Challenging time, age and power relations: The child figure in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata

Abstract

This article is an interdisciplinary study of the figure of the child in Ingmar Bergman’s Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata) (1978), using theoretical perspectives from childhood studies within a cinema studies framing. By analysing the shifting roles of mother and daughter in this seldom-discussed film, the article demonstrates the on-screen child figure’s capacity to challenge society’s deep-rooted ideas of ‘child’ and ‘adult’, respectively, thereby exposing the inconstant nature of age categories. Drawing on contemporary childhood studies, I argue, using Autumn Sonata as an example, that the child figure in cinema bears a subversive potential for questioning power relations between generations as well as defying a chrono­normative notion of time and age. This reading contributes to a deepened ­awareness of the function of the on-screen child figure, not least transferable to Bergman’s cinematic work. It also sheds light on the mutable connections between fictional children and central conceptions of childhood in contemporary society.