The son of a stern Lutheran
pastor who eventually became chaplain to Sweden's royal family, Ingmar
Bergman was raised under strict discipline, on occasion spending hours in a
dark closet for infractions of his father's rigid ethical code. The traumatic
experiences of his childhood were later to play a significant role in his work
as a stage and film director. He fell in love with the theatre at the age of
five, after seeing his first play, and at the age of nine conjured up a toy
theatre under a table in his playroom. He became involved in stage production,
as an actor and director, at the University
of Stockholm, where he studied
literature and art, and after graduation he became a trainee-director at a Stockholm theatre. During
that period he wrote a number of plays, novels, and short stories, most of
which he failed to have produced or published. He entered the Swedish film
industry in 1941 as a script doctor. His big opportunity came in 1944 when he
was assigned to write the script for Hets (titled Torment in the US, Frenzy in the UK) for director Alf Sjöberg. The
film became an international success and the following year Bergman was
assigned his first film as director.
Bergman's early films are
in themselves largely insignificant, but they are interesting from a film historian's
point of view as works that contain the seeds of the director's artistic
development and hint at greatness to come. They typically dealt with problems
and frustrations of the young and the generation gap in Swedish society.
Bergman's first important film was Fängelse(The Devil's Wanton in the US, Prison in the UK), released in 1949. It is the
first complete Bergman work, drawn from his own original script, and it is
imprinted with many of the expressive means that were to become identified as
the director's personal style. The plot, dealing with events leading to a young
prostitute's suicide, is dotted with references to God and Devil, Life and
Death–philosophical and ethical questions that were to torment Bergman in many
of his future films.
Another consistent Bergman
theme–the psychology of women and their introspective inner world–began to
emerge in his next film, Törst (Three Strange Loves in the US, Thirst in the UK). He later developed the theme
further in such films as Summer Interlude
(1951), Waiting Women (1952), Summer with Monika (1953), Journey into Summer (1955), and Smiles of a Summer Night
(1955). The inner world of women remained an integral part of the Bergman theme
in many other films, within the context of broader issues and personal
concerns. A landmark in Bergman's development was The Naked Night (1953), a film that reveals the director's maturation as a visual
stylist as well as a philosophical artist. But Bergman remained an ignored
director at home and virtually unknown abroad until A Smile in the Night (1955) and The Seventh Seal (1957) catapulted him into fame as
a new Scandinavian master by winning prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. The Seventh Seal in particular, a film dealing
allegorically and agonizingly with the philosophy and metaphysics of man’s
relationship to God and his encounters with the idea of Death, created a
Bergman vogue in art theatres all over the world. His films began reflecting
more and more his personal, inner world, his anguish and fears, his joys and
hopes. He developed a team of players which grew into a virtual stock company,
in his stage productions as well as in his films. The
latter came to be identified over the years as Bergman's on-screen alter ego,
an incarnation of the artist's torment and doubts. Actresses who played an
important role in Bergman’s screen dissertations include Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson (they are unrelated), Ingrid Thurin, and Liv Ullmann. The latter lived with the director for many
years and gave birth to his child. Gunnar Fischer and later Sven Nykvist were his regular cameramen, providing the
visual boldness that was so necessary for his themes.
Another landmark film in
Bergman's career was Wild Strawberries (1957), which deals powerfully and
profoundly with the subject of man's isolation, and like several others of the
director's films uses a journey as a plot structure. The film marked a pinnacle
in the international Bergman cult, after which his reputation went into an
anticlimatic semidecline. The Bergman "trilogy" of the early 60s,
which consisted of Through the Dark brightly (1961), The Communicants
(1963), and The Silence (1963) met with mixed critical
reaction, possibly because of the director's overly ambitious attempt to deal
in physical film terms with the complex metaphysical question of the existence
of God and the equally difficult-to-sustain phenomena of human isolation and
alienation. Of the three films, The Silence fared best with critics and audiences. But
Bergman enjoyed a significant resurrection of reputation with Persona (1966), a film that marked his departure from
metaphysics toward the realm of human psychology. This renewed reputation was
further enhanced by Cries and Whispers (1972).
The year 1976 was a
traumatic one in the life of Ingmar Bergman. On January 30, while rehearsing
Strindberg's "Dance of Death" at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre,
he was arrest by two plainclothes policeman, booked like a common criminal, and
charged with income-tax fraud. The impact of the event on Bergman was
devastating. He suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the humiliation and
was hospitalized in a state of deep depression. Even though the charges were
later dropped, Bergman was for a while inconsolate, fearing he would never
again return to directing. He eventually recovered from the shock, but despite
pleas by the Swedish prime minister, high public figures, and leaders of the
film industry, he vowed never to work again in Sweden. He closed down his studio
on the barren Baltic island
of Fårö and went into
self-imposed exile abroad. In April of 1976 he visited Hollywood
and announced plans to make films in the United States. His next was a
German-American production, which he filmed in Munich. The film, The Serpent's Egg (1977), deals with the collapse of
the German currency and other events of the 20s that paved the way for Hitler's
rise to power. It was followed by a British-Norwegian co-production Autumn Sonata (1978), in which for the first time he
directed another famous Swede, Ingrid Bergman. Although he continued to operate
from Munich, by
mid-1978, Ingmar Bergman seemed to have overcome much of his bitterness toward
his motherland. In July of that year he was back in Sweden,
celebrating his 60th birthday on Fårö and resuming his work as a director at Stockholm's Royal
Dramatic Theatre. To honour his return, the Swedish Film Institute launched a
new Ingmar Bergman prize to be awarded annually for excellence in filmmaking.
In 1983, just when it
seemed his career had gone years past its zenith, Bergman astonished the film
world with what many consider one of his finest achievements. An intimately
personal work, Fanny and Alexander offered a mature, sober reappraisal
of the themes and soul-searching questions that preoccupied the director
throughout his career. But the film was surprisingly mellow and accessible to a
wider audience. Gone were the pessimism and anguish that characterized many of
his earlier films. Instead, filmgoers found an exuberant affirmation of life,
love, and faith, bathed in vivid colors–a hopeful summation of a cinema poet's
lifelong inner conflict. Fanny and Alexander fared commercially well in the US,
where it won Academy Awards for best foreign language film, best
cinematography, best art direction, and best costume design. Bergman was
nominated for best director. The film also shared the International Critics
Prize at the 1983 Venice Festival. After the film's release, Bergman announced
his retirement from filmmaking. Within a year he was back, however, with After the Rehearsal, a small-scale production
originally made for TV that went on to receive theatrical distribution.
Ingmar Bergman, for years
now a dominant figure in Swedish theatre and cinema, is widely recognized as
one of the leading film artists living today. He is among a select few
directors who have consistently used the medium of cinema as a creative art of
personal expression, and among an even smaller group that has been able to
exercise near-complete freedom and total artistic control over its film
product. He is the author of autobiography The Magic Lantern (1988) and
film memoir Images: My Life in Film (1993). He wrote the novel The
Best Intentions (1993), based on his parents' lives, and the screenplay for
the 1992 film on the same subject.
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