(* … or not. As an alert reader just pointed out, Bergman has been replaced with a tribute to James Garner. Still… I’ll leave this post for future reference, as I’m sure TCM will eventually bring some of these films back.)
I recently screened a 16mm print of Ingmar Bergman’s (1918 – 2007) The Magician (1958). His birthday was on Bastille Day (July 14th) and his day of death was July 30th. It is fitting that both his life and death should fall on the same month. The Swedish director is famous for artful portrayals of existential extremes that tackle the agonies of passion and life against a backdrop of inevitable mortality in ways that put them back-to-back. His most famously iconic scene from The Seventh Seal (1957) turns the game between life and death into something that is not even back-to-back; it’s face-to-face in a setup that is still referenced even today (ie: in The Colbert Report‘s “Cheating Death” segments). Which brings us back to the end of July… usually thought of as a summer moment made for back-pack adventures, trips to the water-park, and leisurely moments spent lounging around in air-conditioned spaces. But perhaps TCM programmers were hip to the idea that July is also Bergman’s month, because this Monday night they are showing six of his films back-to-back. Here are some crib notes for those ready to take the plunge.
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
TCM program blurb: “An actress schemes to win back her married lover from his still virginal wife.” Admittedly, space restrictions on the program make pithy condensations of the plot into their own art-form. Had I been pressed to summarize the film in twelve words, I doubt I’d do better (and am, in fact, confident I’d do worse). But check out how much more appealing the film is from this paragraph-long excerpt from French journalist Georges Sadoul (as translated by Peter Morris):
This witty, sophisticated comedy is one of a series of Bergman films about women and their relationships. Though superficially a frothy farce in the Feydeau (or even Flers and Cavaillet) manner, it is in fact a profound satire of mores and social conventions comparable to La Règle de jeu (q.v.). But where Renoir’s films is realistic, Bergman’s is more philosophical, at times, even metaphysical – and one can find in it traces of Beaumarchais, Marivaux, Musset, Shakespeare, Laclos, Pirandello, and Kafka.
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Boom! Time to go back to school, because if you’re like me you were fine with Alain Renoir (1921 – 2008), Rules of the Game (1939), Shakespeare, Kafka, and maybe even a bit of Pierre Beaumarchais (he helped give Paris drinking water, right?)… but while the other names ring bells I’m now hitting Wikipedia to digest the richer legacy and context for this work.
Wild Strawberries (1957)
TCM program blurb: “On his way to an awards ceremony, a distinguished professor thinks back on his loveless life.” Hmmmm. I think I’d rather eat tubs of ice-cream alone in my bathtub as I cry with the lights off. With just seven more words I’d have gone with Peter Bradshaw’s one-sentence review from The Guardian: “A wonderfully composed movie in which Ingmar Bergman is able to vary the tone from melancholy to gaiety in the most deeply satisfying way.” Ah, much better! Now watch what Tom Dawson from the BBC can do with TWO sentences: “This is one of the truly outstanding works of post-war European cinema. Ingmar Bergman’s allegorical road-movie slips between present and past, dream and reality to explore the external and internal words of its ageing central character.” Now we’re cooking with gas, as that’s something anyone should want to see.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
TCM program blurb: “A medieval knight challenges Death to a chess game to save himself and his friends.” Okay, that’s sounding interesting and might even remind the fans of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), that this is a touchstone film. Let’s bring Sadoul back for this one to see what he says: “The Seventh Seal is Bergman’s most ambitious film and is somewhat his ‘Faust’ (and even his Second Faust’) in its allegory of the knight vainly grappling with Death. Despite its simplistic philosophy it has an engaging lyricism and a power of imagery perhaps unequaled in the Swedish cinema. Preferable to the final Dance of Death or the chess game on the seashore are the scenes of medieval Sweden, the band of flagellants, the life of the three wandering players, and the young girl condemned as a witch.” Did you see what Sadoul did there? He takes this movie that is best known for this one thing (“knight challenges Death to a chess game”) and he basically says, “yeah, that’s alright, but you know what really rocks this movie: this, and this, and this, and this and, oh yeah, btw: its imagery is unequaled in the Swedish cinema. Okay, I have to admit, now I’m sticking with Sadoul to see how Bergman’s next trilogy fares. If The Seventh Seal is the high-water mark for Swedish cinema, surely the rest is down-hill, right? Actually, not necessarily… Of the next film in the TCM queue (Through a Glass Darkly) he says “it is full of some of Bergman’s most unforgettable sequences.” Okay, I guess we’ll let him have it both ways…
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
TCM program blurb: “A recently released mental patient becomes obsessed with her younger brother.” Ick. Still, not much you can do here, and even Ebert’s summary for this film which he lists under his four-star Great Movie list doesn’t exactly sell it at first: “…the story of a father, his daughter and son, and the daughter’s husband, isolated on a remote Swedish island for a summer vacation.” He adds that the “opening scenes are deliberately banal,” which is now making it a harder sell. Here’s the thing, Ebert also adds that “Bergman works hand-in-hand with his cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, one of the greatest artists of his craft. Nykvist makes us realize that most movies simply illuminate faces, while he lights them. Especially since the advent of television, movies have used a lighting style that flattens the image and makes it all seem on one plane. One reason we like film noir is that it uses angles, shadows and strategic lighting more boldly. In a Bergman film, if you freeze a frame on one of his two-shots, you’ll see that Nykvist has lighted each face separately, and often not from the same source; he uses the lights to create a band of shadow that is like a dark line drawn between the faces, separating them.” Got that? The light is its own character. This is the essence of cinema, and what separates it from TV shows. All those people who talk about “quality TV” and why that’s the reason they don’t go to movie theaters anymore are missing out on the original fuel that lit the big arthouse culture of the sixties. And speaking of the light…
Winter Light (1962)
TCM program blurb: “A disillusioned priest copes with his loss of faith.” No snark here. For a short sentence, I think that does a pretty good job and the subject matter should be of interest. It’s well known that Bergman’s father was a strict Lutheran minister and this trilogy of films is helping him sort through the baggage of his upbringing. To flush it out a bit more, I’d turn to a colleague of Jean-Luc Godard: writer and filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin, who holds Winter Light in high regard by putting it on his personal Top 10 list. Here’s his opening salvo (and I certainly encourage you to Google the original text to read in full): “This is a terrifying film to watch for any aspiring filmmaker worth his/her salt. One takes a look at it and soon realizes that it spells perfection. Not a reassuring realization when one is trying to enter the trade. The only thing that can mitigate somewhat this feeling is that Bergman himself expressed wonderment at what he had pulled off here, as if he weren’t entirely responsible for it and lady luck had been outrageously on his side.” He goes on to add that “there is a miracle at work here.” Damn… did I just hear another mic drop?
The Silence (1964)
TCM program blurb: ” Two sisters deal with their tangled relationship while stranded in a war-torn city.” Tangled relationships and war. Sex and action. That should motivate some people to check it out. Given what Sadoul said about The Seventh Seal (“a power of imagery perhaps unequeled in the Swedish cinema”) and Through a Glass Darkly (“full of some of Bergman’s most unforgettable sequences”), surely this last entry in the trilogy will reflect some kind of slide from grace, no? No. According to Sadoul, The Silence is “one of Bergman’s most perfectly realized films, oppressive in its atmosphere and disquieting in its human implications.” Also: “The best scenes show the small boy wandering around the strange world in which he finds himself, a world that amuses and excites him more than it disturbs him. Ann is entirely carnal and libidinous but the scenes of intercourse are not at all erotically stimulating (though parts of them were censored outside Sweden and Germany), being presented objectively and dispassionately.” Maybe TCM should have added the words “carnal, libidinous, and censored” to it’s program blurb to help get viewers. Or not. At this point if you still think Bergman’s work is the stuff of arthouse cliches, the boat has already sailed without you. Most cinephiles have already been paying attention.