Ingmar bergman

Ingmar Bergman (Uppsala, July 14, 1918 – Fårö, July 30, 2007) was a Swedish screenwriter and director of theater and cinema, considered one of the key film directors of the second half of the 20th century.

Biography

Erik Bergman, during a sermon at the Hedvig Eleonora church. ca. 1930

The second son of Lutheran pastor Erik Bergman (1886-1970) and Karin Åkerblom, Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala. The metaphysical world of religion influenced both his childhood and his adolescence. His education was based on Lutheran concepts: "Almost all of our education was based on concepts such as sin, confession, punishment, forgiveness and mercy, concrete factors in relationships between parents and children and with God," he writes in the memoirs of he. «The punishments were something completely natural, something that was never questioned. Sometimes they were quick and simple like slaps and butt-whipping, but they could also take very sophisticated forms, honed over generations.” Many of his works are inspired by such fears and violent relationships. The ritual of punishment and other anecdotes from his childhood appear staged in one of his most recognized films, Fanny and Alexander , where Alexander is a ten-year-old boy who is a transcript of little Bergman.

Progressively, the young Bergman sought a way to channel his own feelings and beliefs, becoming more and more independent of parental values in order to search for his own spiritual identity, but, throughout his life, Bergman always kept an open channel with his childhood, and in it the cinema had penetrated strongly with the gift of an elementary cinematographer, which led him to all kinds of daydreams and technical knowledge.

From the age of thirteen he studied high school at a private school in Stockholm; later he graduated in Letters and History of Art at the University. He found in the theater, and later in the cinema, the two most appropriate means to express himself and focus his creative capacity and potential. During the World War II years, already estranged from his family, he began his career as an assistant director at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm. However, the images and values of his childhood, which would follow him for the rest of his life, and the proximity to his father's work, had immersed him in metaphysical questions: death, autonomy, pain and love..

Cinematography

Bergman's film career began in 1941 working as a screenwriter. His first screenplay was conceived in 1944 based on a story of his, Torture ( Hets ), which was finally a film directed by Alf Sjöberg. Simultaneously to his work as a screenwriter, he worked as script ; and in his second autobiography, Images, Bergman points out that he did the final exterior shooting (it was his start as a professional director), and that his obsessive and violent story was retouched by Sjöbert, who was the one who it gave a special inner tension to the character. The film was produced by Victor Sjöström, so Bergman thus had close contact with two great directors. Sjöström will support him, participating as an actor in two of his films.

The international success of Torture allowed Bergman to start directing a year later with Crisis. Over the next ten years he wrote and directed more than a dozen films, including It Rains on Our Love (Det regnar på vår kärlek), Prison (Fängelse) in 1949, Circus Night (Gycklarnas afton) and A Summer with Monica (Sommaren med Monika), both from 1953. The actress in the latter, Harriet Andersson, was in his opinion one of the "rare shining specimens of the cinematographic jungle".

Curiously, the first international recognition, both from the public and from critics, occurred in peripheral countries of the film industry, with the exhibition of Sommarlek (Summer Games in Spain and Juventud divino tesoro in Uruguay and Argentina) at the Punta del Este Film Festival in 1952. The success obtained at that festival led to the exhibition of all of Bergman's early work in Rio de la Plata as well as immediately in Brazil, when it was highly appreciated by both the public and critics, before its international recognition in Europe and North America. The adhesion of the public and film critics of the Latin American Southern Cone persisted throughout all of Bergman's later work.

International recognition in Europe and North America came with Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende, 1955), where «there is a portion of nostalgia, a father-daughter relationship that reflects my life, the great confusion and sadness", in addition to the complicated love; with it he won the "Best poetic humor" award and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.

It was followed by the filming of The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) and Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället), released ten months apart in Sweden in 1957. The Seventh Seal—for many his first masterpiece, though Bergman, who appreciated it, did not consider it flawless—won the Special Prize of the Jury and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. And Wild Strawberries won numerous awards, including the Golden Globe, the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay. It is the beginning of the director's best period, which would link numerous masterpieces until the end of the 1960s.

He then made two films: Nära livet (Nära livet, 1958), which received numerous awards —it is one of the director's first chamber works (with few characters and practically developed on a single stage)— and The Face (Ansiktet, 1959) —the director's only foray into mystery films mixed with black humor— with which he won the BAFTA award. El rostro, despite not being a great critical and public success, is one of the most claimed titles of his filmography, by the mature Bergman or by his admirer Woody Allen, who is inspired by his production.

He filmed The Maiden's Spring (Jungfrukällan, 1960), a crude medieval fable based on an old Swedish story of rape and revenge, for which he received an Oscar for best foreign film, the Golden Globe and a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Bergman is at the top and, right around this time, he begins to spend long periods of time on the Swedish island of Fårö, where he shoots many of his key films.

Bergman with Sven Nykvist during the shooting Like in a mirror1961

After filming the diversion The Devil's Eye (Djävulens öga) —an interesting comedy forgotten over the years about the myth of Don Juan—, Bergman directed three of the most important films in his filmography: Like in a mirror (Såsom i en spegel, 1961), The Communicants ( Nattvardsgästerna, 1963) and Silence (Tystnaden, 1963), in which he explores themes such as loneliness, isolation or the absence of God. Critics treated the works as a triptych and Bergman initially denied this claim (arguing that he had not planned his shoots as a trilogy and that he saw no similarities between the three films), but would end up accepting such a label for the works because of their subject matter.

Like Through a Mirror again won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, as well as being nominated for numerous awards. The film dealt with a quartet of characters, a case of hysterical-religious madness, as the author wrote. For its part, El silencio became one of the director's most acclaimed works and his greatest box office hit to date. However, the price of fame was expensive, due to the desperate plot content (which anticipated in its realization part of the formal style of Bergman's later works) and its explicit sex scenes; Silence was banned in many countries, and Bergman received several death threats from the most conservative and cynical sector of viewers at the time, who viewed the film as pornography. In this period of unbridled creativity and great critical and public success, Bergman shot a minor comedy parodying Fellini's films: Those women! (För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor, 1964).

In 1966, after spending a few months hospitalized, Bergman directed Persona, a film that the author himself considered one of the most important of his career, and which masterfully condenses all the work he had been doing since the early 1960s. The film had a modest box office take (110,725 Swedes saw Persona compared to 1,459,031 who had seen Silence three years earlier, such as Peter Cowe points out in The Bergman Personal Files); but despite its air of experimental art and essay cinema, and the fact that Persona barely won any awards, many would consider it the pinnacle of his career from its premiere and it is surely his work. today more recognized of him. In addition, according to him, he wrote: «During the filming, passion reached Liv and me; a great mistake that led us to build Fårö's house, between 1966 and 1967; she stayed there for a few years."

Bergman shot one of his most cryptic and controversial works, The Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen, 1967), a work as adored as it was criticized by its audience due to its complex storytelling and symbolism. In 1968 he said goodbye to black and white (he returned to it in 1980) with the crude war film The Shame (Skammen, 1968) and the film for Swedish television The Rite (Riten, 1969). «At the origin of Shame there is a personal horror: I saw a report on Vietnam, before the great escalation, based on the suffering of civilians; the main characters are two musicians, and he loses his balance in a warlike invasion".

Bergman later premiered what is officially (if you don't count Those women!) his first color work, Passion (En passion , 1969), considered by a sector another of his capital works (almost like all the author's works of the 60s), partly due to the careful and beautiful treatment of photography. The film is a painful analysis of the bitterest side of love and relationships; and in it they repeat the same actors from The Hour of the Wolf and The Shame. In it, the director is allowed the license to include in the middle of his footage an outtake from his previous film ( La shame ) in the form of a dream. With Pasión an ascendant stage full of experimentation and creativity for Bergman comes to an end, and from then on the director will delve more uneasily and harshly into the issues that he had already been dealing with in his previous works, with greater or worse fortune.

Then La coma (Beröringen, 1971) was released, the first film shot entirely in English and a product designed purely for the Hollywood market, which the director himself denied for years later and which was one of his biggest critical failures. Failure that was remedied with the premiere of Cries and whispers (Viskningar och rop, Whispers and screams, 1972). Precious and tormented work, with impeccable photography and scant dialogue, which would be among the most applauded of the director, with three Oscar nominations and awards at Cannes, and which represented a darker and more dreamlike return to themes dealt with in previous films such as The silence.

At this time, Bergman worked for Swedish television. Two of his most memorable works are Secrets of a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap, 1973) and The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten, 1975). The first film had its cinematographic premiere in a shortened version and would be remembered as one of the best in-depth studies on couple relationships brought to the screen; while the second gave a simple and wise theatrical synthesis of Mozart.

In 1976, Bergman directed Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte), a brutally stark and highly dreamlike film that delves suffocatingly into the psyche of a disturbed protagonist. Again, he was nominated for an Oscar for best director and won a Golden Globe. That same year he was charged with tax evasion and committed to a psychiatric hospital; later it would be seen that it was a problem of his accountant and everything would be resolved by paying the difference.The scandal was international and had a lot of support.

After this episode, Bergman decided to leave Sweden and settle in Germany to shoot The Serpent's Egg (Ormens ägg/Das Schlangenei, 1977), a curious analysis of the Nazism that would be overshadowed by the success of his next work: Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, 1978), praised by many as another of his artistic peaks. Autumn Sonata received Oscar and César nominations, and won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. The film was attended by Ingrid Bergman and returned to the theme of deteriorated family relationships that the director had already worked on in numerous previous works such as El silencio (1963), Cries and whispers (1972) or shortly before Face to Face (1976).

The director's German stage ended with Of the Life of Puppets (Aus dem Leben der Marionetten, 1980). Initially shot for television, it was the first work without the intervention of Liv Ullman in the cast since the 1960s. A severe film, appreciated by the director, shot in black and white, which revolves around the murder of a prostitute.

Subsequently, Bergman released his last feature film, Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander, 1982), which won the Oscar, the Golden Globe and the César for best foreign film, in addition to other nominations. This film marked the celluloid director's farewell and was considered by many to be the finishing touch to a career full of masterpieces.

From then on, Bergman dedicated himself to the theater, an activity he had never abandoned, and to shooting several movies for television. He is particularly interested in Saraband (2003), the last shot by the director, and in which he takes up the characters from his work Secretos de un matrimonio to place them in old age. He conceives it as a tribute to Ingrid who recently disappeared.

The director passed away at the age of 89 on July 30, 2007 on the island of Fårö, where he had retired. That same day, the Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni also died.

Main actors and other collaborators

Bergman worked on numerous films with the same actors; among which those who accompanied him throughout his career stand out, these being:

• Gunnar Björnstrand: charismatic actor, nephew and galan debuted with the director in It rains on our love in 1946, making a totally secondary role. It would continue Music in the dark (1948), Three women (Secrets of women(1952) and Circus Night (1953); until 1954 he would face one of his first roles as protagonist in A lesson in love. In Dreams (1955) and Smiles of a summer night (1955) he continued to show his dowry, but it was in 1957 with The seventh seal where his role as the protagonist’s squire (the purest Sancho Panza style) makes him shine. He would continue to work with Bergman on many of his most important titles: Wild strawberries (1957), The face (1958), The Eye of the Devil (1960), Like in a mirror (1961) or The comulgators (1963), one of his best interpretations where he embodies a pastor who has lost faith. From 1966, he would have small appearances in Bergman films, although of great argumental importance: Person (1966), Shame (1968), The rite (1969), Face to naked (1976), Autumn Sonata (1978) and Fanny and Alexander (1982).

• Ingrid Thulin: gorgeous and multifaceted Swedish actress who debuted with Bergman Wild strawberries (1957). He continued with varying and personality roles in At the threshold of life (1958), The face (1958), The comulgators (1963) and Silence (1963) where their interpretations are superb. After a few years of international glory in Hollywood productions, he returned with Bergman in 1968 in The time of the wolfto which they would follow The rite (1969) and Screams and whispers (1972), where he makes one of the best roles of his career. In 1984 he filmed for Swedish television his latest film with Bergman After rehearsal (1984).

• Max Von Sydow: The Scandinavian actor of tortured roles was one of Bergman's favorites throughout his career. With melancholic and deep airs debuted as protagonist in The seventh seal (1957) and would continue in almost all the productions of the director at that time: Wild strawberries (1957), At the threshold of life (1958), The face (1958), The fountain of the maiden (1960), Like in a mirror (1961), The comulgators (1963), The time of the wolf (1968), Shame (1968), Passion (1969) and The carcoma (1971), last collaboration with Bergman. Then Von Sydow would succeed in Hollywood after interpreting Father Merrin in The exorcist (1973) and would continue a successful career.

• Bibi Andersson: An angelic face, is one of the most striking Swedish actresses of his time. Debuted in Bergman's cinema with a secondary role Smiles of a summer night (1955). A year earlier, he had begun an affair with the director replacing Harriet Andersson in the heart of Bergman, a relationship that would extend until 1969. Bibi Andersson would initially be characterized by his cheerful or vintage roles The seventh seal (1957), Wild strawberries (1957), At the threshold of life (1958), The face (1958), The Eye of the Devil (1960) or Those women! (1964). In Person (1966), it would change radically from record showing a spectacular interpretative maturity and dominating with its pulse the entire film, in one of the best monologues in the history of cinema. I'd still shoot three more movies with Bergman: Passion (1969), The carcoma (1971) and Secrets of a marriage (1973).

• Liv Ullmann: Norwegian actress, and great love of Bergman, debuted with the director in Person (1966), followed by almost all the productions of the director between 1966 and 1978: The time of the wolf (1968), Shame (1968), Passion (1969), Screams and whispers (1972), Secrets of a marriage (1973), Face to naked (1976), The egg of the snake (1977) and Autumn Sonata (1978). I would achieve international success and recognition as a dramatic actress, and develop a broad career as an actress and film director. I'd still shoot one more movie with Bergman, the last of the director, Saraband (2003).

• Harriet Andersson: another great love of Bergman, debuted with the director in the polemic A summer with Monicato which the following productions would follow Circus Night (1953), A lesson in love (1954), Dreams (1955) and Smiles of a summer night (1955). After Bergman's international success, he would return to the director in Like in a mirror (1961), Those women! (1964) and Screams and whispers (1972), his best interpretation. I'd still shoot one more movie for Bergman for Swedish television, The elect (1986).

• Erland Josephson: although he makes his debut with Bergman in 1958 with two films followed: At the threshold of life (1958) and The face (Ansiktet) (1958), does not work with the director until The time of the wolf (1968), followed by a large number of productions: Anna's passion (1969), Screams and whispers (1972), Secrets of a marriage (1973), Face to naked (1976), Autumn Sonata (1978) and Fanny and Alexander. He took the witness from the Stockholm Dramaten address. I'd be back with Bergman for his last movie. Saraband (2003).

Other valuable actresses who worked with Bergman on various productions include Eva Dahlbeck who worked on six of Bergman's early films —Three Women (1952), A Love Lesson (1954), Dreams (1955), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), On the Threshold of Life (1958) and Those women! (1964)—; and the beautiful Gunnel Lindblom, who worked in The Seventh Seal (1957), The Maiden's Spring (1960), The Communicants (1963), Silence (1963) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973).

In addition to this group of actors and actresses, since the early 50s, more precisely since Circus Night (1953), Bergman had almost as a member of his filming team the photographer Sven Nykvist, who won several awards with the works directed by Bergman, including two Oscars from the Hollywood Academy for photography for Cries and Whispers (1972) and Fanny and Alexander. The fruit of that collaboration with Bergman launched Nykvist's international career, particularly in Hollywood.

Themes and style

Two playwrights, Henrik Ibsen and, above all, August Strindberg influenced him and introduced him to a world where the great themes that attracted him so much were manifested, charged with a dramatic, oppressive and still hopeless atmosphere, which leaves a deep mark in the spirit of the young Bergman and a marked influence on his artistic work.

Her visual narrative tends to be deliberately slow, with a measured montage and sequence of shots, this in order to achieve sufficient reflection time among the viewers, even when they are already "captured" in the diegesis; however, such slowness is, as in Andrei Tarkovsky, far from monotony thanks to the load of the message or the excellent acting marking; another characteristic of his film aesthetics is the cleanliness of the images.

The fact that in most of the Swedish filmmaker's filmography, his characters are traversed by the same paths that they enter is recurring. These are trajectories that lead them back towards themselves, towards their own soul, towards their own conscience. They are intimate, enigmatic journeys that often seize the viewer, transporting them to a strictly personal and disturbing experience, to the extent that their characters carry out that journey overloaded by dense drama, one that implies stripping the human soul in a generic way.

That trajectory ends in some cases in madness or death, in others in a state of grace, a metaphysical moment that allows his characters to understand more of their reality, a revelation that will illuminate them and modify the course of their lives. lives. In some cases it will help them to exorcise, conjure and control the ghosts that disturb the character's soul.

Bergman's characters carry a heavy ballast in their minds, in their feelings. In general they are adults, except for the case of the child in El silencio (very revealing, even though it is Esther who has the 'birthing', the character played by Ingrid Thulin). The restlessness that these characters feel is more or less latent, but it will progressively reveal itself to the viewer, producing a lighting effect and sometimes just devastating.

The transmission of these states of internal conflict of his characters, originate anguishing and lacerating stories, as few film directors have been able to communicate to their audiences, and this is the greatest achievement of the Swedish director.

The specialists Jordi Puigdomenech and Charles Moeller classify the more than forty works by Bergman, as director and screenwriter, in five stages:

• Works of youth or impressionists, 1945-1948;
• Psychological weight, 1948-1955;
• Symbolic content, 1956-1963;
• Critical expression, 1964-1980;
• Genealogical reconstruction, 1981-2007.

Filmography

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

Medals of the Film Writers Circle

BAFTA Awards

Cannes International Film Festival

Venice International Film Festival

Berlin International Film Festival

Theater director (selection)

He directed theater from his youth, working at the great Swedish theatre, the Dramaten in Stockholm, for decades. But not only as a playwright; In the 1960s, he moved to the office of the Dramaten and marked an era: he reorganized internal work, opened rehearsals to the public, encouraged tours to the provinces and children's theatre, increased the salaries of actors, lowered ticket prices, attracting young people, and used his prestige to, with the support of Parliament, make Swedish culture resonate with the world.

All of Bergman's creation cannot be understood without his constant and parallel dedication to theater, of which the following stand out:

• 1939: Strindberg (The Journey of Peter the Lucky, The pelicanutPär LagerkvistThe man who could relive)
• 1940: Shakespeare (Macbeth)
• 1942: Ingmar Bergman (The Death of Kaspar)
• 1944: Hjälmar BergmanThe Game House, Mr. Schleman.)
• 1946: Albert CamusCaligula)
• 1947: Ingmar Bergman (To fear me)
• 1948: Jean Anouilh (The dance of the thieves)
• 1949: Tennessee Williams (A tram called desire)
• 1950: Bertolt Brecht (The three-cent opera); Valle-Inclán (Divine words)
• 1953: Ingmar Bergman (Murder in Barjärna)
• 1953: Luigi PirandelloSix characters in search of authorKafka (The castle)
• 1954: Strindberg (Spectrum sonata)
• 1955: Molière (Don Juan)
• 1956: Tennessee Williams (The cat on the roof of zinc)
• 1957: Ibsen (Peer Gynt); Hjälmar Bergman (The sagaMolière (The Misanthropist)
• 1958: Goethe (Fausto)
• 1960: Strindberg (Storm)
• 1961: W. H. Auden and Stravinsky (The Rake's Progress)
• 1962: Chéjov (The three sisters)
• 1963: Albee (Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?Strindberg (The dream)
• 1964: Ibsen (Hedda Gabler)
• 1965: Molière (Don Juan)
• 1966: Molière (The School of Women); Weiss (The inquiry)
• 1969: Georg Büchner (Woyzeck)
• 1970: Strindberg (The dream); Ibsen (Hedda Gabler)
• 1972: Ibsen (Ibsen)The wild duck)
• 1974: Strindberg (The Way of Damascus)
• 1976: Strindberg (Dance of death)
• 1977: Strindberg (The dream)
• 1980: Witold GombrowiczYvonne)
• 1981: Ibsen (Dollhouse)
• 1983: Molière (Don Juan)
• 1985: Strindberg (Miss Julia.)

La señorita Julia (1986) and Doll House (1990) were performed in Madrid (other pieces in Barcelona), under his direction.

On occasions, Ingmar Bergman has directed some theatrical pieces for television: Mr. Sleeman Arrives (Herr Sleeman kommer) (1957), The Venetian Girl (Venetianskan) (1958), both by Hjalmar Bergman; Rabies (Rabies) (1958) by Olle Hedberg, Storm (1960) and A Dream ( Ett drömspel) (1963), by August Strindberg, and also The School for Women (1983), by Molière.

In 1951, Bergman made nine commercials for Bris soap for AB Sunlight. Swedish actress Bibi Andersson took part in one of them.

Miscellaneous

He has no family ties to actress Ingrid Bergman, a confusion caused by the fact that Ingmar Bergman married an actress also named Ingrid, Ingrid von Rosen.