The Life and Films of the Last Great European Director
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Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 INGMAR BERGMAN Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 19, 2009 11:55 Geoffrey Macnab writes on film for the Guardian, the Independent and Screen International. He is the author of The Making of Taxi Driver (2006), Key Moments in Cinema (2001), Searching for Stars: Stardom and Screenwriting in British Cinema (2000), and J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry (1993). Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 INGMAR BERGMAN The Life and Films of the Last Great European Director Geoffrey Macnab Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 Sheila Whitaker: Advisory Editor Published in 2009 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © 2009 Geoffrey Macnab The right of Geoffrey Macnab to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978 1 84885 046 0 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 To Finlay, Francis and Catriona Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 1 A Portrait of the Young Filmmaker 21 2 Early Work 43 3 The ‘Middle Period’: 1953–60 73 4 Bergman and Hollywood 111 5 Tax and Politics 121 6 Bergman’s Actresses 135 7 Religious Faith – the Trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence 155 8 Bergman the Polymath 175 9 The Magus 187 10 Prospero in Retreat: Back to Faro, Back to Childhood 205 Notes 221 Index 233 Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 Illustrations 1. A fleeting moment of happiness in Summer Interlude, the first film in which Bergman felt he had mastered his medium. Sommarlek © 1951 AB Svensk Filmindustri Still photographer: Louis Huch 66 2. Harriet Andersson strikes a Bardot-like pose in Summer with Monika. Sommaren med Monika © 1953 AB Svensk Filmindustri Still photographer: Louis Huch 78 3. A study in humiliation – Frost (Anders Ek), the clown, and his wife Alma (Gudrun Brost) in Sawdust and Tinsel. SAndrew Film AB 82 4. The clown threatens suicide in Sawdust and Tinsel. SAndrew Film AB 83 5. Albert (Ake Gronberg) and Anne (Harriet Andersson), the circus couple, at their most wretched in Sawdust and Tinsel. SAndrew Film AB 85 6. Susanne (Eva Dahlbeck), the fashion director clinging to the phone in Dreams, was based on Gun Hagberg – the journalist for whom Bergman had left his second wife. SAndrew Film AB 88 7. Gunnar Bjornstrand as the old roué trying to seduce the naive model (Harriet Andersson) in Dreams. SAndrew Film AB 89 8. Death on the march – Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Det sjunde inseglet © 1957 AB Svensk Filmindustri Still photographer: Louis Huch 96 9. Bergman’s most forgiving film: Victor Sjostrom in Wild Strawberries. Smultronstället © 1957 AB Svensk Filmindustri Still photographer: Louis Huch 100 Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 x INGMAR BERGMAN 10. Alma The Nurse (Bibi Andersson) in Persona. Persona © 1966 AB Svensk Filmindustri 142 11. The excruciating scenes that lead up to the death in Cries and Whispers. The dying Agnes (Harriet Andersson) cradled by the maid Anna (Kari Dylwan). Cries And Whispers © 1973 AB Svensk Filmindustri Still photographer: Bo-Erik Gyberg 149 12. Insanity and religious ecstasy side by side in Through a Glass Darkly. Såsom i en spegel © 1961 AB Svensk Filmindustri 159 13. The battle for faith – Winter Light. The priest (Gunnar Bjornstrand) struggles to minister to the depressed Jonas (Max Von Sydow) and his wife Karin (Gunnel Lindblom). Nattvardsgästerna © 1963 AB Svensk Filmindustri 162 14. Bergman enjoyed an unlikely box-office success, partly thanks to the scandal generated by The Silence. Sweltering in the carriage are Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), the boy Johan (Jorgen Lindstrom) and Ester (Ingrid Thulin). Tystnaden © 1963 AB Svensk Filmindustri 168 15. Bergman’s underrated From the Life of the Marionettes. Katarina (Christine Buchegger) and Peter (Robert Atzom) in a jarring fantasy sequence. From the life of the marionettes © 1980 AB Svensk Filmindustri Still photographer: Arne Carlsson 200 Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 Acknowledgements I WOULD LIKE to acknowledge the help given to me in the writing of this book by Jannike Ahlund, who organises the ‘Bergman Week’ on what was Bergman’s home island, Faro, every year, and invited me on to the island in 2007. I would like to thank Fredrik Gustafson at the Bergman Archive, housed in the Swedish Film Institute in Stockholm, for help- ing me negotiate my way through the archive’s holdings. Thanks also to David Thompson of BBC’s Arena for providing me with old documen- taries about Bergman. Thanks to Paul Smith too of the (sadly now de- funct) Tartan Films for sending me DVDs of the films in Tartan’s Bergman Collection. My thanks, also, to Danish journalist Jorn Rossing Jensen for his suggestions and help with contacts. My thanks to those who gave me special interviews for the book: Barbro Hiort af Ornas, Bertil Guve, Katinka Farago, Kabi Laretei, Marie Nyrerod and various others. I am grateful to the book’s editor Philippa Brewster and to the assis- tant editor Eloise Villez for their patience. Thanks, also, to Payal Malik for her diligent copy editing. Macnab-05480001 macn5480001_fm May 8, 2009 9:23 Macnab-05480001 book May 8, 2009 9:27 Introduction Lord, let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped. (DAVID HOLM,inThe Phantom Carriage) ITWASAMIDSUMMERevening in 2007 on Faro, a small windswept island in the Baltic Sea, and a group of film enthusiasts were climbing aboard a bus for the ‘Bergman Safari’, a tour of landmarks where the island’s most famous resident, Ingmar Bergman, had shot scenes from some of his best-known films. The mood was enthusiastic and a little raucous, as if we were going on a school trip. I was sitting in the back seat alongside Japanese, French, Russian and American admirers of Bergman as the bus set off from Strandskogen at 5.30 pm. The light was grey and overcast (just as Bergman and his cinematog- rapher Sven Nykvist used to like it). ‘When it rains, we call that Bergman weather’, locals remark.1 (Popular belief has it that in the wet air, the spirits can be felt.) Our tour guides were Arne Carlsson, a bluntly spo- ken islander who worked as a truck driver and cameraman for Bergman, and the formidable Katinka Farago, who was an assistant and produc- tion manager on many of his films. The three-hour outing was a little like the Universal Studios’ tour, but instead of seeing the shark from Jaws, we wandered across Persona beach, were shown just where Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow’s farmhouse was razed in Shame (Bergman’s only action movie) and drove past many of the houses that Bergman built for his family and collaborators. As the tour party trundled around the is- land, the guides revealed how Bergman and Sven Nykvist achieved the trompe l’oeil effects on Shame, burning down miniature churches and making tiny streams into turbulent rivers. They stopped briefly on the north side of the island, within sight of a series of looming rocks by the Macnab-05480001 book May 8, 2009 9:27 2 INGMAR BERGMAN seashore, allowing the bus passengers off for a ‘Bergman burger’ and a low-alcohol beer. Faro is a magical place full of myth and history. The light and atmo- sphere are constantly changing. The island can seem grey and brood- ing, but when the sun shines, it suddenly becomes idyllic. Residents tell colourful stories about buried Viking princesses, pirates, boat wrecks and fishermen on daredevil trips. The local lore – recounted in one of Bergman’s documentaries – is that seal hunters discovered the island by accident, when they were swept away by a chunk of drifting ice. Despite the thousands of tourists who visit here in summer, the 600 or so locals face a fierce struggle to survive. The fishing industry is all but dead. This is a harsh place on which to farm and there are few jobs outside tourism. While we were on Faro, we learned that the only school on the island was threatened with closure. That is one of the reasons why the residents were so protective of Bergman. One of the world’s most celebrated filmmakers was living in their midst, and they saw it as their duty to protect him. It was as if they had struck an informal pact to- gether. He poured investment into Faro. (It used to be said that his tax bill was as big as those of the rest of the islanders put together.) He always used many local craftsmen on his films and made angry documentaries – Faro Document 1969 and Faro Document 1979 – about Sweden’s ne- glect of the island.