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

Abstract

Born: July 14, 1918, Uppsala, Uppsala lan, Sweden Died: July 30, 2007, Faro, Gotlands lan, Sweden 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 Sjostrom's 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 Faro, 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 premieres gave rise to fierce media debates. …