Author and Cinema
Retro columnist Raymond Benson pays his respects to one of the cinema’s
most legendary directors.
Another one of my cinema heroes is gone.
I first discovered Ingmar Bergman when I was a freshman at
the University of Texas at Austin,
way back in 1973. My good friend and
Drama Department colleague Stuart Howard and I were working in the scene shop
as part of our required crew assignment when he said, “Hey, they’re showing The Seventh Seal tonight [on
campus]. Want to go?â€
I had heard of The
Seventh Seal and had seen that famous still photo of Max von Sydow playing
chess with Death, but I had never viewed the film or any other Bergman
picture. After all, I was fresh from Odessa, Texas,
where the idea of a foreign language film (with—aghh!—subtitles) was something alien and too bizarre to comprehend. Like most people in those days, I eventually discovered
the great foreign classics while I was a college student.
“I don’t know,†I replied.
“Isn’t that a weird movie?†That
was my initial, naïve perception. “Weird? Are you kidding? It’s great! It’s one of the best movies ever!†Stuart replied. “You’ve never seen it? You gotta go!
Come on, we’re going!â€
So I agreed. And for
ninety minutes I was spellbound, from the opening shot of that bird in the sky
accompanied by the eerie choral score, to the last iconic image of Death
leading his newly-acquired souls over the hill.
I was blown away. I sat there,
speechless. Stuart nudged me and said,
“So, what did you think?†We spent the
rest of the evening talking about it.
(Many thanks, Stuart, for that introduction.) From then on, whenever a
Bergman film showed up on campus, I’d go see it. I also caught each new film as they were
released… all the way up to his most recent and last masterwork, Saraband.
The first thing I should say about Bergman’s films is to
quash the notion that they are high-brow, intellectual, depressing, and
dead-serious. Sure, he made more
dramatic works than comedies (he did produce a few, though), and many times he
dealt with subjects that were
depressing and serious—like death, religion, divorce—but he treated them with
such brutal honesty and soul-searching dissection that the experience of
viewing Bergman was, I would say, more enlightening
than gloomy. For at the heart of nearly
all of Bergman’s pictures is the concept of a hope that better things are
beyond our mundane, everyday existence.
The second thing that is undoubtedly unique to Bergman is
his treatment of women. Woody Allen has
always written great roles for the female gender mainly because he was
influenced by the master—Bergman himself.
No one else in the history of cinema could write such great parts for
women. He seemed to genuinely understand
the feminine psyche and he laid it all out for us on the big screen. Bergman’s “stable†of repertory actors included
not only great male thespians, but especially
outstanding females. Liv Ullmann,
Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Eva Dahlbeck, Maj-Britt
Nilsson, and Gunnel Lindblom, to name a few, opened up their hearts and souls
on the screen for Bergman. Outstanding
work.
Thirdly, Ingmar Bergman was a great director but he was an
even better writer. His first foray into
cinema was a screenplay (entitled Torment,
1944) that won the Swedish equivalent of the Best Screenplay Oscar. This award catapulted Bergman from his
extensive theatre and stage career into one of film. Many of his screenplays were subsequently
published—a feat accomplished by very few filmmakers.
And finally, it’s amazing that the man continued working in
the legitimate theatre after becoming a successful movie maker. (He once said that “theatre was his wife, but
cinema was his mistressâ€.) I regret that
I never had the opportunity to see one of Bergman’s stage productions; but his
filmed version of The Magic Flute
gives us an excellent front-row view of what it was like.
In the USA,
much of Bergman’s output is sadly unavailable.
But thanks to companies such as The Criterion Collection, more and more
titles are being released. Now that this
icon of cinema has departed, perhaps the rest of his vast catalog will see the
light of day.
My favorites? I’m
hard pressed to list a Top Ten. But if I
had to name my favorite three, they
would have to be The Seventh Seal, Fanny and Alexander, and Persona.
Each is from a distinctly different period in Bergman’s career, and each
is individually unique. If you’ve never
seen a Bergman, start with these three (although I strongly suggest not beginning with Persona, perhaps his most challenging and most existential
picture).
Although I once obtained an autograph from Bergman through a
friend in Sweden,
I never met him in person. I came close,
though. In 1988, my wife and I were
vacationing in Scandinavia. We were in Stockholm and found ourselves outside the Drottningholm
Palace Theatre (where The Magic Flute
was staged and one of Bergman’s many theatrical haunts). On a lark, I went inside and asked if Ingmar
Bergman was around, expecting the answer, “Are you crazy? Of course not!†Instead, I got the reply that I had just missed
him by about ten minutes. Wow. Perhaps I soaked in some of his vibe for
those few minutes.
So, to Mr. Bergman, I extend my heartfelt thanks and respect
for everything you gave us. I hope your
journey across the field with Death is a pleasant one, and I hope all the
questions you asked about God’s silence will be answered. Farewell.