Approaches & Analysis (Week 3) Ingmar Bergman
Introduction:
- Professor Borg; self absorbed, narcistitic - this journey for him is a journey of reevaluation and nostalgia that takes him back to his past.
- Personal project for Ingmar Bergman - The character of Isaac Borg is like a cinematic vessel for Bergman to tell his own narrative/story - own longing for childhood - his youth.
- Victor Sjöström: plays the lead, specially cast by Bergman who considered Sjöström to be a mentor figure.
- Bergman influenced by a silent film by Sjöström called The Phantom Carriage - 1921 - themes of funeral, death, spiritual realm - all of these themes and messages resonate in Wild Strawberries as well.
- Another connection is the character Isaac Borg, initials: IB - Identical to Ingmar Bergman. Bergman based the movie when he was on the road to Uppsala, driving in his car and then stopped off at his Grandma's house, when he went up to the door he was blind sighted by all these memories of his childhood.
- This caused him to wonder, what if you could walk right into a door and straight into your childhood. Portals to the past. Source of fascination for Bergman who had a very fractious relationship with his parents, he was often estranged. Another theme for wild strawberries - being at odds with his father.
- Early manifestation of a Road-Trip Movie
Life and Work of Ingmar Bergman
- Born (in 1918 Uppsala, Sweden) into a very strict religious environment . His father being a Christian pastor
- Religious Uprising had a tumultuous effect in his filmmaking
- Controversial aspect of Bergman - dabbling with facism at an early age - When he was 16 he visited Weimar, Germany and Bergman actually attended a Nazi Rally, he was infatuated with Hitler's charisma. Maintained this infatuation with Nazi ideology and facism right the way through WW2. When he released the enormity and depravity of the holocaust he quickly denounced Nazism.
- Studied art, history and literature at Stockholm University. But his first love was always drama. His role in drama was actually multi-directional, he wrote, acted and directed.
- First full time job as a director was at the Helsingborg's municipal theatre in 1944. This was where he met Carl-Anders-Dymling, the head of Svensk Filmindustri - largest Scandinavian film company at the time; who compelled Bergman to take the next stage in his filmmaking career.
- Bergman then became director of the Gothenburg Civic Theatre in 1946 where he had the opportunity to make his first film Kris (Crisis) - Bergman's early films have been the subject of critic from their production values to their rather fragmented nature.
- Bergman had his breakthrough in 1955 with 'Smiles of a Summer Night' - which was a romantic comedy drama in a period setting. This set Bergman into an international lime light.
- Ironic as he was not as universally embraced in his home country of Sweden.
- One of the monumental years in his filmmaking career was 1957 where he made two very iconic films; The Seventh Seal & Wild Strawberries - two very different films but embrace the theme of a lone individual on a quest to accept meaning and discovery
- Through these films Bergman was really pushed to the forefront of global cinema, where his process as an auteur began to blossom
- Died in 2007 on exactly the same day as Michelangelo Antonioni
Theatre & Art as influences:
- Bergman was hugely intertextual - brought on many forms of visual arts in order to fashion his very particular filmmaking style
- August Strindberg was one of the primary influences as was Henrik Ibsen
- Strindberg notion of intimate theatre - minimal space between actors and audience. Very intimate scenario - became one of Bergman's paradigms.
- Bergman's chamber films where there were very few characters, all present or often shut in a room. Chamber Cinema - influenced by Strindberg's idea
- Bergman was also inspired by symbolism and metaphors, expressionism that linked back to the painter Edvard Munch - full of anger, pain and desire to break from the shackles of everyday existence.
- Literature was another source - Shakespeare, for example the mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream and the tragedians from Hamlet in his portrayal of wandering jesters in The Seventh Seal.
Collaborators:
- Worked with long time collaborator cinematographer Sven Nykvist since 1961.
Actor Ensemble:
- Harriet Andersson
- Bibi Andersson
- Ingrid Thulin
- Liv Ullman
- Max Von Sydow
- Gunnar Bjornstrand
Bergman's Themes:
- Confronting Mortality - staring into the abyss of death - Bergman preoccupied w/ this idea in his formative years
- Finding Humanity
- Suppressed Sexual Desires
- Loss Of God
- Crisis of faith - Personal to Bergman
- Crisis of identity
- Crisis of the mind (psychological breakdown)
Bergman's films can be analysed through several philosophical lenses, especially the philosopher Heidegger, and his notion of time. As human beings we're thrown into the world, creating our stories looking at the world, the future is yet we are human beings in this world facing death. Nietzsche assertion that god is death - prophet Zarathustra claims that god is dead. By the end of the film he is protesting to the none existence of god.
Psychoanalysis (Freudian types) - regularly used in Bergman's film. Men and Women relationship - male attachment to the mother figure - personal to Bergman. He had a very strong connection to his mother, but a turbulent relationship with both his parents.
Bergman avoided politics, his early interaction with politics really scarred him to an extent. Most of his films feature middle class or upper middle class characters.
Absence of cross-cultural context - archetypically Swedish filmmaker, a lot of his films are set in Sweden and about Swedish characters
Modernist filmmaker - believes mostly in structures - creating binary structures: goodvsevil, malevsfemale
Through a Glass Darkly - stand out film, formal through stylist abilities. Bergman ceases us through his hand and places us in this universe where we see these intricate and monumental questions about life and the loss of god.
Bergman's (A)Politics
- After his controversial experience with facism, Bergman says in terms of politics Never Again
- Social Democrat - Powerhouse of Sweden (especially in WW2)
Despite his love for the Swedish state there was an event that caused him to be delusion-ed with the state. This was when he was arrested while directing a production at the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Stockholm.
They accused him of tax evasion, the charge was that Bergman set up an off-shore tax haven and collected profits off of sales of his films. He denied this claim and left Sweden and went into exile (in Germany) in 1976.
This was a dark period for Bergman, only returning back to Sweden in 1984.
Auteur Signature: Chamber Films
- Bergman was passionate about individual introspective journeys - undertaking very philosophical journeys of self discovery
- called himself a puppet master - manipulating his actors
- Wrote scripts for some of his early films
- Advocate for chamber cinema - minimalist, two or four actors in a confined setting
- Loved the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, used these in several of his chamber films.
- Opening credits of Through a Glass Darkly - Bach
- Faith Trilogy - deal with the in-between space between sanity and madness, between human contact and total decoupling of human contact. We see these binaries again.
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY CLIP:
Insight into Shakespearian influence, Bergman's own philosophical mind - ''oblivion shall own me and death alone shall love me'' - a marker of Bergman's existential questions, that continually re-appear in his films, especially the faith trilogy.
Persona (1966)
- splitting of human mind
- fragmenting of human mind to a point where you can't tell what's reality
- spawned cultural references
Reverberations of Bergman's work spanned a considerable length of time until the time we live in now.
Bergman History (Cont.)
- He continued to direct at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre
- Received plenty of awards and applauds, in 1977 he received the Swedish Academy of Letters Great Gold Medal
- in the following year the Swedish Film Institute established a prize for excellence in filmmaking named after Bergman.
- Fanny and Alexander - engages in the lives of a wealthy family (theatrical background) told in POV of a young boy. Gained him another academy award in the foreign language category.
Bergman's use of Close Up - signature feature.
Impulses - urges & stimuli from Bergman's childhood that underpin his philosophical ideas in his filmmaking. His relationship with his parents, cognitive modes during his own mental breakdown, questions that stayed with him throughout his own career. Bergman narrated his own experience in Wild Strawberries.
Bergman acquired a holiday island (Fårö island) - used this as a stage for many of his films (Persona. Hour of the Wolf, Through A Glass Darkly)
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