Abstract
As was revealed in Chapter 2, Smiles of a Summer Night ends happily. Yet, such happy endings are not the case for many of Bergman’s most famous films: Summer with Monika (1953), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Persona (1966), The Passion of Anna (1970), Autumn Sonata (1978) and others. This chapter focuses closely on The Passion of Anna in order to detail some aspects of what had been described in previous chapters as ‘tragedies of remarriage’. The chapter’s arguments are guided to some degree by Stanley Cavell’s theorisations on these issues, where love is considered a ‘best case of acknowledgment’ while tragedy is considered as the consequence of a ‘failure of a best case of acknowledgment’. The chapter brings out issues pertaining to the latter in a discussion of Bergman’s film, while touching on a range of other of Bergman’s films along the way. The chapter also introduces some other reflections on love, most notably from Julia Kristeva (from her Tales of Love), Sigmund Freud, and Jacques Lacan (from his seminar on Transference).
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