Egil Tornqvist
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EGIL TORNQVIST x kPx AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEN INGMAR BERGMAN DIRECTS FILM CULTURE IN TRANSITION Thomas Elsaesser: General Editor Double Trouble Chiem van Houweninge on Writing and Filming Thomas E/saes!>'er, Robert Kiev;! and Jan SimonJ (cds. J Writing for the Medium Thomas E/WH'SSe1; J(I11 Sim""s uml L"Cf!lIe Bronk (ed.I'.) The Film Spectator: From Sign to Mind Warren Buck/and (ed.) Film and the First Wol'ld War Karel Dibbets, Ben Ho"enkllmp (eds.) Fassbinder's Germany Thomas Elsaesser (summer 1995) BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEN INGMAR BERGMAN DIRECTS by EGIL TORNQVIST x .Il:<P X AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Cover (front): Alexander, Ingmar Bergman', aher ego in Fm",)' a"d Alexander, hehind hi, puppet tllealer. copied on tile Royal Theater in Copenhagen. The Dani,h in,criplion above lhe pro,;cenium opening means "nOl only for plea,ure:' Photo Ame Carl"on. Cover (back): Ingmar Bergman direcling hi, la,l feature film, Fan"y and Alexander. Photo Ame Carlsson. Covcr design: Kok Korpershoek (KO), Amslerdam Type,ening: A-zel, Leiden ISBN 90 53561374 (paperback) ISBN 90 53561714 (hanlbound) © Amsterdam University Press. Amslerdam, 1995 All rights reserved. WillloUl limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no pan of lhi, publication may he reproduced, ,lored in or introduced into a retrieval system. or transmined. in any form Or by any mean, (e1eclronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or olllerwisel, without lhe prior wrillcn permission of bolh the copyright owner and lhe auhor of lhis book. CONTENTS 7 Preface 9 Prologue The Stage and the Screen PART 1- THE STAGE DIRECTOR 23 Strindberg, The Dream Play (1970) 30 Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata (1973) 46 Strindberg, Miss iu/ie (1985) 59 O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night (\988) 69 Ibsen, A Doll's House (1989) 81 Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (1994) PART 2 - THE SCREEN DIRECTOR 95 The Seventh Seal (1957) 112 Wild Strawberries (1957) 128 Strindberg, Storm (1960) m Persona (1966) 146 Cries and Whispers (1973) 160 Autumn Sonata (1978) 174 Fanny andAlexander (1982) PART 3 - THE RADIO DIRECTOR 191 Strindberg, EasIer (1952) 195 A Matter ofthe Soul (1990) 199 Epilogue Between Stage and Screen 213 Notes 226 Selected Bibliography 231 List of Illustrations 233 Index PREFACE The present book is not an examination of how Bergman's stage, screen and radio pro ductions have come into being, of the director's work in the rehearsal room, the sound studio, the cutting room. I! is rather an examination of the results of this work. After all. Bergman's profile as a director is determined first and foremost by the completed pro ductions, irrespective of how he has arrived at them. In my analysis of these end prod ucts, I combine more general aspects with close 'readings' of individual, often transcribed passages, since such a procedure in my view gives the reader optimal insights into Bergman's directorial distinction. The 15 production analyses are framed by a Pro logue, in which Bergman's work as a director for different media and the problems in volved are presented, and an Epilogue, where fonnal and thematic correspondences and differences between Bergman's stage, screen and radio productions are examined and where an evaluation of the stage/screen relationship is attempted. Quotations from Ibsen, Strindberg and Bergman are rendered in American translation; whenever British translations are quoted, they have been adjusted to Ameri can norms. When the target text deviates so much from the source text that it no longer seems wholly adequate for my purpose, I have resorted to a variant of my own. With regard to the use of tense, the principle followed is to use the present tense for durative (repeatable) presentational modes, while the past tense is used for non durative modes (except in transcriptions). The existence of a durative recording of a stage presentation, in the form of video. cannot change the fundamental fact that it was intended as live performance, that is, as a noo-repeatable theatrical event. The typography of drama texts and film scripts varies somewhat. Since such variation seems both irrelevant and disturbing, I have deemed it wise to standardize the typography as follows: (I) For stage and acting directions, ruse italics throughout. The same principle is applied in my transcriptions of performance passages. (2) Figure designations in the stage and acting directions as well as cue designations are capitalized and printed in roman. Titles of non-English works are giveo in American translation; the original titles and, with regard to some Bergman films, British variants are added in the index. The dates of PREFACE the films are those of first public screenings. Single quotation marks signify that a word or phrase is used figuratively. A substantial part of this book has appeared earlier in various publications. The chapter on The Ghost Sonala is based on BerRman och StrindberR. Spoksonaten drama och iscensiiuning Dramalen /973, Stockholm: Prisma, 1973. The section on Miss Julie relies on the discussion in Slrindberg 's Miss Julie: A Play and Its Transposi lions, Norwich: Norvik Press, 1988. The examination of Long Day's Journey into Night appeared under the title "lngmar Bergman Directs Lonfi Day's Journey into Nifiht" in New Theatre Quarterly, Vo!. V, No. 20 (1989). The chapler on A Doll's House was first published as "Ingmar Bergman\ Doll's Houses" in Scandinavica, Vo!. 30, No. I (May. 199]). All of Part Two and sections of the Prologue and Epilogue were published in Filmdiktaren Ingmar Bergman, Stockholm: Arena, 1993. The chapter on Stormy Weather appeared under the title "Long Day's Journey into Night: Bergman's TV Version of 'Ovader' Compared to 'Smultronstallet''' in Kela Kvam (ed.), Strindherg's Post-Inferno Plays, Copenhagen, 1994. The chapler on Fanny and Alexander first appeared in Chap/in, Vo!. 25, No. 6 (1983), under the title "Den !ilia varlden och den stom: Kring Ingmar Bergmans Fanny och Alexander." All these publications have been thoroughly revised for the present book. For invaluable assistance I wish to thank scenographer Gunilla Palmstiema Weiss as well as the staff of the Royal Dramatic Theater, the National Archive of Re corded Sound and Moving Images, the Swedish Institute, and the Swedish Film Institute, all in Stockholm. S PRE}'ACE PROLOGUE The Stage and the Screen With his fifty feature films, around a hundred stage performances, some forty radio ver sions, about fifteen television transmissions, a few opera productions, and even a libretto contribution to a ballet - not to mention his work as a playwright, screenwriter, and adaptor - Ingmar Bergman has presumably proved more productive and versatile than any other director to date. A Sunday child, born into a clerical Stockholm family on the French national holiday in the year ending the first World War, Bergman at an early age - as shown in Fanny and Alexander - was a 'director' already in the nursery. There he staged plays in his puppet theater and made up 'film' stories with the help of his latema magica. When only 17 he wrote his first play; in the 1940s some twenty-three others were to follow, a few of which were published and staged. I His debut as a director, in the proper sense of the word, took place in 1938 when, at the age of 20, he staged SUltan Vane's Outward Bound with an amateur group at Master Olofsgarden in Stockholm, himself playing one of the roles." Still staging at least two plays a year, Bergman, soon 77, has declared that he will probably continue directing in the theater as long as he has the strength to do so. For almost four decades Bergman has, in confonnance with the Swedish sys tem, divided his time between stage productions in the theater season and filming in the summertime, when the actors were available. To a great extent he has worked with the same actors in all three media under consideration here: Max von Sydow, Anders Ek, AIlan Edwall, BibiAndersson, Gunnel Lindhlom, Gertrud Fridh, to mention but a few. In several cases - Birger Malmsten, Gunnar Bjomstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, Maj-Britt Nilsson, Harriet Andersson, and Ingrid Thulin come to mind - there are actors who have largely appeared in his films, while the opposite (Benkt-Ake Benktsson, Karin Kavli, Toivo Pawlo) also, though more rarely, holds true. It has become a truism to say that Bergman's achievements on stage and screen are inseparably related to his long-standing close con nections with a group of outstanding actors and actresses and the inspiration he receives from and gives to them. J After his first screenplay, Torment, had been filmed by Alf Sjoberg, Bergman's career as a film director began in 1946 with Crisis, based on his own adapta tion of a Danish play. This part of his career ended in 1982, with Fanny and Alexander, when he decided to stop filming because of the physical strain it involved. Most of Bergman's radio productions were done in the late I940s and in the 1950s. His debut as a TV director came in 1954, with Hjalmar Bergman's Mr. Sleeman Is Coming. 11 THE STAGE ANIJ THE SCREEN Unlike novels or poems, plays lead a double life. Having two kinds of recipi ents - readers and spectators - drama is a hybrid genre. With an increasing number of film scripts being published, film is gradually moving in the same direction. It has not always been like that. For a rather long time, films had only one kind of recipient: the spectator. The script on which the film was based was rarely published. While you could choose between reading or watching Shakespeare, Ibsen, or Strindberg, you had to be content with watching Griffith, Eisenstein, or Sjostrom.