Ingmar Bergman

[charliechaplinfan]

Chio, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised, to in viewing it again. I didn't manage to finish it last night, I have 30 minutes or so left to watch. After the first 15 minutes I was compelled to watch the story of this middle class, seemingly perfect marriage wobble and then go through it's death throws. Even though I haven't finished it yet and despite not seeing any redeeming charecteristics in Johan's character, I do have some thoughts

1. I don't know a great deal about Bergman the man, I know he was married six times, this suggest a man who wasn't entirely comfortable in the institution of marriage. Is Johan his alterego? We know Johan had had a fling with a singer before his marriage to Marianne.

2. Marianne is a wife, mother, daughter, divorce attorney, torn different ways. Living the career her parents wanted for her. Her generation were the first to have it all, ie marriage, family, career. She tries to please everyone and feels she fails. Is this Bergman's look at the new emancipated woman.

3. What fails in their marriage for Johan is the sex and the fact he doesn't like being the dutiful son, husband etc. He jeopardises his family life because of unsatisfactory sex life, without trying to sort out the problem first. I find Johan incredibly shallow, as I think we are meant to.

Bergman shows more sympathy to Marianne, she blooms after the seperation whereas Johan suffers and looks older and finally realises his mistake.

The scene where Johan leaves is powerful cinema

[charliechaplinfan]

Well, I finished the film, Johan was slightly redeemed in my mind. He is an unhappy man, not happy with his lot in life, even though he wants for nothing. The film finishes on a high, the couple's love has matured, their lifetogether and apart having gone on quite a journey and they seem supremely happy and in tune with one another, some would say soulmates.

At the beginning of the film we see a couple, so at odds with one another, airing their grievances in public, embarassing Johan and Marianne who they have joined for dinner. Yet as the film progresses our couple have much the same argument albeit in private, Johan saying incredibly wounding things to Marianne and throughout it all she remains the wife/mother figure. I never got the impression that Johan was an emotionally mature man in this relationship until the last reel when he comforts Marianne though her nightmare.

At 162 minutes it's really long for a Bergman movie, it was made at 299 minutes for Swedish TV and released as a shortened version for release abroad. Don't let the length put you off, it's incredibly moving and has some very fine acting in it and touching scenes.

[MichiganJ]

You should check out Bergman's last film Saraband, which revisits Marianne and Johan some thirty years later. It's a nice coda to Scenes From a Marriage as well as Bergman's career.

If you ever have the opportunity to revisit Scenes From a Marriage, I'd highly recommend the full-length TV version. It's broken into six episodes so you don't have to watch it straight through (although you just may want to). The greater length, naturally, allows for much more character depth and revelations, not to mention much more of the perfect and painful performance by Erland Josephson.

In either version, I think Scenes From a Marriage is one of those rare films that works better when viewing at home. The intimacy that home viewing allows can't help but make the film more compelling.

[charliechaplinfan]

I do want to watch Saraband. I watched Scenes From a Marriage knowing nothing about it, thinking it would be another 90 minute film, I was so drawn in by it, thought it excellent and although I didn't like the character of Johan I recognise a very good actor when I see one, well two of them because Liv Ullman is as good.

[charliechaplinfan]

You should check out Bergman's last film Saraband, which revisits Marianne and Johan some thirty years later. It's a nice coda to Scenes From a Marriage as well as Bergman's career.

If you ever have the opportunity to revisit Scenes From a Marriage, I'd highly recommend the full-length TV version. It's broken into six episodes so you don't have to watch it straight through (although you just may want to). The greater length, naturally, allows for much more character depth and revelations, not to mention much more of the perfect and painful performance by Erland Josephson.

In either version, I think Scenes From a Marriage is one of those rare films that works better when viewing at home. The intimacy that home viewing allows can't help but make the film more compelling.

I've just watched Saraband and I have so many thoughts on it.

Firstly and perhaps not the most importantly, I realised that one of the things that I really liked about Liv Ullman is her voice, it sounds so reassuring and warm. She's as attractive in her sixties as she was in her thirties, she has a natural untouched beauty that is lovely to behold, so much nicer for it's naturalness.

Anyhow, back to the film. It has been made for television and seemed to impart that quality more so than in Scenes From a Marriage, it offers voice overs and characters talking to the camera that Scenes didn't have. Marianne and Johan are only the part of the story this time. If I thought I'd become more reconciled to Johan in his old age I was very much mistaken.

[charliechaplinfan]

Johan has inherited a great deal of money and the old house on the lake is now inhabited by his son (not with Marianne but a previous relationship) and his grandaughter. He knows nothing of his daughters with Marianne, one of which is in a nursing home. What kind of father lives his life like this? A supremely selfish one. His relationship with his son is one of contempt and hatred on his part and on the part of his son, contempt because of the way his father has treated him over the years and a real want of being accepted by his father. He wants part of his inheritance for his daughter and Johan humiliates his son so completely that one can feel for his son Henrik.

Henrik, is very complex, his wife Anna died two years ago, a fact her husband and daughter cannot get over. Father keeps Karin the daughter claustrophobically close to him, too close, almost incestuously close. She is filling her mother's void in everything apart from the sexual and that is up to the viewers interpretation. The relationship is wrong and Karin must break away but cannot knowing that her father has little appetite for living without her. She finally makes the break gathering the strength after talking to Marianne.

Marianne is a conduit for the characters to channel their feelings in the family feud. Karin who needs help and a motherly guiding hand finds it in Marianne who never takes on the role of the mother but allows Karin to talk and helps her investigate her feelings. Karin recognises how talking to Marianne helps her work through her dilemma.

[charliechaplinfan]

It's unclear why Marianne came back, she tells Johan that she felt him calling her. She comes to visit and stays with him for a time. She has no bitterness but a slight sadness that is brought to the fore by the talk of Anna, Johan's dead daughter in law, Johan seems to have held her in a special place in his heart, somewhere Marianne feels she has not been held. This brings her sadness. She is not a bitter woman.

Johan seen through Marianne's eyes is someone to be pitied, she doesn't see the side that others complain about. We see it with his dealings with his son, who obviously is crying out to be accepted but lends himself to further humiliation. Marianne sees Henrik's utter contempt for Johan and is horrified by it. She's also horrified at Johan's reaction to Henrik's suicide attempt.

Johan is so difficult to take. He hates himself most of all. He hates his eldest child because Henrik rejected him when he was 17. He seems to hate the sight of him, he's cruel btoh intentionally to Henrik and unintenionally to Marianne.

In this drama Bergman has lost none of his ability to shock and to entertain. His use of Johan and Marianne is a masterstroke to a film that could have been made about any four people. Reuniting Liv and Erland again is a pleasure to watch. I don't feel the characters are the same as those in Scenes From a Marriage, especially Marianne but we can dreamthat they are.

[charliechaplinfan]

Tonight was the turn of The Hour of the Wolf, I've never been very good with horror films unless they are very tongue in cheek. There's nothing tongue in cheek here. Undeniably Bergman, the same beautiful photography and stirring scores which I've come to recognise as Bergman. I think the point of the film is when Liv Ullman says to Max Von Sydow that when couples have spent a lifetime together they start to look alike and think alike. Liv starts to see the charaters that Max sees, she's unable to discern what is true and what is unreal. I'm not sure that I understood what was real and what wasn't. I chose to believe that very little was real, apart from what went on in the cottage. The performances given by Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman are what bind the film together. It's interesting seeing them paired together again after Shame and The Passion of Anna, both of which I preferred.

Of all the Bergman movies I've seen in the last couple of months, Winter Light is for me the very best of what I've seen, then Cries and Whispers and then closely followed by many others. There's something about Winter Light and Cries and Whispers that are outstanding for me.

[charliechaplinfan]

Back to Bergman, who I've drifted away from in recent months due to my inability to concentrate due to illness, I've found my feet again tonight, albeit encouraged by Ingrid Bergman's biography to dip my toe and try out Autumn Sonata. The first thing that struck me was the construction, lighting and design of a Bergman film, particularly from this period, 1978. Bergman often treats the viewer to monologues to camera and this film starts with one. A man watching his wife who is engrossed writing a letter, to her mother as it turns out which she gives him to read. She has invited her mother to stay, a mother she hasn't seen for 7 years, a successful concert pianist who has just lost her longtime companion. Daughter, Liv Ullman has felt abandoned over the years by mother Ingrid Bergman and during the visit all the bitterness of the intervening years comes out, Liv/Eva also has a sister who has an illness which mother does not like to see and deal with. I was intrigued to watch this film by the parellels it draws with Ingrid's life, the abandoned daughter, Pia her child by Petter Lindstrom who she couldn't see for several years due to custody and both husbands. The illness of Isabella, which Ingrid did give up her career to nurse her through. Ingird was very career driven and knew there was a lot of her in Charlotte the mother, it was very brave of her to portray Charlotte, perhaps no one knew her better and the scenes between Liv and Ingrid are no less powerful that those between Liv and Josef in Scenes From A Marriage. Ingmar Bergman knew of course how personal he was getting to Ingrid's personal life, there was a point that Ingrid thought of leaving the film, she thought about it over the weekend and decided to go ahead with the film, an apology the biography says to Pia. It's a film worth watching to see two of the best actresses to come out of Europe handling very powerful dialogue, a filmed play with not a lot of backdrop, just the dialogue. Ingrid looks amazing, such bone structure she had, she looks far younger than her years, Liv in constrast inhabits a character that is very different than that of her mother wearing non descript clothes and an old fashioned hairstyle with big round glasses, taking away from her own natural beauty. It doesn't carry the beauty of some of Bergman's work but it has the power.

[MichiganJ]

I didn't see anything written about one of my favorite Bergman films, which I recently revisited, The Magician (1958). This film often gets lost in the shuffle as it falls between Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring, but The Magician is just as thought-provoking and entertaining, and is perhaps, more accessible. Featuring Bergman staples, doubt, magic and masks, The Magician is essentially a film in which Bergman answers his critics, pitting the artist against said critics; the believers vs. the non-believers. (Foreshadowing his role in Winter Light, Gunnar Bjönstarnd plays a Doctor who is very much a non-believer, one who very much wants to unmask von Sydow's mute Magician.) While sounding "heavy", The Magician is actually a "comedy" and does have considerable ribald humor, much of which features Bibi Andersson. The film's climax morphs into a horror movie, with dark shadows and disembodied hands, all finally leading to Bergman's usual happy ending.

[charliechaplinfan]

I don't know why I didn't get to this one when I was watching Bergman's movies, perhaps the rental company didn't have a copy, I do now and will have to make time to watch it. I can't say that I find all of his work easy to comprehend, some sit so easily with me, I think it's his simplicity and economy of storytelling, leaving the visuals to make an impression that I find the easiest to appreciate. Some of his better known works I've not appreciated as much, like The Seventh Seal, I've watched it twice but it's not reached a special place, yet. I do like Bergman's continual use of the same actor/actresses, I like seeing the same faces but in very different roles, it shows the skill of both the director and the actors/actresses and adds to the feeling of simplicity for me.

[kingrat]

I saw Bergman's The Naked Night aka Sawdust and Tinsel. Apparently the Swedish title is closer to Sunset of a Clown or The Jester's Evening. Whatever you call it, this is now one of my three or four favorite Bergman films. This would make an interesting double feature with Fellini's La Strada, as both concern traveling circus or sideshow performers. Early in the film comes one of the most famous passages in Bergman's early films, a flashback which shows the clown Frost who drags his faithless wife from the sea where she's been frolicking with a number of soldiers and then carries her on his back across a rocky beach. I believe this was shot on overexposed filmstock to give a different look; Hilding Bladh and the great Sven Nykvist were the cinematographers.

The circus has arrived in the town where the wife and sons of Albert, the ringmaster (Ake Gronberg), live. He hasn't seen them for three years but contemplates leaving the circus and helping in his wife's shop. Meanwhile, Albert's mistress, Anne (Harriet Andersson) wonders if she could get a job in the legitimate theater, perhaps through the influence of the leading actor, played by Hasse Ekman. Betrayal is the main theme of the film, and love in spite of betrayal.

Some of my favorite parts: the great flashback, despite some overly obvious symbolism; the whole seedy atmosphere of the traveling circus; the delectable Harriet Andersson, so sexy as a young woman who doesn't understand how much appeal she has, which makes her even more attractive; Anders Ek, unforgettable as the clown; the scene where Albert's wife Agda calmly tells him she doesn't want him back in her life (Bergman handles this beautifully); the long shots of the horse-drawn caravans low on the horizon beneath a vast expanse of gray sky. One amusing moment occurs when Anne complains that her perfume is cheap and the actor promptly says, "Try mine." Gals, this is never a good sign. Just sayin'. By whatever title, this is a film to cherish.

[kingrat]

According to Max von Sydow, The Seventh Seal was made for about 45,000 Swedish kroner or about $9,000. Talk about getting your money’s worth. The print shown was visually outstanding, though the soundtrack wasn’t the same quality. Still, to see the cinematographer Sven Nykvist’s stunning images of the Swedish coast in the opening scenes of the film was wonderful.

A little to my surprise, quite a few people in the audience had not seen The Seventh Seal. Although I did chat briefly with one woman who had expected more of the chessboard scenes—Max von Sydow confirmed that at the time no one had any idea that these shots would become iconic—and did not care for the film, the response by the first-timers was overwhelmingly positive. “That was fabulous,” I heard one man say. I also heard comments like “I’d forgotten how powerful the scene was when the actors are performing and the procession of penitents comes through.”

Because von Sydow had mentioned Bergman’s love of Orff’s Carmina Burana, I noticed a shot that might have slipped by: first we see a pig walking on the floor of the tavern, then the camera moves up to show a pig roasting on the spit. This was probably inspired by the song of the roasting swan in Carmina Burana.

Much has been written about The Seventh Seal, and instead of discussing the whole film, I want to concentrate on some of the things which struck me most this time. Some of the characters are particularly sensitive to religious matters: Jof the actor sees a vision of Mary teaching the infant Jesus to walk. The Knight has a privileged moment, like an instant of divine grace, when the actors share their milk and strawberries with him, in a kind of divine communion. It’s noteworthy that what the Knight sees as a glimpse of the divine is Jof’s ordinary life. The woman whom the Squire saved from being raped, played by Gunnel Lindlom, also has an acute sensitivity to religious matters. Although she has no dialogue for much of the film, her reactions are always strong and important (a great performance), and Bergman makes sure that she is included in many shots where she has no lines. To get a fresh perspective on this film, pay attention to her scenes. She is drawn to the flagellants, and it is she who first sees the figure of Death when he appears in the Knight’s castle, and she is the one who says, “It is finished” (Christ’s last words from the cross).

Max von Sydow spoke of Bergman’s love of music, and one can see some of the structure of The Seventh Seal in musical terms. The Knight is the first theme, the Squire the opposing second theme. By the way, it’s important that the Squire, who feels no need for God, distrusts religion, and doesn’t see Death when he appears in the castle, is the one who saves the girl from being raped and who saves the actor Jof from being tormented, perhaps even killed, by the people in the tavern. If Jof and his family, the Knight, and the servant girl are the positive side of the religious impulse, the darker side—the thematic inversion, to continue the musical analogy—is represented by the flagellants, the young witch, and Raval, the priest who tries to rape the girl. This priest is the one who had sent the Knight off to the Crusades.

The medieval religious paintings which inspired Bergman’s play, which eventually became The Seventh Seal, contained humorous as well as serious scenes, and Bergman puts a surprising amount of humor in it, which isn’t how most of us remember the film. Most of the humor concerns the actors and the love triangle of Skat (the older actor), the blacksmith, and the blacksmith’s wife. The scene of Death sawing down the tree in which Skat is hiding has a very medieval feel—it’s more their sense of humor than ours, and it works.

Have you ever thought of The Seventh Seal as a film about marriage? I hadn’t until I saw it again. Jof, Mia, and their baby are the happy family, still early in their marriage, still in love. The Knight and his lady have been separated for years while he was on crusade, and chill that has grown between them is like a harbinger of similar couples in Bergman films to come. Perhaps the ideals and aspirations and doubts of the Knight have prevented him from the simple happiness available to Jof and Mia. The blacksmith and his wife are like a parody of these marriages, governed strictly by impulse, whether it’s the impulse to run away with someone else or the impulse to get back together. The squire and the girl he saves from being raped are not married, yet he looks after her in the way that a husband might. Their relationship is the least developed of the couples.

The festival presented us with tough choices, and for me the toughest of all was deciding to forgo The Train, The Big Parade, and The Tall Target for a chance to hear the interview with Max von Sydow and then watch The Seventh Seal again. I’m glad I did.