed his first film based on an original screenplay of his own, Fängelse (1949; Prison, or The Devil's Wanton). It recapitulated all the themes of his previous films in a complex, perhaps overambitious story, built around the romantic and professional problems of a young film director who considers making a film based on the idea that the devil rules the world. While this is not to be taken without qualification as Bergman's message in his early work, it may at least be said that his imaginative world is divided very sharply between the worlds of good and evil, the latter always overshadowing the former, the devil lying in wait at the end of each idyll.

      In 1951 Bergman's career in films, like nearly the whole of Swedish filmmaking, came to an abrupt halt as the result of a major economic crisis in Sweden. But in 1952 he returned with two films, Kvinnors väntan (Waiting Women, or Secrets of Women) and Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika, or Monika), that marked the beginning of his mature work. He was also appointed director of the Malmö municipal theatre, where he remained until 1959. This new phase introduced two markedly new characteristics in his work. In subject matter, Bergman, now himself married, returned again and again to the question of marriage. Viewing it from many angles, he examined the ways by which two people adjust to living together, their motives for being faithful or unfaithful to each other, and their reactions to bringing children into the world. At this time Bergman began to gather around him, in his film and stage productions, a faithful “stock company” of actors with whom he worked regularly to give his work and their interpretation of it a manifest consistency and style.

      In 1955 Bergman had his first great international success with Sommernattens leende (Smiles of a Summer Night), a bittersweet romantic comedy-drama in a period setting. In the next few years, a kind of Bergman fever swept over the international film scene: concurrently with the succession of his new films, which included two masterpieces, The Seventh Seal (1957), a medieval morality play, and Wild Strawberries (1957), a meditation on old age, all of his early work was shown, and Bergman was universally recognized as one of the most important figures in cinema. Indeed, a far wider section of the cultured public became aware of his work than of that of any previous filmmaker; for the first time a filmmaker was as widely and as highly regarded as artists in any of the more traditional media.

      Inevitably, a reaction set in, though Bergman continued to make films and direct plays with undiminished activity; and his trilogy of films, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence, dealing with the border line between sanity and madness and that between human contact and total withdrawal, was regarded by many as his crowning achievement. Through a Glass Darkly won an Academy Award for best foreign film.

      About this time, Bergman acquired a country home on the bleak island of Fårö; and the island provided a characteristic stage for the dramas of a whole series of films that included Persona (1966), Vargtimmen (1968; Hour of the Wolf), Skammen (1968; Shame), and En passion (1969; The Passion, or The Passion of Anna), all dramas of inner conflicts involving a small, closely knit group of characters. With Beröringen (1971; The Touch), his first English-language film, Bergman returned to an urban setting and more romantic subject matter, though fundamentally the characters in the film's marital triangle are no less mixed up than any in the Fårö cycle of films; and then Viskingar och rop (1972; Cries and Whispers), Scener ur ett aktenskap (1974; Scenes from a Marriage), and Herbstsonate (1978; Autumn Sonata), all dealing compassionately with intimate family relationships, won popular as well as critical fame. Throughout the years, Bergman continued to direct for the stage, most notably at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre. In 1977 he received the Swedish Academy of Letters Great Gold Medal, and in the following year the Swedish Film Institute established a prize for excellence in filmmaking in his name. Fanny och Alexander (1983; Fanny and Alexander), in which the fortunes and misfortunes of a wealthy theatrical family in turn-of-the-century Sweden are portrayed through the eyes of a young boy, earned an Academy Award for best foreign film.

      Bergman also directed a number of television movies, notably the critically acclaimed Saraband (2003), which featured the main characters from Scenes from a Marriage; the movie received a theatrical release. In addition, he wrote several novels, including Söndagsbarn (1993; Sunday's Children) and Enskilda samtal (1996; Private Confessions), that were made into films. His memoir, Laterna magica (The Magic Lantern), was published in 1987.

Assessment

      Bergman established a worldwide reputation for writing and directing films that, in an unmistakably individual style, examine the issues of morality by exploring man's relationship to himself, to others, and to God. His work and the worldwide vogue it enjoyed in the late 1950s and early 1960s introduced many people for the first time to the idea of the total filmmaker, the writer-director who throughout a sizable body of work uses the medium of film to express his own ideas and perceptions, with as much ease and conviction as artists in earlier generations used the novel or the symphony or the fresco. In addition, the immense international popularity of his films has tended to ensure that Bergman's picture of Sweden and the Swedish temperament is the first and often the only impression received by the outside world; and when other Swedish films seem to present much the same image, it is usually because the influence of Bergman on his Swedish colleagues is so pervasive rather than because his highly personal vision should be taken as an objectively true portrait of his country.

      Bergman's anguished appraisal of the human situation lost nothing of its intensity through the years; rather, he progressively stripped away the distracting decorations in his films to create an abstract drama of man's relation with man and perhaps with God (if he exists). He dealt with man's attempt to define his own personality by removing his masks to see if there is a face underneath. The images of the creator as actor and the creator as magician recur throughout Bergman's work. He himself embodied elements of both the thinker and the actor, the preacher and the charlatan; in Bergman they all fused to create an artist of great force and individuality whose work is always unmistakably his own.

John Russell Taylor

Major Works

Kris (1945; Crisis); Skepp till Indialand (1947; A Ship to India, or The Land of Desire); Hamnstad (1948; Port of Call); Fängelse (1949; Prison, or The Devil's Wanton); Törst (1949; Thirst, or Three Strange Loves); Till glädje (1949; To Joy); Sommarlek (1951; Illicit Interlude, or Summer Interlude); Kvinnors väntan (1952; Secrets of Women, or Waiting Women); Gycklarnas afton (1953; The Naked Night, or Sawdust and Tinsel); En lektion i kärlek (1954; A Lesson in Love); Kvinnodröm (1955; Dreams, or Journey into Autumn); Sommarnattens leende (1955; Smiles of a Summer Night); Det sjunde inseglet (1957; The Seventh Seal); Smultronstället (1957; Wild Strawberries); Nära livet (1958; Brink of Life, or So Close to Life); Ansiktet (1958; The Magician, or The Face); Jungfrukällan (1960; The Virgin Spring); Djävulens öga (1960; The Devil's Eye); Såsom i en spegel (1961; Through a Glass Darkly); Nattsvardsgästerna (1961; Winter Light); Tystnaden (1963; The Silence); För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor (1964; All These Women, or Now About These Women); Persona (1966); Vargtimmen (1968; Hour of the Wolf); Skammen (1968; Shame); En passion (1969; The Passion of Anna); Beröringen (1971; The Touch); Viskingar och rop (1972; Cries and Whispers); Scener ur ett aktenskap (1974; Scenes from a Marriage); Trollflojten (1974; The Magic Flute); The Serpent's Egg (1977); Herbstsonate (1978; Autumn Sonata); From the Life of the Marionettes (1980); Fanny och Alexander (1983; Fanny and Alexander).

Additional Reading

Jorn Donner, Djävulens ansikte: Ingmar Bergmans filmer (1962; Eng. trans., The Personal Vision of Ingmar Bergman, 1964), a perceptive study of Bergman's themes and images by a fellow filmmaker; John Russell Taylor, Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear (1964), contains a critical study of Bergman, filmography, and bibliography; Henrik Sjogren, Ingmar Bergman på teatern (1968), a complete account of Bergman's theatrical work, with pictures and credits; Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman: Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magician (The Face) (1960), and A Trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence (1965), two collections of English translations of Bergman's principal screenplays.

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