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Photo:
BONNIERS HYLEN/Agence France-Pre
To love the films of
Ingmar Bergman
(1918-2007), one can’t be afraid of the dark. “Film as dream, film as music,” the Swedish stage and film director wrote in his autobiography “The Magic Lantern” (1987). “No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.” Theater and film had been obsessions since childhood, when he traded an army of tin soldiers for his brother’s cinematograph.
Bergman’s towering reputation as a filmmaker is reflected in programs marking the centennial of his birth. At the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, screenings begin on Thursday. On Feb. 7 a series opens at New York’s Film Forum. Other venues will follow in North America. Part of a global celebration, the retrospectives include new restorations by the Swedish Film Institute.
His strengths included collaborating with a brilliant stable of performers, as well as the talented cinematographers
Gunnar Fischer
and
Sven Nykvist.
The work of the director and actor
Victor Sjöström,
especially his exquisite ghost story “The Phantom Carriage” (1921), also helped shape Bergman’s vision. Sjöström played an orchestra conductor in Bergman’s “To Joy” (1949) and a professor haunted by dreams and memories in “Wild Strawberries” (1957).
Photo:
Janus Films
Bergman’s work electrified art-house audiences. It also inspired debate among critics. In an essay in “Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays and Criticism From a Lifelong Love Affair With the Movies” (1998),
Phillip Lopate,
who as a young cinephile preferred the work of
Jean-Luc Godard,
recalls, “It was precisely because Bergman was so much an auteur, but not ‘our kind,’ that he posed such a threat.”
Bergman’s seriousness and deeply personal themes—including preoccupations with death and faith—were forces to be reckoned with. He could also direct with humor and lightness, as in his period comedy intertwining pleasure and death, “Smiles of a
Summer Night
” (1955), whose glittering dialogue and graceful visuals brought him international attention.
Some of Bergman’s most indelible images appeared in “The Seventh Seal” (1957), in which Max von Sydow’s disillusioned crusader returns to plague-ravaged Sweden and plays chess with Death. Bergman described it in “The Magic Lantern” as “an uneven film which lies close to my heart, because it was made under difficult circumstances in a surge of vitality and delight.”
He directed a string of stories addressing spiritual desolation. In the chamber piece “Through a Glass Darkly” (1961),
Harriet Andersson
plays a young woman with schizophrenia. Vacationing on an island with her husband (Mr. Von Sydow), father (
Gunnar Björnstrand
) and brother (
Lars Passgård
), she waits for God in an empty room. The film’s heartbreaking conclusion affirms the sacredness of human love.
Photo:
Janus Films
A familiar motif, an image of Death, appears on a church wall in “Winter Light” (1962), which unfolds during one frigid Sunday. The pastor (Björnstrand) is suffering from the flu and a crisis of faith. He rejects a former lover (
Ingrid Thulin
). A parishioner (Mr. Von Sydow) is suicidal. Filmed with bitter austerity, “Winter Light” is still a film of haunting beauty.
In “The Silence” (1963), two sisters—one (Gunnel Lindblom) with a small son (Jörgen Lindström) and the other seriously ill (Thulin)—fail to communicate while staying in a near-empty hotel in a country on the brink of war. Thulin’s character, a translator unfamiliar with the local language, connects with an elderly waiter through the music of
J.S. Bach.
When he directed his shattering, self-reflexive enigma “Persona” (1966)—in which a nurse (
Bibi Andersson
) attends to an actress who has become mute (
Liv Ullmann
)—Bergman made a radical departure. With its disorienting images, searing performances and probing of the boundaries between acting and living, speech and silence, “Persona” has continued to influence countless films, such as
David Lynch’s
“Mulholland Drive” and
Olivier Assayas’s
“Clouds of
Sils Maria.
”
Bergman also delved into the mysteries of longtime relationships between men and women. In “Shame” (1968), a marriage disintegrates under the horrifying pressures of war. “Scenes From a Marriage” (1973) intimately chronicles the married life, divorce and enduring bond of a couple played by Ms. Ullmann and
Erland Josephson.
When Bergman filmed “The Magic Flute” (1975), he realized a long-held dream. In “Hour of the Wolf” (1968), demons haunting an artist (Mr. Von Sydow) become subdued while watching a scene from
Mozart’s
opera staged in a marionette theater: Tamino, alone in the dark, learns that his beloved lives. Bergman wrote in his autobiography, “It is no longer a matter of the name of an attractive young woman, but a code word for love: ‘Pa-mi-na still lives.’ Love exists. Love is real in the world of human beings.”
The enchanting “Fanny and Alexander” (1982) fluidly combines the earthbound and supernatural. According to Bergman, it had two godfathers:
Charles Dickens
and
E.T.A. Hoffmann.
In imagining the benevolent world of the Ekdahls, he resurrected ghosts from his childhood and his electrifying discovery of art, while envisioning love triumphing over darkness.
—Ms. Jones writes about film and culture for the Journal.
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