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Saturday 15 September 2007:
Summer with Monika (1953)
Saturday 13 October 2007:
Persona (1966)
Saturday 10 November 2007:
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Saturday 8 December 2007:
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Ingmar Bergman died this year at the age of 89. According to the official Bergman website, he revolutionized the theatre many times over and it remained his greatest and constant passion. Yet it is as a filmmaker that he is known best.
Ingmar Bergman was not only one of the greatest ever Swedish artists but one of the world's leading filmmakers, ranking alongside other giants such as Kurasawa, Ozu, Tarkovsky, Godard and Antonioni. From the 1950s onwards, Bergman put Sweden on the map of world cinema and ensured it remained there for the next half century.
Bergman's oeuvre is regarded as the epitome of European Art Cinema so it is worth our considering for a moment what how that term is used. Essentially it refers to films that are, to varying degrees, aesthetically innovative, socially committed and humanistic in outlook. Typically, European Art Films have loose and ambiguous narratives with characters who search for meaning rather than action. They display overt directorial expression, a heightened sense of realism (including their depiction of sexuality) and move at a slower pace than their Hollywood counterparts. The originality and personal vision of European Art Films are therefore quite different from the industry-based and generically-coded films of the Hollywood studios.
Bergman directed more than 60 feature films, many of which he also wrote, so any choice for this commemorative season will inevitably omit somebody's favourite. I would like to have shown Fanny and Alexander (1982) but the film version lasts three hours (and the TV version five hours). In an interview broadcast on the BBC earlier this year, Bergman said he considered Persona and Cries and Whispers the high points of his output. I find the latter very hard to watch and have elected to show instead The Seventh Seal Ð though frequently parodied, this iconic film is in the cinemas again this summer and is about to be released on DVD in a newly remastered print. Summer with Monika serves as an exemplary introduction to Bergman and Art Cinema. For me, a Bergman season that omitted Wild Strawberries is simply not credible.
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PHOTO: LOUIS HUTCH © AB SVENSK FILMINDUSTRI
Summer with Monika (1953) Saturday 15 September 2007
The following account is slightly modified from account on the DVD Times website:
Monika (Harriet Andersson) is fed-up with her job in the grocery store, is constantly the victim of unwelcome advances of her male co-workers and is sick of the young men she goes out with. She's also unhappy with her family situation and the behaviour of her drunken father. Finally pushed past her limit, she runs away with Harry (Lars Ekborg), a young man she has just met who is also disillusioned with his work and family life. Together they take a boat, leave their troubles behind and fend for themselves in the wilderness of the Stockholm archipelago. They spend an idyllic few months together before real-life comes crashing back.
There appears little to distinguish the storyline from other early Bergman stories of young people struggling to live their lives freely and find love outside the restrictions placed on them by their small-town surroundings, social attitudes and unhappy family situations. What distinguishes Summer with Monika is, quite simply, the presence of Harriet Andersson. Monika becomes a force of nature, uncontrollable and wild, capable of intense passions but also unreliable, unpredictable and untameable. There is a remarkable scene towards the end of the film where she looks defiantly and directly into camera - and therefore directly into the eyes of the viewer. It is perhaps Monika's defiant look rather than the film's uncommon though chaste nudity and the small acts of rebellion that were really the most shocking aspects of Summer with Monika (the film reportedly caused a great deal of problems for some members of the board of the Svensk Filmindustri company). That look into camera directly challenges viewers to pass judgment on her if they dare although she does not seem to care in the least if they do.
 The impact of Summer with Monika and the step beyond conventional dramatic performance, characterisation and performance doesn't just make its mark on Bergman's subsequent work. It opened up new cinematic potential - its influence can be seen on the French New Wave, praised as it was by Godard, and referenced by Truffaut in The 400 Blows. Truffaut's runaway bad-boy alter-ego Antoine Doinel is not only seen stealing a poster of the famous image of Harriet Andersson in Summer with Monika, but his gaze directly into camera at the end of the film is a similar personal act of defiance.
Summer with Monika is one of Bergman's most delightful films, striking a wonderful balance between dramatic narrative, lyrical reverie and boldness of experimentation. It effortlessly breaks down the barrier between his work and the viewer, forcing the spectator to see the film as much more than a moralistic story.
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© AB SVENSK FILMINDUSTRI
Persona (1966) Saturday 13 October 2007
The following account is taken from the Strictly Film School website.
Persona is arguably Ingmar Bergman's most challenging and experimental film. Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullman) is an accomplished stage actress who, in the middle of performing Elektra, ceases to speak. Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson), the young nurse assigned to care for her, learns that there is nothing physically or even psychologically wrong with Elisabeth - she has simply, consciously decided not to speak. Alma (the name, not accidentally, is the Spanish word for soul) describes her initial impressions of Elisabeth as gentle and childlike, but with strict eyes. She takes Elisabeth to the attending physician's remote summer house to facilitate her recuperation. At first, the two seem ideally suited: a talkative, candid, and inexperienced nurse, and a sophisticated, enigmatic, and silent patient. They take long walks, bask in the sun, and read together. It is obvious that their isolation has cultivated a sense of intimacy between them, albeit one-sided. But it is a curious attachment. At first, Alma attempts to fill the void of Elisabeth's silence. She talks incessantly about her life, unburdening her soul to the seemingly attentive patient. But soon, it is obvious that Elisabeth's interest is more than mere politeness or voyeuristic curiosity. She is, in fact, "willing" her identity - the facade she created as Elisabeth Vogler - to the mentally weaker Alma. Elisabeth's struggle for absolute transference - the proverbial battle for the soul - is a means of further divorcing herself from the pain of her own existence. Persona is a provocative, highly cerebral, and artistically complex depiction of human frailty, cruelty, and identity.
© AB SVENSK FILMINDUSTRI
Bergman uses minimal composition and extremely tight close-ups to illustrate the theme of psychological deconstruction. Note the prevalent use of single camera shots throughout the duration of a scene. The lack of camera movement forces us to study the characters' faces. Persona, after all, as the title suggests, is not about who the person actually is, but the different identities, or facades, that the person projects. Figuratively, Elisabeth Vogler, having played the role of celebrity, wife, and mother, has decided to abandon her persona and walk off the stage. A variation on the idea of duality provides an essential ingredient to the plot development. The themes of experience, children, and romantic relationships take on very different meanings for the two women. Alma seems to covet what Elisabeth has, but she has deliberately chosen other paths. Note the monologue that is shown twice: one showing a close-up of Alma, and the other of Elisabeth. It is a scene about regret, frustration, and denial. The effect illustrates how different, and yet similar, these two women are... and how cruel and destructive the human will can be.
For a fuller account of this remarkable film I strongly recommend Susan Sontag's extended essay from Sight and Sound in 1967.
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© AB SVENSK FILMINDUSTRI
The Seventh Seal (1957) 10 November 2007
Below is Peter Bradshaw's review in The Guardian of Friday July 20, 2007:
Ingmar Bergman's dark masterpiece effortlessly sees off the revisionists and the satirists; it is a radical work of art that reaches back to scripture, to Cervantes and to Shakespeare to create a new dramatic idiom of its own. It was released 50 years ago, but it's as fresh as a glass of ice-cold water.
Max von Sydow and Gunnar Björnstrand are the ascetic Crusader knight and his cynical squire who return from the wars after 10 years to find their country ravaged with plague and the population panicking about the coming apocalypse. The knight is confronted by the cowled figure of Death, who agrees to a game of chess, and lets the knight stay alive for as long as he can stave off checkmate. It's an inspired conceit, a seriocomic masterpiece on its own, which Bergman carries off with absolute conviction. Woody Allen's honourable homage in Love and Death brought out its latent black comedy, though a batsqueak of this is present in Bergman. The chess game is a brilliant metaphor for man's attempt to defy mortality's gravity through his accomplishments, perhaps most vividly in the idea of artistic genius, the need to create a vital work which will survive the author's death. On his journey home to his wife, the knight accumulates a raggle-taggle entourage of strolling players, whose good-natured innocence he seizes on as a hopeful sign of humanity's decency. Elsewhere, this is in short supply. A corpse-robber turns out to be a lapsed Christian zealot; the squire is revolted to recognise the same man whose firebrand oratory inspired them to go to the Crusades in the first place.
© AB SVENSK FILMINDUSTRI
The Internet Movie Database entry for this film, incidentally, has the tagline "surrealism", presumably because of the chess scenes. But this isn't quite right: a surrealist might sport with the forms of the real world and find sensual and subversive pleasure in the act. Bergman's project is far more earnest. The movie fiercely addresses itself to the agony of belief, the need to believe in a God who remains silent, mysterious, absent. It is a work of art that grabs the audience by the lapels, believers and unbelievers alike, and demands not answers, exactly, but an acknowledgement that this is the most important question, the only question: why does anything exist at all? Even after half a century, The Seventh Seal is an untarnished gold-standard of artistic and moral seriousness.
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 Wild Strawberries (1957) Saturday 8th December 2007
PHOTO: LOUIS HUTCH © AB SVENSK FILMINDUSTRI
The following account is taken from the Strictly Film School website:
Wild Strawberries captures the thoughtful and compassionate side of Ingmar Bergman rarely seen in his films. It is the story of an aging man's introspective journey on the meaning of his life, and inevitability of death. Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) is compiling his memoirs in preparation for an honorary degree that he is to receive for 50 years of medical practice. After an incomprehensible nightmare, he impulsively changes his travel plans, and decides to drive to Lund with his daughter-in-law, Marianne (Ingrid Thulin). Marianne is separated from his son, Evald (Gunnar Bjornstrand), but decides to go home and reconcile with him. The road to Lund is a reluctant path that takes Professor Borg through his youth: the family's summer cottage, the town he served as a physician, and his mother's house. He meets a young hitchhiker named Sara (Bibi Andersson) who reminds him of first love. He rescues a stranded, verbally abusive husband and his suffering wife, who undoubtedly reflect his cruelty to his late wife. In the course of their journey, he confronts his past failures, and reconciles with his life, and mortality.
Allegorical dreams are integral to the film's theme. Professor Borg's runaway carriage dream is similar to the dream sequence in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, signifying the burden of life, guilt, and inescapability of death. The dream is obscure and surreal, as if the mind is in denial of its fate. In contrast, the summer cottage dream is lucid, nostalgic, and melancholy. Professor Borg reluctantly awakens from it with a profound sense of loss and regret. His most unsettling dream occurs in a lecture hall because it is a place that has defined his existence. Having become alienated from his family, and denied his skills, his life, and legacy, are lost. The final dream occurs after he attempts to reunite Evald and Marianne. Recalling a family picnic by the lake, the effect is warm, peaceful, and redemptive. It is a subtly beautiful affirmation of reconciliation and closure.
According to the official Bergman website, Wild Strawberries was Bergman's most successful film in terms of the number of awards it has received and it firmly established his reputation as a filmmaker on the international stage. Moreover, with the possible exception of The Seventh Seal, it is the Bergman film that other filmmakers have most frequently referenced. Philip and Kersti French have even described it as "the real ur-road movie", claiming that other films in the genre - such as Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) - owe an implicit debt to Bergman's film. This may be an exaggeration, but whether in the form of parody or homage, there are numerous references to Wild Strawberries in the films of directors as diverse as Pedro Almodóvar (High Heels), André Téchiné (My Favourite Season), David Cronenberg and Tim Burton. Yet the most tireless devotee of the film is surely Woody Allen, who has made at least three films that - wholly or in part - can be seen as appendages to Wild Strawberries: Another Woman (1988), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Deconstructing Harry (1997).
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