Ingmar Bergman

gigatos | June 9, 2022

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Summary

Ernst Ingmar Bergman, born 14 July 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, died 30 July 2007 in Fårö, Sweden, was a Swedish film and theatre director, film producer, scriptwriter, theatre director, playwright and author. He is one of Sweden”s most internationally renowned cultural figures, and one of the greatest directors in film history. His most classic and critically acclaimed films include Summer Night”s Smile (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), The Strawberry Place (1957), As in a Mirror (1961), The Night Watchmen (1963), The Silence (1963), Persona (1966), Whispers and Cries (1972), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Fanny and Alexander (1982) and Saraband (2003).

During his career, Bergman has directed and written scripts for over sixty films and documentaries for both cinema and television, as well as directing over 170 plays. His films are mainly set in Sweden, and several of them were filmed on Fårö. His various works deal with topics such as betrayal, madness, faith, the existence of God, humanity, death, the upbringing of young people, women and their role in society, and the principle of simplicity. He created creative collaborations with his cinematographers Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist, and his ensemble of actors included Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow.

Childhood and adolescence

His father, Erik Bergman, was ordained in Uppsala in 1912 and was first a priest in Forsbacka in Valbo parish in Gästrikland 1913-1918, after which he and his wife moved to Stockholm. He eventually became a court preacher.

His mother Karin Bergman, born Åkerblom, had begun training as a nurse at the Red Cross training centre at Sabbatsberg Hospital, but was forced to discontinue this in 1912 due to tuberculosis. For ten years his parents lived in the Sophiahemmet vicarage when Erik Bergman, in addition to being a pastor”s assistant (from 1918) in Hedvig Eleonora parish, became a hospital chaplain in 1924 at Sophiahemmet in Stockholm. His son Ingmar was born in Uppsala, where his parents had stopped over at his grandparents” home when they moved from Gästrikland. He was baptised at the summer house in Våroms in Dalarna a month later. At the same time, the devastating Spanish flu pandemic was raging and Ingmar Bergman later falsely stated in his autobiography Laterna Magica that his mother had been affected by the pandemic at the time of his birth, whereupon the newborn would have been in a weakened state and had to undergo emergency baptism at the hospital. However, later archival research has shown that this was not the case, but that the family later suffered from a milder, short-lived form of the disease. The family also included a brother, Dag, four years older, and a sister, Margareta, four years younger. When the father became a vicar in 1934, they moved to the vicarage opposite Hedvig Eleonora Church on Östermalmstorg.

Bergman grew up in a priestly home with many religious images and, for the child, conflicting contradictions, which shaped his working themes throughout his life. He often described the contradiction between the Christian message of love on the one hand and the father”s strict discipline and punishment of his older brother Dag in particular on the other, a theme Bergman used in the film Fanny and Alexander. The relationship with his father, according to Bergman, remained complicated for a long time. The aforementioned film also depicts his passion, as a boy, for his puppet theatre and car experiments with his beloved laterna magica apparatus.

Bergman was a student at the Palmgrenska School, which inspired him to make the school film Hets (1944), his first adapted screenplay.

Bergman studied at Stockholm University from 1937 to 1940 and became interested in theatre, and later in film. In 1937 he began directing various amateur

Also read, important-events – German Peasants’ War

Work and employees

Bergman began his theatrical career in 1937 as the director of the Mäster Olofsgården theatre in the church hall of the Stockholm City Mission in the Old Town of Stockholm. In 1940 he became temporary assistant director at the Opera. In 1941 and 1942 he ran his own amateur theatre, Medborgarteatern, in Medborgarhuset on Södermalm, with several productions. As a sideline, he founded Sagoteatern for Children, Sweden”s first real children”s theatre company, which in 1942 was taken over by Elsa Olenius to form the basis of what was to become the extensive Vår teater.

After standing and hanging outside the gates of the legendary Filmstaden in Solna for a long time, hoping to be “discovered”, he finally attracted attention inside the gates and in 1940 was given the opportunity to finally get in and start working as a script editor and co-writer under Stina Bergman at Svensk Filmindustri. Based in part on his own unpleasant school memories, he managed, after a while, to find interest in filming his own original screenplay for the later internationally award-winning film Hets (1944), which became his film debut. Bergman was assistant director on the set

The prospects of gaining the confidence to continue making films after this defeat were deemed minimal. At this point, Bergman was approached by Lorens Marmstedt, a risk-taking, independent film company director and producer for Terrafilm and the Swedish Folkbiografer. Marmstedt offered a chance to make another film, something Bergman later described with great gratitude as his great salvation for his future career, and one film led to another. From this period come the films It”s Raining on Our Love (1946), Ship to India Land (1947), Music in the Dark (1947) and Prison (1949). Prison was the first film Bergman directed with his own original script. The film starred fellow director Hasse Ekman, who later made an endearing parody of scenes from it in a film of his own. Bergman was soon able to return to Svensk Filmindustri with scripts for films by Gustaf Molander and with his own Hamnstad (1948), which marked the start of a long-standing collaboration with cinematographer Gunnar Fischer. Svensk Filmindustri went on to produce most of Bergman”s subsequent films.

In the midst of all this filmmaking, Bergman, at the age of 25, was appointed the record-breaking director of the Helsingborg City Theatre on 6 April 1944. After Helsingborg, he moved on in 1946 to the Gothenburg City Theatre, where he has often referred to the instructive conversations with its director Torsten Hammarén as crucial to his development as a director. In interviews he often quoted his words: ”The first thing a director has to learn is to listen and keep his mouth shut”. His debut in Gothenburg immediately after the war was with the world premiere of Albert Camus” cruel dictatorial drama Caligula in November 1946. The production was highly praised and became Anders Ek”s breakthrough in the title role. He remained in Gothenburg until 1950, when he made the inaugural productions for the Intiman in Stockholm, including something as unusual for Bergman as the political Bertolt Brecht”s opera Tolvskillingsoperan. In 1951, he staged Tennessee Williams” The Tattooed Rose, a frequent playwright, at the newly established Norrköping-Linköping Stadsteater. Starting in 1945-46 and continuing from 1952, he spent most of the 1950s as director, playwright and artistic director at Malmö City Theatre, a period he later described as the happiest of his life.

He brought most of his future cast to Malmö, where he directed an acclaimed mix of productions, including Hjalmar Bergman”s Sagan, Goethe”s Faust, August Strindberg”s The Crown Bride, The Ghost Sonata and Erik XIV, Molière”s The Misanthrope, Henrik Ibsen”s Peer Gynt, the folklore play The Värmlands and Franz Lehár”s operetta The Merry Widow with Gaby Stenberg. Some productions travelled on acclaimed guest tours to London and Paris. This period also saw the production of several of Bergman”s best-known films, such as Summer with Monika, The Evening of Gycklarnas – the first collaboration with photographer Sven Nykvist – The Smile of Summer Night, The Seventh Seal (based on his play Trämålning, performed in Malmö), The Strawberry Place, The Face and The Maiden”s Tale.

In 1951 Bergman made his debut as a director at the Dramaten with Björn-Erik Höijer”s play Det lyser i kåken, and in 1961 he returned there, where he stayed intermittently until the last production in 2002. From 1963 to 1966 Bergman was director of the Dramaten, where he developed the theatre”s children”s theatre activities, but it was a difficult test for the normally extremely creative artist to be locked into administrative work, and this led to a period of illness.

It was at the Dramaten that the big change in his life then occurred in 1976, when in the middle of a theatre rehearsal he was arrested by the police on suspicion of tax evasion. The incident attracted enormous attention, not least internationally. Bergman was completely exonerated after a few months in court, but felt so violated both physically and psychologically that on 22 April 1976 he announced his intention to leave the country. After a period of chaos with unrealised film discussions in Hollywood (including a planned film adaptation of The Merry Widow with Barbra Streisand), he moved to Munich. The city became his home and workplace from 1977 to 1982.

In Germany, he made the film The Serpent”s Egg (1977), the acclaimed chamber play The Autumn Sonata (1978), filmed in Norway and starring Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann, and From the Life of Puppets (1980). In Munich, Bergman worked at the Residenztheater. He also guest directed at the National Theatre in Oslo in 1967, the National Theatre in London in 1970, the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen in 1973 and the Salzburg Festival in 1983.

Bergman constantly worked in parallel with theatre and film as a writer, director and producer. In addition to stage theatre and film, he made a large number of productions for Swedish Television between 1957 and 2003, including Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Face to Face (1976) and the script for The Good Will (1992). He has made a number of productions for the Radio Theatre of the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, as well as some high-profile opera productions such as Igor Stravinsky”s The Road to Ruckles (TV film 1993) at the Royal Swedish Opera. A number of his screenplays, plays and other works have been published in book form. During his time in Malmö he also wrote ballet libretto.

Later, using an image borrowed from Anton Chekhov, he described the relationship between the theatre and film as follows: ”The theatre is like a faithful wife, but film is like my mistress. He continued in later years as an esteemed and innovative stage director, and it is clear that theatre influenced his filmmaking. In terms of film, he was himself influenced by a great deal of French cinema, Victor Sjöström”s The Körkarl, the early silent films of Georges Méliès and, as an inveterate cineaste, later with his own cinema on Fårö, he placed great value on films by Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel and Jan Troell, for example.

In the late 1960s, the “three giants” Bergman, Italian Federico Fellini and Japanese Akira Kurosawa prepared a unique film project together, a love story told by each in his own version. Much to Bergman”s disappointment, the project never came to fruition, as Kurosawa fell ill and other things later interfered. Bergman also had other unrealised collaborative discussions with Fellini over the years.

Bergman was often referred to as a “demon director” for his often fiery temperament and dynamic, demanding personality. He also wrestled throughout his life with what he called his “demons” of various kinds (he kept whole lists of these various kinds of tormenting emotions and problem areas). He preferred intuition to intellect in his directing and was known and often appreciated for his special insightful ability to make actors feel “seen”.

He is said to have said that he felt a great responsibility as a director and that he had to, almost as a perceived “father figure” to many, support his beloved actors, but many were also the ones who could fall into disfavour if the “chemistry” was not right. Ingmar Bergman maintained a distance and critical approach to his work during the process, saying that one must remain neutral and professional when judging a day”s filmmaking. Many prominent actors, directors and others around the world have had Bergman as a main inspiration and sought in vain to work with him, and numerous foreign projects were discussed and prepared over the years but for various reasons did not come to fruition.

Bergman was unusually talented and often successful in financing his films and productions; but he also struggled for a long time with many of his pet projects, such as The Seventh Seal, which eventually had to be filmed on a very tight budget and with very little shooting time, and many projects never came to fruition. In the left-wing cultural climate of the 1970s, he found it difficult to find his place. The Touching (1970) was co-produced with the US and in order to make one of his greatest films, Whispers and Cries (1971), most of the cast had to invest their salaries at a profit or loss. Then Sveriges Television came to the rescue with TV films

Thereafter followed his involuntary stay abroad until 1981, when he returned with the multi-award-winning blockbuster Fanny and Alexander and a series of world-touring productions at the Dramaten, beginning with Shakespeare”s King Lear (1984). With this, he was increasingly transformed from a reputedly stodgy, hard-to-reach artist into a more popular, more accessible ”national icon” in the eyes of the wider public. He said he cared neither for popularity nor giant film budgets. His films often had small budgets compared to the accelerating budgets that the most popular films usually have. In the 1970s and 1980s, he also produced some films by other directors such as Gunnel Lindblom, Erland Josephson and Kjell Grede.

In contrast to the earlier films based on prequels, from the late 1940s Bergman wrote his own original scripts for most of the films he directed; often it took months or years from idea to writing. He was meticulous in his work, making meticulous preparations so that, as he said, he could then increasingly allow himself to improvise in the collaborative process.

Bergman said in 1982, after the premiere of Fanny and Alexander, that this film would be his last and that he would now mainly direct theatre. It was also the last feature film he made primarily for the cinema. The following 20 years were devoted to a number of television films, screenplays directed by other filmmakers close to him (e.g. Trolösa directed by Liv Ullmann), and many directing assignments at the Dramaten, the Radio Theatre and the Royal Opera.

Bergman kept his integrity in check and did not participate much in public social life. Over time, a select group of friends and regular collaborators emerged as a “Bergman stable” and not many others were readily admitted into this inner circle. Meticulous attention to punctuality, order, loyal devotion and locked doors to outsiders during working hours prevailed. As Bergman”s fame grew internationally, so did the number of devoted admirers and cultural figures who wished to meet or work with him, and by many he was seen almost as a holy, worshipped deity. Not least in connection with his cohabitation with Liv Ullmann in the 1970s, the international media pressure grew and he was forced to build walls around his house on Fårö.

Also read, battles – Gerardus Mercator

Employees

Bergman assembled an ensemble of actors who appeared in his films. Many of them he had first met in the theatre. Among them were Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Eva Dahlbäck, Gunnel Lindblom, Stig Olin, Birger Malmsten and Ingrid Thulin. Norwegian Liv Ullmann joined the team somewhat later, but worked closely with Bergman for a long time. Later additions included Lena Olin, Pernilla August, Lena Endre, Peter Stormare and Elin Klinga. People like Nils Poppe, Hasse Ekman and Hans Alfredson also appeared in Bergman”s films.

Bergman began working with cinematographer Sven Nykvist in 1953 on The Evening of the Gyckles, but it was not until 1960, in The Maiden, that Nykvist fully replaced Bergman”s former principal photographer Gunnar Fischer. The collaboration with Nykvist lasted a long time and the two had a close and creative relationship. Often they needed only a minimum of joint preparation. He was also happy to work repeatedly with the same technical staff in production after production.

Also read, biographies – Isamu Noguchi

Privacy

Ingmar Bergman was married five times:

Bergman lived from 1965 to 1970 with actress and director Liv Ullmann and had a daughter with her, the writer Linn Ullmann. Liv Ullmann has written about this and the following period in two books: Förändringen and Tidvatten. He also had long-term relationships with Harriet Andersson (1952-1955) and Bibi Andersson (1955-1959), both of whom were long-time collaborators in his film productions.

In 2013, journalist and author Thomas Sjöberg”s biography Ingmar Bergman – a story of love, sex and betrayal was published (Lind & Co). The book depicts the director”s chaotic private life up to his last marriage, but also gives an in-depth view of Bergman”s childhood and his Nazi youth influences.

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Accommodation

Since the early 1960s, with interruptions for the years in Munich, Bergman was partly resident on Fårö, where he also shot several of his films, such as As in a Mirror (the first film shot there) and Persona. He also had an apartment at Karlaplan and a smaller one at Villagatan in Stockholm. In the 1940s, during his first marriage, he lived for a time in Abrahamsberg in Bromma. During his time in Malmö in the 1950s he lived in the then newly built so-called Stjärnhusen in the area of Mellanheden and during his time with Käbi Laretei in the 1960s he lived both on the island of Torö and in Djursholm. In his childhood he occasionally stayed with his grandmother in Uppsala and he also liked to return to the holiday areas of his childhood in Dalarna.

Bergman moved to Munich in 1976; he had emigrated from Sweden after accusations of tax evasion and did not return to make feature films in Sweden until 1981, when he made Fanny and Alexander. However, he kept his property on Fårö and his independently owned film company Cinematograph, and spent a lot of time there, mainly during the summers. He made two documentaries about the people and nature of Fårö, Fårödokument in 1969 and Fårödokument in 1979.

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Name

Many characters in Bergman”s films have had similar names. This has been interpreted in different ways. Some names have been interpreted allegorically, for example biblical names such as Isaac and Thomas. Other names have been interpreted according to their etymological origin. Alma is Spanish for “soul”; sister Alma in Persona would then symbolise the emotional life, psyche or inner state of the human being. The name Vogler comes from the family circle in Bergman”s childhood world. It is also related to “bird”; Bergman is said to have been afraid of birds, and these characters have sometimes been interpreted as threatening.

Maybe the names are just coincidences? Bergman himself writes in his workbook for Whispers and Cries, “Anna. It”s a good name, although I”ve used it in a lot of contexts before, but it”s so good.”

Another interpretation is to look at the type of character that bears the name. Vogler is often an artist of some kind (an actress in Persona). Vergérus is often an authoritarian, preferably scientifically informed figure (a stern bishop in Fanny and Alexander). Vogler stands for the emotional, while Vergérus stands for the rational.

Recurring first names: Albert, Alma, Anna, Eva, Fredrik, Henrik, Isak, Johan, Karin (Bergman”s mother”s name), Marie

Recurring surnames: Egerman, Jacobi, Rosenberg, Vergérus, Vogler, Åkerblom (Bergman”s mother”s maiden name).

The artist and artistry

One of the most typical characters in Bergman”s films is the artist; in at least 25 of Bergman”s films (and in most of his plays), the artist plays an important role. Many of these seem to be self-portraits by Bergman, who, inspired by August Strindberg, used his own life experiences and relationship conflicts (not least from his childhood home and his grandmother”s home in Uppsala) throughout his life in both films and theatrical interpretations.

However, the art itself does not play a very important role; for example, it is rarely shown how a work of art develops. Instead, art and the artist seem to be used by Bergman as an image of society and the lack of communication between people.

There are broadly two types of artist in Bergman: the humiliated artist (e.g. Frost in The Evening of Gycklarnas and Albert Emanuel Vogler in The Face) and the vampiric artist (e.g. David in As if in a Mirror and Elisabeth Vogler in Persona).

The humiliated artist is the one who is forced to perform and humiliate himself in front of a threatening audience, and who is then scrutinised and vilified. The vampiric artist is the one who parasitizes on other people”s experiences and then uses this material in his own art. A certain manic fear of a ”parasitic” world towards the ever-exposed artist is also evident, for example, in the film The Wolf”s Hour, to which he first gave the title The Man-Eaters.

Relationship to politics and society

Bergman describes his own political stance during the 1930s and the Second World War as apolitical and pro-German, which would sometimes have slipped into Nazi sympathies, in a controversial passage in Laterna Magica. Later in the World War, however, he would expose himself to danger with explicitly anti-Nazi theatre productions, including the premieres of three resistance plays, such as the Nazi-banned Danish drama Niels Ebbesen by resistance fighter Kaj Munk, who was murdered shortly after its premiere. Neither Dramaten nor any other theatre had dared to perform the play because of German pressure, and a similar situation prevailed with Rudolf Värnlund”s pacifist submarine drama U 39, both performed in 1943 at the newly founded, protest-oriented Dramatikerstudion, which faced protests from the German Embassy in Stockholm and harassment from the Foreign Ministry for its recurrent non-neutral repertory selection. The third premiere was in the same year at the Stockholm Student Theatre with a play about the German occupation of Norway, Strax innan man vaknar, by the young Norwegian writer Bengt Olof Vos. As the new director of Helsingborg”s City Theatre, he then staged a distinctly anti-Nazi version of William Shakespeare”s power drama Macbeth in 1944 just a few kilometres from German-occupied Elsinore as “an anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler play about a war criminal” In addition, he later directed the Swedish premiere of Peter Weiss”s drama from the post-war Nuremberg trials, The Search, at Dramaten and on radio in 1966.

Although he generally remained non-political in his work, he later came to deal repeatedly with themes and questions about the vulnerable, sensitive individual in relation to an elusive, often threatening, destructive and warlike world. Specifically in films such as The Shame (1968), about the reality of war, with the breakdown in the face of the atrocities of the Vietnam War in Persona (1966), a seemingly godless world of alienation in a Cold War totalitarian society in The Silence (1963), a war-torn, refugee-overrun Europe in Thirst (1949), the emerging Nazi Germany in The German Snake”s Egg (1976). The medieval drama The Seventh Seal (1957), with its existential life questions and symbolic link to the concrete nuclear threat of the time, went through the audience – in Bergman”s words in the book Pictures (1990) – “like a firebrand through the world”. More symbolic forms are given to the subject in films such as Hets (1944), with its tyrannical teacher “Caligula”, in the vulnerable circus folk of Gycklarnas afton (1953) and in the anxiety-ridden Vargtimmen (1968).

Having to complete the “bread and butter” work of the anti-Soviet spy drama Such Things Don”t Happen Here (1950) in the wake of the outrageous so-called Baltic extradition of 1946, and starring actual Baltic refugee actors, Bergman took it so hard that he later banned the film (although exceptions were made for certain cinematheques and the like). He considered the film to be crass suspense entertainment rather than an honest portrayal of the real human tragedies and humanitarian scandals that were taking place in our part of the world.

In relation to the politicisation and new views of younger generations of cultural workers during the social changes of the radical ”68 movement, Bergman found it increasingly difficult to find his place. Many of the established generations of filmmakers and cultural figures found it increasingly difficult to continue their activities in Sweden. Some were forced to stop working altogether, others chose to look abroad. In order to make the film Whispers and Cries (1973), the participants were forced to invest their own salaries to finance the project, but were still met with violent criticism from dissident groups. When, in 1976, he was arrested by the police at the Dramaten on trumped-up charges of tax evasion, the clash was a definitive fact.

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The Spiritual and the Secular

As the imaginative son of a strict priestly father – compare the image of the punishing Bishop in Fanny and Alexander (1982) – much of Bergman”s working life was marked by musings on Christian issues and his life came to oscillate at various periods between its duality”s poles with a heavy dose of anxiety as a result, a wandering between hope and doubt. For most of his life until the 1960s, he was often driven by a deep religiosity in his work, sometimes preaching almost small sermons to his ensemble, for example during work on The Seventh Seal. From the 1960s there was a shift with a period of near agnosticism, where he came to rationally transfer his beliefs closer to a humanist view, that “man bears his own sanctity” and with death it is “just like turning off a light bulb”, something he felt to be extremely liberating and logical. He now began to articulate his oscillating doubts in films such as the trilogy As in a Mirror (1960), The Night Watchmen (1962) and The Silence (1962). He had first given the latter film the title ”The Silence of God”. At the same time, this initial path of religious doubt was increasingly followed by a search for a deeper, “metaphysically” transgressive cinematic language in more anguished, experimental works such as Persona (1966), The Wolf”s Voice (1966), The Shame (1967), The Rite (1967), Whispers and Cries (1971), Face to Face (1975) and From the Lives of Puppets (1980). According to fellow filmmaker and friend Vilgot Sjöman, Bergman had even become enraged at this time when he saw his documentary I Blush (1981) from the slums of the Philippines and accused him of having become religious, towards the end of his life, however, these conditions began to resemble the spiritualised, hopeful faith of earlier years, in the light of his lifelong fear of death and despair at the thought of not being able to see his last wife Ingrid again after her death. He therefore said he strongly sensed her spiritual presence in his daily life and now said he was convinced of life after death. This new reconciliation can be seen in works such as Individual Conversations (1996) and the final work Saraband (2003).

Throughout his life, he strove to achieve a transcendent, dreamlike experience of the world in his art. Of his Russian colleague Andrei Tarkovsky, he writes in Laterna Magica: “When film is not a document, it is a dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of all. He moves with obviousness in the rooms of dreams (…) All my life I have knocked on the door of the rooms where he moves so obviously.” A film like the magical The Face (1958) moves very much in this direction.

The second pole of Bergman”s life and work concerns the more down-to-earth human relationships, both the emotional, psychological, often subtle nuances and games within and between people – for which Bergman has become internationally renowned, as well as for his sensitive, listening work with the actors – and the more intimate and often complexly sensual relationships. As a young man, Bergman describes himself as a lonely, inhibited man with odd cultural interests, but over time he came to develop a long series of intimate relationships with many of his actresses in particular. This is a subject depicted with an oscillation between lust and complication in films such as It”s Raining on Our Love (1946), Thirst (1949), To Joy (1950), Summer Play (1950), Women”s Waiting (1952), Summer with Monika (1952), A Lesson in Love (1953), The smile of the summer night (1955), The pleasure garden (1961), Not to mention all those women (1963), A passion (1968), The touch (1970), Scenes from a marriage (1972), From the life of a puppet (1980), Fanny and Alexander (1982), The two blessed (1985) and The faithless (2000). However, there are hardly any complications in relation to religious issues or prohibitions.

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Shape experiment

Bergman is also considered one of the great innovators in the art of cinema. He has moved in different styles from more poetic, epic films to almost neorealist depictions such as Hamnstad (1948) and Summer with Monika (1952). He has experimented with editing techniques and dreamlike forms, as in The Place of Dreams (1957) and The Silence (1962), made idiosyncratic historical costume films such as The Seventh Seal (1956) and The Maiden”s Tale (1959), and a number of intriguing psychological chamber plays between people, a form not least associated with Bergman. With the German Ur marionetternas liv (1980), he approaches an eroticising, digging German style in the vein of Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Margarethe von Trotta.

Persona (1965) is one of Bergman”s most famous films and is characterised by its existential and avant-garde nature. Bergman considered it and Whispers and Cries (1973) to be his best films, as they push the boundaries of cinematic art to the limit. Whispers and Cries is unique in its chromatic composition; colour and music interact here in an unprecedented way.

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Theatre

It is not common for a person to combine theatre and film direction to the extent that Bergman did, but for him it was a natural interaction, often inspiring and cross-pollinating each other. It is not uncommon to trace different periods when a theatrical production inspired the making of a film, not least during the creative period at Malmö City Theatre in the 1950s, when the production of the operetta Glada änkan (1954) led to the light-hearted film Sommarnattens leende (1955), its own medieval play Trämålning (1955) became the basis for the film The Seventh Seal (1956), and Molière plays such as Don Juan (1955) and The Misanthrope (1957) had a thematic connection with the film The Devil”s Eye (1960). With the departure from the lush Skåne region, the form became more serious, more contemporary.

Bergman”s origins were in the theatre, from his childhood puppet theatre and laterna magica experiments at home to the amateur theatre at Mäster Olofsgården, where he went in his youth as an escape from a complicated home environment and where he sometimes even slept on the theatre floor wrapped in a carpet. From there, he went on via children”s theatre at Medborgarhuset, productions for folk park tours and increasingly professional productions at both the Stockholm Student Theatre and the Dramatikerstudion, which had been newly founded by Vilhelm Moberg and others, to become, in 1944, at the age of 26, the record-breaking director and first director of Helsingborg”s Stadsteater. His productions attracted attention early on and often received glowing reviews in the press. He also wrote and directed a number of his own plays for the stage and radio theatre and is continuously one of the most performed Nordic playwrights on stages around the world, not least through stage versions of film scripts.

Of the more than 130 stage productions and more than 40 radio theatre productions he directed, there were certain playwrights and plays that recurred time and again throughout his life. The incomparable favourite and soulmate was August Strindberg. Of him Bergman directed a total of 31 productions, four of which were of A Dream Play, four of The Ghost Sonata and three of The Pelican. For his historical dramas, Strindberg adopted William Shakespeare”s approach of bringing royal stories to life by taking the liberty of using himself and his own personal life experiences and impulses in the portrayal, rather than being distantly deferential, and this approach Bergman in turn could be said to have adopted from Strindberg. Bergman has become internationally known for repeatedly portraying his own and his conflict-related relatives” lives and experiences in both theatre and film in his unmistakably personal way. (This uncompromisingly revealing and serious approach has in turn later, like a recognizable Swedish line, almost synonymous with the common international image of Sweden, been carried on in Lars Norén”s drama. Bergman thought Norén was brilliant but never got around to working on his work himself.)

In the first part of his life, he also returned frequently to the plays of the youth idol Hjalmar Bergman, whose Sagan made up no fewer than four productions out of a total of nine by his namesake; the Malmö production, starring Bibi Andersson, also made a guest appearance in Paris in 1958 with the help of money raised by the people of Malmö. At this time, he was also doing productions by contemporary playwrights such as Tennessee Williams (four productions), Jean Anouilh (five productions) and Swedes such as Björn-Erik Höijer (six productions) and Olle Hedberg. Another companion throughout his life has been Henrik Ibsen, whose Peer Gynt he returned to twice: with Max von Sydow in Malmö in 1957 and at the Dramaten with Börje Ahlstedt in 1991. In addition, classics such as William Shakespeare, with a total of ten productions, including three of the violent power drama Macbeth, and Molière, with nine productions, including three of Don Juan and three of The Misanthrope, have returned frequently. Plays by Per Olov Enquist and others were also in the repertoire.

However, he was not interested in either the political theatre of the 1960s and 1970s or the more intellectually experimental or absurdist theatre of writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco or Harold Pinter, which he called “fast food for the impatient”. The closest he came to these forms were probably two productions of Luigi Pirandello”s remarkable Six Roles Seeking an Author (one with Liv Ullmann and others in Oslo in 1967), productions of American Edward Albee and Polish Witold Gombrowicz”s Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy in two versions in older days. According to Bergman, the theatre “should be the meeting of man with man and nothing else”. Throughout his life, he balanced being a challenging, personal theatre-maker on the one hand, and a responsible classical “theatre director” with his dose of well-established classics and household names on the other. In addition to having some driving co-responsibility for his earlier companies, he was theatre director at Helsingborg City Theatre 1944-46 and Dramaten 1963-66, as well as Dramachief during his time at Malmö City Theatre 1952-58. During the 1940s-1960s in particular, he was also very active at the Radio Theatre and the TV Theatre, and made a number of music drama productions, such as Mozart”s opera The Magic Flute on Swedish Television in 1974 and the Swedish premiere in April 1961 of Igor Stravinsky”s opera The Way of the Ruckles at the Royal Opera, where his own and Daniel Börtz”s opera Backanterna also had its world premiere in 1991. He has also staged the classic Swedish song play Värmlänningarna, both for Radioteatern in 1951 and at Malmö Stadsteater in 1958, and Bertolt Brecht”s Tolvskillingsoperan in 1950 at Intiman.

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Music

For Bergman, music was a comfort and a vital source of inspiration throughout his life. “If I had to choose between losing my sight or my hearing – then I would keep my hearing,” the filmmaker said in an interview, and “film is almost like music”, “as a filmmaker I have learned an enormous amount from my devotion to music”. He said he increasingly came to build his scripts and productions with the movement structure and precision of musical compositions. On film shoots, he often preferred to listen to the actors” dialogue rather than watch it, because if it sounds real, it looks good, was his experience. Had he had the talent for it, he would have chosen to become a conductor, he also said. However, he suffered from limitations in his ability to remember music, which made it particularly difficult in his work with music drama.

It was above all the pure, stringent, concentrated classical music that he appreciated most. Composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert appear time and again in his films. He also collaborated with contemporary Swedish composers, notably Erik Nordgren and Erland von Koch in a number of earlier films, but also Lars Johan Werle, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Ivan Renliden and Daniel Bell. Among popular music, he particularly appreciated the subtle songs of Povel Ramel. Bergman”s late collaboration with Peter Stormare on a number of theatre and TV productions introduced him to modern rock music, which came to shape much of the form of his rebellious 1986 Dramaten production of Hamlet, with thunderous closing music by the group Imperiet.

Music and musicians play a central role in a number of films, such as the blind pianist in Music in the Dark (1947), the orchestral musicians in To Joy (1949), the ballet exercises in Summer Play (1950), the jesters in The Seventh Seal (1956), the famous cellist in Not to Mention All Those Women (1963), the puppet show performance of The Magic Flute in The Wolf”s Voice (1966), the piano-playing mother and daughter in The Autumn Sonata (1977) and the cello-playing girl in Saraband (2003). In films such as Summer Night”s Smile (1955) and The Maiden”s Tale (1959), actors suddenly burst into song, and film music accompanies most of the films.

When Bergman was a summer speaker on Swedish Radio on 18 July 2004, he spent a lot of time on music and asked listeners a few questions about what music really is and where it comes from. The response was enormous and large numbers of letters were received by SR, whereupon a special programme was made about these responses, entitled Breven till Bergman 24 December 2004.

Oscar

In 1970 Bergman was awarded an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Academy Awards. Three of Bergman”s films won Oscars for Best International Feature Film:

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Other awards and honours

The idea that Bergman would be more appreciated abroad than in Sweden, where he sometimes faced harsh criticism, is often repeated. This was particularly true of early films such as The Evening of the Gycklarnas and The Smile of a Summer Night. Among the critics was Olof Lagercrantz. Later, the films were criticised for a lack of social commitment, not least during the radical cultural climate and rethinking of cultural forms in the 1960s and 1970s. Significantly, Bo Widerberg began his film career by sharply criticising Bergman in the book Visionen i svensk film (1962). It was not until Fanny and Alexander (1982) that a united Swedish criticism and film audience unanimously praised his work. This particular film has been considered both artistically driven and, in contrast to Bergman”s chamber plays, unusually accessible.

A curious detail of the Bergman critique was Chaplin magazine”s anti-Bergman issue on 14 November 1960 “to clear the air of the slightly stifling presence of the genius director, who collected Oscars and Palms of Gold in abundance”. Bergman himself participated, both with an intercession for the impending verdict and secretly with a highly critical article, written under the pseudonym (French film critic) Ernest Riffe. However, word soon spread that Bergman himself was the author and, after half-hearted denials, he admitted in the interview book Bergman on Bergman (1970) that the accusation was true.

Three foundations are active in managing and developing the cultural legacy of Ingmar Bergman. The latter two foundations were established in 2009 and their work is gradually taking shape.

The Ingmar Bergman Foundation was established in 2002 by the Swedish Film Institute, Dramaten, Svensk Filmindustri and Sveriges Television in consultation with Bergman, who donated most of his artistic legacy to it – scripts, working materials, notes, diaries, correspondence and more – as well as the rights to all his scripts, which largely finance the Foundation”s activities through a large number of theatre productions around the world in particular. Its archives are accessible to researchers and writers, and the Foundation also has the task of disseminating relevant information to the public about Bergman”s life and works. In 2007, the Foundation”s archives were included on UNESCO”s World Heritage List.

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Festivals

In the summer of 2004 the small festival “Fårö Filmdagar” was started on the initiative of Jannike Åhlund and others. This gradually developed into the internationally established annual summer event Bergmanveckan on Fårö with film screenings and talks with invited guests related to Bergman”s work and those who were inspired by him. In previous years, Wim Wenders, Kenneth Branagh, Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson and Ang Lee, among others, have visited the week, and Bergman himself has sometimes participated.

In May-June 2009, the first international Bergman theatre festival, the Ingmar Bergman International Theatre Festival, was held at Dramaten, with the intention of returning every few years.

Culture Awards

A number of cultural prizes have been instituted by Bergman himself or in his memory and awarded regularly to cultural figures according to various criteria.

Other cultural works related to Ingmar Bergman

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New international productions of Bergman”s works

Bergman was involved from an early stage in the creation of a film school in Sweden and was employed from its inception in 1964 and for a number of years thereafter as an “inspector” and regular lecturer at the Swedish Film Institute”s Film School and its successor, the Dramatic Institute.

In 1987, he was one of the founders of the European Film Academy, based in Berlin, and was its Honorary President until his death.

On 18 July 2004, Bergman was the summer speaker on the Swedish Radio programme Sommar.

In 2005, an ”Ingmar Bergman Professorship” was established at the Department of Film Studies at Stockholm University in collaboration with the Ingmar Bergman Foundation. Its first professor was the Dutch film scholar Thomas Elsaesser from 2006.

In September 2008, Ingmar Bergman had a street and a square in Stockholm named after him. Part of Smålandsgatan near the Dramaten was renamed Ingmar Bergman”s Street and the intersection outside the Dramaten where Smålandsgatan, Almlöfsgatan and Nybrogatan meet was named Ingmar Bergman”s Place. Ingmar Bergman used to wait for his taxi at this spot after his working day at the Dramaten. In Helsingborg, too, Bergman was honoured with an Ingmar Bergman”s Place on Bruksgatan, near the address of Helsingborg”s old municipal theatre, where Bergman was its director in the 1940s. The unveiling took place on 14 July 2008, the day Bergman would have turned 90.

In 2010, Ingmar Bergman also had a street named after him in his native Uppsala. Part of Nedre Slottsgatan then became Ingmar Bergman”s street. The street is close to the blocks where the film Fanny and Alexander was shot, close to the family quarters on Trädgårdsgatan (where Bergman”s grandmother had a large apartment) and close to Slottsbiografen, where Bergman had his first film experiences.

Ingmar Bergman is the subject of the new Swedish 200-krona banknote, which was introduced on 1 October 2015. The banknote features a picture of Bergman and Bengt Ekerot, dressed as Death, during the filming of The Seventh Seal.

Bergman died on the same day as Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni.

Documentaries

In 1957-2003, Bergman directed

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Other TV productions

Ingmar Bergman appeared in 137 stage theatre productions between 1938 and 2002 as director (sometimes also scriptwriter) in Stockholm, Helsingborg, Malmö, Gothenburg, Norrköping, Oslo, Copenhagen, London, Munich and Salzburg, and many of these productions have toured and guest performed in a large number of countries around the world.

He directed two opera productions at the Royal Swedish Opera (the Swedish premiere of Igor Stravinsky”s The Road to Rucklaren in 1961 and the world premiere of Daniel Börtz”s The BackAnts to his own libretto in 1991; the latter also as a TV version in 1993) in addition to the TV production of Mozart”s The Magic Flute in 1974. At Malmö Stadsteater he staged the much-publicised performance of the operetta Glada änkan in 1954 with Gaby Stenberg in the title role, the song play Värmlänningarna in 1958 and wrote the libretto for the acclaimed ballet Skymningslekar in 1954. In 1976 he also made the dance film The Dance of the Damned Women for SVT together with choreographer Donya Feuer, a long-time collaborator in Bergman”s productions. See also: list of Ingmar Bergman”s theatre productions.

For Radioteatern at Sveriges Radio he directed and wrote

A number of unpublished juvenile works and other manuscripts and writings are held in the Bergman Archive collections, in addition to those listed below. Some have also been published as short stories and serials in various newspapers and magazines.

Published books

In addition to a large number of books, newspaper articles and radio and TV features in various languages internationally, there have been a number of films and TV programmes about and featuring Ingmar Bergman and his work. Several of these have attracted considerable international attention and have been awarded prizes at international film festivals. In addition to the document Fanny and Alexander (1986), there have also been so-called “behind-the-scenes” films about the production of some of Ingmar Bergman”s various films.

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In English

Sources