EGIL

TORNQVIST
x

kP
x
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

.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

Preface

Prologue
The Stage and the Screen

PART 1- THE STAGE DIRECTOR

23
30
46
59
69
81

Strindberg, The Dream Play (1970)

Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata (1973)

Strindberg, Miss iu/ie (1985)

O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night (\988)

Ibsen, A Doll's House (1989)

Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (1994)

PART 2 - THE SCREEN DIRECTOR

95
112
128

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Persona (1966)

146
160
174

Autumn Sonata (1978)

Wild Strawberries (1957)

Strindberg, Storm (1960)

Cries and Whispers (1973)
Fanny and Alexander (1982)

PART 3 - THE RADIO DIRECTOR

191
195

A Matter ofthe Soul (1990)

199

Epilogue

Strindberg, EasIer (1952)

Between Stage and Screen

231

Notes
Selected Bibliography
List of Illustrations

233

Index

213
226

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 productions, 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 Prologue, in which Bergman's work as a director for different media and the problems involved 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 American 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 nondurative 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, r use 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 Transposilions, 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 PalmstiemaWeiss as well as the staff of the Royal Dramatic Theater, the National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images, the Swedish Institute, and the Swedish Film Institute,
all in Stockholm.

PRE}'ACE

PROLOGUE

The Stage and the Screen

With his fifty feature films, around a hundred stage performances, some forty radio versions, 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 system, 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 connections 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 adaptation 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 recipients - 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. Only when a director based his
film on a published novel or play, could you as reader acquaint yourself with a text that
had some connection with the film in question. Even now the publication of a film script
is a sign that we are dealing with an artistic product.
Film is an international medium, theater a national one. As a film director
Bergman is world-famous; as a stage dircctor he is little known outside his own country.
Even if a production by the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, directed by Ingmar
Bergman, may be seen nowadays in London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Madrid and
Rome, the audience attending it will be very limited compared with the audience attending his films. Besides, unlike the film audience, the theater audience will either listen to
a language they do not understand, or will be provided with simultaneous interpretation
via earphones, which is an unsatisfactory solution of the language problem, since it prevents a proper reception of the paralinguistics of the performance, the way in which the
speeches are enunciated.
As Bergman himself has pointed out, there is a close connection between his
work for the stage and for the screen. In 1963 he declared:
My films are only a distillation of what I do in the theater. Theater work is
sixty percenl.. .. Not even considering the connection between The Seventh
Seal and my production of Ur-Faust (although they came about in the reverse

order). Not even considering the connection between The Face [The Magician in the U.S.] and my production of Six Characters in Search ofan AlIthor

in Malmo."
Bergman here seems to indicate that his work in the theater - the contact with outstanding drama texts - has inspired him to pursue certain ideological, thematic, and fonnal
patterns within the film medium.
In a statement made seven years later, he says: "Between my job at the theater
and my job in the film studio it has always been a very short step indeed. Sometimes it
has paid off, and sometimes it has been a drawback. But it has always been a short step
between.'" Some of the films, he points out, have even been "surreptitious plays."6 Even

12

THE STAGE AND THE SCREEN

in the mid-1950s, he remarks, "there was a frustrated dramatist in me. I wrote stage plays
for the screen in those days, because the theater seemed closed to me."7 It is noteworthy
in this connection that the film The Seventh Seal grew out of the play Wood Painting: that.
conversely, the film Torment and the TV series Scenes from a Marriage were transposed
for the stage; and that films like Smiles ofa Summer Night, Brink ofLife, The Silence and
Autumn Sonata without any drastic changes could be turned into stage plays.

Bergman's films deal with themes that have sometimes been regarded as typically Swedish: loneliness, lack of communication, somberness. a Although there may be
some truth in this, "the question is not so much how 'Swedish' Bergman's movies are,
but to what extent they have colored our perception of what is Swedish."9 Besides, the
characteristics just mentioned are not unequivocally Swedish. The international aspect
ofBergman's films has certainly less to do with northern exoticism than with the universality of his pervading themes: the relationship between good and evil, dream and reality,
art and life, mask and face, men and women, adults and children, conscious and unconscious. And though some of them - the recurrent theme of humiliation, the 'ideological'
significance of music - carry a more individual signature, there is nothing Swedish about
them. In fact, Bergman's metaphysical and psychological rather than political and social
concerns seem fairly removed from what one might see as characteristic Swedish qualities. It is, then, not surprising that many of his mms have had a greater success abroad
than in his native country. This is not saying, of course, that Swedish nature and culture
have not been of enonnous importance to Bergman, who has often declared that he constantly revisits his childhood.
Of particular interest in our context, considering Bergman's profession, is his
depiction of the relationship between thealer and life. In his work, the theater - this
protected home of dreams - frequently becomes a metaphor for this world of illusions.
The theater family in Fanny and Alexander is named Ekdahl in recognition of the fact
that, like lbsen's Ekdal family in The Wild Duck, they live by illusions. The illusion is
loved and hated simultaneously or alternately. Emilie Ekdahl's exit from the theater and
return 10 it (she has a predecessor in Elisabet Vogler in Persona) is paradigmatic for the
ambivalent attitude to the house of dreams - to illusion - characteristic of many Bergman
figures as well as of their originator. 1O
Bergman's continuous work as a stage director means that for long periods he
has been living almost daily with a particular play in heart and mind. Many of these plays
have left traces in the films. This is, of course, especially true of the plays that have meant
the most to him, ones that he has staged several times: Shakespeare's Macbeth, Moliere's
Don Juan and The Misanthrope, lbsen's Peer Gynt, A Doll's House, and Hedda Gabler,

Strindberg's Miss JuNe, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata, Pirandello's Six Charac-

13

THE STAGE AND THE SCREEN

lers in Search of an Author. There is much to be said for the view that "no olher film

director after the breakthrough of the sound film has been so influenced by the theater."11
Moliere, lbsen, Strindberg and, later, Shakespeare are dramatists he has frequently returned to. Of these, Strindberg holds a special place. "My household gods,"
Bergman points out, "were Strindberg, whom I began to consume already when I was
twelve, and Hjalmar Bergman, whom I discovered a few years later."ll Strindberg "expressed things which I'd experienced and which I couldn't find words for."IJ This statement seems to imply that a major reason why Bergman turned to directing fairly early on
was that as a director he could express audiovisually what he was unable to express
verbally_
Characteristic of Strindberg as a playwright is his endeavor to engage his
audience emotionally. Bergman likewise admonishes his theater audience: "It is in your
hearts, in your imagination that this performance is to take place,"I. He expresses the
same view when speaking. in connection with his films. of the importance to "faire
communiquer le public, de le faire participer," and when he praises black-and-white film
because it gives the spectator the opportunity to "voir les couleurs" in his or her own
imaginationY In his plays Strindberg functions as a hypnotizer. The theater becomes a
weapon directed towards our emotional life. The same is true of Bergman, whose stage
and screen productions in this respect belong to Strindberg's extreme form of Aristotelian theater. The film medium is here supportive, for "no form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of
the soul."16 As a film director, via his magic lantern, Bergman has had better possibilities
to hypnotize his audience than as a theater director - or as a playwright.
With the first part of his trilogy To Damascus, Strindberg in 1898 created the
first subjective drama in world literature. An overwhelming part of this play is a projection of the protagonist's, the Stranger's, thoughts and emotions. His experience of the
surrounding world becomes our experience. The border between objective and subjective is blotted out. The varying locations and weather conditions represent above all inner
realities. The same is true of many Bergman films. The barren island in Through a Glass
Darkly stands for a feeling of isolation, the frosty, gray November landscape in Winter
Light for emotional chill. and so on. In To Damascus, as in Strindberg's dream plays
generally, there is a diffuse borderline between dream and reality, resulting in a feeling

that life is a dream. This diffuseness is characteristic also of Bergman's work, which is in
other respects very lucid. It is in fact a key to it.
Scenes of unmasking often appear in Strindberg's work. The most explicit
one is found in the second act of The Ghost Sonata, where the Old Man. Hummel, unmasks the Colonel; later, when the guests begin to arrive for the ghost supper, he de-

14

THE STAGE AND THE SCREEN

elares: "You keep calm and we'll continue to play our old roles a while longer." The focal
scene in a Bergman production is often one of unmasking. After this scene, the characters resume their roles and hide behind their social masks. Vampirism is another frequent
theme with Strindberg, appearing in several Bergman films, notably in Persona and The
Hour o/the Wolf.
In the literature, drama and film of the twentieth century, man's inability to
communicate with his fellows in any deeper sense is a constantly recurring theme. One
of the possible means of communication is language. As a stage and screen director,
Bergman distrusts language as a means of establishing contact. On the contrary, he maintains, language is nonnally used to build walls between people behind which they may
hide.'7 This idea, which echoes the Old Man's elaim in The Ghost Sonata thatlhe differentlanguages have been invented in order to hide the secrets of the tribe, seems to underlie the enigmatic words on the blackboard in the exam scene of Wild Strawberries, later
developed in The Silence, where the three main characters are confronted with a language, created by Bergman and unintelligible both to them and to us. The inability to
understand each other's language becomes a metaphor for the inability 10 understand one
another generally. While Anna in The Silence tries to communicate by means of her
senses, the unintelligible language becomes an admonition to Ester. Her job as a translator is an adequate symbol of her search for verbal communication. She is akin to the
Student in The Ghost Sonata. Like him, Ester is a seeker who tries to decipher the meaning of life. But in contrast to her, the Studenl is clairvoyant. His true counterparts in
Bergman's films are the young ones, the children. Their purity and openness contrast
with the constant role-playing of the adults. This is true of Minus in Through a Glass
Darkly, of Johan in The Silence and of Fanny and Alexander in the film of that name.
The search of Bergman's protagonists is often expressed in the fonn of a
journey. lust as in Strindberg's post-Inferno plays, the journey here plays an important
thematic and structural role, functioning as "a catalyst for the conflict between the
present and the past, between imagined and real

values."l~

It can be a Irain journey, re-

turning the characters to an environment they have left behind them, as in Three Strange
Love.~,

or a voyage in remembrance of things past, as in Illicit Interlude. In The Seventh

Seal we accompany Antonius Block on his way to his waiting wife - and 10 death.
Similarly, we accompany Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries on his presumably last journey,
from Stockholm 10 Lund. In Winter Light we journey with Tomas, the doubting clergyman, from one church to another. When Bergman once, speaking of this film, declared
that "everything became stations on the road for Ihe priest," he indicated not only the
connection with Christ's way to Calvary but also the connection with Strindberg's dra
mas of penance.

15

THE STAGE AND THE SCREEN

Bergman has rightly been called the most energetic pursuer of the
Strindbergian chamber play. 19 Although the term 'chamber play' in the first place has a
spatial meaning, Strindberg gave it a generic status. In his Memorandum to the Members
afthe Intimate Theater he writes:

... in drama we seek the strong, highly significant motif, but with limitations.
We try to avoid in the treatment all frivolity, all calculated effects, places for
applause, star roles, solo numbers. No predetermined foon is to limit the author, because the motif deteonines the foon. Consequently: freedom in treatment, which is limited only by the unity of the concept and the feeling for
style. 'O
But the term 'chamber play' relates also to music. In his Memorandum Strindberg speaks
of "the concept of chamber music transferred to drama. The intimate action, the highly
significant motif, the sophisticated treatment."21
Bergman has borrowed the teon from Strindberg:
Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light and The Silence and Persona I've

called chamber plays. They are chamber music - music in which, with an
extremely limited number of voices and figures, one explores the essence of a
number of motifs. The backgrounds are extrapolated, put into a sort of fog.
The rest is a distillation. 22
The Ghost Sonata ends with a 'coda: a swift recapitulation of earlier themes and an

execution: the faith in a benevolent God which is the prerequisite for the Student's intercession for the Young Lady. In the same way, Through a Glass Darkly ends with a 'divine
proof' - the idea that God is love - and this forms, says Bergman, "the actual cada in the
last movement."23 Just as Strindberg calls Master O/rifandA Dream Play symphonies, so
Bergman calls The Se-,'enth Seal "an oratorio."~4 And just as The Ghost Sonata by its very
title implies a relationship with the sonata form, so the title Autumn Sonata has the same
implication. With his chamber plays, Strindberg has renewed drama. By applying
Strindberg's idea to film, Bergman has renewed film art.
Olof Molander, the leading Swedish stage director in the 1930s and 1940s,
especially renowned for his Strindberg productions, has acted as an important mediator
between Strindberg and Bergman. In the program for his 1945 perfonnance of
Strindberg's The Pelican, Bergman clearly stated his indebtedness to Molander, who

16

THE STAGE AND THE SCREEN

has made us see the magic in Strindberg's dramaturgy.

[He] gives us

Strindberg without embellishments or directorial visions, tunes in to the leXl,

and leaves it at that. He makes us hear the poet's anxiety-driven fever pulse.
We listen 10 a strange, mUled chamber music.
First it was A Dream Play. Night after night I stood in the wings and
sobbed and never really knew why. After that came To Damascus, Saga ofthe
Folkungs, and The Ghost Sonata, It is the sort of thing you never forget and

never leave behind, especially [not] if you happen to be a direclor...Y

Opposing the idea of a director's theater, Bergman here implicitly characterizes his own
ambition to be a humble elucidator of the play text, loyal to the spirit, if not to the letter,
of it. Since the demarcation line between letter and spirit is unclear, it is often difficult to
determine to what extent Bergman's stage adaptations of drama texts have affected one
or the other. Unwilling to compromise with his own vision, he changed the opening and
ending of Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo, minor parts were cut, and the collective
scenes were omitted. In Strindberg's The Crown Bride, he left out most of the folkloristic
passages and the ghostly ingredients, while in Erik X/V, by the same author, he added a
court jester, appearing in the history books but not in the play text. 16 Bergman's versions
of Strindberg's so-called post-Inferno plays have proved especially controversial in this
respect Strindberg's faith in a life hereafter that would justify the misery of this life is
not shared by Bergman, who from the early 1960s has stressed his belief in human love
as the only salvation for the single life granted us. While Bergman's productions of these
plays have nevertheless been convincing, it is not because he has been true to their spirit
but because he has been able to transubstantiate the texts in such a way that his own
vision has come to penetrate them. The subtitle given to the published version of his
1970 production of Strindberg's Dream Play - "an interpretation by Ingroar Bergman" adequately summarizes his own very distinctive contribution to the plays he is directing.
If the relationship between drama text and performance is complicated, the

one between script and film is hardly less

SO.:!7

While many of Bergman's early film

scripts are unpublished, nearly all scripts beginning with Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
have been published both in Swedish and in English translation. Owing to Bergman's
dissatisfaction with the Swedish critics in the 1950s, who often complained about his
clumsy language, some of the early scripts have been published only in translation; this
concerns such significant films as Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild
Strawberries and The Magician.

Other circumstances further complicate the matter. Thus scripts for some of
Bergman's early films have been written by others. Moreover, Bergman has changed his

17

THE STAGE AND THE SCREEN

attitude to the relationship between script and film. In 1961 he could still embrace the
principle of faithfulness:
Don't leave your script in the lurch in the middle of shooting. Be faithful to
what you wrote, even if now, here in the studio, you think it represents a
bygone phase. Don't meddle with the unity it had then. That sort of thing is
dangerous from both an artistic and a practical production point of view. If
you want to record new results, then wait until the next fihn. 2s
Five years later he took a very different view, seeing now the script as "a very imperfect
technical basis for a film."l9 And in 1969 he declared that

The script is nothing but a collection of motifs which I work over with my
actors as the filming proceeds. The final decisions I make in the cutting room,
where I cut away all obtrusive elements.:\I
In J976 he was so negative about film scripts that we may wonder why he chose to
publish the scripts at all:
It is hard to write a screenplay.... The words can never express what the fin
ished film wants to convey.... a filmscript is always a half-finished product, a
pale and uncertain reflection. JI
In 1987 his faith in the script seemed somewhat restored:
The rhythm in my films is conceived in the script, at the desk, and is then given
birth in front of the camera. All fonns of improvisation are alien to me. J !
It is hard to see how the rhythm of an audiovisual medium could to any significant degree
be caught in a textual medium. On the contrary, the cutting continuity of an average film,

containing hundreds of shots, would reveal that the rhythm is necessarily very different from that indicated by the script. In Bergman's case rhythmical discrepancies may
also arise from monologues in the script being turned into dialogues in the film or
subsequent sequences in the script being turned into simultaneous, cross-cut episodes
in the film.
As a matter of fact, by his own admission Bergman's scripts have often
lacked a clear orientation toward a specific medium. The dialogues in his most recent

18

THE STAGE AND THE Sl.:REEN

book, The Fifth Act, were written, he says, "the way I have written for the last fifty years
- it looks like theater but might as well be film, television or merely reading matler."JJ
As Bergman himself indicates, the discrepancy between script and film tends
to be greater in the late films than in the early ones. In these films, many situations in the
scripts are omitted, while, conversely, they contain much that does not appear in the
scripts. In this respect the scripts of these films are comparable to drama texts, where the
stage directions merely register a fraction of the audiovisual elements of a performance,
The appearance of ingredients in the scripts that cannot be realized in films (smells,
colors in relation to black-and-white film, etc.) also demonstrates that such ingredients
are more indicative than prescriptive. 34 Well aware of this, Bergman refers to his published scripts as "film stories." The label suggests that we deal with something that can
be read by itself, something that has deliberately been made friendly to the reader. Another complicating factor is that even one and the same film will show national differences. A Bergman film without subtitles differs from a subtitled version, and this again
from a dubbed version. It can even differ in width and length, whether because Bergman
himself has produced two different versions - as in the case of Face to Face and Fanny
and Alexander - or because film censorship has demllilded certain cuts, cuts which may

differ from one country to another, The situation of reception, finally, may vary considerably. A Bergman film in a large cinema with perfect audiovisual equipment is rather
different from a Bergman film on television.
As a result of these complicated circumstances (with regard to production,
distribution and reception), the literature about Bergman's films - there are still very few
works devoted to his work in the theater - has become rather heterogeneous. While most
analyses ~eem founded primarily on a reading of the published scripts, some of them are
based - as are the film reviews - mainly or exclusively on a viewing of the films. (The
intermediate stage - Bergman's own director's copies - are still, if at all preserved, a
missing link.)

A~

a result, different presentational modes (one textual, the other audio-

visual) and different stages in the creative process (a semi-product as compared with a
finished product) are indiscriminately brought together under the same common label:
the name of the film. There is, after all, a considerable distance between, say, an analysis
of an original Bergman film and an analysis of a translation of a Bergman script. It is still
an open question what influence defective translations and subtitles/dubbing have had on
the international Bergman criticism.
The differences between script and film may concern the characters' actions:
in the script of Through a Glass Darkly, David burns the manuscript of his novel; in the
film he does not. They may involve the place of action: in the script of Autumn Sonata
Eva is seen in the churchyard, where her little son Erik is buried, together with her

19

THf: STAGE AND THE SCREEN

mother Charlotte, while at the end she is alone, somewhere out of doors; in the film their
conversation takes place in Erik's room, while the location at the end is the churchyard.
The differences may concern the time when a piece of information is given: the spectator
of Winter Li/?ht immediately sees that Marta Lundberg, the Christ figure in the film,
wears a furcoat made of sheepskin; the reader of the script learns this much later. The
textual medium is often more explicit than the audiovisual one. When it says in the script
of Cries and Whispers that "the sun breaks out like shimmering horizontal spear poin/s."
the enmity of the sunlight is more obvious to the reader than to the spectator.
Why then bother with the scripts? Is it not the finished product that matters?
In the choice between script and film, the latter must obviously have priority. But just as
it is natural to analyze a stage performance with a certain consideration for the drama text
on which it is based, it is legitimate to analyze a film with regard to the script functioning
as a blueprint for it. In both cases there are ingredients which in one fonn or another ~ by
eiucidations or divergences ~ illuminate the final product.
What distinguishes the significant stage and/or screen director is his or her
ability to create images which communicate something that is difficult or even impossible to express in words. This something is frequently of a metaphoric nature. Naturally,
some images in a Bergman stage or screen performance are more complex than others.
Also, some passages are richer in metaphors than others. The borders are fluid and
highly dependent on the interpretative imagination of the recipient. Thus, a grouping
may become expressive when combined with what is, has been or will be said, a costume
when combined with another one. A face may take on a new meaning when lit in a
different way or, in screen versions, when seen at a different distance or angle. A dissolve
may seem significant when regarded in its thematic context. In all these cases we deal
with visual imagery. The same is true of acoustics. A sound may become significant
through striking changes, through repetition, or even through sudden absence. Or it may
become so because of a suggestive concurrence or contrast between sound and image.
Since both theater and film make use of words, sounds, and visual images. it
is possible to distinguish between verbal, acoustic, and visual imagery. In combination,
the three types create - in the imagination of the spectator

a metaphoric network of

considerable complexity and power. (In radio drama, the visual component is relegated
to the recipient's imagination, which in fact makes it very

powerful.)J~

In the following

chapters we shall see how this is done in some of Bergman's most successful stage,
screen, and radio presentations.

21)

THE STAGE AND THE SCREEN

PART!
THE STAGE DIRECTOR

Strindberg, The Dream Play (1970)

With his pioneering Dream Play (1902),1 Slrindberg set the tone for the non-Aristotelian
drama to come. Loosely imitating the form of a dream to evoke the feeling that life is a
dream, the traditional division of acts and scenes is lacking. For the same reason, there is
no lis! of dramatis personae.

The play describes how Indra's Daughter descends to the Castle of Earth,
where she is reincarnated as Agnes. Gradually, she is made aware of human misery. The
nadir is reached in the middle of the play, where she experiences the most intimate kind
of human relationship - marriage - as imprisonment. She now longs for freedom. At the
end she returns to heaven.

Reputedly the daughter of an Indian god, Agnes is an agnus dei, a female

Jesus. Being a divine creature, she is by definition different from all the other characters
in the play. This is indicated not least by the alienating third-person fonn of her recurrent
"Det ar synd om mlinniskoma," a phrase meaning not only "Human beings are to be
pitied" but also "Human beings are rooted in sin." In the early part of the play the former
meaning prevails, but gradually the latter gains ground.
Together with the Mother and the Doorkeeper, the Daughter fonns a female
trio advocating acceptance of life, while the three prominent men in the play (the Officer,
the Lawyer and the Poet) refuse to accept life as an inexplicable vale of tears. Everyone
wonders what is behind the mysterious door, that is, what the meaning of life may be.
The conflict between (Oriental) acceptance and (Occidental) rejection is never completely resolved. Yet the notion that mankind suffers meaninglessly is gradually overruled by the Schopenhauerian idea that there is a higher meaning in suffering.
Strindberg indicates the fluid, dreamy nature of the play by letting various
properties take on a new look when they become part of a new setting. Apart from being
dreamy 'dissolves: these transformations serve to evoke a feeling that we cannot trust
our senses and that human understanding is limited. This is explicitly demonstrated in
the three visions of the second cave scene, where the Poet imagines that he sees a ship,
then decides that it is a house or a tower until, finally, he discovers that it is a church.
Gradually, his eyesight improves. Similarly, Strindberg's arrangement of scenery and
properties time and again remind us that our imperfect eyesight gradually improves, as
when we discover that the earthly paradise cal1ed Fairhaven is not Paradise, or that the
four-leaf clover (representing luck, worldly success) found in the door in the theater

23

STRINDBERG, THE DREAM PLAY (1970)

corridor, when appearing in the door leading to the sacristy is actually a (Greek) cross,
that is, the symbol of suffering and altruistic love. Similarly, the Officer's bouquet of red
roses gradually turns into the Lawyer's "crown of thorns" Vicarious suffering is the
meaning of life.
Bergman's first production of A Dream Play- hc has by now produced it four
times - was transmitted on May 2, 1963. With its 28 scenes and 36 actors and actresses,
it was the largest production undertaken so far by Swedish television.! Although on the
whole it was well received, Bergman found it in retrospect a bit of a failure. "The Swedish TV version had come to grief owing 10 technical disasters (video tapes couldn't even
be edited in those days).") When compared to his second, stage production seven years
later, most critics found that
the dreamy nature {of the play] was managed better on the stage. Why? Was it
because color television had not yet started in Sweden? Or because the many
close-ups of faces reduced the possibilities for suggestion via the
scenography? Because the electronic cameras needed so much light that it
was difficult to bring about chiaroscuro?4
Bergman's TV version, in black-and-white, opens with a quotation from Strindberg's
Explanatory Note to the play superimposed on the face of the author. The face dissolves
into a cloud. In the next shot Indra's Daughter is seen approaching a barred gate. She
opens it and enters the Prison - rather than the Castle - of Life. SubstilUting Strindberg,
as it were, for Indra and abstaining from the author's Pr%g im Himmel, Bergman immediately clarifies that his perfonnance is not an 'objective,' divine report about the sad
state of mankind but a subjective dream on the part of the author, whose alter ego is the
Poet in the play - as indicated especially at the end where the opening is reversed. The
Poet here enters a cloud which dissolves into an extreme close-up of Strindberg's face.
Who is the dreamer of the play?5 The most natural answer to this question
would be: Ihe recipient. Bergman preferred 10 make the author the dreamer - disregarding the fact that his production deviates from Strindberg's text in other ways than in just this
respect. To put it differently: in his TV performance Bergman indicated that Strindberg is
the dreamer of a version that he himself, as director, had fashioned to a great extent. The
idea of the author as the dreamer of the play was to return in Bergman's first stage production of the play bUI this time with the Poet in the play as the dreamer and creator of it.
The scene shifts, which have contributed to the view that A Dream Play is
more cinematic than theatrical, have always proved a problem 10 stage direclors. Characteristically, it took an outstanding film director like Bergman to overcome this problem.

STRINDBERG, THE DREAM Pl.AY (1970)

In his second production of the play, opening on March 14, 1970, at the Small Stage,
seating 350, of the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm (usually called Dramaten)
Bergman settled for an extremely simple permanent setting with a minimum of properties - as he had done in his TV perfonnance. In this way very swift and smooth scene
changes could be brought about.
Advertized as The Dream Play, Bergman's "interpretation," published three
years after the perfonnance,6 retained the number of scenes (15) that can be distilled out
of Strindberg's play.' The dialogue was condensed; a number of references to Oriental
religion, considered of little relevance to a modern Western audience, were omitted. The
dialogue was somewhat rearranged; thus the opening and the closing speeches were
given to the Poet rather than to Indra's Daughter. The omissions and the swift scene
changes resulted in a performance lasting about 45 minutes less than what is nonnally
the case.
During the whole perfonnance a table (the Poet's writing-desk) was seen in
the same fixed position. For the various scenes temporary screens and a few pieces of
furniture were added. An evenly distributed, grayish light fell across the stage most of the
time, indicative of the somber everyday mood pertaining to this shadowy world.
Remaining on the stage throughout, Bergman's Poet (Georg Arlin), in black,
replaced Strindberg's Indra's Daughter as the character witnessing the various scenes,
like her more of an observer than someone involved in the action, sometimes sitting at his
desk, sometimes hiding himself under it, constantly eavesdropping on his characters,
occasionally reading from his own script. At the same time, Bergman's Poet, being the
dreamer of the play, was the shaper of the action and the characters. In this capacity he
could be seen not only as the author but also as the director of the play, a Strindbergman.
In the figure of the Poet, Strindberg's collocation of reality, dreams, and poetry were
made one flesh.
By contrast, Indra's Daughter was split in two: the divine Daughter (Kristina
Adolphson) and the earthly Agnes (Malin Ek). The Daughter appeared in a long white
robe with a mantle attached to it, whereas Agnes wore a simple blue or gray dress with a
white collar, completely unadorned, a weak - and representative - member of mankind,
deprived of the possibility to return to a consoling celestial origin.
The performance opened not up in Heaven, as with Strindberg, but down on
Earth, with a symbolic situation. In the gray light the characters gathered on the empty
stage like shadows, then began a treadmill walk to the sound of a barrel organ - a period
instrument favored by Bergman. The opening scene, a critic said, was "a metaphysical
image of mankind's shadowy wandering in the wildemess."8 Suddenly the movement
was frozen in the middle of a step - as in a film - and the play proper began.

STRINDBERG, THE DREAM PLAY (1970)

From the very beginning the meta-aspect of the production was made clear.
Sitting at his writing-desk, the Poet whispered the first lines to Agnes and the Glazier,
which they then repeated aloud - a very concrete way of illustrating the transference of
written into spoken words, of drama text into live performance.

ln Bergman's 1970 Dream Play production, the Poet and Agnes, in the foreground, were separated
from their ideal eounterpans, the Scald and the Daughter, who appeared on a raised stage in the
hackground in front of Lnnart Mork's nonfigurative design.

The Prologue was partly included, but it did not open the play. Instead, it was placed at
the beginning of Scene 4, labeled "The Theater." Moreover, Indra (here called the Scald)
and his Daughter, far from appearing alone in Heaven. appeared on a small elevated
platfonn at the back of the stage, where they were observed by a stage audience (humanity), including the Poet and Agnes. Instead of Strindberg's celestial reality, the audience
was confronted with the world of theatrical illusion, indicated also by the fact that the
Scald and his Daughter were applauded for their 'theatrical performance.' Strindberg's
independent divinities were transformed into products ofthe human brain, theatrical inventions, poetic fantasies.

26

STRINDBF.RG. THE DREAM PLAY (1970)

In Bergman's version of the degree ceremony (in the church scene), three
extras incarnated an altar piece visualizing the Crucifixion, The pretentious immaturity
of the academic world was indicated by having children dressed up in tails and Swedish
student caps. Accompanied by Chopin's Funeral March - borrowed from Olof
Molander's Dream Play productions - the Officer (Holger Lowenadler) and the Lawyer
(Allan Edwall) entered to receive the symbols of their doctor's degrees:
Entering this bizarre scene, the Lawyer ... found himself literally trapped in a
nightmarishly logical Chaplinade from which he could not extricate himself.
This "terribly ugly, unsuccessful, embittered character in an old tailcoat,
whiny with use, that hangs around his shoulders," (Zem) stumbled onto the
stage, bowed to the assembly - and then discovered that he was still wearing
his galoshes. Desperately, he tried to unbuckle and remove them - only to be
assaulted by the foul smell of his wretched old coat, heavy as all his clothes
are with "the stink of other men's crimes." Quickly the sniffing spread; soon
everyone present was holding his nose. In his mortification the Lawyer then
tried to remove the offending coat - with the result that his trousers fell down,
and he was reduced to the ultimate indignity of hopping about, unable to pull
them up againY
In this nightmarish "Chaplinade," possibly inspired by Reinhardt's similar treatment of
the School scene,1O Bergman, by his own admission,lI set himself in contrast to
Molander.
In conformance with Swedish academic tradition, the Officer was laureated,
while in Bergman's amplification of Strindberg's idea, Agnes took the crown of thorns
from the crucified Christ and placed it upon the Lawyer's head. Suffering vicariously, the
Lawyer nevertheless found himself unworthy of the crown of thorns. When he put it
aside, the Poet picked it up and coquettishly tried it on before an imaginary mirror (the
audience in the auditorium). "Satis/actio vicaria [was 1 transformed into literary coquetry."12
The Coalcarriers' scene, where class differences are especially emphasized,
was drastically - and successfully - integrated into the Fairhaven scene, that is, transposed from Italy to Everywhere. As the blackened coalcarriers entered, the movements
of the white-dressed vacation celebrators at Fairhaven (tennis players, dancing couples)
were frozen. In this manner Bergman could retain, in condensed fashion, Strindberg's
black-and-white pattern.

27

STRINDBERG, TIlE DREAM PLAY (1970)

The Fairhavcn scene in the 1970 Dream Play production. The Poet, in dark clothes, was visibly
kept apart from lhe white-clad holiday makers.

In Bergman's reduced version there was no burning castle to be seen at the end. Instead,
there was a purely symbolic fire: a large, nonfigurative, red design on a screen. No doubt
meant to activate the spectators by presenting them with an enigma, this design by
scenographer Lennart Mork was variously interpreted as "the burning castle of the
dream:' "the human circulatory system," "flickering flames from the earth's interior,"
and "the inside of the eyelid as we see it when we doze off."B
Instead of the altar, not prescribed by Strindberg but usually figuring in stage
productions of the play, there was the Poet's table, where the characters sacrificed their
attributes, that is, took leave of their roles in token of the fact that these were merely
products of the Poet's imagination.
Finally. the Poet stepped forward and all the other characters, facing the audience, gathered around him - Bergman's counterpart of Strindberg's "wall of human
faces, asking, sorrowing, despairing" - while he, rather than the Daughter, spoke the
final lines about the schizophrenic predicament of humanity: the desire to leave and to
stay. Then the stage was left almost empty.
The spotlight on the Poet's table was extinguished. The final image was ... no
depiction of a flowering castle of redemption and deliverance, but simply a
glimpse of Agnes, the woman who has taken upon herself all manKind's suffering in her heavy gray shawl, still seated alone on the empty stage. her hand
pressed convulsively to her face in speechless anxiety.l'

STRINDBERG, THE DREAM PLAY (1970)

Bergman's second production of A Dream Play was reductive in more than one respect.
Apart from effectively condensing Strindberg's dialogue and largely ignoring his stage
directions in favor of a 'Shakespearean' empty stage, the director transformed the author's metaphysical perspective, in which the existence of divine creatures and a divine
plan is still assumed, into an immanent, meta-theatrical, Pirandelloan conception,!.' in
which the divinities were revealed as actors posing to a stage audience - much as the
Poet posed as a divinity in the church scene. Metonymically representing humanity at
large. this stage audience was linked with the real audience. As a result a sense of
theatrum mundi was created.

Rarely has Bergman been so Shakespearean as in his 1970 production of A

Dream Play, where literally all the world was a stage and where the characters were not
only walking shadows who strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage but also "such
stuff as dreams are made on."
Yet since the whole play, in Bergman's version, was presented as a dream by
the Poet, Shakespeare's 'objective' conception of the world was overruled by his subjective view of it. As Strindberg puts it in his Explanatory Note for the play: "one consciousness is superior to them all [the characters]: that of the dreamer."

29

STRINDBERG, THE DREAM PLAto (l970)

Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata (1973)

In a Prologue written for the opening of his own Intimate Theater in Stockholm. where

The Ghost Sonata (1907) was first performed, Slrindberg speaks of the journey that mankind must undertake "from the Isle of the Living 10 the Isle of the Dead." He was alluding
to Amold Bocklin's well-known paintings of these subjects; at his request copies of these

were placed al either side of the stage in the Intimate Theater. l In The Ghost Sonata we
witness a similar journey. The house we see on the stage represents the House of Life,
which at the end vanishes and is replaced by the Isle ofthe Dead. Without actually realizing it we have been on our way to another reality. Along with the Student, we gradually

discover that the house which on the outside looks so attractive (Act I) is far less attractive inside (ActlI). Life may not be what we had expected but amor vincit omnia (Act
Ill). Yet even this proves to be an illusion: like everyone else, the Young Lady is tainted
by Original Sin ("sick at the core of life"). The stable, attractive house has proved to be a
mirage. The true reality - this is what Strindberg wants us to experience - is to be found
in the life hereafter.
The fundamental idea of the play, then, is that Jife on earth is painful and
illusory and that when we die we are saved, returning from this pseudo-existence to the
original one. Only by hoping for this can we endure our earthly life. This ties in with the
idea that the living are actually ghosts - as indicated by the cue designation "The
Mummy" and the reference to the "ghost supper" in Act 1I.
The Student is "a Sunday child," who "can see what others cannot see"; he is
a student of languages trying to find the unity behind and beyond the linguistic Tower of
Bahelthat mankind has erected "to keep the secrets of the tribe." He is the only one in the
play who sings, "matching human language with the 'universal language' of Music."l AI
the same time, he is Everyman, starting out in life enthusiastically but ending it in disillusion. His hope for a beller existence hereafter, justifying the pain of this life, is not an
individual hope hut a representative one, the hope of mankind.
The play loosely adheres to the unities of time and place. Act I opens on a
Sunday morning; Act n happens in the afternoon and evening of the same day; Act III is
set a few days after the Old Man's (Hummel's) funeral, about a week later.
The acts are linked spatially. Along with the Student we move from the street
(Act I) through the round parlor (Act Il) to the hyacinth room (Act II1), from wider to
narrower space, a Danteanjourney in reverse. By synchronizing this inward movement

30

STRINDBERG, THE GHOST SONATA (1\173)

with the Student's increasingly negative view of life, Strindberg indicates a connection
between life experience and denial of life.
Strindberg's use of space in The Ghost Sonata is quite cinematic. "The
gradual revelation of the rotten foundations of the house.. .is presented visually by a
zoom from act to act towards the center of the house." The spatial "turnaround" in Act III
has its counterpart in a reversed point of view: that of the young couple, now in the
foreground, replaces that of the old people, now in the background.)
The duplicity characteristic of mankind - the attractive social mask hiding
the ugly face - is represented by the "far;ade" of the House of Life. In a fairly literal
translation the initial stage directions read:
The xmundfloor and the first floor ofthe far;ade ofa modern house, only the
corner ofthe house is visible, ending on the groundfloor in a mundparlor, on
the.first floor in a balcony and a flagstaff.
ThmuKh the open windows of the Ivund parlor, when the blinds are raised, a
white marble statue of a young woman is seen, surmunded by palms and
brightly lit by rays of sunshine. In the window to the left pots of hyacinths
(blue, white, pink) can be seen.
On the balcony rail at the corner of the second floor can be seen a blue silk
quilt and two white pillows. The windows to the left are hunK with white
sheets. It is a briltht Sunday morning.
In the foreground in front of the far;ade is a green bench.
To the riltht in the foreground is a street drinking10untain, to the left an advertisement pillar.
To the left at the back is the entrance, which reveals the staircase, the stairs of
white marble and the banister of mahogany and brass; on both sides of the
entrance on the pavement are laurel bushes in tubs.
The corner with the round pariorfaces also a side street, which is thought to
lead inwards towards the backdrop.
To the left ofthe entrance, on the first floor, is a window with a gossip mirror.'

The play opens as follows (figures indicating sequences5 added):

When the curtain rises the bells of several churches in the distance are
ringing.
The doors of the far;ade are open; a woman in dark clothes is standing motionless on the stairs.

31

STR\NDBER(;, THE GHOST SONATA (1\173)

The CARETAKER'S WIFE sweeps the entrance hall; she then polishes the
brass On the front door; finally she waters the laure!.\',
The OLD MAN il' sitting in a wheelchair by the advertisement pillar reading a newspaper; he has white hair and heard and wears glasses.
2

The MILKMAID comes ill from the corner with milk hottles in a wire

basket; she is ill summer clothes, with brown shoes, black stockings, and a
white beret; she takes off the beret and hangs it on the foulltain; wipes the
sweat from her forehead; drinks from the cup; washes her hands; arranges
her hair, usinR the water as a mirror.
A steaml'hip bell can be heard ringing, and the bal's notes of an organ in a
nearby church now and then hreak the silence.

3 After a couple ofminutes ofsilence, when the GIRL has finished her toilet. the STUDENT comes in from the left, unshaven and showing he has not
slept. He goes right up to the fountain. Pause,
STUDENT. May I have the cup? The GIRL pulls the cup toward herself.
Haven't you finished yet? The GIRL looks at him with horror.
OLD MAN to himself. Who's he talking to? - I don't see anyone! - Is he
CHlZY? COlltinues to watch them in great amazemell/.

Compare this to the ending of the play:

The YOUNG LADY has drooped, seems to he dyinR, rillgs. BENGTSSON
enters. Bring the screen! Quickly - I'm dying!
BENGTSSON returns with the screen, which he opens up and puts infront of
the YOUNG LADY
STUDENT. The liberator is coming! Welcome, pale and gentle one. Sleep,
you lovely, innocent, doomed creature, suffering for no fault of your own.
Sleep without dreaming, and when you wake again, . may you be greeted by
a sun that does not burn, in a home without dust, by friends without stain, by
a love without flaw. You wise and gentle Buddha, sitting Ihere waiting for a
heaven to grow out of the earth, grant us patience in our ordeal and purity of
will. that the hope may nOI come to nought l
The strings of the harp hum softly; the room is{illed with a white light,
I saw the sun. To me it seemed
that I beheld the Hidden.
Men must reap what they have sown,
32

STRINDBERG, THE GHOST SONATA (1173)

blest is he whose deeds are good.

Deeds which you have wrought in fury,
cannot in evil fmd redress.
Comfort him you have distressed
with loving-kindness - this will heal.
No fear has he who does no ill.
Sweet is innocence.
A moaning is heard behind the screen.
You poor little child, child of this world of illusion, guilt, suffering and death,
this world of endless change, disappointment, and pain. May the Lord of
Heaven have mercy on you as you journey forth ..
The room vanishes; HOcklin 's Toten-Insel becomes the backdrop;faint, quiet.
pleasantly sad music is heard from the isle.

Bocklin's monumental painting Toten-Insel shows an isle with high, crater-like rocks
surrounding a group of tall cypresses. In the walls of the rocks, there are openings like
those of sepulchral chambers. On the shore below, in the centre, there are stairs of white
marble; here the recently dead are received. "A black boat with a black oarsman. carl)'ing a white coffin with a white figure standing next to it" - Strindberg's stage directions

for his unfinished sequel of The Ghost Sonata, entitled Toten-Insel - approaches the
stairs across the still water.
In The Ghost Sonata the final projection of this painting forms an antithetic
counterpart to the solid house falYade of the play's opening. The marble stairs of the
house - the entrance to Life - correspond to those of the isle, the entrance to Death. The
windows have their counterparts in the sepulchral openings. The white marble statue
inside the house, "surrounded by palms," resembles the erect white figure in the boat,
surrounded by the cypresses of the isle - evergreen like the laurels outside the house but
with a more aspiring shape. The mournful D<lrk Lady "standinf: motionless on the stairs"
corresponds to the black oarsman in the boat. Even the fresh water of the street drinkingfountain, which the Milkmaid "in summer clothes" uses as a mirror, has its counterpart in
the still water around the isle in which the white figure in the boat is reflected.
It is from this isle of the blessed that the ghostly Milkmaid emanates. This

explains why she wears summer clothes even though she was drowned in the winter. And
it is to this isle that the Young Lady journeys forth in the final tableau. The house of
earthly existence - the Old Man's realm - has collapsed and in its place we see its spiritual counterpart, "a home without dust," the Isle of the Dead, "the station of rest or the
first summer vacation" as Strindberg calls it in one of his Blue Books.

J.~

STRINDBERG, THE GROST SONATA (1913)

The connection between the beginning and the end of the play is also emphasized by the sound effects. 6 When the curtain rises on Act I, we hear the ringing of bells
of "sewral churches at a distance." While the Milkmaid washes her hands - an act of
purification - and looks at herself in the "fresh water" of the street drinking-fountain, "a

.\"f<'amship hell can he heard ringing, and the bass notes of an orxan in a nearby church
now and then hreak the silence." By this puzzling combination of sound-effects
Strindberg from the very beginning creates a strange and solemn mood. Only in retrospect, when we have witnessed the ending, do we realize their metaphoric signitlcance,
do we understand that the ringing of the steamship bell signifies a leave-taking of the
shore of life and that the organ music is there to help on the last journey.
"The first great absurdist drama and the greatest play ever written in Swedish."7 Bergman's high evaluation of The Ghost Sonata explains partly why he was willing
to stage this play for the third time. Other reasons were that the right actors were avail-

able for the main parts and that he had new ideas about how to stage the play, especially
the problematic third acl. Despite its chamber play fomlat, the play, opening on January

13, 1973, was performed at the Big Stage of Dramaten. Bergman chose to place the
modem house favade of Act I not upstage, as Strindberg has it, but in the auditorium. A few
years earlier he had done the same thing with the attic in lbsen's The Wild Duck. A major
reason in both cases was that with this arrangement the characters would no longer turn
away from the audience. To Bergman this was of paramount importance. As he stressed
during rehearsals, what the characters witness is less important than their reaction to it.
In The Ghost Sonata, where the house represents Life and its inhabitants
stand for humanity, the spatial reversal was meaningful also in the sense that it linked the
audience with the characters on the stage. Appearing on either side of the proscenium
frame, the inhabilllnts of the house came to function as mediators between the audience
inside the House of Life and the characters out in the street.
At the same time, Strindberg's idea was partly retained. A beautiful art

nolll'eau building was projected on the black screens in the rear. As the Old Man (Toivo
Pawlo) and the Student (Mathias Henrikson) watched the house in the auditorium, the
spectators watched the house they were describing on the screens. The result was a
dreamlike mirror effect, inducing a feeling of being strangely "face to face," seeing
something "through a glass darkly" -

10

quote two Bergman film titles. This state was

further heightened by the similarity between the stage, enclosed by concave screens, and
the horseshoe shape of the auditorium, turning the whole locale into a global "wooden

0" or theatrum mundi.

At the start of the play, the Student relates how he has witnessed the collapse
of a house in a neighboring street the day before; at the end, the house on the stage

STRIND8ERG. THE GHOST 80NAl:-t (1973)

collapses. The implication is that the houses are one and the same: the House of Life.
Bergman's scenographic solution meant that Strindberg's partly verbal and partly visual
metaphor of the dreamlike, illusory nature of life was retained purely visually.
What I have called the Student's Dantean journey in reverse was necessarily
obscured by placing the house in the auditorium. Instead, the generation motif was emphasized in the scenery of the last two acts, where the old, experienced, guilt-laden people occupy the round parlor and the young. innocent, hopeful ones, the hyacinth room. In
the two rooms two phases of life and two contrasting views of it were exposed. The
contrast appeared not least in the interior decoration. In the round parlor, out-of-focus
projection showed a typical tum-of-the-century wealthy bourgeois interior - overloaded,
dark; five sturdy black and red chairs completed the impression of sombemess. In the
much loftier hyacinth room, by contrast, two slender white chairs and a white-and-gold
harp dominated the picture: only gradually did the spectators become aware of a con
tfasting property: the black death screen.
Three times (once in each act) the projected exterior/interior scenery was
momentarily replaced by a projected high stone wall. Whenever this occurred. there was
a sound reminiscent of thunder. The projections appeared in moments of intense anguish
on the part of the Old Man (Act I), the guests at the ghost supper (Act II), and the Student
and the Young Lady (Act HI). By these audiovisual effects the director wished to communicate a sense of claustrophobia. a feeling of being imprisoned in "this madhouse, this
reformatory, this charnel house the earth," as the Student puts it, and the concomitant
longing for "the liberator," death.
The contrast between house

fa~adeJdecorated

interiors on the one hand and

bare wall, on the other. also served to stress the mask-face dichotomy that is so pronounced in the play: the projection of the bare wall signified an unmasking. a laying bare
of hidden ugliness.
The dreamy note struck in the opening was not only maintained but augmented in the course of the performance. Twice. for a minute or so, the curtain dropped
to allow for necessary changes of scenery and costume. But even during these short
intervals the audience was kept in a dreamlike mood through a strange 'snowfalr - rising
and falling dots of light projected on the curtain - creating a sense of dizziness. The
second time the snowfall appeared, the face of the aged Strindberg could be vaguely
divined in it indicating that the audience was sharing the playwright's experience of life
- a surprisingly subjective touch.
With regard to the stage lighting. we may distinguish between functional,
realistic, symbolic, and atmospheric lighting. Functional lighting was provided when the
Student started to tell the story about the house that collapsed the preceding day; at this

.15

STRINDBERG. THE GHOST SONATA ll'J7.11

point, the lighting on the stage was dimmed, while the Student was strongly lit As a
result, attention was focused on him and the story he had 10 tell. The lighting here helped
to emphasize a thematically important passage in the play.
Seemingly more realistic was the strong white light directed toward that pari
of the stage 10 which the Student was wheeling the Old Man in response to his request to
sit "in the sun." On closer inspection, however, the sunlight here had above all a symbolic
significance: sensing that he is soon to die, the old sinner, hoping for divine Grace. is
drawn to the warm sunlight.
Especially in Act Ill, atmospheric light was important. Here there was a
change from warm to cold and back to warm light, corresponding to the three "notes" the
director sensed in this act: tenderness - bitterness - tenderness. The hyacinths mentioned
in the play text never materialized in the production. They were merely indicated in the
Young Lady's hyacinth-blue dress and in the lighting: mixed blue and white light. As the
Young Lady, kneeling on the floor, stretched out her hands, the bluish-white light colored
her dress to indicate that "she surrounded herself with a barrier of color and warmth and
fragrance."g By contrast, an uncharitable cold light accompanied the Student's unmasking of the Young Lady, which directly led to her death.
In his acting directions, Strindberg gives rather sparse and somewhat capricious information about his characters' outward appearance. We lack information about
how the Old Man is dressed in Act I and what the Young Lady wears in Act Ill. On her
second appearance, we learn that she "has changed her clothes' but we are not told in
what way. In Acl I, the Colonel appears "in civilian clothes."' How he is dressed in the
following acls Strindberg does not tell us, but assuming that he wears hb uniform in Act
II, the author could rely on widespread knowledge of Swedish military fashion around
the turn of the century.
In Bergman's production, the costumes were meticulously designed, sometimes with regard to factual circumstances but more often with an eye to their symholic
significance. In addition. there was an overall color pattern. Thus, Act I was dominated
by grayish tints. In Act 1I, the characters appeared in costumes which were realistic in cut
but so glaring that they looked like dresses for a fancy-dress ball; here "the world of
illusions" was at its strongest. In the final act. by contrast, the costumes were pale_ The
masquerade was over, and the characters seemed to incarnate the Mummy's contrite
recognition that "we are poor human beings."'
One of the innovative traits in the production was Bergman's emphasis on the
relationship between the Colonel (Anders Ek) and the Mummy (Gertrud Fridh).
Strindberg's Colonel incarnates duplicity. Behind an aristocratic mask - moustache,
false teeth, wig and corset, a dubious title and a false noble name

he disguises the fact

that he is a former servant and sponger.

36

STRINDBERG, THE GHOST SONATA (1973)

In Bergman's production, the Colonel tirst wore a long, black silk dressinggown, announcing his aristocratic pretensions. In Act II, he had dressed up for the ghost
supper in uniform. Although he claims to have been "an acting colonel in the American
voluntary service," his gold-braided, scarlet uniform did not seem to fit the claim at all.
Instead the glaring color served to bring out the fact that the Colonel was disguising
himself behind a socially impressive persona. In addition, the red color linked him with
his wife, the Mummy, and his servant, Bengtsson.
InAct IIl, however, his red unifonn was replaced by an old, worn, gray velvet
dressing-gown, strongly contrasting both with the uniform and with the elegant silk
gown he wore in Act I; the boots had been replaced by slippers; the wig and the monocle
were gone; so was the iron corset, and as a result he had lost his artificial erectness. The
stiff gait had been replaced by a tired man's bent shuffling along. At the end he had
arrived at a resigned acceptance of suffering and compassion for all human beings reminiscent of a Buddhist outlook.
The explicit references to Buddha in the play text were all omilted in the
production, partly because these ingredients would be alien to a Western audience, partly
because Bergman's version did not alIow for any divine superstructure. Instead the Colonel in the final act was turned into a 'Buddhist monk' with shorn head, simple gown,
mild voice and radiant face. Sitting next to the death screen in a humble, harmonious
position, he incarnated the attitude to life which the Student in the play text prays to
Buddha for: "patience in the trials, purity of will."
The change in the Mummy's costume from Act Il to III was similar in kind.
Her ghostly parrot-costume, intensely red below in Act II, became almost colorless in the
final act. Sapped of her lifeblood, in her long gray-yellow-white dress she was now proclaimed a living corpse.
Corresponding to the Mummy's dress in Act II was the Young Lady's petticoat in Act HI: dirty, blood-stained around the womb, a visual confirmation of the Student's suspicion that the most beautiful flowers - the smea')' petticoat was disguised by
an ethereal hyacinth-blue dress - are the most poisonous and that the Young Lady is "sick
at the corc of life."
According to Bergman himself, a fundamental idea behind his production
was "the fact that the Young Lady is slowly turning into another Mummy."9 To convey
this idea to the audience the director had the same actress, Gertrud Fridh, play the roles
of both mother and daughter, assisted by a mute stand-in when necessary. The idea that
the Mummy has once been what the Young Lady is now and, conversely, that the Young
Lady is an embryonic Mummy was indicated in various ways. By position: the Young
Lady in Act I and the Mummy in Act 11 were placed in the same position next to the

37

STRINDBERG, THE GHUST SUNATA (1973)

marble statue representing Ihe Mummy as young; moreover. the Young Lady's coiffure
was strikingly similar to that of the marble woman. By gesture: at times the Young Lady
would nutter her hands in a manner reminiscent of the Mummy's parrot gestures. By
costume: the Mummy's dirty and tattered gray-yellow dress turning red from the womb
downwards resembled the dirty and bloodstained petticoat in which the Young Lady was
finally revealed. By movement: notably in the following passage in Act III (the acting
directions refer to Bergman's version):
YOUNG LADY

Turning

fO

the STUDENT, thumb in mouth, whispers.

What's the worst thing you know?

STUDENT whispers. Counting laundry. Ugh!
YOUNG LADY. That's my job. Ugh!
STUDENT. What else?
YOUNG LADY. To be awakened at night and have to get up to fasten the
window-catch ...because the maid has forgotten to.
STUDENT. What else?
YOUNG LADY. To climb up a ladder and mend the cord of the damper when
she has tom it off.
STUDENT. What else?
YOUNG LADY with (l.l'hrill ~'oice, illcreasinglvjaslel: To sweep after her, to
dust after her, to make a fire in the tile stove after her - she just puts in the
wood! Starts slow/)' turning around. To watch the dampers, to dry the glasses,
re-lay the table, uncork the bottles, open the windows to air the rooms, remake my hed, rinse the water decanter Slo"dnJ;

dml"/l,

illcreasillJ;lyadopting

the MUMMY'S lone ofrake. when it gets green with slime, buy malches and
soap that we're always Ollt of, dry lamps and trim wicks, so the lamps won't
smoke and so that the lamps won'l go out, when we have company I have to
fill them myself..
This passage has long been considered a sad example of how Strindberg could not always keep his own household problems OUlside his work. We know from his Occult
Dim)' that many of the everyday chores mentioned in this passage tormented him.

However, in Bergman's production it was made clear that the catalogue of

unpleasant chores should be understood not literally but figumtively, as so many examples of the obligatory "drudgery of keeping the dirt of life at a distance." In addition to
this, the passage became the most telling instance of the thematic connection between
the Young Lady and the Mummy, of how the former is destined to turn into the latter. In

3H

STRINOIlF:RG, THE GHOST SONATA (1973)

the Young Lady's speech, as quoted above, the development from childhood (thumb in
mouth) to old age (mummification), the gradual 'dying' to which we are all condemned
in the course of life, was demonstrated by tone of voice and body language.
Just as the outward similarity between the Mummy and the Young Lady, between mother and daughter, suggested the frightening destiny of human development, so
did the outward resemblance between the Old Man and the Student. Like Strindberg's
Old Man, Bergman's was provided with a beard (plus a moustache) and glasses. So was
his Student. In this way the idea was conveyed that the Student incarnates an earlier stage
in the Old Man's life and that. conversely, the Student is destined eventually to turn into
another Old Man - an idea that Strindberg hints at, not least through his age-oriented cue
designations. Taken together, the male and the female couples thus presented a picture of
the fate of humanity.
In providing the Old Man also with a skullcap and a diamond ring, indicative
of his Jewish origin, Bergman took a risk. Turning the most dislikeable character into a
Jew would inevitably be seen as an anti-Semitic statement by some spectators. Actually,
the reason was quite the opposite. The Old Man was meant to appear as a pariah revenging himself on the society which oppresses him. His usurping mentality, his desire to unmask people of higher station could in this way be socially justified or at least motivated.
The theme of food has a prominent place in Strindberg's writings. In The
Ghost Sonata, the antithesis of the blood-sucking vampire is the suckling mother. The
Old Man and the Cook are the vampires of the play. The opposite, nourishing role we
find in the character who is but an apparition: the Milkmaid. It is she who represents the
nurturing, loving force in life. When Slrindberg provides the Cook with "a coloringbottle with scorpion letters on it," he gives her an attribute which blatantly contrasts with
the Milkmaid's white milk bottles.
Thematically important are also the biblical allusions. When, in the opening,
the Student tells the Milkmaid that he has "bandaged up injured people and kept watch
over the sick all night," we associate him with both Jesus and the good Samaritan.
Strindberg's allusion to John 4.7-14, where Jesus meets a woman of Samaria at Jacob's
well, provides a key to the whole scene. In "Give me to drink," Jesus asks her. "Give me a
drink of water," the Student asks the Milkmaid. The contrast in the biblical text between
Jacoh's earthly water, which only temporarily quenches the thirst, and Jesus' "living
water" which does so eternally is latently present in the contrast between the earthly
existence on which Jacoh (!) Hummers power rests and the heavenly one to which the
Milkmaid belongs and for which the Student finally hopes.
Let us now see, more closely, how the opening passage has been rendered by
Bergman (the position numbers correspond to those on the ground plan on p. 42):

39

Sl'RINDBl<;RG, THE GHOST SON.4.TA (1973)

Projection on the screens of a beautiful white art nouveau apartment

house and on the cyclorama of part of a church. Left and right (at 3 and 6,
respectively) a banister ofsilvered bras.\', Right (at 11) a gray street drinkingfountain with pump and cup. Left downstaK': (at I) a grandfather clock and a
black chair. Right (at 7) a white marble statue ofa beautiful semi-nude young
woman. Projections of palm twigs

011

clock and statue. All projections, in

black-and-white, are slightly out of focus. White light, chiming of church

bells.
The OLD MAN sits in a black wheelchair at 10, readinx a paper. His hair.
moustache and beard are white. He wears x/asses. He is dressed in a black
overcoat with a velvet collar. black striped trousers, black boots, black-green
neckerchiefwith a diamond tie-pin, a diamond ring on his pink, a Mack skullcap on his head, on his knees a gray blanket.
2

The MILKMAID enters at 5 with milk bottles in wire baskets, which she

puts down next to the drinkinx10untain. She wears a simple, light-xray eotton dress, a peaked cap ofthe same material, a white apron, gray stockings,
black boots, a black purse hanging at the sash. Her hair is braided into a
plait.
The OLD MAN looks worriedly around, tucks the blanket around himse(f
3

The COLONEL enters at 7 with his back to the audience. He wears a

black wig alld a long black-silk dressing-gown. He pats the statue

0/1

the

bottom and starts observing it.

The MILKMAID wipes sweat from her forehead,

washe~'

her hands, ar-

ranges her hair, mirroring herface in the water; then puts the cap back on her
head.
4

The DARK LADY enters aI 5, walks back and forth in the opening up-

stage, looking around. She wears a dark-gray silk coat, a biE; hat with roses
and gauze, dark-gray gloves, and carries a black parasol. Her hair is chestnl/t red. When she moves, the hem of a briE;ht red petticoat can be seen.
5

The CARETAKER'S WIFE enters at 3 with a laurel tree. She is poorly

dressed in a gray skirt. gray blouse, black-and-xray knitted vest, a black kerchiefon her head, slippers. She stops. looks at the DARK LADY, exits alS.

40

STRINDBERG. THE GHOST SONATA (1973)

The MILKMAID works the pump and drinks from the cup.

The FIANCEE enters at I, sits down on the chair, looks at the (imaRinary) gossip mirror, starts to crochet. She wears a black-violet silk dress from

the 1880s, a black laced shawl, and a black laced cap. Her hair is gray.
8

The STUDENT enters at 5. He has a reddish-blond moustache and

beard. He wears glasses, a Iighr-gray linen jacket, gray striped waistcoat.

unbuttoned white shirt, gray shoes, everything a bit torn and dirty. Around his
left hand he has a bandage. His head is bare. He walks riRht up to the fountain.
STUDENT. May I have the cup?
OLD MAN shudders, looks to the right.
MILKMAID pulls cup toward herself.
STUDENT. Haven't you finished yet?
MILKMAID looks at him with horror.
OLD MAN to himself Who's he talking to'!
STUDENT. What are you staring at? Do I look so terrible'!
OLD MAN to himself Is he crazy?
A comparison with Strindberg's text reveals that the number of sequences there (3) was
increased to 8 in Bergman's production; 7 of these occurred before a word had been
uttered. (For the whole play, the total is 49 sequences in the play text as against 94 in the
production.) The difference indicates the cinematic swiftness with which Bergman
opened his production. Unlike Strindberg, he began the play with the Old Man alone on
the stage. When the Milkmaid entered, he sensed her presence, looked around worriedly
and tucked the blanket around himself - as though he suddenly felt cold. The Milkmaid,
Bergman thereby suggested, had been evoked by the Old Man's guilt-feelings.
While Strindberg opens the play with several sound effects, Bergman limited
himself to one: the chiming of the church bells - a very natural sound since it is Sunday
morning and, moreover, time for the dead Consul's funeral. The mournful sound faded
away as the Milkmaid left. returned briefly when the dead Consul appeared. and was
heard for the last time when the Milkmaid was represented as drowning. Since the Old
Man has 'murdered' both of them. the mournful chiming of the bells was actually nol so
much a realistic sound as an expression of his pangs of conscience. The handling of this
sound-effect seemed well alluned to Slrindberg's drama of "half-reality."

41

STRINDBERG, THE GHOST

.~ONATA

(1973)

To.....er

54m

Gf.and1athec
clor.:k

'1

Statue

+15cm L
I
_____

F((Int~tage

~
"70

Towel
5.4 m

(7
._I1+1!j(1r"\
_

,~20cJr'L

./._,,~-

Bcrgman 's and Marik Vos' setting for Act I in the t 973 production of The Gho.~t Sonata. (When the
play opened the Old Man was sitting in the wheelchair left.) On the bla~k screens diffuse projeclions of an art nouveau building and, on the cyclorama, of part of a church. The clock, left, and the
marble statue, tight, were not projections but three-dimensional properties. Cf. the ground plan.

42

STRINDBERG, TilE GHOST SONATA (1973)

Bergman rearranged the end even more than the opening:

The COLONEL goes up to the YOUNG LADY, puts one arm around her
shoulder, tenderly, The liberator is coming, Welcome, pale and gentle one. He
moves the YOUNG LADY behind the screen. A little later her hand is seen
falling on the floor to the right ofthe screen. The COLONEL sits down on the
floor, takes her hand.

COLONEL. Sleep, you lovely, innocent, doomed creature, suffering for no

fault of your own. Sleep without dreaming, and when you wake again ... may
you be greeted by a sun that does not burn, in a home without dust, by friends
without stain, by a love without flaw.
The STUDENT, standing by the harp, recites in a toneless voice.

I saw the sun. To me it seemed

that I beheld the Hidden. , seemed?
Men must reap what they have sown,
blest is he whose deeds are good ... Good?
Deeds which you have wrought in fury,
cannot in evil find redress.
Comfort him you have distressed
with ... with loving-kindness - this will heaL
No fear has he who does no ill. Looks at the COLONEL. No fear has he
who does no ill . _
Sweet is innocence ... Innocence? Shakes his head, exits right.
The MUMMY comes in from the rear, pushes the screen gently away, sits
down on the chair next to it, looks at the YOUNG LADY (who is lying on the
floor, her back 10 the audience), pUIS one hand on the COLONEL'S shoulder.

You poor little child

Light in rays from above. Occasional harp nOles dur-

ing the final speech

child of this world of illusion, guilt, suffering and

death, this world of endless change, disappointment, and pain. May the Lord
of Heaven have mercy on you as you journey forth ..
A final harp.nole. Slow black-oul. CUrlain.

The conception of life underlying 8ergman's production was almost the opposite of
Strindberg's; in the director's own words, "the only thing that can give man any salvation
- a secular one - is the grace and compassion that come out of himself."]] In line with this
view, the projection of TOlen-lnsel had to be omitted. The Old Icelandic poem called
"The Song of the Sun," which the Student had recited in a romantic-idealistic way, to the

43

STRINDBERG, THE GHOST SONATA (1973)

The linal 'holy lI'inily' grouping in the 1973 Gho.ll Sonata. From lefl1orighl: lhedead Young Lady.
the Mummy. and the Colonel.

accompaniment of occasional harp notes, at the end of Act 11 was now recited tonelessly,
without any accompanying music, the harp having turned "deaf and dumb"

10

him.

Bergman: "If the Student reads the poem with a sceptical tone the second time he recites
it and recognizes that it turns to dust, then it seems to me meaningful.. .. Every sentence in

that stanza seems dubious."12

The final speeches of the play express compassion for the dead Young Lady
and faith in a better life hereafter. Strindberg, who has the Student deliver these speeches,
stresses the latter: Bergman, who gave them to the Colonel and the Mummy, the former.
In the performance, the divine aspect was constantly toned down in favor of human love
and compassion. In the text the COlonel and the Mummy seem to share a mummified
matrimonial existence. III the production, they were turned into two people who despite
their crimes - or because of them - were tied to one another in a feeling of mutual
loyalty. When the Old Man during the ghost supper revealed thatlhe Young Lady was his
daughter, not the Colonel's, the Mummy grasped the Colonel's hand. A little later, when
she testified to the misery of mankind, she stood behind the Colonel with a protecting
gesture, while he in turn grasped her hand.

44

STRINDBERG, TI''''' GHOS1' SONATA \))73)

In the final act of the play text, the Colonel and the Mummy are seen in
positions illustrating that they have drifted away from each other: they are sitting dose to
the death screen in the round parlor, "inactive and silent" - a pre-Beckettian couple
waiting for death. "the liherator." In Bergman's version, by contrast, they were reunited
at the end. By giving the Student's concluding prayer for the dead woman to both of
them, the director was able to stress their unanimity. This was strengthened by the choreographic pattem in the final tableau. The Mummy's hand rested tenderly on the Colonel's shoulder. He in tum lovingly held the hand of the Young Lady. Both of them
regarded their dead 'daughter' - a secular holy trinity harking back to Jof, Mia, and their
little son Michael in The Seventh Seal, the loving trinity that is saved from the Black
Death.
"We have hroken up and left each other infinitely many times, but then we're
drawn together again," the Mummy states in ACllI, referring to her marriage to the Colonel. Bergman demonstrated how the two were "drawn together" first when the Old Man
threatened them, then when the Young Lady was taken from them. Her death was not in
vain.
(n the dosing moments of Bergman's performance. the harp that was "deaf
and dumb" to the Student began to play, when the Mummy prayed for her dead daughter.
In addition, there was a combination of soft light, representing the love and compassion
experienced at this moment by the Colonel and the Mummy, and strong light from above,
indicating the spiritual nature of their state of mind and their hope - Bergman did not cuI
this religious reference - that "the Lord of Heaven" would show the Young Lady the
same compassion as they did. Yet the separate harp notes, composed for the occasion,
ended on a dissonance, undermining the hope expressed in the Mummy's prayer.

4S

STRINDBERG, THE GHOST

.~ONATA

(1973)

Strindberg, Miss Julie (1985)

Bergman's Miss JuNe, opening at Dramaten on December 7, 1985, was his second stage
production of the play and the first one in Swedish. Four years earlier he had staged it

at the Residenztheater in Munich with German actors, a production which has been

thoroughly documented. l
Central to Bergman's Munich production was the idea that Julie, the daughter
of a count, "is a big helpless animal who is done 10 death by smoothly functioning beasts

of prey.... Defeated by her own kind, destroyed by the others.'" By "the others" Bergman
apparently meant not only Jean, the Count's servant, and his 'fiancee' Krislin, the cook,
but also the people who figured more prominently in both stage versions than in the play

text. It is possible that Alf Sjoberg's well-known film version of the play provided an
inspiration.
In Bergman's view Julie is a woman "who is already wounded and who fights
for her life in a ... hopeless kind of way - hopeless because she wants only to die." She is
a "loser," while Jean is a "winner." This does not mean that she is weak. On the contrary.
"when Julie makes up her mind to die, ... she becomes the stronger oflhe two. And Jean
collapses."!
Bergman thus pitted the life-denying JuJie against the life-affirming Jean much as he had earlier, in The Sewnth Seal, contrasted the Knight with his servant Jons.
In that respect, his stage interpretation meant a very loyal reading of the text. But in his
interpretation of the third character, the cook Kristin, he differed with almost all earlier
directors of the play. Kristin was depicted not as "a female slave ... conventional and
lethargic; instinctively hypocritical" - Strindberg's characterization of her in the preface
to the play - but as a young, sensual, forceful woman, who "rules not only her kitchen,
but also Jean. She is the reason why Jean is a winner - because [she] is the strongest of
them all. She knows that one day ... [she and Jean] will rule this house together.'"
By and large, the conception of the play and characters underlying the Munich production was carried over to the one in Stockholm. Again the audience was confronted with a young, attractive, powerful Krislin (Gerti Kulle). Jean (Peter Stonnare)
combined a boyish vitality with a desire to embellish his life with made-up stories. Julie
(Marie Goranzon) was visibly marked by the past. Brought up as a boy, she was
pronouncedly masculine with her short, straight hair and her authoritarian manners. Her
attitude to Jean was contemptuous rather than inciting - as though she was suffering
from a sexually grounded fear of being dominated by a man.
46

STRINOBERG, MISS JULlE (1\185)

Scenographically, too, the two productions, both designed by Gunilla

Palmstiema-Weiss, were very similar. But there was one notable difference. In the German version, done on a big stage, the spectators could see not only the kitchen but also
part of Julie's and the Count's domain above it: the lower part of three big French windows, family portraits, a coat of anns. In the beginning, they could even see the legs of
some shadowy figures, while at the end, one such figure (the Count) could be divined.
The spirit of the Count hovered literally above the whole perfonnance.
In Stockholm, where the play opened at the Small Stage of Dramaten, this
superstructure could not be retained. But a remnant of it was kept in the form of a huge
beam running from left to right at the front of the stage, indicating a strongly supported
superstructure and a suppressed kitchen level.
The midsummer atmosphere was more explicit in the German version than in
the Swedish one, necessarily so, since the German audience would not be familiar with
this piece of Swedish folklore.
Unlike Strindberg's kitchen, which is oblique in relation to the footlights,
thereby including the audience, as it were, in the kitchen, that of Ms. Palmstierna-Weiss
ran parallel with them. The coloring was sparse: green (the birches), brown (the copper
pans), violet (lilacs and, partly, windows), and gray. Gray was the dominant color. The
scenery was like a graphic sheet, containing no fewer than ten different shades of gray.
The reason for this was not so much that this color would fit a proletarian environment;
more important was the fact that gray
is a neutral calor, showing the rhythm of day and night from afternoon light to
evening light to nocturnal darkness - it is never truly dark since it is midsummer - to warm sunrise to a terribly ice-cold bluish-white light which you can
only experience in the North. The gray nuances absorb and transform the
light. A cold shade results in a very cold, colorless room, while a warm light
on the gray makes the room come alive, lightens it up. These are effects
which you cannot achieve with other colors. s
The violet of the lilacs had its counterpart in Julie's violet-colored costume, cut like a
young girl's summer dress. Traditionally, violet stands for mourning; as such it was a
color used only by ageing women. In this respect, Julie's dress was more symbolic than
realistic, connoting her presentiments of death; and the contrast between the negative
color and the vital design of the costume was indicative of her split mind.
Jean wore in the beginning his black servant's livery, a very explicit social
costume, while Kristin, unlike Strindberg's cook but in agreement with nineteenth century reality, appeared in a dark dress, somewhat shorter than Julie's and with shorter

47

STRINDBERG, MHS JULIE {I9851

sleeves than

her~,

as an indication that Kristin's costume is a working dress. Similarly,

Julie's white linen, which could be glimpsed, contrasted with Kristin's beige one, made
of much coarser material.
A transcription of the opening of the performance might read as follows:
A large, light-gray soutcrrain kitchen. In the rear wall three small, .'iulet-

tinted windows, partly opaque, throufih which tree-tops can be seen. In the
middle of the wall two swinging filass doors, reached by a short .flight of
stairs. A gray-white cast-iron Itove, with an exhaust hood, by the left wall, a
kitchen sink behind it, a chair in front of it. To the right a simple tahle, of
light-gray pine, with three chairs and three backless stools. all gray. /n the
right wall a door leadinfi to JEAN'S room. The kitchen is decorated with
birch branches. On the table a bowl with violet /ilacs. A water barrel with a
ladle, an ice-hox, and a washstand concealed by afolding screen in the background. A larfie cupboard with porcelain and filassware around the corner to
the left. A large bell above the glass-doors, To the left of it a speaking-rube. A
coffee pot on the stove.
Empty stage. Fiddle music in the distance. KRISTIN, in dark dress lI'ith an
apron, emersfrom left. She pillS some logs in the SlOve, exits left, enters again
with a plate. JEAN emers quicklyfmm rear. He wears black li.,et)" Kwv-andblack striped waistcoat, a black cap and black low boots and carries a pair of
high, black riding boots, which he pUIS down infmnt ofthe slove. He removes
his cap and wipes the sweatfmm his{orehead.
JEAN. Miss Julie's crazy again tonight - absolutely crazy I
KRISTIN. Well, so here you are at last.
JEAN up to the waler barrel. I took the Count to the station. And as I was
passing the barn on my way b<ick, I went in for adance. Who do I see but Miss
Julie leading the dance with the gamekeeper. But the minute she sees me. she
rushes straight into my arms Drinks from the ladle. and invites me for the
ladies' waltz. Takes afew waltz steps. And she's been waltzing ever sinceI've never seen anything like it. She is crazy!
KRISTIN laying the lahle. Always has heen. But never so bad as during the
last two weeks, since her engagement was broken off. Returning to the stove,
JEAN glancinl: in the newspaper he has picked up from the tahle. Yes, what
was all that about? He was a gentleman. even if he wasn't rich. Ah l Aren't
they fussy! Folds the paper and thmws it on the table, Strange, though, a lady

STRINDBERG, MISS JUI.IE (1\185)

like her, hmm, that she'd rather stay home with the servants than go wilh her
father to visit relatives, during midsummer! Sits down at the end of the table,
takes off his left boot.

KRISTIN. She's probably embillTassed after that uproar with her fiance.
JEAN. Probably. He was a man to stand his ground, though. Do you know
how it happened, Kristin? I saw it, you know, though I didn't let on I had.
KRISTIN. You saw it, did you? Up to the table.
JEAN. I sure did. - One evening they were down by the stable, and Miss Julie
was "training" him, as she called it. Pointing with his boot. Do you know
what that meant? She made him jump over her riding crop the way you'd
teach a dog to jump. He jumped twice, and each time he got a rap. But the
third time he grabbed the crop out of her hand, Makes a sweep with his boor.
hit her with it across the left cheek, The boot against his cheek. and off he
went.
KRISTIN. Is that how il happened. You don't say!
JEAN. Yes.
KRISTIN. That's why she paints her face white now.
JEAN banf?s his boot af?ainst the table, puts it on again. That's it. - Now,
what have you got for me that's tasty, Kristin'J
KRI$TIN, Oh, just a bit of kidney I cut from the veal roast. Serves from the
fl}'ing pan and places the plate htfore him.
JEAN. Superb! That's my great delice' Sniffs the food, feel.\' the plate. You

might have warmed the plate, though.

KRISTIN _You're fussier Ihan the Count himself once you start. Pulls his hair
affectionately.

JEAN angrily. Leave my hair alone! You know how sensitive I am. Smoorhes
his hair.
KRISTIN. Now, now. It's only love, Fetches a bottle ofbeerfram the ice-box.

JEAN. Beer - on midsummer eve? No thank you! I can do better than that!
Gets lip, opens a drawer in the table and pulls out a bottle ofred wine, sealed
with veflow wax. Yellow seal- nol bad eh? KRISTlN puts her beer back in
the ice-box. Pointing, as KRISTIN hands him a corkscrew. Bring me a glass!
KRISTINfetches a beer glass, which she dries on heraproll. A wine glass, of
course, when you're drinking pur!

KRISTIN returns to the stove and pllts a small saucepan on. God help whoever gets you for a husband! What a fuss-budget! Up to JEAN with a wine
t;lass, which she dries on her apron and puts down on the table.

49

STRINDBERG, M/SS JVLlE (1\185)

JEAN. Nonsense! You'd be glad enough to get a gentleman like me. And it
hasn't done you any hann to have people call me your fiance. KRISTlN puts
a lump of sugar in her mouth, pours coffee on a saucer and starts to sip it.

JEAN, standing, puts one hand behind his back, pours wine with the other;
tastes it. Good! Not quite the proper temperature, though. Warms rhl.' glass in
his hand. We bought this in Dijon. Four francs a liter, not counting the bottle,

or the customs duty. Sits down again, puts the serviette around his neck, scrutinizes the knife, clasps his handfor prayer, suddenly turns around. What are
you cooking? The smell's infernal.

Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss had designed a fairly realistic kitchen, very similar to kitchens in Swedish castles or manor-houses around 1890. And there was a very strong mood
of midsummer about it. At the same time it was extremely functional with marked acting
areas: the exterior behind the windows, where prying people could be seen off and on;
the stove (Kristin's place); the chair in front of it (Jean's place) with the Count's ridingboots in a dominant position downstage, indicative of his presence in the minds of the
three characters; the table (for moments of communion), the hierarchical stairs (to indi
cate social position or for crucial moments in the struggle for power), Ihe empty area
between the stove and the table (for Julie's restless moving around - as opposed to
Kristin's and Jean's fixed places of work - indicative of her feeling out of place in the
kitchen).
There were also naturalistic touches in the opening of the play, such as the
smell of kidney from Kristin's frying-pan and Jean's wiping the sweat from his forehead
and rushing to the water barrel, thirsty after Julie's wild dancing with him. His glancing
at a newspaper was a directorial addition, presumably inspired by Jean's later reference
to a story he had read in the paper. The suggestion here seemed to be both that Jean
picked up stories from newspapers when they came in handy for him and that his reading
was topical and incidental in contrast to Kristin's traditional reliance on one book: the
Bible. This contrast was further illustrated by a directorial addition: Jean's prayer at
table, a piece of role-playing enacted merely to satisfy Kristin's piety.
Bergman provided Jean with low boots; when compared with the Count's
high riding-boots, which figured prominently throughout the production and which were
linked especially with Jean, the low boots seemed indicative not only of Jean's modest
social station but also of his tendency to identify himself with his master, of his aspirations once to end up as a Count. Significantly, the low boot was figuratively turned into a
riding whip, symbol of mastership, as Jean was telling Kristin about how Julie, having
forced her fiance 10 jump over his riding crop, suddenly saw her engagement broken.

SO

STRINDBERG, MISS JUUE (l'HIS)

When describing this event, Strindberg had originally written: "But the third
time he grabbed the crop out of her hand and hit her with it across the left cheek." He later
replaced the last words by: " ... and broke it across his knee." Strindberg would have kept
the original version, Bergman argued, had he not been afraid that his wife Siri would
refuse to do Julie with a scar

011

her face, since people might think the scar a result of

$trindberg's mishandling of her. Bergman therefore restored the original line and even
added another, Kristin's "That's why she paints her face white now."This addition relates
to Jean's remark about the "powder on the smooth cheek." Bergman here found a way of
exteriorizing Julie's schizophrenic state of mind by providing her with a big, ugly scar,
which in the beginning was hidden behind a thick layer of make-up. "It becomes completely understandable," he said in an interview, "why she, with a scar on her face, does
not go with her father to visit relatives. Instead, she stays in her room until dusk and puts
on so much make-up that she looks like a clown: she believes she can hide the scar that
way."6lt may be countered that the broken engagement is enough reason for Julie's not
wishing to visit her relatives.
After the intercourse, the make-up came off, and the wounded face became
visible. In the Munich production, the scar was very prominent: " ... when Jean deflowers
her and she is bleeding, the scar on her cheek starts to bleed, too. When Jean gives her
this second 'wound' - her second physical humiliation at the hands of a man - it destroys
her.'" However, to see the symbolic connection between the scar and the blood running
down Julie's leg, an audience must identify the blood with deflowering ratber than menstruation; this is hardly possible in view of Kristin's earlier reference to Julie's imminent
"period." In the Stockholm production Bergman significantly abstained from this confusing kind of blood symbolism.
Beer or wine? Strindberg's use of drinking habits to demonstrate a (desired)
social status begins already when Kristin intends to serve Jean beer, while he finds wine
a more appropriate drink on festive occasions. At this early point Jean pretends to be a
wine connoisseur with a refined, aristocratic taste. Later we leam that his expertise in this
area stems from his time as a wine waiter - a fact which Bergman ironically illustrated by
having Jean flll his wineglass waiter fashion; he was here in fact performing a one-man
show - being at once master and servant - illustrative of his social and psychological
middle position. Bergman also enlarged upon the contrast between Jean and Kristin by
having her mistakenly bring him a beer glass for his wine; by having her dry it off on her
apron; and by having her sip coffee from a saucer - formerly a habit among the rural
population in Sweden - while Jean was tasting his wine.
Another marked directorial touch concerned the handling of Julie's and
Jean's contrasting, socio-sexual dreams. While telling Jean of her desire to fall, Julie

SI

STRINDBERG, M/SS JULlE (1985)

turned away from him in what was obviously a thinking aloud. By contrast, Jean's dream
of rising was vividly communicated to Julie. In this way, their very manner of presenting
their dreams indicated their contrasting mentalities: her isolation and death urge as opposed to his sociahle vitality.
Jean's story of how he, as a hay, once stole imo the Count's Turkish pavilion,
Ihat is, the privy in his park, has a meaningful relation to the main aClion. Just as little
Jean, when someone enters the privy, is forced to steal out of the pavilion through the
latrine hole, so Julie is forced to steal out of the kitchen when the people invade it intothe
room of her servant Jean. s Jean's story thus anticipates Julie's fall, her sexual
"beastiality:' to use Jean's word. 5trindberg has Jean pick one of the lilacs from the vase
on the table and hold it under Julie's nose as he tells her of his visit to the Turkish pavilion. The scent of the lilac seemingly serves to soften the unpleasant smell aroused by the
story; but in reality it serves, as an aphrodisiac, to stimulate JuEe's sexual urge.
Bergman had Jean and Julie handle the lilacs in a way that clearly was a
prelude 10 their sexual intercourse:
JEAN.... 50 gradually I got a longing Holds the lilac aRainst JUUE'S

halt~

open mouth. to experience the full pleasure of - Lets the lilac fall, stands up.

- enfin, I stole in, looked and admired. But then somebody came! JUUE
picb up the lilac, smells it. There was merely one exit for the gentry, bUI for

me there was yet another, and I had no choice but to take it!
A little later the lilac was transformed from male sexual organ into a riding crop. as Jean,
pointing with it to the rear door, referred to the broken engagement by the stable. Since
the calor of Bergman's lilacs matched that of Iulie's dress, indicative of her longing for
death, the flowers became a pregnant concretization of three fundamental and partly
controversial human urges: sexual impulse, will to power, and death instinct.
5trindberg's "Ballet" -the interlude showing how a crowd of "servants and
fann people" occupy the kitchen - became in Bergman's version almost a play within the

play." Rather than a crowd, the audience was confronted with three maids and three
farmhands. In the play text we find the following socio-sexual relations:
Count married to Countess - Brick Manufacturer (her lover)
Jean 'engaged' to Kristin - Iulie (his 'mistress' )
Diana (thoroughbred)

Gatekeeper's mongrel

Julie's social debasement has its antecedent in her mother's unfaithfulness towards her
husband with a man of lower social station and in Diana's rutting with the gatekeeper's
52

STRINDBERG, M/SS JULlE (1985)

pug - whereas Jean's unfaithfulness toward Kristin, in a sense mirroring Julie's mother's
marriage to the Count, is a step in the opposite social direction. Bergman enlarged upon
this sodo-sexual scheme by inserting several low-stationed levels between the Cook and
the animals:
Johan, clerk
Clam, housemaid
Lars, coachman
Sofie, scullery-maid
Nils, cow-boy
Anna, dairymaid lO
The relationship Johan-Sofie mirrored, on a lower level, that between Jean and Kristin,
while Clara's jealousy of Kristin, similarly, was a low-stationed echo of Kristin's jealousy of Julie. Lars' relationship to Anna signified both a social and a sexual
descendance.
Unlike JuJie and Kristin, the three female representatives of the people were
colorfully, even gaudily dressed, as a testimony to their primitive joy of Jife; and unlike
them, they were not made up, that is, they lacked a social fa)":ade. The cut of Ciara's blue
dress was similar to that of Julie's. Anna's red one, by contrast, was too small for her
pregnant body; she clearly typified the village slu!. Sofie's dark-green cotton one was a
representative folk costume.
The members of Bergman's prying and celebrating 'chorus' not only contrasted with the main figures; in various ways they visualized the actions and feelings of
Jean and, notably, of Julie. Thus, the onstage 'coitus' between Lars and Anna was a
mockery of what was at that moment taking place on the other side of the wall. Sofie's
pregnancy anticipated Jean's and Julie's fear of "the consequences." And Nils' vomiting
prepared for Julie's.
With Strindberg, the reason for Jean and Julie escaping into his room is that
there is no other exit (e;l;cept the one to Kristin's room); this idea was in principle retained in the Bergman production. It therefore seemed inconsistent when NHs entered the
kitchen from the left - where a pantry was supposed to be located - as though this was
another way to enterlleave the kitchen.
The second stanza of the song was cut, and the obscenity of the words, which
- as Strindberg points out in the preface - is not very apparent, was indicated by a slow,
mocking manner of singing and, in retrospect, by having Julie wipe sperm from her leg,
relating to the song's ''The one was wet about her foot." The midsummer wreath which
Kristin had earlier tried on her head, wishfully thinking of a bridal crown, now figured on
53

STRINDBERG, MISS JULlE (1985)

the head of the sluuish Anna. Combined with the song's concluding words, it underscored the theme of unfaithfulness.
In Bergman's version, the Ballet served several purposes. It made visible the
class hatred of the people; it created a feeling that the "cruel eroticism Ihat runs beneath
the surface of the play"ll can be found at every level; and it integrated this section more
firmly in the play.
Unlike Strindberg, Bergman had Kristin enter the kitchen while the people of
the estate were still carousing there. The intention of this was apparently to demonstrate
Kristin's strength. One by one, Ihe intruders left the kitchen, driven oul by her austere
apparition; even Clara, her rival, finally succumbed to her. Strindberg's Kristin learns
about the intercourse when she enters the kitchen 10 fetch Jean for church. Bergman's
Kristin learned about it the moment it took place

through the prying people. It was a

measure of her realistic view of things - and of her strength ~ that she could keep herself
from rushing into Jean's room at this point.
After the intercourse, Jean's sexual urge is again aroused. Strindberg describes this as follows:
JEAN, ... Miss Julie, you're a splendid woman, much too good for someone
like me! You've been the victim of intoxication, and you want to conceal the
error by pretending you love me! You don't, unless my looks attracl you
then your love isn't any better than mine

but

r can

never be satisfied by

being simply an animal to you, and I can never awaken your love.
JULlE. Are you sure of that?
JEAN. You're trying to say it's possible!

I'd be able to love you

without a

doubt! You're beautiful, you're refined~ Comes up to heralld takes herhalld.

~educated, charming

when you want to be, and the flame you've aroused in a

man will surely never be put out. Puts his arm about her waist. You're like hot
wine with strong spices, and a kiss from you ... He tries to lead her out, but
she slowly tears herself loose.

JULlE. Leave meT

~ You

won't win me that way!

There is a correspondence here between Jean's unctuous flattery and his gentlemanly
attempt to seduce Julie. Jean is clearly play-acting at this point. As for Julie, her indication that she mighl, after all, be able to love Jean reveals her need to stick to this illusion
to soften her fall and save her honor. When she tears herself loose from him, it is because
she senses his hypocrisy.
Compare this to Bergman's version, in which the dialogue was left almost intact but where Jean's behavior differed considerably from thal suggested by the playwright:
S4

STRINDBERG, MISS JUUE (1985)

JEAN .... He fondles her breasts. Miss lulie, you're a splendid woman, much
too good for someone like me! He kisses her /leek. You've been the victim of
intoxication, Kneeling, kisses her breasts. and you want to conceal the error
by pretending you love me! You don't, unless my looks attract you Puts his

hand underneath her dress. - then your love isn'l any better than mine - But
I can never be satisfied by being simply an animal to you, and I can never
awaken your love.
JULIE. Are you sure of that?
JEAN. You're trying to say it's possible! -I'd be able to love you - without a
doubt! You're beautiful, you're refined - He forces her down backward

against the table and straddles her. - educated, charming when you want to

be, and the flame you've aroused in a man will surely never be put out. You're
like hot wine with strong spices, and a kiss from you...
lULIEfights him offalld pushes him to the floor. No, no! You won't win me
that way!

In his 1985 Miss Julie production, Bergman created an on-stage echo of the off-stage intercourse
when Jean, flattering and 'raping' Julie, revealed a marked discrepancy between his words and
action~.

55

STRINDBERG, MISS fULIE (1985)

As a result of the changed acting directions, there was an almost absurd discrepancy between Jean's romantic flow of words and the raw sexual urge demonstrated
in his actions. He said that he could nol be content to be but an animal to Jul ie - and at the
same time he behaved like an animal. Similarly, Julie's line about the possibility of love
has much less primitive connotations in the text than it had in Bergman's stage version,
where it was colored by her sexual excitement. In short, while Strindberg demonstrates
the clinging together of a man seeking a sex object (who moreover can satisfy his social
careerism) and a woman seeking a love object, Bergman more grotesquely showed how
the words of both of them bel ied the truth that was acted out: the sexual urge. What the
audience witnessed was, in fact a hypocritical version - since man in contrast to animals
has the power of speech - of the copulation between the thoroughbred Diana and the
gatekeeper's mongrel.
One of the few culs that were made in the dialogue concerned the hypnosis
scene toward the end, which Bergman found "a little bit ridiculous."'l In the ending,
Julie, now married to death, appeared in a white 'bridal' gown, while Jean and Kristin,
dressed for church, surrounded her "like two black, deathly ravens" (Palmstiema-Weiss),
The ending was done as follows:

In the final mirror scene in the 1985 MiH III/ie production, Jean showed Julie how to use his razor
for her suicide. In the gray kitchen, designed by Guni Ila Palmstkrna- Weiss, the bin.:h trees on either
side of the door and the lilacs on top of the ice-box indicated that it was midsummer. To the right.
the door leading to Jean's room.

S6

STRINDIlERG, MISS /UI.IE (l911S)

JEAN .... I think if the Count came down here now - and ordered me to cut
my throat, I'd do it on the spot.
JULIE. Then pretend you're he, and I'm you! You were such a good actor
before, when you knelt at my feet - you were the nobleman then - or haven't you ever been to the theater and watched a hypnotist? JEAN nods
affirmatively. He says to the subject: "Take the broom!" He takes it. He says:
"Sweep!" And it sweeps.
JEAN. But then the other one has to be asleep.
JULIE

whi~pers.

I'm already asleep. I'm already asleep.

JEAN up to her, puts the razor to her throat, fetches a mirror, shows her in it
how to hold the razor. Go now - out to the barn -

Whi~pers

in her ear.

JULIE. Thank you. Now I'm going to rest. Butjusl tell me - that the first can
also obtain the gift of grace. Tell me that, even if you don't believe it.
JEAN. The first? No, I can't. Up to the chair by the stove. But wait - Miss
Julie - now I know! You aren't tlmong the first any longer - since you are
among the last!
JULIE. That's true. I am among the very last! -I am the last. JEAN turns his
face away, JULIE lowers the mirror, sits down by the table. But now I can't
go. Tell me once more to go!
JEAN. No, now I can't either. I can't.
JULIE. And the first shall be the last.
JEAN. Don't think, don't think! You're taking all my strength from me, too,
JULIE'S head sinks. making me a coward. Wait! I thought the bell moved.
No! Shall we stuff paper into it? - To be so afraid of a bell! But it isn't just a
bell - someone is sitting behind it - a hand sets it in motion - and something
else sets lhe hand in motion. JULIE xradually shrinks. Just cover your ears,
cover yourears l But then he rings even louder! Rings until someone answers
- and then it's too late! Then the police will come- and then - Two loud ring~
of the bell. Then fiddle music in the distance. JULIE straixhtens herself up,
Kel.Y up from the tahle. JEAN rushes out left, returns with a lot of banknOles
which he nervously lelS fall on the floor, Kathers them tOKether and stuffs
them into JULIE'S side pocket.
JEAN. This is horrible! But there is no other end l In servile position. GOI
JULIE slowly ascends the stairs, turns arourul, opens the door and backs out.
As soon as she has disappeared, JEAN starts to cry, thell moves to the table.
When two loud rings of the bell are heard, he

take.~

up a little pocket mirror

and combs his hair. He picks up the bird-caKe and hastens out left with it.
Returns 10 rake the small copper coffee potfrom the stove, pours coffeefrom it
57

STRINDBERG, MISS JULlE (1985)

into a silver pot. Picks up the riding-boots, puts them under his arm, takes up
the silver tray, clicks his heels together and marches out left. Black"oUl.
As appears from this transcription, Bergman in addition to Strindberg's acting directions
made an effective and ironical use of mirrors in the ending. The man in black could be
seen closely behind the woman in white, his anus in much the same position as hers, so
that the two seemed to be one flesh. Instead of making Julie imagine that the razor is a
broom, as Strindberg has it, Bergman had Jean hand her the mirror, instructing her in the
art of suicide. To Julie, the mirror signified above all a confrontation with her own selfa very Bergmanian face-ta-face situation - on the threshold of death. When Jean later
took up his pocket mirror to make himself presentable to the Count - compare the Old
Man's adjusting his 'mask' before the mirror in the second act of The Ghost Sonatalulie's self-confrontation glaringly contrasted with his hiding behind a social persona.
His behavior at this point was completely in line with his attempts to disguise his share in
the theft (the cramming of the bank-notes into Julie's pocket), the planned escape (the
removal of the bird-cage), and the suicide (his ordering Julie to leave the kitchen).
To Bergman, it was of paramount importance that Julie's decision to die
should be seen as a manifestation of strength, not of weakness: "She has the power and
can crush Jean because at this moment she can force him to take part in her death, force
him to give her the order to go out to the barn."Ll To this end her position was substantiated in various ways. Instead of letting Jean hand her the razor, as Strindberg has it,
Bergman's Julie picked it up herself. By replacing part of the hypnosis passage with the
mirror scene, Bergman further strengthened the idea that Julie consciously takes her own
decision. Finally, by increasing Jean's cowardliness and by having him speak the final
line, not as a command hut in an appealing, servile manner, he further weakened his
share in her death.
Although Jean has the final line in the play text the attention at the end is
directed toward Julie and her exit. We know that she is going to end her life with the razor
we see in her hand. Most directors would focus on Julie in the closing moments, She who
is to die is so much more intriguing than he who goes on living.
But a director can also choose to keep the two, and the alternatives they represent, in halance, This is what Bergman did when he added Jean's concluding panlomime
to Strindberg's ending. After Julie had walked out of the kitchen into the morning sunlight, completely absorbed by her decision to die, Jean briefly sobbed; then concealed all
traces of his own part in what had happened; and returned relieved to his everyday domestic duties. In this manner, two contrasting types - the inflexible versus the lenient, the
idealist versus the realist - were pitted against one another. Jean survived by returning to
his subordinate role, while Julie, unable or unwilling to revert, chose death.
58

STRINDBERG,

MJS.~

JUUt; (1985)

O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night (1988)

O'Neill's most memorable drama, the finest American drama ever written, produced by
one of the foremost directors of our time at the theater which has cared more for
O'Neill's plays than any other - the success of Ingmar Bergman's production of LonK
Day's Journey into Night, written in 1941 but published, posthumously, not until 1956,

opening at the Big Stage of Dramaten on April 16, 1988, seemed guaranteed.
Like O'Neill - another Strindberg devotee - Bergman has always been very
concerned, not only with "the relation between man and man" but also with "the relation
between man and God:'! It is therefore surprising that this was the firs!, and so far the
only time that Bergman staged an O'Neill play.
Although O'Neill and Bergman do not belong to the same generation, the gap
between the two is not so great that it cannot be bridged. And, of course, Bergman was in
1988 older than O'Neill ever became. This explains perhaps why in his production of
Long Day's Journey he stressed the "deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all

the four haunted Tyrones" that O'Neill speaks of in the dedication that precedes the play.
This statement must have meant a great deal to the author of The Best Intentions,
Bergman's compassionate treatment of his parents' troubled marriage, especially since
O'NeiiJ's phrasing seems like an echo of the pity for suffering mankind that fonns the
central theme of Strindberg's Dream Play.
As already indicated, Dramaten has a very special relationship to O'Neill. It
was there that many of his plays were performed when his own country seemed 10 turn its
back on him. A few weeks before he died, in 1953, O'Neill told his wife Carlotla that he
did not want an American thealer to do Long Day's Journey, that he wanted it done at the
Royal Dramatic "in gratitude for the excellent perfornlances they had given his plays
over the years.""
The world premiere, directed by the young Bengt Ekerot, took place on February 10, 1956. It was a tremendous success. It is doubtful whether Dramaten has ever
launched a more lauded production. The impact was shattering. To an audience familiar
with Ibsen's and Stnndberg's revelations of complex and painful family relations, Ekerot's
Long Day's Journey seemed a very familiar variety of the situation in several of their plays.

O'Neill's dialogue was followed to the letter. resulting in a perfonnance lasting 4 hours and 20 minutes. Also, the stage directions were carefully adhered to. The
audience was introduced to a very realistic New England living room. The actors, who

59

O'NEIU" LONG DAI"S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1988)

were the best the country could boast - Lars Hanson as Tyrane, lnga Tidblad as his wife
Mary, Ulf Pa!me as the elder son Jamie, and Jarl Kulle as the younger one Edmund,
O'Neill's alter ego - were wonderfully matched, so that the spectator's opportunity to
identify with each of them was optimal, a matter of utmost importance in a play where
we are asked to share the playwright's willingness to understand all four.
The head of Dramaten at the time, Karl Ragnar Gieraw, has said that the
dialogue of Long Day's ]oumev "is written in such a way that a group of actors who do
not stick closely to the text will not manage the task."J Florence Eldridge, similarly, who
played the part of Mary Tyrone in the first American production, has praised O'Neill's
widow Carlotta for rejecting all talk of the play being repetitious and for refusing to have
a single word cut. "The more one worked on the play," Eldridge says, "the more one
realized that it was a symphony. Each character had a theme and the 'repetitions' were
the variations on the themes."" Obviously, no one would abbreviate a Bruckner or Mahler
symphony. Nonetheless, Bergman shortened the play by about 20 percent or almost an
hour. The servant Cathleen's part was reduced considerably. The initial, allegorical pig
story was omitted. And the numerous literary quotations and allusions were largely limited to James Tyrone's references to Shakespeare and Edmund's to Nietzsche. Although
some of the Irish fragrance and 1912 atmosphere hereby disappeared, few critics felt that
these cuts were hannful to this universal version of the play. The omissions seemed
wholly in line with Bergman's reductive tendency, his desire to make the truly important
aspects stand out by doing away with all paraphernalia.
In contrast to the realistic 1956 production, Bergman presented an existential,
stylized version. This appeared not least from the extremely sparse scenery, designed by
Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, which combined cinematic effects with theatrical ones. It
took no fewer than seven models for her to arrive at the final one. Before she discussed
the scenery with Bergman, she had the idea that the perfonnance might begin with a
realistic environment and end with a vague, hazy one, that is, that the scenery would
reflect the change of climate - outer and inner - in the course of the penormance. l
This idea was not effectuated. Nor was O'Neill's New England living room
put on the stage. Instead, the audience was faced with a black 'raft' - a square, raised
stage - surrounded by blackness, insisting that although the sun may enter the living
room when the play opens, darkness surrounds it. Or as Tyrone's Shakespeare has it, that
"our little life is rounded with a sleep." The blackness ofO'Neill's back parlor had, as it
were, been extended. On the black cyclorama, black-and-white images were projected.
Color was added by properties and costumes.
From another, technical point of view, the scenery could be compared to the
black interior of an old-fashioned, funnel-shaped grammophone. What the direclOr and

60

()'NI':ILI., LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO N/(;HT (I9RR)

the scenographer had in mind was an acoustic box, where every whisper could be heard.
Similarly, the practical idea behind the limited, raised stage was to have the actors come
closer to the audience, to emphasize the intimacy of the play.
The 'raft' could also be seen as ajetty (we are close to the sea, as the sound of
the foghorn keeps reminding us), the two columns at the back of the stage corresponding
to piles. Or it could be seen as the dock, from which Mary had once tried 10 drown
herself. The stage in a sense visualized the past which, Mary claims in one of the key
speeches of the play, is "the present" and "the future. too."
In the last act, Bergman took the characters to the veranda of the Monte Cristo
cottage. the O'Neill summer home in New London, Conn. 6 0'Neill's unity of setting was
hereby abolished. The outdoor setting, especially the worn green veranda floor, helped to
objectify Edmund's wish that he had been born a fish and his concomitant longing for
death by water - as well as the feelings of all the Tyrones that they were lost in the fog.
The impression to be communicated was that of a human aquarium.
Bergman's version was a dream-play version, stressing the unreality of life,
exceedingly suggestive in its concentration on the four characters, on their gestures.
movements and, above all, their faces. And in its use of projections. First, the fa\=ade of
the house, dreamlike in its low angle perspective, as though floating in the air, dreamlike,
too, in its strange combination of exterior and interior in one and the same stage picture. 7
Then a projection of the window in the spare room, where Mary's relapse takes place, a
visualization of what is on the mind of all the men. Then a closed double doorway, telling
us that no escape, no exit is possible. Subsequently, a grotesquely big greenish wallpaper
pattern inviting the audience to enter the fantasy world of the four characters as they
succumbed to dreams and drunkenness. Again the exterior of the house, now behind
drifting spells of fog. And finally the wallpaper paltem in cold, blue light.
On the black 'raft,' Bergman limited himself to the necessary properties: a
worn brown armchair to the left (a quotation from the 1956 production), a round table to
the right, surrounded by four chairs. O'Neill singles out the "varnished oak rocker ." at

rightfront of table" from the three "wicker armchairs" close to it. The oak rocker represents the sturdy nature of the paterfamilias - only he sits in it - while the three wicker
chairs around the table indicate a certain unity among the other family members: wife
and sons. Bergman retained the idea of four chairs. But unlike O'Neill's, Bergman's
chairs were all of different shapes: four different human beings, four different fates. And
unlike O'Neill's rocker, Bergman's armchair was occupied not only by Tyrone but also
by the other family members. While O'Neill by means of the rocker separates the Tyrone
from the rest of the family, Bergman emphasized the constant flux between separateness
and communion that is applicable to all the Tyrones.

61

O'NEILL, LONG DAY'S JUURNEJ' INTO NIGHT (1988)

Largely abstaining from atmospheric light, the director throughout the performance had the characters brightly illuminated, as though they were put on a dissecting
table or exposed to X-rays. The lighting visualized both their attempts to get al the naked.
unashamed truth with regard to the other family members and their feeling of being
painfully stripped of their consoling masks with regard to themselves.
In 0' Neill 's stage directions the mask-face dichotomy of the characters, their
fa~ade

mentality. is indicated in the contrast between the neat and at times brilliantly lit

front parlor and the black back parlor. In Bergman's version, this had its counterpart in
the projection in the first act of the exterior - the

fa~ade

- of the Monte Crista cottage, as

compared with its interior.

There was also an ironical reference to the

fa~ade

mentality in the Greek

imitation column which later was shown to hide a cocktail cabinet." While this piece of
property related especially to the men's tendency to embellish their weaknesses, another
column, on which a Madonna and a votive candle were placed, visualized both Mary's
and the three men's inclination to cling to an empty faith, in her case, a faith in the Holy
Virgin, in their case in the holy mother. For both the faith proves illusory. When the stage
was revolved in the later part of the perfoffilance, the sculpture was shown to be not
three-dimensional as we would have expected, but tlat and provided with a support at the
back. Significantly, the men's discovery of Mary's relapse into morphinism more or less
coincided with the audience's discovery that the back of the sculpture was hollow and in
need of support. Some spectators may have been reminded of the medieval Madonna
sculpture in Bergman's film The Touch, where the same dichotomy applies: the interior
of the Madonna, whose enigmatic smile recalls the "secret smile" on the face of David's
dead mother. proves to be full of beetles.
The Greek column with its Dionysian content (the liquor) seemed an ironic
reference to Edmund's - that is, O'Neill's - Nietzschean craving for a rebirth of the
Greek spirit, the Greek sense of tragedy. If this symbolized Edmund's, and 10 some ex
tent Jamie's 'religion.' the Holy Virgin represented their parents' Christian faith. But. as
we have seen, both properties were hollow. The four characters were doomed to move
restlessly between what used to be the two cornerstones of Western civilization. Toward
the end. they were seen - not unlike four Beckelt figures - in resigned, frozen positions.
waiting for death.
In O'Nei!l's texl there is an interesting contrast between "the four somewhat
dissociated lamps in the living room representing the living present" and "the five
'united' front partor bulbs reminding us of the harmony that might have been,"" that is,
all the Tyranes including the dead Eugene, who is very present in the minds of the four

remaining family members.

62

O'NEILL, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1988)

Bt:rgman opened his performance of umi! Day's Journey into Night with a tableau vivum, in which
the communion between the Tyrone family members was stressed. From left to right, lames. Mary,
Edmund, and Jamie, Behind the stylized Tyrone j ntenor, the projected exterior of their house.

Abstaining from this lamp symbolism, Bergman nevertheless indirectly retained it by

opening his performance with a little pantomime. O'Neill has his four characters enter
from the same direction. quite logically, since they have just had breakfast together.
Bergman had husband and wife enter from one direction. the sons from another. In this
way the older generation was immediately separated from the younger one. Yet very
soon the four formed a close-knit family group of tenderness and love. In this group.
Mal)' was singled out as the pivotal figure by her central position opposite the three men.
While Tyrone and Jamie both took complementary, selfcontained positions - the former
an authoritarian, the latter a nonchalantly insubordinate one - Mary and Edmund showed
gestural compassion. There was no physical contact between Tyrone and Mal)' on the
one hand and Jamie on the other. Edmund bridged the distance between the parents and
Jamie, In the rest of the performance, Edmund was embraced by the other three family
members, TyroDe and Mary by each other and by Edmund, but Jamie only by Edmund,
The opening tableau viwmt functioned as a proxemic and kinesic image of the fundamental relationships in the family.
[n the subsequent action, the four were never seen again in harmonious togetherness. At most there were brief moments of tenderness and love between individual
members of the family. Not until the end of the play were all four together on the stage
again for any length of time - but then in positions indicating separation, isolation.

63

O'NEILL. 1.0NO DAY'S JOURNEY lNTO NIGHT (1988)

The initial pantomime could be interpreted in different ways. It could be seen

as a pose, a fa<;ade, an expression of how the family was trying to keep up appearances.
Or as a sign of how it wished to be seen by others; the momentary immobility was that of
a group in front of a photographer. It could be seen as an expression of wish-fulfillment,
indicating their common dream of how everything might have been. Or - with an interpretation more in agreement with O'Neitl's intentions - as an image of the love that
bound the four together in spite of everything. In any case, the menacing sound of the
foghorn, heard already at this point, warned the audience that the relative harmony between the four was more apparent than real.
In the end, Mary's moving away from the three men is indicated in the drama
text not only in her radically changed outward appearance but also by striking proxemic,
kinesic, mimic, and paralinguistic signifiers:
[MARY] comes into the mom, the wedding gown lrailing on the j100r.
[TYRONEj gets to hisfeet and stands directly in her path

She lets him take

{the wedding gown]. ... She moves back from TYRONE

He sinks back on

his chair, holding the wedding gown in his arll1,~ wilh all ullconscious clumsy,
pmteetil'e !{entleness.
While Jamie recites from Swinbume's "A Leave-taking,"

She mows like a sleepwalker, around the back of JAMIE'S chair. then forward toward left front, passing behind EDMUND .... She moves left to the
frOllt end of the sofa beneath the windows and sits down, facing frollt, her
handsjolded in her lap, in a demure schoolgirlish pose,
Mary's separation could hardly have been suggested more definitely. This is the only
time in the drama text that anyone sits down away from the family table. The men imIDe"
diately recognize her separation and act accordingly:
JAM lE pushes the bottle toward {TYRONE1. He pow's a drink without disar-

ran!{inR the wedding /;,own he holds carefully over his olher arm and on his
lap, and shoves the bottle back. JAMIE pours his and passes the bOllle to
EDMUND, who, in tum, pours one. TYRONE lifts his Rlass and his sons
follow suit mechanically. but before they can drink MARY weaks and they
slOldy lower their drinks to the table. forRertinR them.

O'NEILL, LONG DAl"S JOURNE)' INTO NIGHT 119881

After Mary's concluding monologue, the final acting directions confinn that the separation is lethal to all the Tyrones:

She stares before her in a sad dream. TYRONE stirs in his chair. EDMUND
and JAMIE remain motionless.
Mary's returning her wedding gown to her husband signifies her separation from him.
She has reverted

10

the time before she met Tyrone, to the time when she dreamed of

becoming a nun, of separating herself from the world. In the closing moments the past.

Mary says in the play's key line, "is the present"

Bergman's ending was, even more than O'Neill's. choreographed as a contrast to the initial togetherness. The four chairs around the table in the living room had
been replaced by three separate chairs - for the men - on the veranda. One chair was
missing. Mary's falling flop down became an ironical comment both on her lack of sup-

port (cf. the Madonna figure) and on the discrepancy between her aspiring dreams and

Strongly o;;ontra~ting with the opening scenc. the closing scene {)f Umg Day's Journey was onc (If
separation. Isolated from each othcr, the three men listened, immobile, to Mary's drugged dreaming aloud of the time before she met her husband, while he forlornly held her bridal gown, rhe
empty remnant of th~ir marriage, in his hand~. Note the Greek column to the left, and the Madonna
to thc right. turning her back on the disrupted family.

65

O'NEILL, LONG D,tY'S JOURNEY INTO N/GIlT (1988)

crass reality. Abstaining from the quoting of Swinbume's "A Leave-taking" - this presumably seemed too explicit :md pathetic to him - Bergman retained Mary's proxemic
leave-taking of each of her men. Cutting out the drinking on their part, he merely retained its essential element, the drunken stupor lhat turns them into immobile corpses
and creates the stillness around Mary's monologue that makes the audience concentrate
all the more on it. One after the other, the characters left the lit 'raft' and departed in the
same directions from which they had initially entered into the surrounding darkness - as
we are all doomed once (0 leave the raft of life alone on our "journey into night."
At the very end, a striking visual note was added. Before Edmund, who was
the last to disappear, left the stage, a radiant tree was double-projected on the cyclorama.
The tree visualized both the complicated net of nerves within Edmund - the poet figure
of the play - and the entangled relations between the family members. At the same time,
its radiance seemed to promise that out of these enmeshed relations a soul was being
born. When Edmund picked up his black notebook shortly before he disappeared, it was
an indication that, like another Trigorin - Bergman staged Chekhov's The Seu!?ufl in
1961 - he was going to record what he had experienced around him and turn it into

dramatic art. I" The black notebook provided a link between the staged 1912 situation and
the play, Long Day's Journey into Ni[?ht, which Edmund's alter ego some thirty years
later was to write. Was then the play the audience had just seen enacted but a dream, a
fantasy by the burgeoning young playwright'! We are not far from the subjective approach in Bergman's 1970 production of A Dream Play, where the Poet, Strindberg's
alter ego, was turned into the dreamer of the play.
When Edmund, in the last act, tries to tell his father of his pantheistic experiences, he does so in a manner which indicates that, contrary to what he himself claims, he
has more than the makings of a poet in him. Edmund's monologue could be recreated as
a desperate attempt to establish contact with his father or, on the contrary, as the reverie
of someone lost in a dream, forgetful of the fact that he has a listener. In either case his
poetical nature would be stressed by the very fact that the speech seems improvised,
spontaneous.
Bergman's approach emphasized another aspect. By having Edmund read
bits of his monologue aloud from his notebook, the director made the poetical nature of
his speech more plausible and indicated furthermore that Edmund was a budding wriler.
Above all, by having him read the key sentence of the speech from his notebook -"It was
a great mistake, my being born a mall. I would have been much more successful as a
seagull or a fish." - Bergman made it clear thal this was no sudden emotional outburst
but, as we now know with regard to O'Neill, a persistent feeling of alienation. Edmund
let, as it were, his father share the secrets of his very private writer's diary.

O'NEILL, LONG V,H'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (19811)

Edmund'g part, in Bergman'g production played by Peter Stormare, is perhaps the most difficult one in the play. He has less of a past and less of a profile than the
other family members. The least guilt-laden of the four Tyrones, Edmund is the character
we can most easily identify with, the character who bridges the distance between stage
and auditorium. This was at least the impression brought forth in Bergman's version.
As played by Jarl Kulle, James Tyrone was a big, boisterous child, in need of
a mother. He was also a man who was play-acting at home, since he no longer had a stage
on which he could perform. Kulle played the pari brilliantly, stressing Tyrone's spontaneity and fighting spirit. But, as other Tyrones have demonstrated, it can he done very
differently. In the scene where Tyrone tells Edmund about his poor youth, he was costumed, not as O'Neill has it in "an old brown dressing gown," indicating his stinginess,
but in an elegant dressing-gown which bore witness of his glorious past; his slippers, by
contrast, were old-fashioned and ugly - and so his discordant costume testified to his
split nature.
In Lars Hanson's 1956 version, James Tyrone's story of his childhood was a
very introvert scene, the confession of a broken man. Fredric March, in the first Broadway production, turned it into just one more whiskey-impregnated anecdote. Laurence
Olivier. at the New Theatre, made it 11 forceful apology by a professional actor. Kulle's
version was yet another variation, the need of a rather naive man to justify himself to his
more mature son.
The most impressive of the four actors, most critics agreed, was Thommy
Berggren, who played the part of the elder son Jamie. Jamie is an actor just like his father,
but in contrast to him, he is merely a ham-actor. As in several of his films, Bergman here
utilized the contrast between stage actors and clowns. Thommy Berggren's Jamie, the
least loved of the four family members, was hiding his true self behind the mask of a
grinning clown. At the same time, he revealed that behind the c10wnesque fw;ade, behind
his snobbish and vulgar Broadway wise-guy jargon, there was a sensitive human being,
more gifted, perhaps, and probing than any of the other Tyrones. Admittedly, in the last
act Berggren almost upset the balance of sympathies in his favor.
The focal character in the play is the wife and mother, Mary. Bergman's Mary
(Bibi AnderssonJ was dressed, as were the others, according to the fashion in 1912. Like
his Julie, she wore a violet dress throughout most of the play, and here again the calor
stood for mourning, death. In Mary's case there was, not surprisingly, a gray, foggy tint
to it. The color also helped to link her with the whore Fat Violet, a related figure. I1
Al the end, her nightgown suggested the dress of a nun.
When Mary leaves her three men, handing her bridal gown back to her husband, the family loses its center and binding force; this is why her relapse into

67

O'NElLI" LONG [JAl"S JOVRNEl' INTO NIGHT (1988)

morphinism is so fatal for all of them. O'Neill has here created one of the most impressive moments in twentieth-century drama, in which past, present, and future for all the
four Tyrones converge in a pregnant visual image.
Bibi Andersson is a rather robust, healthy kind of actress, lacking the nervous
oversensitiveness of her predecessor Inga Tidblad. Nevertheless she portrayed a very
convincing Mary who, like Kulle's James Tyrone, at times seemed to be acting a part. In
their play-acting, one sensed both O'Neill's and Bergman's constant concern with the
problem of identity.
Jamie's sarcastic comment on Mary's final entrance - "The Mad Scene. Enter
Ophelia!" - was cut by Bergman. Presumably, he found it disturbingly explicit - especially since the Dramalen audience might see the connection between the barefoot
Ophelia in Bergman's 1986 production of Humlet and his, at this point, barefoot Mary.
This kind of auto-intertextuality is not unusual with Bergman.
In his Hamlet production Bergman turned the protagonist, played by Peter
Stormare, into a transparent counterpart of himself as a young playwright-director. As
we have seen, the same actor played O'Neill 's - and Bergman's - alter ego in Lanx Day's
Journey. Although Bergman cautiously stressed Edmund's quality of being an outsider,

not least in his positions and movements, his version was nevertheless an attempt to
strike a balance between the four characters, to understand them all, The audience was
confronted with an existential, post-Beckettian drama emphasizing - as Strindberg does
in his chamber plays - the fundamental representativity of the fateful family interaction.
Play-acting, role-playing is the common denominator of the Tyrones. They
all sense the need of putting on a mask which others can accept so that they can feel
accepted by others and thus by themselves. We are here very close both to the playwright
who wrote The Great God Brown and to the filmmaker who wrote and shot Persona.
Since The Great God Brown on a symbolic-existential level dramatizes much the same
situation and many of the same conflicts as Lang Day's Journey. one might even say that
Bergman directed the latter play very much in the spirit of the former one, while penneating it with his own vision. In his version, he certainly tried to hring oul the classical
tragedy that is hidden behind the naturalistic surface layer of Lang Day's Journey. In a
way, it was a reply to O'Neill's worrying question in 1931: "Is it possible to get modern
psychological approximation of Greek sense of fate ..., which an intelligent audience of
today, possessed of no belief in gods or supernatural retribution, could accept and be
moved byT'11 Bergman's production of LanK Day's Journey into Night was an impressive attempt 10 provide a viable answer to O'Neill's fundamental question.

68

O'NEILL, l.ONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO N/GIIT (1988)

Ibsen, A Doll's House (1989)

How do productions of a play presented by the same director in different countries with
a time lapse of some eight years compare? lbsen's A Doll's House (1879), staged by
Ingmar Bergman first in Germany and then in Sweden, is a case in point.
On April 30, 1981, his Nora, as the play is often caned in Gennany, opened at
the Residenztheater in Munich. ' Virtually the same text fonned the basis for his second
production of the play, opening on November 17, 1989, at the Big Stage of Dramaten, the
Swedish equivalent of the Residenltheater. The play now carried the traditional Swedish
title Elt dockhem.
A performance intended for a southern German audience in the early 1980s
must be different in some respects from one intended for a Swedish public around 1990.
Besides the temporal gap, there is the spatial one, the sociopolitical climate in Franz
Josef Strauss' Bavaria being rather different from that in Sweden. The theatrical traditions in the two countries are different. And the characteristics of the individual actors
necessarily make one Nora differ from the other, one Helmer from the other. There is the
linguistic difference, a German translation of Ibsen's play heing necessarily more removed from the Dano-Norwegian source text than a Swedish one. Moreover, in Munich
Bergman was forced to deal with a language which was not his own. In Stockholm, by
contrast, he was in that respect on a par with his actors, who furthennore shared his
social and cultural referential system.
In addition to these general distinctions, a more specific one may be added. In
Munich, Nora was pari of a triad, the other plays being Strindberg's Miss Julie, there
called simply Julie, and Bergman's own Scenes/ram a Marriage, a rather radical stage
adaptation of the well-known television series 2 As the titles indicate, the link between
the three plays was the focus upon man-woman relations: Helmer-Nora, Jean-Julie,
Johan-Marianne. The plays were produced simultaneously, and the triad soon came to be
known as "the Bergman project." In Stockholm, by contrast, A Doll's House was presented as an independent play.
The focussing upon the Helmer-Nora relationship at the Residenztheater the characters were played by Robert Atzorn and Rita Russek - meant that the three
Helmer children prescribed by Ibsen as wen as their Nurse were visibly eliminated in
Nom. The ruling idea behind the production was Nora's emancipatory conviction that
she has a right - nay, an obligation - to leave her husband and the consequences this has
for him and him alone.
69

IHSEN, A DOLL'S HOUSE (1989)

Ibsen's play was drastically cut; nearly one-third of the text was removed, and
both the Nurse and the Maid were omitted.:' The three acts of the original were replaced
by 15 scenes. And lbsen's unity of setting gave way to the presentation of three different
rooms of the Helmer apartment: the living room, the dining room, and the bedroom.
Even so, Bergman retained a strong sense of claustrophobia, since both windows and
doors were lacking in the tall wainscot surrounding the room; not until the end, when
Nora made her exit was a closet door in the background surprisingly revealed. Nora
finally found a way out of her somber 'prison.' This device was in a sense a quotation
from Strindberg's The Father. as performed at the Stockholm City Theater. where
Gunilla Palmstiema-Weiss two months earlier had been responsible for another seemingly doorless, imprisoning living room.
A sense of claustrophobia was also ensured by the fact that the whole play
was acted out on an inner stage, a quadrilateral platfonn, surrounded by extremely high
walls topped by small barred windows. The intention behind the setting was not so much
to suggest that the Helmer marriage was imprisoning. even less to visualize a fear on
Nora's part that she might be imprisoned once her forgery was discovered. Since the
representative quality of the Helmer-NOTa relationship was stressed throughout, and
since the high, dark-red velvet walls at the back of the stage were suspiciously theatrical,
the audience was invited to mirror itself in what was happening on the stage.
A striking aspect was that during the whole performance the actors never
disappeared out of sight. Exits were indicated simply by their leaving the platform stage
for the background, where they remained sitting until their next 'entrance.' Disregarding
the playwright's realistic motivations for entrances and exits, Bergman had the characters suddenly appear or disappear - as in a dream. With this device, he placed his production in an illusion-breaking Pirandelloan and Brechtian tradition, indicating the constant
flux between on-stage and off-stage role-playing, between theater and life. Moreover, by
letting the actors, when off-platfonn, form a stage audience, he provided a link between
them and the real audience. Combined with the barred windows of the selling, the impression of the stage audience was one of ajury in a courtroom sitting in Judgement on
the marital relationship that was acted out before them and in which they themselves,
when on-stage. were directly or indirectly involved. The stage audience could in this way
mediate between the acting, on-stage characters and the observing real audience, and the
idea was conveyed thal the spectators in the auditorium. as mentally divided as the characters-cum-actors, were virtually sitting in judgement on themselves.
As in the source text, the action in Nom was sel around 1880. On the curtain
the scene designer had drawn a street in Christiania, showing the exterior of the Helmer
apartment house. When the curtain parted, the audience moved, as it were, from the

70

IBSEN, A DOLL'S HUUSE:: (1989)

exterior to the interior of the Helmer apartment - a movement reminiscent of that in The
Ghost Sonata. The characters wore the stiff clothes of the 1880s, high collars and gray or

black dresses for the gray-haired men, a corseted wine-red dress for Nora - a vivid spot
in a gray world.
The play opened not with Nora's entering the apartment together with the
Porter, as Ibsen has it, but with Nora
already seated, utterly immobile, in the midst of a wilderness of toys, dolls.
and other suggestive relics of childhood. Leaning back against the pillows of
the [wine-red] plush sofa, she stared out into empty space - virtually the picture of a human doll waiting to be taken up and played with. The very distant
and faintly audible sound of an old-fashioned music-box tune [Schumann's
"Triiumerei" from Kinderszenen] added to the strongly oneiric mood of nostalgia and suppressed melancholy that was created by this silent image of her
motionless, oddly dejected figure.'
With her wine-red dress Nora was at one with the comfortable sofa she was reclining in
- a visual metaphor for the confining unity between character and environment. Among
the relics of childhood was a doll's bed, ironically foreshadowing the marital double bed
shown at the end. l Nom's claim that she has been treated as a doll first by her father and
then by her husband seemed visually corroborated by this correspondence.
Unlike his Nom, Bergman's Doll's House was set around the turn of the century. The union flags in the Christmas tree indicated that the action took place not later
than 1905, when the union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved. By this change
the distance between the original sender (Ibsen) and the receiver (the Stockholm audience) was diminished by some twenty-five years. Moving the play closer to our time not
only increased the audience's sense of being in touch with the characters, Nom's emancipatory ideas and her willingness to break out of her marriage also seemed more plausible. The fashion around 1905 also helped to make the bodies, especially Nora's,
erotically present. Last but not least, since the opening took place in one of the most
beautifull1rt nouveau buildings in Stockholm - Dramaten was completed in 1908 - the
period selected was a kind of homage to the theater which Bcrgman has come to see as
his professional home. For once. the blue Jugendstil curtain of Dramaten functioned not
as a border separating the stage from the auditorium. Rather, it suggested the temporal
unity between these two areas.
As in Munich, the play was acted out on a quadrilateral platfonn. this time
surrounded by walls 11 meters high. topped by eight small barred windows. "The little

71

IBSEN,A

DOLL'.~

HOUSE (1911'J)

room - the home - is placed inside a larger room which is society," one critic wrote, and
this larger room "in the course of the evening is transformed into a universe, a human
cosmos, a home on earth."6 By surrounding the Helmer home with a large dark space,
Bergman diminished the characters, turned them into dolls, and set their little world off
from the big, threatening one outside. As in Munich, the actors remained visible also
when they were off-stage. However. they were this time not seated in the background but
on either side, immediately below the raised inner stage.
On this stage, representing the living room, a green art nOllveau sofa and
armchair could be seen, as well as a decorated Christmas tree and a heap of parcels.
Behind the platform a green-tinted bourgeois art nouveau dining room could be divined:
round table, chairs, and above the centrally placed piano a large painting. 7 Reminiscent
of a picture out of a photo album, the setting seemed to indicate Nora's dual vacillation
between the world of the present and of reality (foreground) and the world of the past and
of fantasy (background), the green color bridging the two worlds. The green could be
associated both with hope as in Strindberg's A Dream Play and with an imprisoning
aquarium existence, as in Bergman's production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
In the second scene, the foreground shifted from green living room to brown
dining room, while the background, still green-tinted, now displayed a sideboard with
two candelabras, above it flowery art nouveau wallpaper, and as in the former scene, a
large painting. The brown color, characteristic of the Juxendslil but here associated
rather with bourgeois materialism, was now set off against the green of the background.
With Krogstad's appearance, the distance between imprisoning, earthy reality and lofty
dream - the candelabras turned the background sideboard into a kind of altar - had increased. The round table on the platfonn was mirrored in an almost identical one in the
background 'photo,' creating an eerie, dreamlike effect. The impression that the play was
acted out in two different worlds - one three-dimensional and real. the other two-dimensional and imaginary - was hereby strengthened. Since the projected furniture in the
background appeared larger than the real pieces in the foreground, the doWs house connotations of the scenery were further underscored.
An aged Rank (Erland Josephson) appeared in an elegantfin-de-siede costume, whereas a young successful Torvald Helmer (Per Matlsson) was fashionably
dressed according to the demier cri in art nOUl-'eau. Krogstad (Bjom Granath) could be
seen in a mold green coat, while Mrs. Unde (Marie Richardson) was dressed completely
in hlack as though in mourning - although her husband had been dead for 3 years. Her
costume was dearly designed to correspond to that of Nom at the end of the play, where
it is clear that Nora has taken over the role that Mrs. Linde has outgrown. Nom (Pemilla
Ostergren) first appeared in a pink dress with a green apron, on which a small N was

IBSEN, A VOU,'S HOUSE (1989)

inscribed inside a big H - one of those meaningful details characteristic of a Bergman

stage production. Later, she appeared in her black-and-white Capri costume, underneath
which a bright red petticoat could be glimpsed. She also wore a black shawl - as prescribed by Ibsen. When Helmer had read the first, threatening letter from Krogstad, he
angrily ordered her to take off her shawL It was an act of unmasking. When he had read
the second, conciliatory letter, he protectively laid the shawl around her shoulders. The
mask was put back in place.
Ibsen's Nora leaves not only her husband but also her three small children.
Today, when most people would accept that a wife might divorce her husband if she finds
their marriage hollow and meaningless. many would still claim that the presence of
young children should prevent her from doing so.
The visual absence of the children in Nom, Bergman eventually discovered,
was a mistake. Yet in a simplified staging, three children plus a nurse is a nuisance.
Besides, leaving three - or even two - children 'motherless' is less sad than leaving just
one child hehind. After all, two or three children have one another. Consequently, in A
Doll's House Bergman settled for one child, a daughter, Hilde, who looked about 6 years

old. Appearing only at the beginning and end of the play, Hilde was nevertheless symbolically present throughout the perfonnance in the form of her doll that was seated on
one of the chairs next to the acting area.
When the play opened, Nora was sitting on the sofa reading the end of a fairy
tale to her almost identically dressed daughter: " ...but a prince and his bride brought with
them as much silver as they could carry. And they moved to the castle east of the sun and
west of the moon." The reading was accompanied by sweet, romantic piano music, "The
Maiden's Prayer:' as from a music-box. Having received a goodnight kiss from her
mother, Hilde left for bed. Nora lay down on the sofa, whistling the tune that had just
been heard, put one arm in the air, then let it fall to the floor as her whistling petered oul.
What Bergman presented in this opening was an emblematic situation, a key
to Nora's existence: her desire to see life in terms of a fairy tale (with its obligatory happy
ending) and her vague awareness that life is anything hut that. Very effectively, Bergman
demonstrated how Nora who, as a single child, had herself figuratively speaking been
brought up on fairy tales by her father now continued this tradition with regard to her
single daughter. Three generations were implicitly interwoven in this initial tableau
vivant, suggesting a perpetuum mohile.

Sitting on the floor, Nora then began to unwrap the Christmas presents, while
calling for her husband: "Come out, Torvald, and see what I've boughl." From a realistic
point of view, this might seem strange, but what was important here was that the audience should see that Nom had bought her daughter a doll for a Christmas present. The

IBSEN,A DOL1.'S 1I0VSE (19119)

deeper significance of this was not revealed until the end of the performance.
When Helmer joined NOTa behind the Christmas parcels, they looked like two
little children - in accordance with the Bergmanian idea that grown-ups are merely children masquerading as grown-ups. As we have seen, psychological role-playing was continually stressed in the production.
"As far as I understand," Strindberg writes in his preface to Getting Married,
"NoTa offers herself for sale - to be paid for in cash." Strindberg's idea that NOTa 'prostitutes' herself was utilized already in the opening of the perfonnance. After all, Bergman
seemed to argue, it is not the Nora-Rank relationship that is corrupt but the Nora-Helmer
one. This was demonstrated in the initial monetary scene, which was done as follows:
HELMER still sit/inR on thef/oor frontstage, takes out his wallet. Nora, what
do you suppose I have here')
NORA who has been standing by the Christmas tree in the background,

jumps onto the sofa, triumphantly shauting. Money!

HELMER. Good heavens, of course I realize it costs a lot to run a house at
Christmas time.
NORA still on the sofa, picks one banknote after the other out of HELMER 'S

open wallet - after each approdng nod by him. Ten, twenty, thirty. He closes
the wallet but opens it again and lets her have one more. Forty. Oh thank you,
Torvald, thank you. 1'11 make this go a long way.
HELMER. And what have you thought of for yourself?
NORA. What, for me? I don't want anything.
HELMER. Of course you do. Name something that you'd like to havewithin reason, of course.
NORA. No, I really don't know. As a matter of fact, though, Torvald..
HELMER. Well?
NORA embraces him. If you really want to give me something, you could of
course - you could HELMER embraces her. Come on, let's have it!
NORA lies back

OIl

the f/oor and draRs him with her. You could give me

money, Torvald. Stretching her lexs in the air on either side of HELMER,

who is lying on top ofher. Only as much as you think you can spare. Then I
could buy something for it.
As appears from this transcription, Helmer's and Nora's marriage was emblematically
depicted. The coitus position demonstrated how she was offering her body in exchange

74

IBSEN, A DOLL'S HOUSE (l1/81/)

for the money he had just been offering her. Representative as it was, their marriage was
no more than legalized prostitution. By presenting the Helmer marriage as starkl y as this,
Bergman provided a logical basis for Nora's decision at the end to free herself from a
relationship which was degrading for both of them. The passage seemed choreographically designed to contrast with Nora's attitude at the end, where she refuses to accept
anything from her husband.

In his 1989 Dol/'s House production, Bergman suggestively combined the erotic a,pect of the
stocking scene with NOTa's preoccupation with dcath - Doctor Rank's and her own - as she
'strangled' him with her black stocking in front of the domestil: 'altar:

75

IBSEN, A D01.l.'S HOUSE. (1989)

Strindberg's severe criticism of Nom refers not to the monetary scene but to her exhibiting her silk stockings to Rank. In Bergman's interpretation, this passage suggested anything but 'prostitution' on Nom's part:
(NORA is ,I'tandin/: behind RANK. who is sit/inf: on a chair. BothJace Ihl'
audience.) She puis her hands on his shoulders.

NORA. Be nice now. Puis her hands over his eyes. Tomorrow you'll see how
well I'll dance. And th<ltl do it only for you. And for Torvald, of course.
Removes her hands.

NORA. I'll show you something. Takes up one of her black silk .l"tockinf:s,
shakes it, has it f:lide down across his forehead 10 his eyes.

NORA. Silk stockings. Removes the slockillf:frmn his eyes, lifls it up. Aren't
they beautiful? It's very dark in here now, of course, but tomorrow - . But
how critical you look l Don't you think they'll fit me? Puts Ihe Slock/lI1:
around RANK'S neck.

RANK. I can't really give you a qualified opinion on that.

NORA looks al him, smilingly. Shame on you!
Substituting black stockings for Ibsen's "flesh-colored" ones and omitting Nora's "Oh
well. I suppose you can look a bit higher if you want to," Bergman was clearly not interested in emphasizing the erotic relationship between Nora and Rank. Rather. the scene
stressed the fact that they have the idea of imminent death in common. When Nora covered Rank's eyes with her hlack stocking, she visibly turned him into a victim before an
executioner. When she put the stocking around his neck, she provided another 'death
sentcnce.' Yet since the stocking belonged to Nom who is herself a victim of circumstances and who may well be contemplating suicide already at this point - a little later
Ihis is manifestly so - both gestures applied also to her. The subtext ofBergman's version
was not a regret that they could not sleep with one another; it was rather a consoling,
and self-consoling, ritual worthy of a Hedda Gabler. suggesting that death can be desirable.
The ending was set in the Helrner bedroom,' In the background the living
room and the dining room could, again, be seen as huge photographs. As Nora contemplated her past life with Helmer, the three rooms visualized their 8 years together. The
photo-alhum connotation seemed especially relevant when Nora was about 10 take leave
of this existence and transform it into a remembrance of things pas\. At the end, one critic
wrote, Bergman's Doll's House "turns into scenes from a marriage, into distant pictures
of an old photo album, where soft shades finally change into modern black-and-white."9

76

IBSF:N, A DOLL'.\' HallSI-: (1989)

Nora's leave-taking of Helmer in the 1989 Doll's Hou.W? production. Between them, in the back
ground, their daughter Hilde with her doll. and to the left, ironically, the rcunilCd Mrs. Linde and
Krogstad - all three 'off-platform'

The idea behind the change of setting - in bOlh productions - was that hus
band and wife have spent a night together. He believed that she had reconciled herself
with him. She was inclined to think that this was their last night together. When the scene
opened. revealing a slender white art nouveau double bed with a glaring red bedspread.
Helmer was seen asleep in it. When Nom entered, dressed in a simple black. timeless
coat and carrying a small travelling-bag, he woke up. In the dark part of the stage on the
left Nora was now standing, fully dressed in 'mourning: To the right, bathed in a searing
white light. Helmer was sitting in bed, slark naked. defenceless, unmasked. On the bedpost hung the red jester's cap he had worn allhe fancy-dress ball the night before. While
explaining her new position to him, Nora moved back and forth from the shade on the left
10

the brightly lit area on the right, from isolation

10

communion - as though she was

struggling with the question: to leave or not to leave. The ending was enacted as follows:
HELMER sitting to the right in the double bed, looking down. Nora, - can 1
never be anything but a stranger 10 you?
NORA standing 011 the left, the travelling-bag in her hand. Oh, Torvald. then
the most wonderful thing would have to happen -

77

II.lSEN, A DOLL'S HOt/SE (1989)

HELMER looks up. Name it, this most wonderful thing!

NORA puts the bag down, walks up to the bed. You and I would both have 10
change so much that - Oh, Torvald ... I don't believe in wonders any more.
She turns and goes left, halfcfwering herface with one hand. Takes the black
shawl in her left hand, the bag in her right one.
HELMER. But fll believe in them. Tell me! Change so much that -?
NORA turns away from him, wipes her eyes with her handkerchief. picks up
her travelling-bag, turns around and looks at him, in a wann butfirm voice.
That our marriage could become a life together. Pause. Turns away. Goodbye.
Exits left.
HELMER: Nom. Nora! Nom!! The front door slams shut. Whiwers, Nom.
Darkness, curtain.
Bergman's skilful choreography could be sensed in this unconventional way of ending
the play. While mosl directors would have Nom answer Helmer's question concerning
"the most wonderful thing" straight away, Bergman inserted a pause at this point to ensure maximum suspense. in this way, the audience was given time to wonder, with
Hehner, what the most wonderful thing might be - and so to feel empathy with him. In
addition. the pause gave proper weight to Nom's key sentence.
In the source text this line reads: "At samliv mellem os to kunde blie et
regteskab." (That our life together could become a marriage.) For Ibsen "marriage' was
the viable concept expressed in the line; for Bergman, offering his version to a presentday audience, it was rather "life together." He cleverly updated the play - thereby adjusting it to the changes in man-woman relations during the last hundred years - simply by
having the two key words change places: "AIt vart iiktenskap blev et! samliv."
Shortly before Nora left, Hilde appeared, silently watching her mother's
leave-taking. Woken up by the shouting of the parents. she became a witness to what was
nothing like the fairytale ending Nora had provided her with before she went to bed.
Hilde now wore

II

blue dress. similar in style to the one Nora had been wearing in the

beginning, and carried the similarly dressed doll she had just received from her mother,
The device came close to what the Dutch refer 10 as Droste effect. named after the chocolate packets showing a nurse carrying a Droste packet on her tmy. this packet again
showing a nurse l:arrying a Droste packet on her tray, this packet... - ad infinitum. Left
alone with her father - just as Nom had once been left alone with her father - Hilde
seemed doomed to relive Nora's experience. Deprived of her mother and lacking a sister
or brother, Hilde would have to console herself by playing the role of mother to her doll.
In his ending Bergman clearly outlined the vicious circle in which the child with just one

711

IBsEN, A

f)OLL'.~

HOVSE (l989J

parent finds itself - a central issue in a social environment where divorces tend to be the
rule rather than the exception. 1O
When Nora made her final exit from the platfonn stage, she passed by Mrs.
Linde and Krogstad silting next to it The happily united couple was proxemically - and
ironically - contrasted with the separating marital partners. While the Munich Nora left
through a closet door at the back of thc stage, the Stockholm Nora left via the auditorium
- as if she was a member of the audience, departing from the theater along with them.
Characteristic of both the Munich and the Stockholm production was the reliance on a heavily adapted version, in which much of Ibsen's concern for realistic plausibility - what we now see as surface realism - was done away with. As a result, a
stylized psychological drama came to the fore in which the characters via their off-stage
counterparts were related to the audience. This attempt to bridge the gulf between stage
and auditorium was especially noticeable in the Stockholm version, where the drama
was acted out on a timeless, universal platform between the art nouveau decor in the
background and the art nouveou auditorium in front. An earlier plan to have Nom also
appear at the end in art nouveau clothes was discarded in favor of a more anonymous,
less time-specific costume, which could render her more representative and relate her
belter to the audience.
While Nora's emancipation was the central issue in the version presented to
the relatively unemancipated Bavarian audience, it was rather the consequences of her
departure for her single daughter - read: the next generation - that formed the final
impression in the version offered to the Swedish audience, an audience increasingly
aware of the problems pertaining to the children of parents belonging to the divorcing
generation. To put it differently: while the Munich production focussed on the marital
relationship, the Stockholm one broadened the perspective. At the end, little Hilde vivified not only the present situation. She also represented Nora as a child - Nora, too,
having been suddenly bereaved of a parent. By implication - the doll in her arms - she
suggested her own future single-parent role. As in the opening of this production, three
generations were in Ihis way combined, suggesting a fateful perpetuum mobile. lI
Despite these differences, relating to differences at the producing and receiving ends, both the Munich and the Stockholm versions could be classified as typical
Bergman productions in the sense that they signified a skilful orchestration of the many
instruments that, properly attuned to one another, result in an outstanding and memorable performance.
An acute scnse of rhythm and a careful moment-by-moment distribution of
theatrical signifiers are two of the most striking features of Bergman's craftsmanship. As
a choreographer of moving stage images - moving in both senses of the word - he holds

79

IBSEN, A VOU,'S

HOU,~

(1989)

a unique position in the contemporary directorial landscape. His two productions of A

Doll's House bore striking witness to this.

80

IBSEN, A DOLI. 'S HOUSE (1989)

Shakespeare, The Winter:S Tale (1994)

Already in 1932, at the age of 14, Bergman planned "two superproductions for his puppet theatre: on the one hand The MaKic Flllte, on the other The Winter's Tale. Both
projects collapsed."l The former project was realized in 1975, when Bergman\ pioneering screen version of Schikaneder's and Mozart's opera was broadcast by Swedish Tele~
vision; the laller not until 1994, when his equally pioneering version of Shakespeare's
play was performed at the Big Stage of Dramaten.
Commenting on the theme of The Magic Flute, Bergman writes:
"Does Pamina still live?" The music translates the little question of the text
into a big and eternal question: Does Love live? Is Love real? The answer
comes quivering and hopeful: "Pa-mi-na still lives 1" Love exists. Love is real
in the world of man. l
A closely related theme is found in The Winter's Tale, where Leontes in the latter part of
the play searches for Hermione as Tamino searches for Pamina, Reminiscing about the
situation in 1932, Bergman comments: 'The Winter's Tale is about the death of Love, the
survival of Love and the resurrection of Love. It was the resurrection that broke me.'"
In Bergman's view, not only the theme of The MaKic Flute but also the handling of it has a close affinity with that of The Winter's Tale. In the opera, he says.
It is the wonderful suddenness of the fairy tale and the dream Ihat we may

experience.... The sweetness of the dream but also the pain and longing of the
dream. ... the people in the play ask themselves if they are dreaming or are
awake - if this is a dream or reality ... "If it is not fiction. then it is a dream."
as Strindberg says in A Dream Play."
A major reason behind Bergman's recent production of The Willter's Tale, was presumably the feeling that he was now, at the age of 76, ripe both for the autobiographical
aspect of the play, the dream aspect, and the ending of it: the resurrection of Love.
Another more obvious reason was that a new Swedish translation of the play
by Srilt G. Hallqvist and Claes Schaar, commissioned by Bergman, had just appeared.
Bergman had earlier asked Hallqvist to make new translations of King Lear and Hamlet

81

SHAKESPEARE, THE WtNTER'S TALE (1994)

for his productions of these plays. Concerning the former play, he wrote her: "Dear Brilt,
what we need is an actable, sayable and above all understandable version of Kinfi Lear."'
His wishes were amply fulfilled. A comparison with the old Swedish renderings of The
Winter's Tale reveals that the new translation radically differs from them precisely in the

ways indicated by Bergman. Naturally, the demand that the text be actable, sayable, and
understandable has often resulted in a certain simplification of the meaning and a diminishing of the poetical qualities (the blank verse). But these losses on the verbal side must
be measured against the increased accessibility of the

text,~

as well as against the imagi-

native non-verbal context in which the dialogue is placed.

Shakespeare's text is divided into five acts. We move from King Leontes'
Sicilia (Acts I-III.2) to King Polixenes' Bohemia (Acts 1II.3-IV4), and from there - with
a time lapse of no less than sixteen years - back to Sicilia (Act V). Disregarding the act
division, Bergman divided the text into 11 scenes:
Sicilia, winter.

I.
2,

The park of King Leontes' palace.

Queen Hermione's salon.

3.

Outside Hermione's prison.

4.

The park of the palace.

5.

The court room.

Bohemia, spring.

6.

Wild coast.
Intermission

Bohemia, spring, summer.

7.

Pasturallandscape. Spring.

8.

Pastoral landscape. Midsummer.

Sicilia, summer.

9.

Cloister.

10.

The park of the palace.

11.

Art gallery in Paulina's house.

H2

SHAKESPEARE, THE W1NTE'R'S TALl:; (1\1\14)

Actually Scenes 7 and 8 were Bohemian only in a figurative sense; if anYlhing, the pasloral environment of these scenes was Swedish,
Approximately one third of Shakespeare's text was omitted. Leaving out a
couple of courtiers, Bergman on the other hand added two women to Shakespeare's cast:
Amalia, lady in waiting 10 Queen Hermione, and the Abbess at the cloister. The llltter
took over one of Cleomenes' speeches, while he took over some of Camillo's llnd the
third Courtier's speeches.
More than is usually the case, the performance began with the theater program, where Bergman pretends to be the translator of a letter, wrilten in 1925 by a German professor, who was returning a nineteenth-century theater posler to the Royal
Library of Stockholm. The postec reproduced in the program, announces that The Winter's Tale, directed by Mr. Richard Furumo, will be performed as part of Miss Ulrika

Sofia's birthday celebration, on December 28, in the grand salon of Hugo Lowenstierna's hunting castle.
By this counterfeit un Bergman's part, the audience, many of whom would be
familiar with the work of Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (one of the leading Romantic writers
in Sweden), was forewarned that the play they were going 10 witness would be placed
within an early nineteenth-century frame. In one of his works, Almqvist has Prans explain to his brother Henrik thllt their father Hugo has invenled Ha kind of plays which he
wants to call SOll/:es," that is, dreams, to be performed "during the infonnal and modest
evenings of autumn and winter."
The theater - the yellow salon, the length of which is suitable for this purpose
- is arranged so that a curtain of white gauze is hung in tbe middle of the
room, dividing it into two parts.... This curtain will never be raised. We spectators are sitting on one side of the gauze. On the other side, furthest back the
dream takes place.)
Unlike Hugo Lowenstierna, Bergman chose not to separate the audience from the performance but, on the contrary, to integrate them as much as possible. Setting the play in
Lowenstierna's salon, the color of which seemed utterly fitting for a play about jealousy,
Bergman created a complex Droste effect. The Stockholm audience were introduced to
an early nineteenth-century evening of entertainment, the main part of which consisted
in the presentation of The Winter's Tale, witnessed also by part of the fictive nineteenthcentury guests. The actors of Dramaten incarnated nineteenth-century members of the
Lowenstierna family, who in turn, as amateur plllyers, incarnated fairy-tale-like, Shakespearean characters living in lln unspecified period. (Admittedly, the illusion of amateur-

83

SHAKESPEARE. THE WINTER'S TALE (1994)

ism could, for natural

reason~,

only be kept up in the comical parts of the production,

~tyles

similar to that in A Midsummer Night'j' Dream.) At the

resulting in a mixing of
~ame

time, scenery, properties, and most of the

costume~

signalled yet another period,

early twentieth century, the time when Dramaten was built. Approaching Strindberg's
concept in A Dream Play, where "time and space do not exist," Bergman in

hi~

version of

The Will/er's Tale created a dreamlike "synthetic theater time.'M

As designed by scenographer Lennart Mork, Lowenstierna's horseshoeshaped salon, imitating the form of the auditorium. was a replica of the beautiful art

IIOl'eau foyer of Dramaten. As a result, the audience found itself in a space between two
areas mirroring one another, one meant for performances, the other for relaxation between the

act~.

The scenery in this way contributed to wipe out the borderline between

stage and auditorium, while at the same time it created an unreal. dreamlike effect.
To ~trengthen the feeling of communion between the people on either side of
the proscenium, the Lowenstierna family and their guests appeared happily chatting in
the staged salon, while the audience were arriving to take their seats, Almqvist

him~elf

Thc Swedish nineteenth century frame for Bergman's version of Th~ Win/er ',\' Tale. The guests, all
in blue shades, assembled in Hugu Lowenstiemu's (in a gray-grcen blouse to the righl) salon. a
semicircular version of Dramaten's ar/ nOIlI'('au foyer. Even the painting on the ceiling was a replica of Carl Larsson's foycr painting. Notc the decorated Christmas tree to the left, indicating lhc
timc of year.

ll4

SHAKESPEARE. THE WINTER'S TALE (1?94}

sat down at one of the two square pianos. A conjurer entertained the double audience
with a trick. A female choir sang one of the Songes. There was music and dancing. After
a while some of the participants, the host being one of them, walked down the steps
installed at the front of the stage and sat down in the first row, thereby turning themselves
into members of the real audience. After some ten minutes two children - a boy and a girl
- with bells in their hands announced that the performance was to begin.
The scenery in the play-within-the-play had an Elizabethan simplicity: a
beautiful garden sofa, a big dinner table, a few painted screens, a wind machine visibly
cranked, writhing veiled women representing a stormy sea on which a tiny model of a
sailing ship was being tossed. It all had the right flavor of amateur theater.
As with Shakespeare, the first part of Bergman's play was set in winter. But
while Shakespeare's pastoral scenes play in late summer or even early autumn, Bergman
settled for spring and summer. The reason is obvious. Having relocated these scenes
from Bohemia to Dalama, the provincial heart of Sweden, midsummer would have a
strong emotional reverberation among the audience, being the most camivalesque time
(in Bakhtin's sense) of the year in Sweden. Consequently, Bergman replaced Shakespeare's sheep-shearing feast with the Swedish midsummer celebration - well-known
also in the theater through Miss Julie.
Shakespeare's seasonal development reflects the inner change that the protagonist, Leontes. undergoes in the course of the play, which essentially deals with the
death, survival and resurrection of his love, This connection was strengthened in
Bergman's version, where in the tinal script we move from "Wintera/ternoon" (Scene 2)
to "Sharp winter" (Scene 3) to "Cold winter day with snow/al/ing" (Scene 4),
In the performance, the lighting, similarly, accompanied Leontes' inner development. When his jealousy was kindled, the windows were lit deep-red. Later, when
his love for Hennione had died, or rather lay dormant, a cold winter night with a starry
sky and a frosty moon above snow-clad trees could be glimpsed outside the windows.~
Leontes' sudden and seemingly unjustified jealousy is a classical, and crucial, problem confronting every director of The Winter's Tale. Shakespeare has Polixenes
visit Leontes for nine months to make it plausible that he could be the father of
Hermione's child. In performances, her state of pregnancy would usually be indicated
from the beginning.
Bergman proceeded differently. He placed Hennione (Pemilla August) on a
wooden art nouveau sofa between her husband Leontes (Borje Ahlstedt) and their guest
Polixenes (Krister Henriksson). She was in red, Leontes in blue, Polixenes in green, the
sofa in noncomittal blue~green. Hennione was so intimate with both men that it was
difficult to tell whether this was a 'matrimonial' sofa or a sofa meant for a menaf;e atrois.

85

SHAKESPEARE, THE WINTER'S TALE (1994)

The troubled quartet in the opening of The Winter's Tafe: Mamillius was anxiously eavesdropping
on hIS parents Queen Hermione and King Lcontcs, while King Polixene.~ jealously looked the other
way. Hermionc's erotic 'strangling' of heT husband was Stfikingly similar 10 NOTa's 'mangling' of
Rank in A Doll's House. Bolh women were played by the same actress.

Confirming his intention to return 10 his own Bohemia the following day, Polixenes had
been provided with a red guest book in which he had just finished writing. The book was
handed over to Hennione. After a while Leontes snapped the book from her, looked into
it. and abruptly closed it. Hennione, declaring her love for her husband. put her arms
around Leontes' neck, while imploring Polixenes 10 stay with them for some time,
Leontes opened the book again and continued to read, then suddenly gOI up, threw Ihe
book on the sofa and left. Here was suggested that Polixenes had praised Hermione in
writing to such an extent that Leontes' jealousy, aroused already by her intimacy wilh his
friend, was kindled.
Leontes returned and hid himself behind the sofa, spying on Hermione and
Polixenes. What he heard served to increase his suspicions:
HERMIONE.... We freely admit

the sins we have seduced you to,

if you first sinned with us, and then

86

SHAKESPEARE, THE WINTER'S TALE (1994)

remained with us and never slipped. la

LEONTES up behind the sofa with a "'Boo!"
HERMIONE and POLIXENES, who have been siltinR
close tORether; surprised fall away from one Gnother.

Hearing that Polixenes had complied with Hermione's prayer that he remain in Sicilia for
a while, Leontes now placed himself on the sofa between Hermione and Polixenes, turning his back on the latter, who looked away to the right. When Hennione put her red
shawl around Leontes' neck it was on her part a lovingly playful gesture which, however,
was experienced by him as though he was being ensnared. With her shawl around his
neck, Leontes, now alone on the front stage, suffocatingly spoke his
Too hot! Too hotT To go too far in friendship,
that is the same as mingling blood.
This soliloquy is usually regarded as the first indication in the text of Leontes' jealousy;
in Bergman's version, as we have seen, it was preceded by several motivating pointers.
Shortly after his jealous outburst Leontes characteristically put the red shawl next to the
red book and sat down on both of them.
Highly pregnant with meaning was the situation when Polixenes and
Hermione were seen lovingly dancing in the background as Leontes told Camillo (Oosta
Priize1ius):
You think I am so muddy, so unsettled
that I myself have caused my suffering..
At this moment, it was suggestively unclear, one critic noted, whether the dancing in the
background was an objective event or a subjective projection of Leontes' jealousy."
When Leontes a little later, another critic observed,
glimpses Hennione and Polixenes circled in Ithe] dance ... a rush of stabbing
anguish overcomes him; Leontes breaks into the circle, casting Polixenes out
and embracing Hermione. He holds her at arm's length while she nestles his
hand gently against her cheek. Suddenly, Leontes whispers something obscene to her, and Hermione breaks away. Leontes grabs a nearby female
member of the court and begins to rape her. 'z

1S1

SHAKESPEARE, THE WINTER'S TALE {1'.J94}

Beyond the need to revenge himself by humiliating his wife even more than she had - as
he believed - humiliated him, this sudden outburst of passion and violence seemed to
visualize both "the middle-aged king's unconscious terror of impotence"" and. in
Bergman's fairy-tale-like terms, "the death of Love."
Much of what took place hetween the three main contrahents within
Bergman's central magic rectangle had its proxemic and kinesic counterpart in the area
outside it. Using one of Anna Pavlova's so-called social dances, suited for the balls of the
bourgeoisie. as well as various elements from Antony Tudor, choreographer Donya
Feuer had the dancers move - and at strategic moments freeze their movements - like
blue-gray shadows in patterns hinting at the subtextual drama that was being enacted at
center forestage. At the same time, the dancing couples helped to expand. universalize,
the man-woman relations demonstrated hy the three chief characters - especially when
these left their central, well-lit space and joined the dancers in the outer, dimmed area.
Characteristic of his concerns in later years is Bergman's preoccupation with
children in his productions. The expansion of Prince Mamillius' p,ut is a case in point.
Early in Scene I, the boy was seen playing with his puppet theater, identical with that of
Alexander in Fanny alld Alexander, that is, modelled on the Royal Theater in Copenhagen with its motto "Not Only for Pleasure" inscribed above the proscenium opening. The
scenery in Mamillius' puppet theater was that of the yellow salon surrounding it. Moreover, itself figuring inside a theater, his puppet theater had another puppet theater on its
stage, this again a puppet theater on its stage, 14 !ntervisually connecting the play with the
film, Mamillius with Alexander. Bergman by this second Droste effect brought together
the boy playing with his theater and the grown-ups - both on the stage and in the auditorium - busying themselves with theirs.
With Shakespeare, Prince Mamillius is sickened to death either because he
cannot bear his father's harsh treatment of his mother or, with another interpretation,
because, like Hamlet, he cannot bear "the supposed sin of his mother and consequent
taint upon himself."" Whatever the reason may be, Mamillius' sad fate is included in the
play mainly to demonstrate the far,reaching consequences of Leontes' jealousy. With
Bergman Mamillius, a boy of 10, played by a girl (Anna Bjork), was a representative,
because 'androgynous: child. His hair was reddish like that of Leontes' - sufficient
proof, it would seem, tbat the King of Sicilia was indeed his father. Yet Leontes, like
Strindberg's Captain in The Father - several critics noted the resemblance - had doubts
about his own parenthood. Mamillius' loyalty to both parents was indicated hoth in costume -like Leontes he wore a blue dress in Scene I: like Hermione he was dressed in red
in Scene 2 - and in his attitude to them, Intuitively sensing that something was awry in
their marriage, he early in the play was seen moving away from his puppet theater to the

SHAKESPEARE, Till:." WINTER'S TA.LE (1994)

sofa where he eavesdropped on their conversation with Polixenes. A little later, he was
happily sitting on his father's lap - until Leontes brutally pushed him away. In Scene 2,
similarly, he was comfortably 'sleeping with his mother - until Leontes tore him away
from her. Shortly after this, he was again seen eavesdropping as Leontes called his wife
a whore. In Scene 3, he was seen outside his mother's prison, suffering with her.
In his description of the dilemma in which a child of disagreeing parents finds
itself - a situation vividly experienced by little Ingmar l6 - Bergman gradually added visual
information that would motivate what in his version seemed to amount to a suicide on
Mamillius' part, the boy who, as one critic put it, was hit by "too great a sorrow 100 early."])
While Shakespeare's play seems set in a pre- or non-Christian, fairy-tale-like
environment, Bergman, in conformance with Almqvist's religious mysticism, made use
of a marked Christian frame of reference. It is no coincidence that the performance of the
faked program was set on the day that the Catholic church used to celebrate as the Holy
Innocents' Day; hereby was suggested that Leontes was another Herod, while Mamillius
and Perdita corresponded to the victimized Bethlehem children (Mat. 2.6). The Christmas tree in the wintry part was carried over in the cruciform Maypole in the midsummer
part; this again was developed into the cruciform of the Holy Virgin in Scene 9 - transformations in the spirit of A Dream Play.
With Shakespeare, Leontes' repentance - after 16 years - is demonstrated in
Act VI, usually set in his palace. Bergman, no doubt recalling the Stranger's penance in
the asylum scene of Strindberg's To Damascus, staged by him 20 years earlier, instead
set the scene in a cloister, showing Leontes, crushed, surrounded by virginal nuns, representatives of that which he had violated. Leontes was seen with his back, streaked with
blood, turned to the audience, prostrated in front of a life-like image of the Bleeding
Madonna, a sword plunged into her heart - to Leontes clearly an image of the wife he felt
he had killed.
When Paulina in the Swedish text reproaches him for what he has done,
Leontes submissively answers;

It is true. Killed! I have killed her.

yes, but how you hurt me with those words I

If they are bitter in your mouth, then they are

much more bitter in my thoughts.
Please say them seldom I
Showing Leontes as a tlagellant, Bergman replaced the escapist "seldom' with the
masochist "often:'

89

SHAKESPEARE, TllE"

WINTE"R'.~

TALE" (1994)

While the penance scene fittingly was set in a cloister, the resurrection scene
was staged in a secular environment: Paulina's art gallery, at night. Hermione was carried
in on a catafalque, which was placed in the middle of the room.
PAULINA.

Music, awake her!

(Almqvist's Songe No. XV is hummed in the distance.)

The time has come. Be stone no more! (HERMIONE moves.)

Look, she moves! (Silence. HERMIONE raises herselflo sitting position.)
Be not afraid! What she is doing is as holy
as my conjuring is good.
As in The Magic Flute, music worked the magic at the hands of someone steadfast in
love.
Providing the scene with a richness of overtones, Bergman was certainly not
suggesting that Paulina (Bibi Andersson), although she knew that Hermione had merely
been hidden away for 16 years, was performing a trick - as did the conjurer appearing in
the pre-play sequence. Rather, he was suggesting that the long survival of love, expressed
through wordless art and music, could miraculously lead to its resurrection. The 50llge
that was hummed in the distance was the one that was sung in the beginning, bridging the
pre-play and the play proper. This 50nge, called "The Flower of the Heart," relates a
parable in simple words. God has planted a colorless rose in the heart of man. Its thorns
wound the heart. When the heart asks God why He has done so, God answers: "The
blood from your heart colors your rose for you. f You and the rose of your heart then
resemble Me in beauty." Suffering in imitatio Christi is the way to salvation_ This meaning ties in with Leontes' 16 years of penance, emblematized in his flagellated back, red
with blood. Suddenly, the red of Hermione's and Mamillius' costumes in the beginning
of the play has gained a deeper meaning.
For the noble Paulina, Shakespeare's play ends happily. Having lost her husband. she remarries; her new husband is eamillo. This solution was not open to
Bergman, since he had gradually turned Camillo into a Catholic priest. Instead, he chose
an ending where the attention was strongly focussed upon the reunion of Leontes,
Hermione, and Perdita (Kristina Tornqvist) - husband, wife and daughter:
HERMIONE slowly, gropingly.
Tell me, my child.
how were you saved, and where have you been?
How did you find the way to your father's house?

SHAKESPEARE, THE: WINTER'S TA1,E (19H)

PERDITA puts her head in HERMIONE'S lap.

PAULlNA up to the trio, puiS one hand on LEONTES' shoulder. the other on
PERDITA'S.
Tell about that, you may do later.
You fortunate people, go now and share
your triumph with one and all! Moves to the right.
I, old turtle, will flyaway

to some withered bough. where I will lament

my husband, whom I have lost, until the end of life.
LEONTES shaking his head.
No! No! No! Dear Paulina, Up to hel; embraces her. lakes her left hand and

moves her behind HERMIONE and PERDITA.

accompany us now to some place where we
in peace and quiet, with questions and with answers,
may learn of what has happened to us all
in this long period Ihat we've been separated.
Come, Reaches his hand out to HERMIONE who rises. PERDITA takes her

right hand. HERMIONE lets LEONTES' hand loose and takes both
PERDITA'S hands, then takes LEONTES' hand again. come with us. They

tum awayflvm the audience and are about to leave upstage.

HOUSEMAID infmm right. Excuse me, Your Excellency. but the supper is
served since quite some time.
LOWENSTIERNA, who has heen sit/ing ill the middle ofthefronl mw, wit-

nessing the performance, enters the stage. Happy //lealtime music. Most of
the people, who hm'e taken part in the performance whirl aroulld

Oil

the

stage, now out of their roles. A white-dressed Rirl jokingly sits down on the
catafalque, where HERMIONE has just been raised from the dead. ExeuJ1l
ALL except the SINGER Starlit night, strong moonlight through the windows.
SINGER silting downstage right, sings a capella Almql'ist's Songe No. I.
o my Lord, what is it pretty,
10 hear music from a holy angel's mouth.
o my Lord, what is it lovely,
to die to music and to song.
Quietly flow,

my soul, in the river.

the dark and heavenly purple river. TIME,

91

11

white-haired lady in a black

SHAKESPEARE, THE WINTER'S TAU;, (1994)

crinoline with a red train enters the stage from the auditorium with a biE(
alarm clock.
Quietly sink, 0 my blessed spirit,
in the arms of God, the relieving, good. TIME puts down the ticking alarm
clock ontheforestage. It

~'howsfive

to twe!I'e.

o my Lord, what is it pretty,

to hear music from a holy angel's mouth.

o my Lord, what is it lovely,

to die to music and to song.
TIME leaves upstage. Black-out. The ticking of the clock grows louder.
By having Time (Kristina Adolphson) ~ whose only speech (in Act IV. I) is usually given
to a man - reappear at the end of the perfonnance in the form of an elderly woman,
wearing both the color of life and of death, and by providing her with an alann clock
instead of an hour glass, Bergman could end his Winter's Tale with a sound that, like the
allegorical figure herself, bridged stage and auditorium and fused the two areas into a
theatrum mundi, in recognition of the fact that we are all ruled by the Clock of Life and
that the silence of darkness eventually awaits us all.

92

SHAKESPEARE, THE WINTER'S TALE (1994)

PART 2
THE SCREEN DIRECTOR

The Seventh Seal (1957)

The theater has long seemed to me, like art in general, a Biblia pal/pal/m, a

Bible in pictures for those who can't read what is written or printed, and the
playwright a lay preacher hawking the ideas of the day in popular form, so
popular that the middle classes, the Iheater's primary audience, can understand the basic questions without too much effort.
Strindberg'g condescending view of the theater, in the opening passage of the preface to

Miss lulie, was more applicable to another art form when Bergman began his career as a
director: the film. Here, even more than in the theater, "the ideas of the day" were expressed visually rather than verbally. Moreover, the audience did not have the possibility

of reading what was "written or printed," since film scripts were rarely published.
In a more restricted sense, the tenn Biblia pauperum is especially relevant to
Bergman's one-act morality Wood Pain/inK (1954), which forms the basis for the film
The Sewnth Seal. l In Wood Painting, which Bergman directed himself, he "moved a
medieval church painting to the stage and transformed it into a silhouette-like gothic
group in which alllhe figures ... stiffened into a sculptural pose.... The group was dissolved and the play began,"l Bergman has himself infonned us about his source of inspiration both for the play and the film:
As a child I was sometimes allowed to accompany my father when he travelled about to preach in the small country churches in the vicinity of Stockholm. . While Father preached away in the pulpit ..., I devoted my inlerest 10
the church's mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the colored sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceiling and walls. There was everything
that one's imagination could desire: angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils.
humans. There were very frighlening animals: serpents in paradise, Balaam's
ass, Jonah's whale, the eagle of the Revelation.... In a wood sat Death, playing chess with the Crusader. Clutching the branch of a tree was a naked man
with staring eyes, while down below stood Death, sawing away to his heart's
content. Across gentle hills Death led the final dance towards the dark lands.
But in the other arch the Holy Virgin was walking in a rose-garden, support-

95

THE SEVE,\'TH SE,tL (1957)

ing the Child's faltering steps, and her hands were those of a peasant woman.
Her face was grave and birds' wings fluttered round her head.
My intention has been to paint in the same way as the medieval church
painter, with the same objective interest, with the same tenderness andjoyJ
The inclination of the church painters to narrate in series of pictures relates to the epic
structure of both the play and the film. And as in the medieval murals, in the lilm images
of the sinful alternate with those of the innocent.
Bergman's choice of historical period, fourteenth century, was determined by
the ravages of the plague around this time. Such a fatal epidemic means that the consciousness of death is increased. To him who fears that he is soon to die. the existential
questions become burning. Does death mean annihilation or is there a life after this one?
If the latter is the case, what is it like? [s there any connection between my life on earth
and life hereafter? Will I be punished or rewarded according 10 how I have lived? Has my
life been meaningful? What is the meaning of life?
Being an epidemic. the plague is a threat to everybody, man and woman,
young and old, rich and poor, good and evil. The unjust distribution of fortune and misfortune in life is rectified by the democratic death that visits all. Confronted with a collective mortal danger. we strongly experience that we are all subject to the same
inevitable fate,
When The Sevelllh Seal was shot, the most serious threat to mankind was the
possibility that a nuclear war would annihilate all life on earth. In Sweden. Nobe! prize
winner Harry Martinson wrote his space epic Alliara (1956), which describes various
reactions to the catastrophic situation in which mankind suddenly found itself. Ten years
earlier, another Swedish Nobel prize winner, Eyvind Johnson, had published his version
of la condition humaille in the novel Retum to lthaca, where the world of The Odyssey
provides a distancing perspective to what is essentially, to quote the subtitle, "a novel
about the present," dealing with, to quote another Johnson title, "the return of the soldier." In Barabbas (1950), a third Swedish Nobel prize winner, Pur Lagerkvist, depicts
the title figure, representing man as imprisoned in himself, as a person who longs for a
faith bat who has no god to believe in. Below its historical surface layer, Lagerkvist's
novel, too, focusses on a dilemma characteristic of modem man.
11 is in this tradition we must place The Sel'ellth Seal. In the words of Bergman
himself: "It is a modem poem, presented with medieval material that has been very freely
handled. The Knight of the film returns from a crusade as a soldier in our times returns
from a war.'" At home, his faithful wife is waiting for him, a medieval Penelope or a
timeless Solveig.'

96

THE SEVENTH SEA1, (1957)

The film describes what is happening to the Knight (Max van Sydow) from
his first to his last meeting with Death (Bengt Ekerot), who is here as in Everyman depicted as a concrete figure approaching man to end his life. When the death of the Knight
is postponed, it is not, as in Peer Gynr, because someone in love with him has interceded.
It is rather because Death enjoys playing chess with man -liS the Cllt enjoys plllying with

the mouse before killing it. Ironically, the presumptuous Knight imagines that he can
beat Death: "If I win, you will release me." His hubris - the sin of the tragic protagonist
- is an expression of man 's dream for the impossible: the llbolition of dellth. His desire to
go on living is representlltively selfish.
After the meeting with Jof (Joseph), Mia (Maria), and Mikael (child Jesus)
and their attitude to life, the situation changes. The Knight realizes that a postponement
of his death would give him time to perform a truly good deed, so that he can die with the
consoling thought thllt his life hllS not been meaningless. The good act consists in saving
Jof (Nils Poppe), Mia (Bibi Andersson), and Mikael from Death.
If the Knight's metaphysical search is one pervading theme, the inevitability

of death is another. In accordance with this, there is a 'Shakespearean' alternation in the

film between stylized scenes, focussing on the protagonist, and realistic collective
scenes; between tragedy and comedy. between 'verse' and 'prose.'
The modem equivalent of the medieval plague, Bergman has himself pointed
out, is the nuclear war which in a few minutes may extinguish all of humanity." This
threat remains and will remain. There is, alas, no risk that the film in this respect will
become dated.
In recent years, the fear of a nuclear war has been overshadowed by two other
dangers threlltening mankind: the destruction of natural resources and AIDS. These two
dangers, especially AIDS, which threatens to kill millions of people within the next few
years, may be seen as a modem equivalent of the medieval plague. Like the victims of the
plague, AIDS victims tend to be shunned by their fellows. Moreover, like the plague,
AIDS is regarded by many as a punishment for a sinful life. As a result of this development, The Seventh Seal, far from being dated. hllS remained relevllnt over the yeurs.
Behind the film title, which is a quotation from Revelation (8.1),
one must imagine the prophet's idea of God's reply to humanity's questions
about the ultimate things as a secret message written on the parchment scroll
of ancient times and sealed with seven seals. Even if six of these seals are
broken, the scroll remains sealed and God's secret preserved. Not until the
seventh seal is broken mlly we learn about the secret of existence. 7

97

THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

What is said here refers to the situation of mankind at the Last Judgement. But the concept 'the Last Judgment' may also be related to the indh'iduai human beillf; and be understood as his or her last moment in life. Viewed in this way, the breaking of the seal
happens at the moment we die.
In the film we follow Antonius Block and his squire lOns (Gunnar
Bjornstrand) on their way home from the Holy Land. As they journey forth, they are
confronted with various situations and people. Bergman here relates both to the medieval
station drama and to its modern equivalents: Peer Gynf and To Damascus. g Characteristic
of these plays is that the looseness of structure - there is unity of neither time nor placeis counteracted partly by a thematic density, partly by an almost ever-present protagonist,
necessarily someone who is on the move, a traveller.
in The Seventh Seal, we deal with a double protagonist, a concretization of
Faust's declaration that "zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brus!," a split within the
self, indicated by the master-slave relation and by the fact that Jons lacks a surname. In
Bergman's words:
To the fanatical believer {Antonius Block] physical and spiritual suffering is
beside the point. compared with salvation. That is why, to him, everything
happening around him is irrelevant, a mirror-image, a mere will-o' -the-wisp_
But Jons, he's a man of the here-and-now. He feels sympathy, hatred, and
scorn;"
The thinker is pitted against the man of feeling, he who is concerned with a transcendent
reality against him who lives in the visible present, the fanatic against the realist. The
classical paradigm of this antithesis is, of course, Don Quixote and Sancho P:mza.
Although lons is the more active of the two, the Knight is not completely
passive. In the scene where the witch, Tyan (Maud Hansson), is being burnt, it is (in the
script) the Knight who is acting out of compassion. Neglecting the Soldier's warning not
to come too close to the witch, he
CUp.l

his halld,jills it with water from the skin and gil'es it to TYAN. Then he

giws her a pOlion.

KNIGHT. Take this, and it will stop the pain.
In the film, it is IOns who hands Tyan the water, but it is still the Knight who gives her the
sedative potion. Here the two cooperate in their assistance of the 'crucified' witch_ In a
striking two-shot, where the faces of lons and the Knight are seen side by side gazing up

98

THE SEVENTH SEAl. (l(57)

at the dying Tyan, 10ns points out the connection between the two: "we see what she
sees, and our terror and hers are the same." Similarly, 10ns' saving of 10f's life in the inn
compares with the Knight's saving of 'the holy family' from Death.
Around the Knight and lOns, the other characters are grouped. On the side of
the Knight we find Tyan, the Girl (Gunnel Lindblom) and Karin (Jnga Landgre); on Jons'
side, the rest. Jof takes a middle position. As an artist, he can enjoy this life and yet be in
touch with another reality. Jof is the visional)' of the film either because he is clairvoyant
or else because he has a very lively imagination. In accordance with this typology, the
film alternates between realistic close-to-life scenes and stylized metaphysical sceneseverything within the framework of the Revelation.
The Seventh Seal is a black-and-white film. Rarely have these colors been
more adequate. It opens with a title frame - white tcxt on a black screen - accompanied
by a somber, reverberating sound, followed by deathly silence. A black frame, representing Black Death, is accompanied by ominous instrumental music. The music swells and
turns into the singing of Dies irae as the director cuts to a low angle shot of restless.
towering clouds, sunlit to the left, threateningly dark to the right - a weather contrast
anticipating that of the final dance of death. When the words "dies iila" are heard,
Bergman cuts to a low-angle shot of a sea eagle, dark against the light-and-dark sky.
Then abrupt silence. After this, a cut to an extreme long shot of a mountainous coastline,
black againslthe light sea and sky. An off-screen voice, soon to be identified as the voice
of Death, reads from Revelation 8.1,10 "And when he [the Lamb] had opened the seventh
seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour." There is a cut to a highangle extreme long shot of waves breaking on a beach, where the black silhouettes of two
horses are seen. As the voice continues - "And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound." (Rev. 1.6)- the surge of the waves is heard faintly.
The film, it will be seen, opens with a sequence which seems to fuse the Day
of Creation with the Day of Judgement. We recall the words of Genesis 1.1-2: "In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and
void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters." Earth, heaven, sea are what we see in the opening shots. The soaring
eagle is reminiscent of "the spirit of God," especially since the optical point of view in
these powerful pictures of nature seems to be that of the eagle. But the bird also relates to
the Last Day. In Revelation 8,13, it says: "And 1 beheld, and heard an angel flying
through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe. woe, to the inhabiters
of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet
to sound!" The silhouetted horses, finally, are reminiscent of the ghostly horses of the
Apocalypse.

99

TIlE SEVENTH St.'AL (1957)

Alternating with the divine bird's-eye view, there is the low human perspective: shots of clouds and of the soaring eagle from beneath, providing visual backing for
"the Knight's hopeless search for God, who remains distant and silent"I, - an interpretation supported by his position: lying on the beach, his glance is directed upwards. Apart
from its cosmogonic function, the landscape by this arrangement illustrates the Knight's
- modem man's - existential sense of desolation. This is scenery mirroring a state of
mind - in imitation not only of a playwright like Strindberg but also of a film director like
Victor Sjostrom. When the camera descends, it takes in two human wrecks on the beach.
The introductory biblical text indicates that while the film's 'human' playing
time seems to he a few days - from sunrise to sunrise - its 'divine' playing time is merely
half an hour, that is, the time from the breaking of the seal to the sounding of the trumpets
of Judgement.
When Bergman has Death read the text of the Revelation, he relates his film
to the Prologue of medieval morality plays such as Everyman, a drama which also in
other respects has much in common with The Seventh Seal. Moreover, Death is here
given divine status; compare Genesis: "And God said," etc. Jons is, significantly, asleep
when Death speaks His prophetic words.
Like the Death figure in the medieval moralities and murals, Bergman's
Death is a metaphysical power, visibly incarnating the condition of being dead. But unlike them, He is an enigmatic, contradictory figure. We do not even know if He is omnipotent or merely the tool of a higher power. The only time He speaks of God. He
questions -dressed as a monk! - God's existence. Does this imply that existence is ruled
by an evil power, the Devil, or by blind Fate? The Death figure in The Seventh Seal can be
identified with both. He has diabolic traits; and he claims to be "ignorant." Bergman's
Death is at once all-seeing - "Nothing escapes me" - and blind.
Ordinary people cannot see Death until they are face to face with Him, that is,
at the moment of death. This is true also of the Knight. When he first meets Death on the
beach, it is because Death has come to fetch him. When 10f, who on twu occasions sees
Death although he is not personally confronted with Him, it is because, being clairvoyant, Jof senses that Death is hUllting him. The first appearance of Death has been called
"one of the most dramatic 'entrances' in all cinema."ll In the script this is described as
follows:

A cloud hangs mute and dark over the western horizon. High up, harely visible, a sea bird floats

011

motionless wings. Its cry is weilll and restless. The

KNIGHT'S large gray horse lifts its head and whinnies. ANTONIUS
BLOCK turns around.

100

THE SEVENTH SEAl. (1957)

Behind him stands a MAN in hlad. His face is rel)' pale and he keeps his
hands hidden in the wide folds of his cloak.
KNIGHT. Who are you?
DEATH. I am Death.
KNIGHT. Have you come for me?
DEATH. I have been walking by your side for a long time.
KNIGHT. That I know.
DEATH. Are you prepared?
KNIGHT. My body

i~

frightened, but I am not.

DEATH. Well, there is no shame in that.

The mute and dark cloud here anticipates the appearance of Death. The restless crying of
the sea bird and the neighing of the horse reveal that the animals have already felt Death
approaching. The neighing makes the Knight turn around. What does he see? His surprise is shared by the spectator. Death appears simultaneously to him and to us - an
effective way of turning the Knight into Everyman. Significantly, Death approaches
from behind, like a traitor.
The Knight makes a distinction between the body's fear of death and the
soul's longing for it, and in the Swedish original there is an unlranslatable pun on the
words 'beredd' (prepared) and 'radd' (afraid). indicating Ihat the Knight, consciously or
unconsciously, does not answer Death's question but answers a question never posed by
Him. The presence of Death makes the Knight feel cold. When Death opens his cloak to
put it around him, it is both a posses~ive and a warming gesture.
Let us now see how this sequence is recreated in the film. Here the

ches~

board, which we have already linked with the Knight, appears in close-up. With ils black
and white chessmen, it signifies the struggle for survival that the Knight is soon to tight
with Death. The metaphysical function of the game is clarified when Bergman has Ihe
chessboard dissolve into an extreme long shot of the roaring sea. In the distance the sun
rises oul of the sea. When the image of wave~ breaking against black rocks dissolves into
the black shape of Death, the roar of the

~urf i~

replaced by complete ~ilence. Where the

sun was seen, we now see the white face of Death. There He suddenly stands, in long
shot, in a black, long, hooded cloak - a gigantic hangman with the face of a corpse, in the
boundary between the dark earth and the light heaven. There is a cut 10 a long shot of the
Knight, in profile, squatting on the beach. He is looking for something in his "biX bag."
Suddenly he looks into the camera, as though he sensed the presence of Death. Then
follows the dialogue between the two, ending with the Knight's assurance that he is

101

THE SEVENTH SEAL (1\157)

himself not afraid of Death. As he gets up to approach Death, dull, ominous music is
intoned. Death raises his right arm to a horizontal position, so that his wide cloak falls
out like a black wall. There is a quick zoom-in on the pale, clownesque face of Death,
surrounded by the black hood.'1 He looks cruel. After this shot, which makes us share the
Knight's fear, Bergman cuts to an even more radical point-of-view shot: a completely
black frame. Along with the Knight, we are enclosed in Death's black cloak. In the next
shot the blackness, the cloaked arm of Death, is lowered - the camera is now behind Him
- and the Knight's face appears in the upper pari of the frame as he says: "Wait a moment."' Then the pact with Death is concluded that provides the Knight with a respite
covering the playing time of the film.
The difference in this sequence between the script and the film is considerable. Both in the script and in the film, the arrival of Death is presaged through realistic,
contextually determined, diegetic on-screen sounds (the crying of the sea eagle, the
neighing of the horse). But in the film the roar of the sea ceases as soon as Death appears.
The switch from an outer, recognizable reality to an inner, metaphysical one becomes in
this way more strongly emphasized in the film. The discrepancy between script and film
concerns also the relation between the sun and the figure of Death. In the script, the
different positions of the sun are carefully noted. It is here not only a question of indicating the progression of time. In the metaphysically waste landscape, the sun receives
apocalyptic dignity. This can easily be made clear verbally. But how does one visually
depict a sun "which wallows upfroln the misty sea like some bloated, dying fish"' or, in a
black-and-white film, a sun which has "lost its red light"? The earlier noted dissolve
from the sun 10 the face of Death at least indicates the transcendental nature of this
celestial body.
Once the Knight and Death have sat down by the chessboard - "a striking
quasi-surrealist image, the transitory and fragile game of life played out against eternity"14 - there is a slow dissolve into a long shot of sea and sky, emphasizing the metaphysical significance of the chess-playing.
There follow a series of shots in which the Knight and his Squire are seen
journeying forth on horseback; the conventional dissolves here indicate the discrepancy
between implicit and visualized time. Although the difference in status is indicated by
the Knight riding ahead and J(ins behind, what is striking, through the choice of extreme
long shots, is rather their minute equality in a 'divine' perspective. They are seen at first
from a bird's-eye view as tiny creatures moving forward along the beach; then in another
extreme long shot as they keep riding between and behind high black rocks, reminiscent
of a medieval hell mouth; fmally in a low angle extreme long shot as they proceed across
a heath, silhouetted against the sky, a shot anticipating the dance of death at the end.

102

THE SEVENTH SEAl. (1957)

Suddenly we see the back of a man sitting by the road, with a dog nearby.
Jons dismounts his horse to ask him about the way. When the man does not react toJons'
tap on his shoulder, Jons jokingly grasps his hood and turns his head. In a shocking pointof-view close-up, reminiscent of the one we have just seen of Death, a face "wilh empty
eye sockets and while teeth" suddenly stares simultaneously at us and at Jons. This is the

firs! testimony in the film to the ravages of the plague. But why the dog? The contrast
dead human beinglliving animal returns later in connection with Skat's death, but then
with a different meaning. The significance of the dog is clearer in the script, where it
says: "Close by a scrawny dog is whining, crawling toward its master. ..." The symbolism
is here the same as in Hjalmar Soderberg's short story "A Dog without Master" (1891),
where the death of the dog's master corresponds to man's existential desolation following upon the death of God. After the confrontation with the dead man, lons no longer
rides behind but side by side with the Knight. Death extinguishes all class differences.
Masked as a monk receiving confession, Death makes the Knight reveal his
strategy at the chessboard. "Why should Death cheat on certainties?" a critic

asks.l~

Do

we deal with the hangman's cruel game with his victim? Does the confession scene serve
to illustrate the Knight's hubris, his vain belief that he can outwit Death? Or is Death's
behavior in this scene merely an expression of the Knight's feeling that he is being
cheated?
The confession scene is interesting in several respects. Its inclusion is in the
first place motivated by the Knight's need to confess his sins now that he knows that he is
soon to die. In that sense, it is highly archetypal. The sin that burdens him is selfishness,
indifference to his fellow men. But this is also the 'sin' that God, according to the Knight,
is guilty of vis-a.-vis mankind. The question is then: Is man's selfishness the cause or the
result of God's selfishness?
A confession is a speech between monologue and dialogue. The confessing
person has a speaking partner, but this partner, the confessor, functions primarily as a
listener. Moreover, it is his duty not to reveal the content of the confession to others. In
these respects, a confession comes close to a monologue. Bergman visually supports the
idea of someone primarily speaking to himself by having the Knight's face surrounded
by bars. By means of a strong side light, the bars separating the Knight from his confessor (Death) are reflected on the opposite wall. The chapel is turned into a prison cell, in
accordance with the Knight's feeling that he lives "in a world of phantoms. I am imprisoned in my dreams and fantasies."16The room, in other words, recreates a mental condition.
It is, of course, ironical that the confessor is identical with Death. Instead of

providing consolation, He extracts the chess secret from the Knight. Again, he appears as

103

THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

the Knight's opposing player, as well as a cheater. There is also an irony in the Knight's
longing that God "uncover his face" - at the moment when we see Death hiding His face
from him.
The stylized description of Skat 's (Erik Strandmark), the jester's, death is like
a church mural in black-and-white. While Skat is planning for the next day, we who have
seen Death approaching him from behind, know that there will be no next day for him.
When Skatdiscovers that Death is sawing away at his tree, he tries to negotiate with Him.
Bergman here intercuts between Skat's optical point of view from above and Death's
from below. One would expect the same distance between the two point-of-view shots.
Instead Bergman alternates between medium shots of Death and close-ups of Skat. The
difference in distance illustrates how Skat psychologically is much closer to Death than
he wants to admit. The end of this scene reads as follows in the script:
DEATH begins 10 saw again. The tree creaks.
SKAT. Isn't there any way to get off? Aren't there any special rules for actors'!
DEATH. No, not in this case.
SKAT. No loopholes, no exceptions.
DEATH saws.
SKAT. Perhaps you'll take a brihe.
DEATH saws.
SKAT. Helpl Help!
The tree falls. ThefrJrt!.I't hecomes silent again_

We notice how Death, who has earlier answered Skat's questions, toward the end ceases
to do so and exclusively pursues his work.
In the film, this passage is recreated in a different way. Instead of audible
cries for help, we here merely see Sk<lt screaming. The effect, not unlike that of Edvard
Munch's famous Scream, is more terrifying when we have to fill in the sound ourselves.
In Bergman's case, the muteness of Skat's scream is motivated also by the fact that it is
the scream of someone dying, a unique situation. II is as though Skat has already taken a
first step into the mute realm of the dead.
We then witness how the tree falls. The crash is followed by three light
clock-like strokes- an inversion of Death's three dull knocks on the gate at the end of the
film - and immediately a squirrel jumps onto the stump and begins to nibble it. Life goes
on as if nothing has happened. Or is it a playful reminder of the possibility of transmigration'l The conventional sequence of the script - scream (life) followed by silence (death)

104

THE SEVENTH I>EAL (1957)

- is expressively inverted by the addition in the film of the squirrel. We have silence
where we expect a scream and a non-diegetic sound (the hopeful clock-like strokes)
where we expect silence.
The Church Painter's (Gunnar Olsson) remark that people are more interested in "a skull" than in "a naked woman" sums up the thematic poles of the film:
Thanatos and Eros. His remark is verified when the jesters' erotic stage performance is
suddenly interrupted by the flagellant procession which attracts the attention of everyone. Here art is confronted with reality, the hedonism of the theater with the asceticism of
the church. But the two events may also be seen as two different types of performances.
The jesters perform their pantomimic farce on a stage, separated from the audience
which keeps mocking them." By contrast, the flagellant procession passes through the
crowd of villagers, who mutely kneel to the Crucified, clasp their hands and make the
sign of the cross in the hope that the self-mutilation of the flagellants will turn away
God's wrath and spare them also from the plague. '8 The awkward song that the jesters
have just been singing and in which joy of life is contrasted with awareness of death is
now replaced by the monks' somber Dies ira'.
The black Dominican monks, with their hoods pulled down and carrying
swaying censers, are first seen at a distance. As they approach the low camera and grow
in size, the rows separate, so that the spectator feels squeezed between them. "After the
line of monks," it says in the script, "comes another procession. It is a column of men,
boys, old men, women, girls. children. All of them have steel-edged scourge.l in their
hands with which they whip themselves and each other, howling ecstatically." The pro-

cession stops at the open space of the village. A raised skull to the left and a crucifix to
the right are the focal points in a carefully composed tableau vivant.
Then follows the Monk's (Anders Ek) fire-and-brimstone sermon on the
theme today red, tomorrow dead, yelled out next to the face of the Crucified, a visual
memento mori. Just as Death, disguised as a monk, in the confession and witch-burning
scenes, appears close to the cross, so the inexorable Monk close to the crucifix bears a
striking similarity to Death. 19
When the flagellants proceed, singing and screaming, they are seen from a
bird's-eye point of view. In a slow dissolve, they disappear into the ground. There is a
moment of absolute silence. It is the film's most radical expression of the idea that we are
all doomed to end underground. The drastic compression of time combined with the
bird's-eye view gives the impression that the transformation from life to death is seen from
the perspective of a Higher Power. To God, a human life lasts but the fraction of a second.
As often with Bergman, life and theater, reality and fiction ironically mingle
in The Seventh Seal. For example, Jo['s, Mia's, and Skat's pantomime on the theme of

105

THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

the deceived husband, his wife, and her lover is repealed in reality when Skat - while Jof
and Mia continue their performance with blacksmith Plog (Ake Fridell) among the audience - behind the stage seduces, or is seduced by, Plog's wife Lisa (Jnga Gill). When he
learns about this, Plog challenges Skat in the nearby forest. Each of them tries to surpass
the other in abuses. Skat seeks moral support from Lisa, Plog from lons. But very soon
Lisa changes side and is reunited with her husband. The whole scene is a piece of stylized theater - with Jons as a wi JIing prompter and predicter of the outcome. Reality here
appears to be just as crude and human relations just as simple as in the pantomime we
have just witnessed. When Skat finally fakes a suicide, Lisa and Plog characteristically
mistake play-acting for reality.
The same reversal is seen a little later; just as Skat's sham death appears very
real, his real death is a piece of stylized theater. Jof's enforced bear dance on the table in
the inn - a torture scene linking it with Tyan's martyrdom - is a speClac le 10 the customers more relished than the one he has just performed on the stage. Why? Because Jofs
suffering this time is genuine. Like the chi Id Tyan, the innocent Jof functions as a scapegoat on whom the audience can project their fear.

The paradi,aic wild strawberry ,cene in The Sevemh Seal, a secular communion. From left to right
Hins, the Girl, Jo[, Mia, and the Knight.

106

THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

In the famous wild strawberry scene, the five characters are symmetrically
grouped in a half-circle: Jons and the Girl to the left, the Knight and Mia to the right, Jof
with his lyre in the middle and a little behind the others. On the wagon in the background
Skat's mask of death is a reminder of the presence of death even in the happy moments of
life. Or is it there to exorcise death? The evening sun sheds its soft light on the five. Jof
plucks his lyre and hums the romantic ballad he has been singing before, "On a lily
branch a dove is perched." The central part of the scene, as it is recreated in the film, is as
follows:

Long shot ofMIA and the KNIGHT. JOF in the background. MIA, the bowl
of wild strawberries in her hands, picks a few berries from the bowl and
hands them to the KNIGHT.
MIA. Do you want some wild strawberries?

The KNIGHT shakes his head, raises his clasped hands, looks at them. Faith
is a torment. did you know that? It is like loving someone who is out there in
the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call. Takes

(j

berry

from MIA'S hand. How meaningless and unreal all that seems to me when I
sit here with you and your husband. How unimportant it suddenly becomes.
MIA smiling. Now you don't look so solemn.

Medium shot ofJOF with his lyre; the skull ofdeath and the wagon are in the
background.
Hif(h angle long shot ofMIA and the KNIGHT, JOF jif(uring in the background.
The KNIGHT with the bowl ofwild strawberries in his hands. I shall remember this moment. The silence, the twilight, the bowl of wild strawberries,

Hands the bowl to JONS. the bowl of milk, Track-out of the group. JONS
hands the bowl to MIA, who in turn hands it to the GIRL. your faces in the
evening light. Mikael sleeping, Jof with his lyre. MIA picks up the bowl of

milk. I'll try 10 remember what we have talked about MIA hands the bowl of
milk to the KNIGHT. Frolltal medium close-up of the KNIGHT, holding the
bowl ofmilk infront ofhim. And I shall carry this memory between my hands
as carefully as ifit were a bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk. Drinksfrom

the bow!. And this will be a sign to me Hands the bowl back to MIA, cut to the
group. and a great sufficiency.
This is a democratic meal, in which the participants address each other infonnally and
eat and drink out of the same bowls. It is also a secular counterpart of the Holy Commun-

107

THF. SHVHNTH

.~F.AL

(1957)

ion. This is indicated by the semicircular grouping, which resembles the grouping round
the altar rails; by the presence of death in the form of the mask; and by Jors humming
and plucking of the lyre, which correspond to the subdued singing and organ playing
accompanying the Communion. 20 In this secular communion out in the open, the wild
strawberries and the milk - equivalent of the bread and the wine - work a transubstantiation on the part of the Knight. He discovers the meaning of life.
Significantly, it is Mia - a young, warm woman, pure of heart - who officiates. Wild strawberries are sometimes in Christian iconography linked with the Virgin
Mmy The milk connotes woman as a nourishing mother. When the bowl of milk is raised
and held between the hands, like a Communion cup, it relates both to Jof's early vision.
where he saw the Virgin Mary holding "the Child between her hands," and to the ending,
where Jof and Mia, in a similar light and environment. one after the other lovingly hold
Mikael between their hands.
These allusions and correspondences give emphasis to the Knight's newly
gained conviction that his metaphysical search has been "meaningless" and that the love
radiating from Mia and Jofwill be "a great sufficiency" to him.
The meal of love out in the open contrasts with the gluttonous eating and
drinking in the dark inn. Here a living pig is running around, while a dead one is turned
on <.l spit, a drastic variation on the theme "Today red...." The morning meal at the end of
the film is a third variety, an ascetic last llleal - and in this sense another Communionwhile waiting for Death.
The text of the Revelation returns at the end of the film. However. it is now
read, not by a metaphysical off-screen figure but by <.l human on-screen one: the Knight's
wife Karin. The Knight has just arrived together with his four travelling companions:
Jons and the Girl, Plog and Lisa. Now they are all waiting that the prophecy of the Revelation about the Last Day will come true. "Three mighty knocks" on the door of the gate
announce the arrival of Death. Jons gets up to open the door. When he returns, the Knight
asks: "Was someone there?" Jons answers: "No, my lord. I saw no one." This is said with
a facial expression that makes one doubt Jons' sincerity. Psychologically, it is a white lie.
Jons wants to spare the others. Metaphysically, it is a truth. Hins, the atheist, claims that
death, rather than being "someone," is "no one," definable only as a negation, as the
absence of life.
When Death finally appears - this time only as a vague, dark shape at the
other end of the room - the six get up from the table and "stand close together," face to
face with Him - and us. The grouping, suggesting how the six "form a single body" - to
quote from a similar situation in Cries and Whispers - to protect themselves against "the
ultimate loneliness," illustrates both the equality and the communion before death. The

108

THI:: SEVENTH SEAl. (1957)

The six characters facing Death at the cnd of The Seventh Seal. From leflto right: Lisa. Plog. Karin,
Ih~ Knight, the Girl. lons. The six arc actually never seen exactly like this in the film, where
Bergman has the camera pan across them.

grouping is highly symmetrical: three men and three women, metonymically representing humanity. But there are also individual differences. Whjle five of them retain the
frontal position, the Knight kneels down in the background; in semi-profile he holds his
hands pressed together as jf in prayer, his gaze turned to the bit of sky Ihat can be seen
through the small window. While the light from the window falls on his face, the others
remain more or less in the darkness. In accordance with this visual contrast, the dialogue
turns into a 'quarrel' - to use a term common in medieval confliclUs literature - between
the two halves of the double protagonist:
KNIGHT From our darkness, we call out to Thee, Lord. Have mercy on us
because we are small and frightened and ignorant.

JbNS bitterly. In the darkness where you claim to be, where all of us probably are... In that darkness you will find no one to listen to your cries or be
touched by your sufferings. Wash your tears and mirror yourself in your indi fference.

10'1

"rH/;; SEVENTH SEAL {l957}

Contrasting with the Knight's de profundis appeals for mercy is lOns' stoic attitude. Facing the inevitability of death squarely, his protest does not concern Death or God, as the
American translation misleadingly suggests, but the Knight's attitude to death. The
Knight's indifference to his fellow men - this is what Jons implies - has its counterpart in
God's indifference to man. While the three men in the background vary in their attitude
to Death - Plog is apologetic, the Knight appealing, Jons protesting - the three women in

the foreground take a joint attitude. Karin bids Death informally but "courteously" welcome; Usa curtsies speechless to "the great lord"; and the Girl falls on her knees and
says: "It is finished." This is her first and only speech in the film." The three words, being
the last words of Christ (John 19.30), give a special dignity to her utlerance.
The Girl is an early exponent of a type of woman appearing in several
Bergman films: she who does not express herself through words but through loving action, the paragon being the mute Milkmaid in The Ghost Sonata. The Girl, who has so far
had a rather subordinate role in the film, is the central figure in the final confrontation
with Death. It is she who first turns her glance to the door through which Death is to
enter. It is she who first gets up from the table to kneel to Death. It is across her face, in
close-up, that the shade of Death is spreading. It is she who with her animated, radiating
face expresses a transfonnation from anguish to affirmation. When her face is dissolved
into that of Mia. it is as though longing for death was fused with life affirmation - a
subdued counterpart of the polarity between the Knight and Jons.
The last we see of the six characters, in search of an 'Author; is a low angle
extreme long shot showing how they, guided by Death. "tread the d<lnce in a long row.
toward the dark lands." In this famous shot,ll anticipated by the church painter's dance of
death mural, the human figures move like silhouetted tiny creatures in the metaphysical
borderland between heaven and earth, in a dance from dawn to darkness - <l pregnant
image of the life-long movement towards dellth. As silhouettes, the six have heen deprived of their individualitylJ and transformed into representatives of humanity. Jof
speaks, with a variation of the words from Revelation. of how "the rain washes their
faces and cleans the salt of tears from their cheeks." This is how it appears in Jof's subjective vision, but since we participate in his vision, it is objectified into a 'truth:
What we logically expect is that the six dancers are identical with the six who
have just been facing Death. Their silhouetted clothes should reveal that we deal with
three men and three women. But what we see are four men and two women. To complicate the matter further, we have Jof's statement that the dancers following Death are "the
smith and Lisa and the Knight and Raval and Jons and Skat:' that is, five men and one
woman. It has been said that the reason why Jof does not mention Karin is thal he hardly
knows of her existence. One critic believes that the reason why the Girl is left out is that,

110

THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

like 'the holy family,' she may have been saved from

Death.2~

Another critic imagines that

Jof has developed '"a mental block in imagining death for someone resembling Mia."'j
A more likely reason why Bergman presents no less than three different versions of the six dancers is that in this way the spectator becomes at once mystified and
actively involved. Our logical expectations are contradicted by what we see. And what
we see agrees neither with Mia's view - she does not see anything - nor with Jaf's vision.
This leads to the conclusion that there is no objective knowledge, merely subjective 'visIons.
As for the visual correspondences between the Girl and Mia and, we may
add, Karin, whose dress is remarkably like Mia's, the simplest explanation is that all
three represent an archetypal feminine affirmative attitude to life and death, contrasting
with the archetypal male attitude of questioning (the Knight) or protesting (Jons) - similar to the male-female grouping in A Dream Play.
However, The Seventh Seal does not end on a note of death. In Revelation we
are told that Archangel Michael conquers the dragon (the Devil) and that God after the
Day of Judgement shall dwell among humanity and "shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be
any more pain: for the former things are passed away." (Rev. 21.4) Bergman shows how
'the holy family' - Jof, Mia, and their son Mikael (1) - are saved from Death as Joseph,
Maria, and child Jesus were saved from Herod when they fled to Egypt. The final shot of
the film shows how the three move away from the dark realm of Death. The contrast with
the opening of the film is striking. There we saw the Knight and J(ins in a low position,
surrounded by a sterile landscape, a gray light of dawn and a sea in turmoil. Now we see
Jof, Mia and Mikael and their horse and wagon high up on a plain overlooking a quiet
sea, bathed in soft sunlight; and we hear the warbling of birds, the notes of harps, and the
singing of angels. Do these celestial sounds refer only to the blessed trinity? Or do they
indicate that also the six will eventually be saved? The ending is, no doubt deliberately,
unclear on this point. But it may be noted that even after the light frame of 'the holy
family' has been replaced by a final black frame, corresponding 10 the one opening the
film, the hopeful singing of the angels can be heard: Soli Gloria Deo.

III

TilE SEVENTH SEAL (l957)

Wild Strawberries (1957)

Many film directors have stressed the connection between the film medium and the nocturnal dream. No one has done it us frequently and as emphatically as Ingmar Bergman. l
One of his most explicit statements on this matter reads:

No other art-medium ,.. can wmmunicate the specific quality of the dream as
well as film can. When the lights go down in the cinema and this while shining point opens up for us, our gaze SlOPS flitting hither and thither. settles and
becomes quite ste<ldy. We just sit there, letting the images flow out over us.
Our will ceases 10 function. We lose our ability to sort things out and fix them

in their proper places. We're drawn into a course of events - we're participants in a dream.!

To Sergman, literary reception is primarily intellectual, while filmic reception, like the
reception of music, is mainly an emotional experience: 'The sequence of pictures plays
directly on our feelings".\ In film, we deal with "a language thallilerally is spoken from
soul to soul in expressions that, almost sensuously, escape the restrictive control of the
intellect.'" Since Bergman feels attracled to Ihe film medium hecause of its ability to
create a dreamlike mood - direct contact with hidden psychic levels - it is logical that he
makes maximum use of this possibility. Strindberg's importance for him is here evident.
Not least in Wild Strawberries, Bergman resorts 10 dreamlike changes of time and space,
recalling the technique of A Dream Play. As in Strindberg's case, Ihese changes serve 10
evoke the feeling that life itself is dreamlike. As Eva in Shame puts it, echoing the Poet in

A Dream Play:
Sometimes everything seems like a long strange dream. It's nol my dream,
it's someone else's, that I'm forced to take part in. Nothing is properly real.
lI's all made up. What do you think will happen when the person who has
dreamed us wakes up and is ashamed of his dream?
The idea is here that life is a nightmare dreamed by God, And that mankind is forced to
exist in this nightmare. We do not usually call a person to task for what (s)he is dreaming.
BUI that is precisely what Eva is doing here wilh God.

I12

WILD STRAWBERRIES {I9571

Similar though they may seem, there is a marked difference between an ordinary dream and a film dream. We can never directly experience each other's dreams.
Only indirectly, by telling each other about them, can we 'experience' them.
One or Jung's best known, and most controversial, ideas concerns the hypothesis of the collective unconscious. the idea that we alL irrespective of time and place,
have certain unconscious drives in common. It is interesting in this context to note that a
film performance is perceived collectively. When a dream is made visible in the cinema,
deep levels of our psyche, levels that we share with our fellow-men, are activated. The
collective unconscious becomes almost perceptible,
Both the verbal dream report of everyday life and the audiovisual dream creation of ftlm are. in different ways, imitations, incomplete reconstructions of the authentic
dream. Moreover. unlike its prototype, the nocturnal dream, the film dream is to a great
extent an aesthetic phenomenon, thematically and structurally related to other parts of
the film to which it belongs. It is true that the purely verbal dream report can also be an
aesthetic phenomenon when it is part of a novel or a play. But often, for example in a
therapeutic situation, it has quite another function.
Wild Strawberries deals with a professor emeritus in bacteriology, Eberhard
Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom),' who undertakes ajoumey from Stockholm to Lund. where
he is going to be promoted to Jubilee doctor at the solemn degree ceremony in the cathedra1. 6 Like Saul'sjourney to Damascus, paraphrased by Strindberg in his trilogy, lsak's
trip turns into a penitential journey, working a conversion. Isak Borg's career has been
based on a reckless attitude to his fellow-men. Now, on the threshold of death, he begins
to suffer from pangs of guil!. The trip to the south is interrupted by a dream or daydream
as lsak revisits the summer house of his childhood. Discovering the old wild strawberry
patch, he nostalgically returns to the innocent period of his life. A little later he has
another nightmare in which he is confronted with his own egoism. While the former
dream deals with a lost, innocent paradise, the latter deals with the circumstances leading
to the loss of this paradise. The cause is simply growing up, that is, growing sinful and
guilt.laden. Just before Isak undertakes his journey, he has a nightmare. When the journey is over he again revisits, in a dream, the summer paradise of his childhood. And there
the film ends.
The pattern is: nightmare, nostalgic dream, nightmare, nostalgic dream, Isak:
is alternately haunted by erinnyes and eumenides. Altogether, the dream sequences take
up about one-third of the film. The balance between dreams and reality results in a meaningful floating between these two areas of experience, After Strindberg, Freud. Proust,
and Joyce, we are inclined to see this floating as realistic. A great part of our life is spent
on dreams and fantasies - especially when we grow old and the past has more to offer

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WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

than the present.) Nostalgically we turn hack to the light memories, often connected with
childhood. Frightened we await the approaching darkness. With his 78 years - in the
script he is two years younger -lsak Borg has reached this marked point in life,
Bergman's handling of the continual alternation between, and merging of.
dream and reality calls for a complex narrative structure. Apart from the author,
Bergman, who is telling the story ahout Isak Borg, there is the narrator. lsak, recounting
in voice-over his diary notes about himself; there is further the lsak of the present. meet
ing various people during his automobile trip; and there is the dre<lming Isak. who as an
old man meets various people 100kingjusI the way they did when he was young. R
The first dream follows immediately after Isak's introductory presentation of
himself. In the script, this prologue is actually an epilogue, for the introductory diary
notes have obviously been written down after the journey from Stockholm to Lund. as
appears at the end of the notes when it is stated that the rest of the story is "a true account
of the events, dreams and thoughts which befell me on a certain day," This can only refer
to the journey to Lund.
It is not unimportant that the prologue here in fact turns out to be an epilogue.

For if the journey means that Isak gains new insight and matures, we ex:pectthis to be
reflected in his initial characterization of himself. But this is not the case:
Nevertheless, if for some reason I would have to evaluate myself, I am sure
that I would do so without shame or concern for my reputation.
Alii ask of life is to be left alone and to have the opportunity to devote myself
to the few things which continue to interest me, however superficial they may

b,.
... I detest emotional outbursts, women's tears and the crying of children.
The firs! quotation indicates self-satisfaction rather than self-knowledge, the other two
suggest passive egocentricity. In short, these descriptions reveal that Isak has not
changed. What seemed like a conversion proves to be no more than a temporary change
of mood. The script shows an Isak who is back in his old egocentric role.
In the film the introductory autobiographical sketch is offered the day beft.Jrc
the journey to Lund. In the expository pre-credit text it here says: 'Tomorrow I shall be
promoted to jubilee doctor in the cathedral of Lund." Subsequently, the film demon
strates that Isak nndergoes an inner change during his journey south. Where the script
reveals man's inability to change in any profound way, the film indicates that this is
indeed possible.

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WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

After the credits, the film proper begins with the nightmare Isak had "in the
early morning of Saturday, the first of June." Then follows the journey and the degree
ceremony in Lund. And the film ends with Isak's paradisaic vision in the night after the
degree ceremony. That the introductory nightmare in the film precedes the journey is
confirmed by Isak's statement during the trip: "I suddenly remembered my early-morning dream: the blank clock face and my own watch which lacked hands, the hearse and
my dead self." The journey begins on Saturday, June 1, around 3 a.m. and ends the same
day around 5 p.m., when the ceremony in Lund takes place. That the trip is undertaken by
car instead of airplane, as Isak had originally planned, is motivated by the fear of death
that the nightmare has given rise to. Although he is a scientist, 1sak is obviously superstitious.
Had Bergman chosen to let the nightmare follow after the journey, some of
the events during the journey might have been explained as reminiscences of the experiences of the day before. This has obviously not interested him. By turning his nightmare
into a traditional, anticipating type of dream, he gives it a metaphysical rather than a
psychological status. Also, it adds an aura of mystique to the events during the journey.
Thus, the ringing of church bells in the nightmare sequence anticipates both the bells at
the degree ceremony in the cathedral and, hypothetically, the funeral bells which are
soon to ring for Isak. The latter is particularly emphasized, since the ringing in the nightmare is combined with a shot of the man who drops dead immediately before the arrival
of the black hearse,9 which corresponds to Isak's old black car. IQ The accident of the
hearse anticipates Alman 's (Gunnar Sjoberg) driving his car into the ditch; when one of
the wheels of the hearse in a low-angle shot rolls towards Isak, so that he "had to throw
[himself] to one side to avoid being hit," the situation corresponds to the crash with
Alman's car which Isak barely manages to avoid. 11
That the nightmare precedes rather than follows the journey also means that
this dream together with the journey and the concluding paradisaic vision becomes an
inner journey

a la Divina Commedia.

Borg is first punished with a vision of hell (In-

ferno), is purged during the journey with its different 'stations; among which there is
one gas station (Purgatorio), and is finally rewarded with heavenly grace (Paradiso).
The calm pre-credit sequence, which recreates a completely realistic environment (Isak's study), is followed by the strongly contrasting nightmare. In this manner,
Bergman already at the outset of the film demunstrates the division between Isak's seemingly harmonious, conscious ego and his repressed, guilt-ridden anguish.
The initial nightmare could, in principle, be recreated in three different ways.
Bergman could let Isak, in Close-up, relate his dream. He could visualize the dream, with
or without sound effects. Or he could combine these two approaches, that is, provide the

115

WILD STRAWBERRIES (IIlS1)

visualized dream with a narrative commentary. Not surprisingly, Bergman on the whole
settles for the most dreamlike alternative: direct visualization - with sound effects.
Nowhere is the distance between script and film as striking as in the initial
nightmare sequence. While in the script the dream is narrated by Isak, in the film it is
shown. The transient passage is:
In the early morning of Saturday, the first of June, I had a strange and very
unpleasant dream. I dreamed that during my morning stroll I had gone astray
and arrived in a district. unknown to me, with deserted streets and dilapidated
houses.
Via a close-up of the dreamer's, Isak's, face combined with his retrospe(;tive (;ommentary just quoted, we move into his dream.
After Freud's Traumdelllllnit, we know that dreams are often initiated by
outer stimuli. We rememher the little boy whose urge to pee results in a dream beginning
with a small stream of water and ending with an o(;ean. Similarly, in the script. Isak's
dream is determined by the rising sun. "It was three in the morning and the sun was
already reflecting from the rooftops opposite my window," it says as soon as Isak has
woken up. Shortly before this he dreams that
High above me the sun shone completely white. and light forced its way
down between the houses as if it were the blade of a razor-sharp knife.
Here is implied that the sunlight, suddenly streaming in through Isak's window, functions both as a dream stimulus and as an alarm clock. In the film, where Isak sleeps with
drawn (;urtains, this indication of a visual dream source has disappeared, while an acoustic stimulus has been preserved. The ticking of the alarm clock, which is heard when Isak
wakes up, has visually initiated both the clock outside the optician's shop and Isak's own
pocket watch, while acoustically it makes him hear his own heartbeat.
All these ingredients are highly symbolic. In most cases, we deal with death
symhol.~

- whether we think of Isak's approaching physical death or his present state of

being a spiritually dead or dying man. Each symhol in the nightmare sequence must be
seen from this both/and perspective. Whether Isak looks forward or backward, he is confronted with death in one form or another. Take, for e"ample, the description in the script
of the optician's sign: ''The dial was blank, and helow it someone had smashed both of
the eyes so that they looked like watery, infected sores." The absence of the hands indicates that time has ceased to exist for Isak. that life has been replaced by death. When we

J16

WiLl) I>TRAWBERRIES (1957)

die, the eyes burst. But the blank dial l'md the wounded eyes staring at Isak also mirror his
frigid egoism. The connection is even more obvious in the mm, where only one of the
eyes is wounded - to indicate lsak's mental one-eyedness. The symbolism here corresponds to the one in the film's second nightmare sequence, where Isak in a microscope
only manages to see his own eye. The big optician's spectacles may be seen as a visualization both of lsak's social persona and of his spiritual nearsightedness, of his egoism.
Similarly, the man without a face, whom Isak takes to be alive but who appears to be
dead, is obviously his double. They are significantly dressed in much the same way. The
empty face of the man with its desperately closed mouth and eyes resembles the face of
a fetus. A grown-up man and yet a fetus is a rather adequate description of lsak who
emotionally has remained at a rudimentary stage. Alternatively, the face can be seen as
lsak's true, grim appearance beneath the mild persona he shows to the world. When the
man without a face turns his back to Isak, his attitude reflects both Isak's experience of
his father as being constantly absent and his own attitude to his son Evald (Gunnar
Bjornstrand).'2 The man without a face may even be seen as a metaphor of deus
abscollditus, the god who collapses - 'dies' -, when you regard him,') a reversal of the
biblical idea that he who has seen God must die.
If the man without a face is a living dead, then the corpse in the coffin is a
person refusing to die. By having the same actor play both Isak and the corpse, Bergman
indicates the connection between the twO. 14 This is further strengthened by the series of
shots/reverse shots, in which we see the corpse with Isak's eyes, and Isak with the eyes of
the corpse. At gradually shorter intervals, the camera approaches the two faces, until they
nearly blend. Via a zoom-in, we are returned to Isak's sleeping face. The strength ofthis
sequence depends upon its ambiguity: we cannot say for certain whether it is Isak who
tries to pull the corpse out of the coffin or the corpse that tries to pull him into it. Fear of
death and longing for death intenningle.
Very striking are the contrasts between the initial nightmare and the paradisaic vision with which the film concludes. Here a sterile urban environment is pitted
against open, smiling nature; an Isak surrounded by tall buildings closing him in and
making him small - indicative of an imprisoning existence - against an Isak up on a
hillock in a high and free position; sharp sunlight and black shadows against shadeless
mild sunlight; and loneliness against communion: in the paradisaic vision of the end we
see, for the first time, in a point-of-view shot, Isak's parents, he it at a distance.
When Isak is left alone by the wild strawberry patch of his childhood in front
of the house, where he spent the first twenty summers of his life, the memories crowd in
on him. The transition from reality to dream is again mediated by the retrospective narrator; in the version of the film:

117

WLLV STRAWBERRIES (1\157)

I don't know how it happened, but the day's clear reality flowed into the even
clearer images of memory, which arose with the force of real

event~.

When we first saw the summer house. with Isak's and Marianne's eyes. it "slept behind
closed doors and drawn blinds," as it says in the script, as desolate and silent as the
houses inlsak's initial nightmare with their boarded windows. The realistic motivation is
that the house is empty this summer. The underlying reason is that in this way an effective contrast could be established between the silent house of the present (reality) and the
living house of the past (remembrance). Via lsak's nostalgic reliving of the past. we
experience how the house suddenly seems "bursting with life" and sound: piano music,
happy voices, laughter. footsteps, children's cries, singing.
Why then a wild strawberry patch? In Sweden, wild strawberries are associated with summer, childhood, and happiness. What Proust's madeleine cake is to the
first-person narrator of A la recherche du temps perdu, the wild strawberry patch is to
Isak Borg, The sight, smell, and taste of wild strawberries arouse the memory of the wild
strawberry patch of childhood, similar to the one Isak now has hefore him and yet, in the
light of memory, quite different. In the mm, the transition from the wild strawberry patch
of the present to that of the past is marked by a couple of dissolves showing trees in the
wind and moving white summer clouds.
The fact that in Christian iconography wild strawberries signify good deeds
and righteousness further supports the idea that these betTies symbolize the innocence of
childhood. In the last instance, we deal with Isak's - an ageing man's - nostalgic attraction to childhood because it represents innocence, purity. But this longing for a return to
a paradisaic state of innocence is also mankind's. We have all, like Adam and Eve, dwelt
in an innocent. happy Eden. We have aI!, by growing up, eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We have all heen driven out of Paradise. That Bergman had the
biblical situation in mind appears from the script, where it says: "I sat down next to an
old apple tree that stood alone and ate the betTies, one by one." But how are we to interpret the Bergmanian variant? Do the wild strawberries correspond to the biblical apple? Hardly. Rather, they symbolize a purity contrasting with the knowledge of good and
evil represented by the apple. As a scientist, Isak has devoted himself to the fruits of
knowledge. At this late stage of his life, he returns to the pure wild strawberries of childhood.
It is characteristic that the beloved woman of his youth, Sura (Bibi
Andersson).I' who soon appears in his remembrance, devotes herself to the picking of
wild strawberries. Everything indicates that Sura is still a virgin. She is secretly engaged
to Isak, he too erotically inexperienced - rather than innocent. The wild strawberry patch

118

WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

is theirs. When Isak's elder brother Sigfrid (Per Sjostrand) appears and kisses Sara, the
Fall is a fact. This is how Isak, in the words of the script, remembers it:
She was carried away by this game and returned his kiss with a certain fierceness. But then she was conscience-stricken and threw herself down on the
ground, knocking over the basket of strawberries. She was very angry and
began crying with excitement.
SARA. You've turned me into a bad woman, at least nearly,
Confronted with Sigfrid, the seductive 'serpent: Sara cannot resist the erotic temptation.
Partly responding to his seduction, she reveals herself as unfaithful towards her 'fiance'
Isak. Herein consists her true Fall, made visible when the wild strawberries are spilt on
the ground. That Sara is a sinning Eve appears from her reaction: "And look, I have a spot
on my gown." This is the wording of the script; in the film, the "gown" has significantly
been replaced by an "apron."
In Bergman's version, the Fall is connected not with erotic extravagance but
with the guilt feelings resulting from it. Retrospectively, we realize that it has less la do
with Sigfrid's way of acting than with lsak's way of thinking, Isak who "likes to kiss only
in the dark" and who frequently speaks "about sinfulness." Sara finds herself tom between Sigfrid's active hedonism and Isak's passive moralism,
When Isak, in the foreground, is a passive observer of Sigfrid's seduction of
Sara in the background, the reason is of course that he, belonging to the present, cannot
intervene in a situation of the past. What is more, Isak never witnessed the seduction; at
most, he heard it described by the gossiping twins. What takes place between Sara and
Sigfrid at this point therefore essentially takes place in Isak's imagination. The arrangement is akin to that in Edvard Munch's Jealousy, where in the foreground we see the face
of the jealous husband and in the background the love-making between his wife and her
lover the way he imagines it, here, too, with the universalizing biblical reference: the
lover stands close to a half-nude Eve who picks an apple from a tree.
When the gong sounds, everybody runs indoors for the family breakfast. For
a moment Isak is left alone with Sigbritt's little child. A connection between the old man
and the little child is indicated. As Sara is soon to state, Isak is "a child," a circumstance
implied also by their names: the biblical Sara was I.<mac's mother,
Soon Isak finds himself alone in the dark hall, looking into the light dining
room, where his nameless aunt and uncle Aron, his cousin Sara, and his many brothers
and sisters are seated. The present is spatially contrasted with the past. Remarkably,
neither Isak nor his parents are present at the breakfast. The authoritarian aunt, who

1l1l

WILD STRAWBERRIES (19S7)

Wild Stmwberries: Isak BQrg as a lonely outsider in the dark hall representing the present. reminiscing the idyllic togetheme~8 ()f hi s chi Idhood.

continually keeps exhorting the young members of the family, communicates as badly
with them as the "stone deaf' uncle. The division mother's sister/father's brother is significant. Isak's mother is later revealed as a cold woman, disliked by the children. while
his father, on the contrary, is liked by everyone. The aunt and the uncle arc apparently
parental substitutes.
Why, then, do we not see the young Isak at the breakfast table? Just as in the
case of the seduction at the strawberry patch, lsak was not present at this particular
breakfast. But since he has experienced many si mi tar ones, the breakfast may be seen as
a synthesis of all the breakfasts in the summer house. What we witness is a representative, Oscarian, upper class breakfast.
However different the parents may be, they have one thing in common: their
absence. While the mother's absence is not regretted, "daddy" is eagerly searched for.
Even to the old Isak the message that his young counterpart is "out fishing with Father"
gives rise to "a secret and completely inexplicable happiness." Being alone with father
must have been something exceptional in a family with ten children. The lack of contact
between parents and children seems to be at the root of Isak's problem.

120

WILV STRAWBERRIES (1957)

After the painful confrontation with the Alman couple which also means a
confrontation both with the past (Isak's bad marriage with Karin) and with the present
(Marianne's problematic marriage with Evald), Isak falls asleep. In his dream, he is back
by the wild strawberry patch he has just visited in his imagination. This time he can
communicate with Sara. The wild strawberries appear again, now no longer in their natural surroundings but picked and put into a basket. Next we see the basket turned over and
the wild strawberries - innocence - spilt. In the mirror that Sara holds up to Isak, he can
see his own guilt-ridden face.
The mirror sequence is seemingly constructed as a continuous dialogue between Isak and Sara. On closer inspection, four stages can be discerned, marked by
Sara's alternate turning to the young and the old Isak - while for the spectator he remains
visibly the old Isak of the present. Through this technique of condensation, it is indicated
that Isak is a man who has stagnated in his growth.
When Sara hears the crying of Sighritt's little boy, she hurries to the child. In
the script, it says:
She lifted the crying child and cradled it in her arms. The sky turned black
above the sea and large birds circled overhead, screeching toward the house,
which suddenly seemed ugly and poor. There was something fateful and
threatening in this twilight, in the crying of the child, in the shrieking of the
black birds. Sara cradled the baby and her voice, half singing, was very distant and sorrowful.
SARA. My poor little one, you shall sleep quietly now. Don't be afraid of the
wind. Don't be afraid of the birds, the jackdaws and the sea gulls. Don't be
afraid of the waves from the sea. I'm with you. I'm holding you tight. Don't
be afraid, little one. Soon it will be another day. No one can hurt you; I am
with you; I'm holding you,
But her voice was sorrowful and tears ran down her cheeks without end. The
child became silent, as if it were listening, and I wanted to scream until my
lungs were bloody.
The child is rocked to sleep. But the old man, who is also a 'child,' is left alone with his
anguish. Isak's scream is not heard. Unlike Peer Gynt, he has not yet deserved a
Solveig's maternal care. [6
When Sara a little later is called to the house by Sigfrid, she runs to him and
hands him the child. Together, they disappear in the house. We here seem confronted
121

WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

with a dreamlike reduction of time. Before our eyes Sigbritt's little boy is turned into
Sara's and Sigfrid's newly born baby.

In the mm, this passage is done as follows. While the camera is panning with
Sara as she is running towards the cradle, we hear agitated music, soon mixed with the
cries of birds. Not until she arrives at the cradle do we hear the crying of the child mixed with that of the birds. Sara has, in other words, heard the crying of the child before
we do - an indication of her maternal instinct. Sara bends over the cradle, picks up the
child, and speaks calmly to it. We see her in a medium shot; behind her face there are two
dead branches resembling a pair of claws. The child and the birds have ceased crying, but
the agitated music remains below her consoling words.
After Sara has disappeared into the house, there is a low-angle shot of swarming, crying jackdaws against the dark sky. The cradle is seen again, now in silhouette
under huge branches, black against the light evening sky. Isak approaches it as a black
silhouette. The crying of birds continues, now amplified by regular 'heartbeats,' reminiscent of those in the initial nightmare. Isak's anguish has become audiovisualized. He
looks into the empty cradle, then turns his glance toward the house. The camera tilts
upwards to the claws of the dead tree, black against the light sky. Slow dissolve to Isak's
'wandering' face, which now seems caught by the claws.
The newborn child and the old man under the dead tree become an image of
life from birth to death. In the approaching darkness and the restless circling of the black
birds, we divine the proximity of death. Sara 'saves' the little child from the claws of
death, but old Isak is caught by them. The dead tree returns later in the confrontation
between Evald and Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) by the sea. A.s in the earlier sequence,
Marianne's affinnation of life, concretized in her pregnancy, is contrasted with Evald's
longing for death, significantly voiced by a dead tree. In this way, Bergman weaves a
complicated pattern of fertility versus sterility symbols. 17 The living trees are pitted
against the dead as the living human beings are pitted against the living dead.
When !sak approaches the illuminated house in the twilight, we first see him
standing outside a window with a drawn, illuminated blind - an image of the outsider.
From inside, piano music can be heard. Isak moves to another window. And here we see,
with him, Sara sitting by the piano and, behind her, Sigfrid. Sigfrid walks up to Sara,
kisses her neck, then her mouth. She responds to his kisses. The situation is a repetition
of the earlier seduction scene. While this happens, the diegetic piano music is replaced
by the non-diegetic playing of a violin. The camera pans with them as they walk to an
elegant dinner table further inside, a spatial change that may suggest a temporal one.
Sigfrid in tails and Sara in a white, low-necked, silk dress are costumed like Marianne
and Evald later, when they are leaving for the solemn degree dinner, an indication that
Sara in Isak's dream mingles with Marianne, Sigfrid with Evald, the past with the

122

WILD

STRAWBERRIE.~ (1957)

present. Significantly, Isak is not present at the dinner following the degree ceremony,
although it is partly given in his honoT. Feeling now that he is not worthy of what is
bestowed on him, he remains an outsider even at the end.
We see Sigfrid and Sara with Isak's eyes, as he stands outside the window.
His face is illuminated partly by the wann light from inside, partly by the cold moonlight
outside. The divided light emphasizes how Isak is left alone with the man in the moon,
once more separated from the communion of the young couple.
The image of the two at the dinner table slowly dissolves into one of dark
clouds and moonlight, reflected on the window pane. There is a shot of the moon gliding
behind dark branches and a close-up of lsak's anguished face, his glance turned upwards
towards the moon. Silence. The camera pans with Isak as he moves, past a protruding
nail, to another, completely black window. He knocks loudly on the window pane,
touches the nail with his palm (in the script it is glass splinters), looks at his wounded
palm, behind which his dark face, as reflected in the pane, can be divined. Again, we hear
the regular, somber 'heartbeats.' Then Alman's face appears behind the window pane
where we just saw Isak's. Alman invites him to enter through what now appears to be a
door with a window up above. The moonlight through the door-window forms across on
the floor of the hall next to Isak's dark silhouette.
The window sequence is metaphorically very pregnant. Here is demonstrated
how the 'imprisoned' Isak experiences himself as excluded, how his egocentricity leads
to self-pity. The Narcissus motif is combined with the motif of stigmatization. Again we
hear the anguished beating of his heart. And we see how his face is mirrored in that of his
alter ego: Alman.
Then follows a new dream transformation. The corridor which in the former
dream led to the light dining room now leads to "a large, bare windowless room," resembling an anatomy theater. In this closed, windowless room, corresponding to the lecture
room where Isak used to examine his students, he is now himself to be examined - in the
presence of ten young students, among them the three he has taken into his car, the
hitchhikers Sara, Anders (Folke Sundquist) and Viktor (Bjorn Bjelvenstam). The situation corresponds to the one in the asylum scene of To Damascus f, where the Unknown is
held responsible before those against whom he has sinned in the past, the difference
being that there the victims appear in ghost-like dresses, while in Wild Strawberries they
are dressed normally, realistically. The sequence also corresponds to the school scene in
A Dream Play, where the Officer who has just received an honorary degree finds himself

returned to the primary school. Here, surrounded by school children, he must "ripen."
Isak's examiner appears to be the cynical engineer Alman, his alter ego. The
questioning seemingly concerns Isak's professional knowledge, but in reality it concerns

12~

wnD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

his attitude to his fellow men. When in the microscope he sees only his own eye "in an
absurd enlargement," it is an expression of his own one-eyedness, his egoism. And when
he proves unable to read the text on the blackboard, saying that "a doctor's first duty is to
askfoq;ireness," it symbolizes his unwillingness to admit his own guilt. By letting us see
what Isak sees ~ the eye in extreme close-up; the text on the blackboard that is unintelligible also for US i8

Bergman makes us identify with him. We. 100, are selfish. We, too,

find it hard to admit our guilt. Isak's role of Everyman is marked also by the accusation
that he is "guilty of guilt," meaning that he shares the guilt tainting all mankind: Original
Sin.
When Isak is asked to diagnose a patient. he declares that the patient is dead.
At the same moment, the woman, who turns out to be Berit Alman (Gunnel Bmstrom),
opens her eyes and laughs loudly. Since she was earlier linked with Isak's dead wife
Karin (Gertrud Fridh), the diagnosis sequence indicates that Isak's wife, although she
has been dead for thirty years, continues to haunt Isak in the form of guilt feelings he
tries to repress. The connection is clarified when Alman orders Isak to revisit a traumatic
memory of his wife. In the erotic sequence that now follows, Karin's laughter is an echo
of Berit's. Alman takes Isak to a glade, where once more he is forced to witness how his
wife gives herself to another man.
The sequence is a development of the earlier Sara-Sigfrid seduction. Sara
responds to Sigfrid's kiss. Karin receives a bestial lover "between her open knees" (this
according to the script; in the film the coitus is toned down). While Isak has not witnessed his fiancee's unfaithfulness, he has witnessed his wife's copulation with the lover
~

without intervening.'9 This second seduction is therefore much more aggravating for

Isak than the first one - and consequently more traumatic, more repressed. The two sequences are visually linked through the ladder. set up against the apple tree, figuring in
both, and behind which Isak takes protection in the latter case. But the ladder has
changed; it is now burnt ~ again a transformation of a prop in the spirit of A Dream Play.
The universal-biblical aspect is carried through in the script, in which the
coitus between the wife and the lover takes place in cold moonlight in a glade surrounded
by "fallen down dead trees" (omilled in the American translation) and marshy ground
with lots of snakes. Afterwards Karin complains that she "is bitten by a snake" (omitted
in the American translation). Whether we associate this with the biblical or the phallic
serpent, the symbolism is so explicit that Bergman has abstained from it in the film. As a
result, the connection between the two seductions is 10 some extent obscured.
The second nightmare ends with Alman's conclusion that Isak has "removed"
his own guilt, that he is punished with loneliness, and that it is uncertain if there is any
grace to be found for him.

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WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

The question of grace comes to the fore in the film's last dream sequence,
which coincides with Isak's falling asleep the night after the degree ceremony. The following motivation is given by the retrospective narrator:
Whenever I am restless or sad, I usually try to recall memories from my childhood, to calm down. This is the way it was this night too...
We notice the iterative formulation. Like his creator, Isak lives very much in his childhood.
There is a dissolve to the summer house. Children pour out of it. They are on
their way down to the landing-stage. Sara, in white summer dress, leaves the others and
approaches Isak, in black suit and dark overcoat, with the message that there are no wild
strawberries left and that he should go looking for his father. Isak answers that he has
been looking for him but that he can find neither him nor his mother. Sara says that she
will help him. Down by the landing-stage, a boy has been pushed into the water. A Iifesaver is thrown out. Sara and Isak regard the intermezzo. Isak's face lights up. Perhaps
there is a life-saver also for him.

Isak's nostalgic, softfocus vision of an idyllic vacation existence at the end of Wild Struwberries,
a vision which, relating both to the past and to the future, stresses his desire to establish contact
with his parents.

125

WILD STllAWBERRlES (1951)

Sara takes bak by the hand and leads him through the forest up to a hillock
from where there is a wide view over the bay. We hear the joyful singing of birds contrasting with the shrill crying of jackdaws earlier - and a harmonious harp chord.
When they arrive at the hillol.:k, Sara points to the bay. A new harp chord forms a transi"
ence to an extreme long shot of the bay, in dreamy soft focus. Far away, a man (Isak's
father) is sitting by the shore with a long, benl fishing-rod. His reflection is seen in the
still water. Further up sits a woman (the mother), knitting. Both wear white summer
clothes. Both look in Isak's direction and wave to him. Sara leaves Isak. Again, we see
the bay and the parents. The singing of the birds, mingled with harp chords, is now very
loud. Track-in on lsak's transfigured face in an extreme close-up, singing of birds, harp
chords. Slow dissolve to lsak's 'real face' on the pillow, still in a transfigured light. He
opens his eyes. Harp chord. Fade-out of bak's face,
In the final images, it will be evident, we are brought back to reality, but to a
reality marked by the vision we have just shared with Isak. Even if the film's pre-credit
sequence clarifies that lsak does not die at the end, the final images suggest that this is
precisely what happens. In the image of the parents, the past (the childhood memories)
and the future (the hope for a happy reunion with them after death) mingle.lfiThe image
of them surrounded by a lovely summer archipelago is an image of paradise pointing in
two directions. The spatial distance between lsak and the parents corresponds to the
temporal distance, backwards towards childhood, forwards towards life hereafter. The
distance is further emphasized in the script, where the outsider theme is stressed even at
the end: "I dreamed that I stood by the water and shouted toward the bay, but the warm
summer breeze carried away my cries, and they did not reach their destination."
Wild Strawberries is usually described as a film in which the search for God

and for a meaning in life are replaced by more immanent questions. This is not altogether
true. The metaphysical questions appear also in this film. lsak Borg's behavior during a
long life cannot be separated from his existential situation in the shadow of death. Like
The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries is in its essence a filmic counterpart of Everyman,

the medieval morality play about Man who in the face of Death is confronted with his
deeds in life, a theme that is penetratingly dealt with in lbsen's Peer Gym, the play that
was on Bergman's mind when he wrote the script for Wild Strawberries. The final images
ofIsak's transfigured face are both thematically and emotionally close to Solveig's concluding song in Ibsen's drama: "I shall rock you, I shall watch you; -I sleep and dream,
my dearest boy!" As for the paradisaic final vision, it relates very closely to the Student's
vision of a paradisaic Isle of the Dead at the end of The Ghost Sonata. In his third staging
of this play Bergrnan rearranged, as we have seen, the ending and had, to the accompaniment of harmonious harp chords, a celesliallighl of grace shine on a reunited family - an
ending very similar to that of Wild Strawberries.
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WILD S1"RAWBh'RRlt;S

(l~S7)

Earlier in the film, we wimessed another paradise: the beautiful view of a

huge sunlit lake seen from a terrace high up. At this occasion, a hymn by Johan Olof
Wallin, beginning "Where is the Friend for whom I'm ever yearning?," is quoted by lsak,
Marianne and the young theology student Anders.
The friend for whom Isak is yearning is the constantly absent father. When
lsak on one occasion is out with the father fishing, he experiences a brief moment of
reunion with this friend. The episode points forward to the end's relished fishing together
wilh the father, who even has a catch: the fishing-rod is bent.
The hymn speaks of a "Friend": God; and the script of a "friend": the falher.
When the word is utlered in the film, we cannot tell if it is capitalized or not. This is
meaningful, for in Wild Strawberries the father is in fact - just as in Through a Glass
Darkly - at least in part the equivalent ufthe heavenly Father. This explains why everybody is so concerned with the father rather than the mother and why it is always him they
are looking for, Little Isak's search for an earthly father, who for the child has divine status,
blends with old Isak's search for a heavenly Father, a forgiving God. When the sun of grace
in the final frames illuminates Isak's face, it is a confirmation that he has finally found -or
believed he has found - the Friend he has been seeking all his life. One can hardly imagine
a more pregnant expression of the Freudian idea of the dream as wish-fulfilment.
We can now see the connection between the wild strawberries and the father
which earlier seemed somewhat cryptic. Both are gone. It is not just the happy safety of
childhood that lsak has lost when growing up, The wild strawberries also connote purity,
the purity which Isak has gradually lost - as we all do when we grow old. It is this
imagery which is suggested in the gradual change of the wild strawberries from naturally
growing berries to picked, spilt, and absent ones. When the wild strawberries are gone,
dark clouds gather in the sky. It is then high time to seek a forgiving, loving Father,
Although the final images of Isak's face bring us back to reality, on another
level they connote death and reawakening to life hereafter, Only in this way can one
satisfactorily explain why Bergman in the final frames does not have Isak fall asleep with
a transfigured face but wake up with such a face. The wish-fulfilling dream has,
objectified, been transmitted from Isak to the spectator.

127

WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

Strindberg, Storm (1960)

In the spring of 1955, Victor Sjostrom, the grand old man of Swedish silent cinema,
performed one of his last stage roles, that of the Gentleman in Strindberg's Storm
(1907).1 Two and a half years later, Wild Strawberries had its world premiere. The lead

was played by Victor Sjostrom, his very last role.

About two yeurs after this, !ngmar Bergman launched his TV production of
Storm.' The perfonnance met with great enthusiasm among the critics. A Danish critic

called it a milestone in the history of the teleplay and even went so far as 10 claim that not
until now, when shown on the small screen, had Slrindberg's chamber play fully come
into its own.-'
It is well-known that Bergman's chamber films in the I960s have an affinity

with Strindberg's chamber plays. It is less well-known that Wild Strawberries in many
ways resembles the first of the chamber plays." In the following, Bergman's production
of Strindberg's Storm will be examined with special attention to its relationship to Wild
Str(lwberries.

Both the Gentleman in Storm and Isak Borg are old men with unhappy marriages behind them. Preparing themselves for the final rest, they long for "the peace of
old age," to quote the Gentleman's reiterated phrase. Both imagine thal they have
reached a stage in life where loneliness, as a preparation for the ultimate loneliness, can
be calmly accepted. Both live in apartment houses, surrounded by other people. And both
have a housekeeper, who obviously functions as a substitute wife. In short, hoth men lead
an existence bordering on that of a hermit. a choice indicative of their vacillating attitude
to loneliness and togetherness, respectively. Like the Gentleman, Isak has the habit of

strolling "along a broad, tree-lined boulevard," another indication thal both of them cherish aflaneur existence of observation, of noninvolvement.
Both men are self-centred and highly subjective. Yet bOlh Slrindherg and
Bergman disguise this initially by having us share Ihe protagonist's poill1 of view. For a
long time we tend 10 side with the Gentleman against his wife Gerda - until we discover
in the course of the play that he gives different reasons for his divorce from her. It is only
after we have come to doubt his judgement that Strindberg has the Brother, his closest
friend, reveal that neither Gerda nor her new husband are as wretched as the Gentleman
would have us, or rather himself, believe. Then comes the Brother's weighty remark:
"You only see things from your viewpoint." Suddenly we realize that the Gentleman has

128

STRINDBERG. STORM (1960)

been an unreliable, highly subjective narrator of his own life story.

The Brother's key line is echoed, sharpened, and expanded by Marianne in
Wild Strawberries, when she tells Isak, her father-in-law:
You are completely inconsiderate and you have never listened to anyone but
yourself. All this is well hidden behind your mask of old-fashioned chann
and your friendliness .... We who have seen you at close range, we know what
you really are. You can't fool us.
The question may be posed: Has the Gentleman in Storm ever listened to anyone but
him.self? Strindberg has structured his play in such a way that he is not seen "at close
range" by the audience until fairly late, at which time his mask offriendliness is dropped,
and he reveals his bottled-up aggression toward his fellow men. Marianne's portrait of
Isak could be read as Bergman's interpretation of the Gentleman. But whereas Isak in the
course of the film grows - or is revealed as - more human than we had expected, the
Gentleman grows - or is revealed as - less so.
In both play and film, the aged protagonists live more in the past than in the
present. Says Isak:
I have found that during the last few years I glide rather easily into a twilight
world of memories and dreams which are highly personal. I've often wondered if this is a sign of increasing senility. Sometimes I've also asked myself
if it is a harbinger of approaching death.
A twilight world is precisely what we have in Storm, set on an August evening shortly
before the gaslamps are lit. As a result, the expression fits the Gentleman even better than
it does Isak, whether we think of old age as the twilight of life or of memories as belonging naturally to the crepuscular light.
Since Storm is a text intended for the stage, the memories of the protagonist
could not be made visible in the form of flashbacks - as is done in Wild Strawberries. In
a screen version, this is theoretically possible. but Bergman - unlike Alf Sjoberg, for
example. in his well-known film adaptation of Miss Julie - has abstained from such
excursions into the past.
Strindberg's play opens with an empty stage:
The jar;ade of a modern house. The subsection. below ground level. is of
f(ranite; the upper part ofbrick, covered with yellow stucco. The surrounds of

129

STRINDBERG. STORM (1960)

the windows, and other ornamentations, are in sandstone. In the middle ofthe
granite subsection is a low porch leading to the inner courtyard; it also contains the elltrance to the cap. On the right o/the house is a garden plot, with
roses and otherflowers, In the corner a letterhox. Above the subsection is the
groulldjloOl; with bit{ windows standinx open; four of these belollfi to a dininfi room, eiefiantlyfurnished. Above the ground floor can be seellthefirst
poor, fhe four central windows of which are covered by red blinds, iIluminatedfrom within. In front ofthe house is a pavement lined with trees. In the
forqvound, a green bench and a fias lamp.'<
Bergman's perfonnance opens with a series of stills. Accompanied by the sombertolling
of church bells. there is the the iconic photo of a thundercloud with the title of the play,
the genre (chamber play), and the name of the author in his own handwriting written into
it. The somber cloud dissolves into a low-angle still of a church tower (Hedvig Eleonora
in the opulent Ostennalm part of Stockholm) with a prominent old-fashioned lamppost
in front of it. There is adissolve to a high-angle photo of a marketplace (Ostermalmstorg)
taken from the church tower. Then another dissolve to a picture of an avenue with apartment houses and a row of high lampposts in the middle of the avenue. Finally, a dissolve
to a row of stately apartment houses behind a line of trees.
Via this authentic material, the play is firmly located in the Stockholm of the
turn of the century. In biographical Molander fashion, we are introduced to Strindberg's
1907 environment. To those who are familiar with the author's life at that time, Bergman
strongly suggests that the Gentleman is Strindberg's alter ego.
As the last still dissolves to a high-angle close-up of a gas lamp, the somber
tolling of the church bells is replaced by a cheerful waltz played on a piano, Waldteufel's
Plui d'Or, prescribed by Strindberg later in the play. The high camera tracks in on the
ground floor of an apartment house and pans right. Through the open window, the
Gentleman (Uno Henning) is seen reading a paper, Another pan right reveals him
through another window, now with the young Louise (Mona Maim) next 10 him serving
him after-dinner coffee.
The transference from the initial authentic stills to a studio-built apartment
house immediately creates the impression that the building before us, in which the
Gentleman lives, is no! a real house but an illusory one. In this way, Strindherg's idea of
life's unreality is retained. But unlike Strindberg's house, which faces a street
Bergman's seems to face a narrow courtyard, that is, a claustrophobic environment. 6 In
the play text, Gerda at one point refers to her marriage, and by implication also to her life,
as an imprisonment. Similarly, when the Confectioner (John Elfstrom) comes out of his

130

STRINDBERG, STORM (1960)

dwelling below ground level, sighing and wiping his neck, the claustrophobic scenery
helps to suggest that he is not so much suffering from the heat as from infemal1ife.
Unlike the stage, the small screen allows Bergman to focus immediately on
one of the central symbols of the play: the gas street lamp. This lamp clearly relates to the
street lamps we have seen in the stills. All the street lamps are found in an intermediate
area between heaven and eartb. But unlike the lamps in the stills which were seen from
below, from a human perspective, this one is seen from above, from a celestial one. The
still of the church and the tolling of the bells have already provided a religious atmosphere. This is retained when Bergman has the camera lower itself and track in on the
house behind the uppermost part of the street lamp, the lantern. Like another Indra's
Daughter, the camera here descends to Earth to visit the House of Life. This is synchronized with the sound effects indicating a similar dichotomy between death and
postexistence on the one hand - since the sound of the church bells suggests a funeral and life (the dance music) on the other.
It is in view of this emphasis on metaphysical aspects surprising that Berg-

man has not retained the Gentleman's initial stage business as indicated by Strindberg. In
the text it says:
The GENTLEMAN is seen at the table in the dining room. ... A YOUNG

GIRL, dressed in light colors, is serving him the final course. The BROTHER
(outside rhe house) enters left, and knocks with his stick on the window-pane.
BROTHER. Have you nearly finished?
Not only is tbe Gentleman being served his last course by an angelic figure; he is also
being asked if he will not be finished soon. From the very beginning Strindberg implies
that the Gentleman's life is coming to an end. Bergman's Gentleman, by contrast, is
simply reading a paper by his after-dinner coffee. Realistic or practical concerns here
seem to have prevailed over metaphoric ones, hardly transferable to the spectator.
The somber tolling of church bells heard in the opening of Bergman 's Storm
is heard also in the nightmare sequence opening Wild Strawberries. Here, too, we see
curtained - even boarded - windows which, combined with the intense silence, inform us
that we are in the realm of the dead. The prominent street lamp is found here, too, now
seen in a more dramatic situation than in the play. With the symbolic significance of the
street lamp in Storm at the back of our minds, we realize that when the horse-drawn
hearse crashes into the lamppost, it is metonymically and by way of contiguity suggested
that death overtakes life. When one of the carriage wheels, that has come loose, in threatening low-angle perspective rolls straight towards Isak, we realize that the collision represents his moment or death.
131

STRtNDBERG.

STORM (1960)

In the nightmare sequence, we recall, Isak Borg is confronted twice with his
double, first in the form of an almost identically dressed dummy. then in the form of a
corpse looking exactly like himself. Similarly. in the SUJrm production. the Gentleman
and his Brother (Ingvar Kjdlson) are dressed almost identically as though they were
twins. The sameness is further emphasized by their identical way of walking, as we see
them side by side leaving for their evening stroll. one hand carrying a cane, the other a
pair of gloves behind the back - a slightly comical touch. While Louise in the play text
says that the brothers may be twins, Bergman strongly suggests that they arc. The visible
identity of the two brothers indicates that they incarnate two attitudes of the same ego, of
Man on the threshold of death. one calm (the Brother), the other worried (Ihe Gentleman). One is reminded of the double protagonist in The Seventh Seal.

Bergman rehearsing Act II of Storm. From left to right: the Brother, the Gentleman. Bergman. the
Confectioner. and Louise.

L12

STRINDBERG, STORM (1960)

In the second act of Storm. the Gentleman at one point finds himself alone in
his apartment. The act opens with Louise's playing chess with the Gentleman, When she
has to leave, the Gentleman asks the Confectioner to play a game with him, but the
Confectioner cannot leave his "saucepans." The Gentleman is left alone for a few

mo~

ments. Strindberg's text reads:

GENTI...EMAN alone. moves the chessmen for a few seconds, then Kets up
and paces across the room. The peace of old age! Yes! Sits at the piano and
strikes afew chords. Gets up and starts to pace again. Louise! Can't you
leave that laundry?
LOUISE in the doorway.l mustn't do that. The woman's in a hurry. She has a
husband and child waiting for her..
GENTLEMAN. I see. Sits at the table and drums on it with hisftngers. Tries
to read the newspaper, but tires of it. Strikes matches and blows them out.
Looks at the clock. There is a noise in the hall. Is that you Karl Fredrik?
In Bergman's production the pantomime sequence is done as follows. The Gentleman
sits down again at the chess set, his sherry glass next to it. Deep sigh. He moves the
chessmen to an opening position. Loud ticking of the grandfather clock. He impatiently
drums his fingers against the table, gets up, walks over to the piano, strikes a few keys.
The clock is heard loudly. As Louise 'dismisses' him, he walks into his study, which is
considerably darker than the dining room, sits down at his desk, puts on his glasses, picks
up the evening paper but almost immediately puts it back on the desk. Another clock,
ticking faster than the one in the dining room can be heard. The Gentleman, now in c1oseup. lights a match, blows it out, lights another match, blows it out. Takes out his pocket
watch. Gets up as he hears a noise from the front door and leaves the room.
The position in front of the chess set, indicating the lack of a partner, the
listless striking of the piano keys, the interrupted newspaper reading - all these signs in
the text of an old man who is bored with his lonely existence are found in Bergman's
version, too. But in addition we are here confronted with a picture of Man sensing how
his life is passing away, minute by minute, and how death is approaching. By h<lving the
Gentleman move from one room to anolher, from one clock to another, Bergman can
quite naturally change both the lighting and the sound. It is by such realistically motivated

<ludiovi.~ual

changes that the Gentleman's increasing anguish is expressed. While

in the nightmare sequence of Wild Strawberries a visual link is provided between the
optician's dock and Isak's pocket watch, in the pantomime sequence of Storm an aural
link is provided between the two docks and the Gentleman's pocket watch.

133

STRINDBERG, STORM (I96(1)

The climactic moment of the pantomime sequence, indicated by showing it in

close-ups, is the lighting and blowing out of the matches. The matches are here comparable to the street lamps which, as we know, are lit and extinguished daily. Clearly, both the
matches and the lamps stand for the flame of life.)
The pantomime sequence may also be compared to the pre-credit sequence of

Wild Strawherries. Here again, we have a lonely man silting at the desk in his study, his
sherry glass next to him, listening to the ticking of a grandfather clock. Just as the Gentleman has photos of his ex-wife and daughter like treasured memories "on the stove, between the candelabra," so Isak has his family members surrounding him in the form of
photos. And just as the thermometer in Storm measures the unstable relations hetween
husband and wife, so in Wild Strawherries the aneroid barometer close to the globe
measures the unstable relations between Isak and the rest of the world.
As we have seen, Bergman 's Storm opens with Louise treating the Gentleman
to his after-dinner coffee. Wild Strmvberries, similarly, opens with Agda's calling lsak to
the dinner table. On his way to the dining room he stops in front of the stove and his chess
set - properties which we recognize from Storm - indicating with his fingers that he
wants to move one of the chessmen. But instead of doing so, he signals to his dog another female servant - to come with him. The sequence ends with a long shot of the
desk and Isak's chair. now empty. The low-angle perspective suggests that the dog has
lost her master. It is a shot anticipating Isak's death.
The reversal in Storm comes close to the end when Louise tells the Gentleman: "Madam has gone to her mother in Dalarna to settle there with the child."
Strindberg's Gentleman receives this message standing by the window outside the house.
Bergman's receives it in the dining room. As soon as the Gentleman has told Louise to
switch out the lights in the apartment above and lower the curtains, we see how he himself switches out the lights in the dining room, so that in a close-up. the portrait ofGerda
is hlotted out. He then switches out the lights in the hall. Through the darkened hall, the
two brothers leave the house to the celestial adagio (muted strings and harpsichord) of
Vivaldi's "Autumn," the third movement of his Quattro Staxioni. The non-diegetic music
emphasizes the peace that has come over the Gentleman now when he knows that his
child is "in a good home." What we witness in Bergman's performance, more extensively
than in Strindberg's text, is a symbolic leave-taking from the house, from life. The
Gentleman's last weighty line - "And this autumn I'll move out of the silent house." has been ritually dramatized.
Once outside the house. the brothers sit down next to each other on the bench
to the left, while the Confectioner remains on his chair to the right. Three old men who
have experienced the storms of life are waiting for the Lamplighter - and for the full

134

STRINDIlERG, STORM (1960)

moon. This is Strindberg's way of dramatizing - between Maeterlinck's lntirieur and

Becketfs Waiting for Godot - Man's inevitable waiting for death. The Gentleman's
phrasing - "Look! Here comes the Lamplighter. At last!" - indicates his longing for
death. Bergman stresses this longing by having the Gentleman stretch out his arms as
though he wanted to embrace the Lamplighter, The Gentleman's desire is fulfilled.
Bergman's Lamplighter, though dressed in black - as Death should be - is by no means
thc frightening figure we remember from The Seventh Seal. On the contrary, his shining
Father Christmas face looking upwards to the lantern - and, like Isak, to the moon seems to incarnate the wisdom of old age that the Gentleman identifies with the blind
lantern, whose light can be shaded so that it does not shine on the carrier. This is a
suggestive metaphor for the idea that the flame of life is hidden - this is the Gentleman's
hope - rather than extinguished whcn we die.
The Gentleman's mentioning of the blind lantern coincides with the lighting
of "the first lantem,,,g as he calls the street lantern. As a result, the street lantern becomes
- in our imagination - a blind lantern, a source of hidden light, of life transcending death.
The Lamplighter's arrival implies that "det borjar skymma," as the Gentleman puts it, indicating nOI only that "it is beginning to grow dark" but also that he is
getting dim-sighted. The moment of death is near at hand. Bergman's choice of turning
out all the lights in the apartment house points in the same direction. His version ends as
it began with a high angle shot of the lantern in close-up. The lantern, which we saw unlit
in the beginning and which has remained so throughout the performance, is now being
lit. If we agree that the lighting of the gas lantern at the end of Storm symbolizes the
moment of death, then the position of the lantern between earth and heaven is certainly
meaningful. Behind the initially unlit lantern, we discerned two people inside the house.
Now, behind the lit one we discern two people walking away from the house, visibly
moving off-screen - a visual pun, it seems, on the euphemistic Swedish expression for
dying: "ga bort" (lit. go away). The last we see of the two is their backs, out-of-focus,
shadowy.
The Gentleman in Storm does not visibly die at the end of the play. Similarly,
Isak does not visibly die at the end of Wild Strawberries. Nevertheless, here as there, the
ending carries strong overtones of death. What is more, both men reveal an intense longing for it.
Nineteen days before Stonn was transmitted, Victor Sjostrom died. Some six
weeks after his death, Bergman delivered an address at the Swedish Film Academy commemorating him. It consisted mostly of passages from the diary Bergman had kept during the shooting of Wild Strawberries. The speech ended:

135

STRINDBERG, STORM (1960)

We have shot our final supplementary scenes of Wild Strawberries - the final
close"ups of Isak Borg as he is brought 10 clarity and reconciliation. His face
shone with secretive light, as if reflected from another reality.... It was like a
miracle.... Never before or since have I experienced a face so noble and liberated.... In the presence of this face I recalled the final words of Strindberg's
last drama The Great Highway, the prayer to a god somewhere in the darkness.
"Bless me, Thy humanity,
That suffers, suffers from Thy gift of life!
Me first, who most have suffered Suffered most the pain of not being what I most would be."9
A face shining "with secretive light, as if reflected from another reality" - the lantern
seen in close-up at the end of Bergman's Storm has found a human equivalent in the
close-up of Isak's face at the end of Wild Strawberries. In addition to this 'dissolve,' there
is the one between Isak Borg, initially called Isak Berg, and the Hunter in The Great
HiRhway, who, like the Gentleman in Storm, is very much Strindberg's alter ego. Dissolves, confluences everywhere. In more senses than one, the film Wild Strawherries and
the teleplay Storm are twin creations.

136

STRINDBERG, STORM (1960)

Persona (1966)

Persona, which shares its central interaction between one speaking and one silent character with Strindberg's monodrama The Stronger,l is arguably Bergman's most daring
and most enigmatic film. This is especially true of the cryptic introductory sequence, the
suite of images preceding and intertwining the credits. 2 In the following, I shall focus on
this sequence and its relationship to the film proper.
Although the sequence contains disparate images and abrupt transitions, it is
not lacking in structure. The various images tend to form image clusters. There are images of film equipment, of people, of nature, or, more specifically, images of faces, of
hands. Some images are recurrent. In some places, we may speak of audiovisual intensification. There are subliminal correspondences, for example, between the anguished
white-clad man in the film farce who pulls the spread over his head to hide himself from
Death and the boy who pulls the white sheet over his head in order not to hear the telephone and who then adopts a fetal position. Here is a paralJel-by-conlIast between the
man who does not want to die and the boy who does not want to live. Sound and image
may also, in combination, evoke a certain impression. For example, when we see the
high, gray tree trunks, the chiming makes us associate them with the columns in a
church. The living columns in the temple of nature, to paraphrase Baudelaire, by implication fonn a contrast to the 'dead' stone columns of a church. More obvious is the
connection between the slaughtering of the sacrificial lamb, the pierced hand, recalling
the crucifixion and the awakening of the boy in the morgue (the resurrection). Add to this
the title of the book the boy is reading, The Hero of Our Time. and it seems evident that
Bergman in this sequence of images has depicted a piece of religious development away
from Christianity' - on the part of the boy, who here seems to function not only as his
alter ego but also as a representative of mankind.
In its interaction between heterogeneity and homogeneity, the pre-credit sequence anticipates the fundamental theme of the film: the problem of identity. The questions provocatively posed in the introductory sequence - What is the connection between
the images? What separates them? - are posed again in the film proper with regard to the
two women.
The introductory sequence already reveals that Persona is a metafilm, a film
dealing with itself, its origin, its relationship to other Bergman films, its media conditions, its characteristics as an artistic product. Significantly, the original title of the film

137

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(1966)

was Cinematography; the title Persona was chosen as a concession to the producer. 4
However, the meta ingredients are not included to indicate in any narrow sense what film
is_ Rather. they function as alienation effects, as reminders that what we are witnessing is
not life but art. By elucidating, and complicating, the relationship between life and art,
reality and the artistic adaptation of reality, they concretize a theme that has constantly
preoccupied Bergman.
One of thc meta ingredients is the image of the animated woman, whose inversion is an indication that the frame of her has not yet passed the projector lens; when
this happens she will be turned the right way around.' Is this Bergman's version of
Indra's Daughter's Platonic view, in A Dream Play, of the world as turned around the
wrong way, a "wrong copy" of the original world?
Another meta aspect concerns the many white frames in the introductory
sequence and the fact that some of the pictures do not fill the whole frame but are "written into the whiteness."o The whiteness can be interpreted in several ways. It may be seen
as the pure, transparent film strip on which the director inscribes his images or the white
cinema screen, the white 'paper,' on which his inscribed images are projected. By intermingling the film images with white frames, Bergman is again reminding us that we are
watching a film, an artifact, somcthing constructed, composed. Moreover, he is suggesting a correspondence between the cinematic contrast of image-filled fr<lmes and
imageless (i.e., white) frames in the pre-credit sequence and the psychological dichotomy mask-face in the film proper.
Towards the end of the sequence the white frames grow into a gigantic 'white
frame.' This happens when the boy (1orgen Lindstrom) stretches out his hand towards us.
Although Bergman was forced to make this frame tmnsparent to enable us to see the boy,
it is evident that especially this frame represents the cinema screen. This is evident not
least from the fact that the size of the frame as compared with the boy, when the 'screen'
in the next shot is again found behind the boy, approaches the proportions between cinema screen and spectator. The gigantic face watched by the boy now corresponds to what
we, as spectators, experience as a close-up on the screen.) However, the boy's groping
makes it clear that the nuctuating female face is not touched by his hand. It is apparently
to be found behind the transparent 'screen." Yet that is where we found ourselves a secondago. By turning the image, Bergman has suddenly placed the projected woman in the
auditorium.
Contrary 10 what one might expect, the boy is no internal narrator. In the
main part of the film, he is totally absent. Who then is the boy, and whose are the faces of
the diffuse women? What does he seek? Clearly, he is identical with Elisabet's (Liv
Utlmann) son,' who has been rejected by his mother and who therefore, we may assume,

1311

PERSONA (1966)

The nameless buy in the pre-creditsequence of Per,Wfla reaches out 10 or wards off the huge femak
face which alternately carries the traits of Elisabet and Alma.

either hates her, takes an ambivalent attitude to her, or tries to re-establish contact with
her - in her imagination. 9 Figuratively, he also represents Alma's (Bibi Andersson)
aborted child. (The female face he keeps watching alternately carries the traits of
Elisabet and Alma.) The boy incarnates guilt feeli ngs on the part of the two mothers. This
explains why he appears so frequently in the introductory sequence, usually frontally and
looking straight into our eyes. It is as though the identical images of the boy in this
sequence coalesce into one image, as though we are watching a photo that has traumati
cally settled in the memory of a guilt-laden mother. There is an inner correspondence
between the boy in the prologue and the rejected and doomed Jewish boy in Albert
Cusian 's photo,1O a photo that Elisabet constantly carries with her and that she contemplates in the film proper. Significantly, Bergman in an extreme close-up isolates one of
the Jewish boy's raised anns to provide a link with the boy's raised ann searching for or
wardi ng off his mother in the pre-credit sequence.
We can now see that the purpose of the double placement of the female face is
to draw the audience into the action, to make it identify with the two guilt-laden women,
to make it co-responsible. Human evil that is so obvious in the authentic pictures from

1.19

PERSONA (1966)

Vietnam and Warsaw (reality) is via the fictive figures (the two women and the boy)
transmitted to reality (the cinema audience).
From a meta-filmic point of view, the boy is identical with the director, the
narrator of the film. In the "reflection" preceding the script, Bergman describes himself
as a child. He was, he says, "a contact-seeking child, beset by fantasies" - an adequate
characterization of the boy in the introductory sequence. Being the narrator of the film,
the boy is frequently seen. once, as we have noted, in a key position between the spectator and the 'screen.' It is as though Bergman wants to remind us that what we see is
reality filtered not only through a cinematic hut also through a human medium: the director's mind and feelings.
The boy who gropingly strokes the gigantic female face could also, psychoanalytically, be seen as an image of man's regressive longing for the maternal womb or,
religiously, as his longing for a mild, cosmic mother. But the mother or maternal god
remains unattainable. Momentarily, the female face may seem to come closer, but it
remains diffuse, enigmatic and alienated, and at last it closes its eyes, stops seeing - an
image of how Elisabet (I quote a description of her) "withdraws from the world into
disengaged observation and silence in order not to compromise herself, make herself part
of the violence surrounding herin the world."" Or is it an image of blind Fate?
The introductory sequence anticipates the film proper in various ways. In that
sense, it demonstrates "the film's impatience to get started" and "how, from scattered
images, a film is born."" Thus, the pierced palm anticipates Alma's turning of her hands
which, in turn, suggests that the back and the flat of the hand have their counterparts in
the left and right half of the human face, so spectacularly contrasted in the film. The
dripping sound in the morgue sequence can be compared to the script's reference to
words "droppinf!, with empty intervals." Suddenly, we realize that the relation word/silence in the film proper is equivalent to the relation image/nonimage - the latter appearing as either a white or a black frame - in the wordless introductory sequence. It is
significant that the mute Elisabet in her letter to the doctor describes herself as "blank," a
tabula rasa. The alternation between images and non-images in the introductory sequence thus in a way corresponds to the two women of the main film, one speaking, the
other silent. There are also more incidental correspondences. Alma, who is linked both
with sensuality and cleanliness (bathing, washing), is anticipated by the very earthy
woman washing herself in the animated film fragment. But when the image of this
woman is suddenly frozen and then again begins to move, it foreshadows Elisabet's sudden silence when she is acting in Electra. "She ... was silent," it says in the script, "for
more than a minute. Then she went on playing, as if nothing had happened." The animated woman is, in other words, an amalgamation of Alma and Elisabet, anticipating
their symbiotic relationship.

140

PERSONA (1966)

Elisabet in Per,wina falling silent and turning away from the audience when aCling in Eleclra.

At one point in the film proper, we see Alma in bed, her face frontally turned toward us
but upside down. This frame points back both to the animated woman, also shown upside
down, and more obviously to the inverted face of the woman in the morgue. As a result,
two contrasting impressions are conveyed. Is Alma comically inverted like the buxom
animated woman or tragically like the dead woman? Alienation or intensification - that
is the question. The situation may be compared to Elisabet's inclination, in the script, to
laugh in the middle of the tragedy Electra. Whether you laugh or weep at life is a question of your point of view. This is what Bergman seems to imply when he inverts both
Alma's and our way of looking at the world. However, in the film there is no sign of
laughter in Elisabet's face at this point. What strikes the spectator here instead is that as
she turns si lent, she turns away from the theater audience 10 face us - the film audience. U
In a single shot, Bergman suggests not only her position belween stage and screen but also
her rejection. by means of the silence, of both of them and, by implication, of art ill general.
When Elisabet, because of Alma, is wounded in her foot by a glass splinter,
which in the script is described as "a protruding spearhead," it is a combination of the
pierced hand, the spearhead railing, and the bare feet in the introductory sequence.
A more cryptic prolepsis is the spider, which anticipates Elisabel's remark in
her letter to the doctor that she feels "curiosity in a fat spider" - a remark omitted in the

141

PERSONA (1966)

film. The verbal spider in the script has turned into a visual one in the film. Both spiders
point to the relationship between Elisabet and Alma. Elisabet is curious about the spider
- as she is about Alma. But she is herself, like the spider, a (Strindbergian) vampire when
she sucks Alma's blood and when she wraps her hair, her 'net,' around Alma. (Significantly, both women are busy taking up fishing-nets in the script.) It is also important that
the spider is seen through a microscope. The spider, which is viewed behind glass from
below, it has been said, is "ready for scientific examination, a detail which ironically
foreshadows the cold, clinical, and calculating ways in which Elisabet will study Alma
and Bergman his characters.'14
Even the opening frames - the explosive contact between the carbon rods of
the projector - are meaningfully connected with the violent confrontation, in intense
sunlight, between Elisabet and Alma at the end of the film. Andjust as the two women
'separate' in the end, we witness how the two carbon rods recede from one another.
This is also saying that Persona has a striking circular composition, in several
respects. In the concluding frames, we see how the fictive characters, Elisabet and Alma,
return to their fonner occupations: those of the actress and nurse, respectively. We see
how the actresses creating these roles finish the shooting of the film we have just been
viewing. Liv UlImann's inverted face in the film camera now corresponds to the three
inverted faces we have seen earlier. We see how the film strip that curled into the projector in the beginning now curls out of it. And we see once more the boy groping with his
hand towards the gigantic female face. Illusion, reality, and medium are intertwined in a
manner reminiscent both of Slrindberg's Dream Play and Pirandello's Six Characters in
Search of an Author_I>

The oscillation between illusion and reality, authentic 'truth' and ficlive 'lie,'
is a fundamental theme in Persona. In the film proper, the authentic, meaningful suicide
of the Vietnamese monk is contrasted with the planned, meaningless one ohole-playing,
inauthentic Elisabet. The implication is that Elisabet only commits fictive suicides - on
the stage. On the television screen, she is confronted with a piece of authentic reality so
frightening that one is inclined to regard it as fictitious. Similarly, we cannot immediately decide whether the dead people in the morgue are authentically or ficlively dead,
whether we are witnessing a documentary fragment or a piece of feature film. In the
same way, it is nol always possible

la

decide whether we are watching Elisabet Vogler's

or Liv Ultmann's face, Alma's or Bibi Andersson's. The boundary between what is authentic and what is fictitions is eliminated.
By its position, the introductory sequence points with its Janus face in two
directions: backward to Bergman's earlier films and forward to the film that is to emerge.
The sequence is found in a border area, and Bergman has indicated this by turning what

142

P/:;RSONA (1966)

is a prologue also into a kind of epilogue. As has onen been pointed out, several ingredients in the sequence may be seen as quotations from earlier Bergman films. Thus, the
silent film farce derives from Prison. Its protagonist, the man in a nightshirt and nightcap, appears in Smiles

0/ a Summer Night. The spider is reminiscent of the spider god in

Through a Glass Darkly, while the slaughtering of the lamb reminds one of Marta in
Winter Light, the Christ figure who is 'sacrificed' by Tomas and who appears in a furcoat
made of sheep skin when the Eucharist hymn "God's pure, innocent Jamb" is sung in the
opening of the film. The piercing of the hand - reminiscent of the Crucifixion - turns up
in The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and Winter Light. The young boy is not only
played by the same actor doing the boy in The Silence; he is also reading the same book
as him, Lermontov's The Hero o/Our Time.
What then does Bergman wish to communicate through this kind of autointertextuality? His intention with the introductory sequence, he says, was
to make a poem, not in words but in images, about the situation in which
Persona had originated. I reflected on what was important, and began with
the projector and my desire to set it in motion. But when the projector was
running, nothing came out of it but old ideas, the spider, God's lamb, all that
dull old stuff. '"
This statement indicates that the purpose of the auto-quotations, at least partially, was to
take an ironical attitude to earlier all-too-explicit symbols, symbols that are totally lacking in Persona. In line with this, the sequence may he seen as a thematic demarcation. an
indication of how the new film differs from the earlier ones.
The introductory sequence has also been regarded as a summary of
Bergman's involvement with film, from the animated films and silent film farces of his
childhood to his own serious sound films. Or even as an indication of the birth and development of film generally.
Bergman wrote the script of Persona in the Sophia Hospital in Stockholm:
"My life just then consisted of dead people, brick walls, and a few dismal trees OUl in the
park. . Besides which r had a view of the morgue ...."17 This must have given him certain
deja-vu feelings. In his autobiography, it says: "When

r was ten,

I was shut inside the

morgue at the Sophia Hospital. ... I was alone with the dead or the apparently dead. At
any moment one of them might rise up and grab hold of me."l& The brick wall, the trees,
and the dead or seemingly dead people all appear in the pre-credit sequence. Although
the hospital has thus been a source of inspiration, it does not explain how the ingredients
just mentioned fit into Bergman's film. It is not the morgue Bergman could see from his

143

PERSONA (1966)

window but "this morgue of a world:' to quote the Student in The Ghost Sonata, that is
here of significance. Indeed, Bergman's morgue is not an ordinary one. Containing
sleeping rather than dead people - compare Elisabet's remark that Alma "lives like a
sleep-walker" - it is a metaphor for life, its inhabitants for the living dead. The cinematic
and the religious spheres can also be combined. The creative human being - the artist, in
this case the film auteur - has creativity in common with the Creator:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was
without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be
light: and there was light. (Gen. 1-3)
The cosmic contrast between light and darkness which is here described verbally is produced audiovisually in the explosive opening frames of Penona. Here we find
Bergman's -the film creator's - "Let there be light." Here, in this variety of the Creation,
the 'dead' filmstrip of Persona comes alive in the light of the arc-lamp. The cosmic
antitheses heaven-earth, light-darkness soon appear to have their counterparts on the
inter- and intrahuman level. Already in the introductory sequence we see ElisabetlLiv
with a light-and-dark face.
But there is also a sexual component in the opening images. Film arises when
two carbon rods come together, in a moment of 'fertilization.' It is no coincidence that
the pillar of light in one of the early frames is strikingly similar to the erect penis shown
a little later. Similarly, the rounded quadrangle towards which the pillar is directed can be
combined with the image of the vertical lips, representing the vagina. Does Bergman
wish to indicate that artistic creativity is related to divine creativity? That just as the
world has come into being through "contact between divine and earthly substances:' as it
says in A Dream Play, so the birth of a piece of art is determined by a 'sexual' union? Or
does he merely wish to indicate that artistic activity is a sublimation of sexual activity'?
Here, as elsewhere in this enigmatic film, Bergman invites, as he says in the note preceding the script, "the imagination of the ... spectator to dispose freely of the material [he
has] made available."
But why is the male organ shown directly, the female only indirectly? In the
latter case, we touch on a pregnant visual metaphor related to the fundamental theme of
the film, a theme developed as Alma tells Elisabet of her beach orgy. Once when sunbathing, she met Katarina. Shortly afterwards (WO young boys. unknown to both of them,
showed up. Katarina was soon "helping" the older one to put his penis into her vagina.
She then took the semen of the younger boy "in her mouth." that is, her mouth functioned

144

PERSONA (1966)

as a vagina. The vertical lips in the introductory sequence anticipate this situation, What
is then the significance of the combination lips-pudenda'! In a film dealing with the relationship between speech and silence, the human speech organ, the mouth, gains a special
significance. A closed mouth connotes silence, an open mouth speech. However,
Katarina's mouth was open not to produce words but to receive semen. Katarina here
showed the same "ravenous hunger" (script) as Elisabet. 19 The mouth is reduced to a
consumptive, vampiric organ. (Later, Elisabet, as we have noted, literally sucks blood
from Alma's arm.) This is figuratively true also of Alma's and Elisabet's wombs. The
former has had an abortion, the latter has given birth to an unloved son. Their vaginas
have played the same consumptive role as Katarina's mouth. The mouth imagery, we can
now see, deals in the last instance with the relationship between giving and taking, love
and lovelessness.
It is possible that the sexual ingredients in Persona, just like the sadistic ones,
aim to activate the spectator. This is completely in line with the contemporary nouveau
roman doctrine about the recipient as co-creator of the artistic work. Bergman has also
declared that he is in favor of Buiiuel's method of shocking the spectator with brutal
images. 2o However, in a film dealing with identity problems, the sexual and sadistic elements function above all as emotive expressions of mental conditions. The painful nailthrough-hand sequence, for example, is a brutal expression of the sadomasochistic
relationship between Alma and Elisabet. As we have seen. the sexual elements have a
similar metaphoric function,
Through its seemingly capricious, associative, wordless stream of images,
the introductory sequence may seem like an attempt by Bergman to create a cinematic
counterpart of Joyce's stream of consciousness in Ulysses. But the sequence is rather a
pictorial poem, an audiovisual alternative to the verbal poems of the modernists. "I
wanted to make a poem," Bergman said himself about the sequence, "not in words but in
images. about the situation in which Persona originated."
Poetry, dream, reality - the sequence contains all these elements. For as the
author of A Dream Play demonstrates, it is difficult to keep the three concepts apart.
Strindberg's drama is certainly closer to Bergman's film than Joyce's novel. What A
Dream Play has meant for the development of drama, Persona has - possibly - meant for
that of film.

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PERSONA (1\166)

Cries and Whispers (1973)

Cries and Whispers begins and ends in the park of a stately mansion. Between these two
exterior sequences the action, except for one brief flashback, takes place inside the mansion, primarily in one room. The space is, in other words, exceedingly restricted.

Four women fonn the nucleus of the action: Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is
dying; her sisters Karin (Ingrid lllUlin) and Mana (Liv Ullmann); and the maid Anna (Kari
Sylwan). The cries and the whispers belong to them. As in a SIring quartet, we lislen to four

different 'instruments' somehow attuned to one another in this 'chamber film.' I

Karin and Maria have come 10 the mansion, the home of their childhood, to

keep watch at Agnes' bedside. I The film describes the last two days of Agnes' life. her
death, funeral, and 'resurrection.' These events are intermingled with tlashbacks of situations or events in the past, showing Agnes' relationship to her mother, Anna's to her
child, Karin's and Maria's to their husbands.
The script begins with a declaration by the director which provides a key to
the film:

As I tum this project Ol'er in my mind il Ilet'er stands out as a completed

whole. What it mosl resembles is a dark flowing stream: faces, mOl'cmellls,
voices, J;estures, exclamatioll!J', lif.;hl alld shade, moods, dream.l. NothinJ;
fixed, nothing really tanf.;ible other than for Ihe momc11l. and then only

all

illusory moment. A dream, a IOIlf.;ill!?, or perhaps an expectation, a fear, in

which that to be feared is ni'ver put into ,vords.
Like the author of A Dream Play, Bergman in Cries alld Whispers strives to "imitate the

disconnected ... form of the dream." The most spectacular dream element in the film is
Agnes' continued life after death. But there are several other sequences which are almost
as dreamlike: Karin's mutilation of herself, Joakim's suicide attempt, the Chaplain's
self-reproaches. We must constantly ask ourselves whether the situations and events describe an objective reality or whether they express the characters' subjective versions of
reality. Rarely does Bergman indicate that we are dealing with dreams, fantasies, Yet the
descriptions are such that we find it difficult to accept them at face value. The borderline
between dream and reality is blotted out.
In the centre of the film, we find Agnes, "the intended owner oitlle eslate. 'In
the script, it says:

146

CRIES AND WHISPERS (1973)

She has vague artistic ambitions - dabbling in painting, playing the piano a
little; it is all rather touching. No man has turned up in her life. ... At the age
afthirty-seven she has cancer of the womb and is preparing to make her exit
from the world as quietly and submissively as she MS lived in it. ... She is very
emaciated, but her belly has swollen up as though she were in an advanced
stage ofpregnancy..
AGNES' painting is generously coloiful and some.vhat romantic. Her main
subject isflowers.
Agnes strikingly resembles the Young Lady, Adele, in The Ghost Sonata, the intended
owner of the beautiful art nouveau building on the stage. Neither the Young Lady's nor
Agnes' illness - cancer of the uterus - should be taken literally. Just as the Young Lady is
"withering away in [an] atmosphere of crime, deceit and falseness of every kind," so
Agnes is surrounded by faithlessness and emotional chill. Neither her mother, now dead,
nor her sisters have given her the wannth she longs for. Both Kann and Mana are unhappily
married, both have been unfaithful to their husbands, both are anxious - as are their husbands - to show an immaculate social persona. Agnes cannot thrive in such surroundings.
However, she has one friend who is pure of heart and able to feel love. Anna,
it says in the script,
is vay taciIum, very shy, unappmachable. But she is ever-present - watching, prying, listening. EverythinK about ANNA is weight. Her body, herface.
her mouth, the expression of her eyes. But she does not speak; perhaps she
does lIot think either.
Like the Milkmaid in The Ghost Sonata, Anna incarnates altruistic love. And just as the
Milkmaid's profession indicates her nurturing function, so Anna's role of maid is a sign
of her willingness to serve - feel compassion for - her fellows. In both the play and the
film, the person who is socially the most unassuming is ethically the most high-minded.
Characteristically. Bergman cast the same actress in both parts and provided her with
virtually the same costume and hair (pigtail) in both.
Anna is the only one who hears Agnes' crying; who consoles her with the
wannth of her maternal bosom; and who is willing to stay with her when she is dead. But
Anna is herself in need of human warn1th. Functioning as a mother substitute to Agnes,
she has herself found a substitute in Agnes for the little daughter she has lost.
Early in the film we see Anna in her simple room praying for her dead daughter. Next to her, there is a lit candle, flowers in a vase. and apples in a bowl. A close-up of
Annn is followed by one of a photo of her and her daughter, this again by a close-up of
147

CRIES AND WHISPERS (1'.173)

At the end uf Cries and Whispers Agnes' diary, recording a bl issful moment. cumes alive i 11 Anna 's

memory. The three sisters - Karin. Agnes. and Mad a- scated in the old swing. are rocked by Anna.

the daughter on the photo. When the praying Anna returns in view, the frame is supple
mented by nondiegetic piano music. a melancholy Chopin mazurka. Anna blows out the
candle and begins to eat an apple while she regards the photo of herself and her daughter.
She then gets up and leaves the room past an empty child's bed.
The sequence is carefully composed. The flowers, the apple, the candle, the
photo. the bed - nothing is there by coincidence. The eating of the apple linb Anna,
whose dead daughter was undoubtedly an illegitimate child, with the Eve of the Fall,
with Original Sin. The photo, which is framed by flowers on one side and by a card
showing a butterfl y, symbol of the resurrection. on the other. bears witness of her longing
for the dead daughter - as do the prayer and the empty bed. The lit candle represents her
hope that her little girl has risen from the dead and that God's angels are now protecting
her in heaven.
The melancholy Chopin mazurka continues as Agnes. dressed in white, is
framed next to a bowl with big, while, cultivated roses (contrasting wilh Anna's more modest wild flowers). Agnes takes one of them. smells it, looks thoughtful, then very sad. The
fragrance of the rose evokes the image of her beloved dead mother. There is a slow dissolve
from the white rose to the mother's white dress, as she is walking, alone, ill the park of the
mansion. surrounded by shadows as though she were a prisoner of the park.

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CRIE-S AND WHISPERS

(197~)

White Agnes and Anna relate to The Ghost Sonata, Maria is linked with A
Doll's House and Miss Julie. This is especially obvious in the sequence showing Maria
lying in the bed of her old room. With a thumb in her mouth and a doll next to her,
regarding her old doll's house, she is still a doll's wife, a child. The camera follows her
glance from the elegant upper floor of the doH's house to the kitchen in the basement the class society in one tilt. The close-up of a cook by the stove, a servant in livery, and a
bird's cage clearly refers to Miss Julie, while the mother looking down on her daughter
from the painting on the wall resembles the final shot in Alf Sjoberg's film version of
Strindberg's play, where Julie's portrayed dead mother looks down on her daughter.
Bergman frequently makes use of this kind of allusions. Apart from amusing the initiated, they economically enrich the action.
The environment in Cries and Whispers may in the tirst place be associated
with decadent aristocratic life around the turn of the century, as described in Chekhov's
Three Sisters - an adequate title also for Bergman's film -or in Miss Julie. But very soon
we notice that the social aspect is not central to the film, which deals more with the
shortcomings of humanity than with those of the bourgeoisie.
The most striking aspect of the scenery is that the interior is constantly kept in
various shades of red. Moreover, the different parts of the film are separated by slow
dissolves containing intermediate red frames. Red is the color of blood, of life but also of
sacrifice, of death. It is the color of erotic love, passion. In addition to these conventional
meanings, there is a more esoteric significance, indicated by Bergman himself. In the
script, he informs us that "e-.-er since [his] childhood [he has] pictured the inside of the
soul as a moist membrane in shades of red." It is obvious that Bergman's "sour' is very
similar to the uterus. 1 In Cries and Whispers, we not only find ourselves in the sisters'
home of childhood, this alone a sign of their inability to escape the early phase of their
life; we find ourselves in the original 'home' of us all, the maternal womb, the only place
where two human beings are in true communion with one another. As David tells Karin
in The Touch: "You can never live inside me. It's only for short, hopelessly short moments that we imagine the prison has been opened.... I think it's some dim memory from
the womb. That's the only fellowship there is...." Both in the red interior and in the reddish dissolves, we should sense the blood pulsating in each of the four women, driven by
the beating of the heart, just as the many clocks ofthe mansion are driven by their clockworks. At the same time, the redness makes visible the psychoanalytic idea that our lives
are determined by what we have experienced in the maternal womb. The dissolves combined with whispering voices - equivalent of fetal membranes and fetal sounds and/or
sounds heard by a fetus - suggest both a prenatal existence and, in the context of the film,
the alienation from life felt by someone dying.'

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CRIES AND WHISPERS (1973)

Of the many clocks in the mansion, "Ihe mantelpiece clock, with ajlute-playing shepherd," associated with Agnes, "is the only one not going." The symbolism is
obvious. As in Wild Strawberries, the ticking and striking clocks represent the living,
while lhe silent clock indicates that Agnes' time on earth is Up.l When she sets it moving
again, her action, comparable to Peer Gynt's appeals to the Buttonmolder or Antonius
Block's chess-playing, is a prayer for respite.
The four women, who receive about equal attention, represent four different
types, outlooks, temperaments. Agnes is mild, Karin cold, Maria superficial, Anna
warm. They appear in costumes suiting their mentality: while for lhe virginal Agnes,
black for the life-denying Karin, red for the erotic Maria, gray for the serving Anna.
Turning to their wombs, we may speak of a virginal but sick (Agnesl, a frigid (Karin), a
sensual (Maria) and a maternal (Anna) one.
What then does Agnes' sick womb represent? It has been suggested that the
disease relates to that "of being a woman and of not fulfilling a woman's function by
bearing a real child."(' However, the reason why Bergman has selected cancer of the
uterus is not that it is an illness restricted to women but lhat it is an illness located in the
original home of all of us - both in the biblical and in the psychoanalytical sense.
Through her cancer, Agnes, like the Young Lady, reveals that she is subject to
Original Sin. Anna's eating of an apple and Karin's and Maria's 'sickly' wombs amount
to the same. Ye\, like Eve they have all begun life as innocent creatures - as their names
indicate: 'Agnes' and 'Karin' both mean 'chaste'; 'Maria' carries, through the Holy Virgin, the same meaning; and 'Anna: being the name of the Virgin Mary's mother, points
in the same direction. Rather than being subjecl to Original Sin, Bergman's women seem
to be victims simply of life; growing up means growing sinful. Life has turned the finn
Karin into a hard and bitter person, who declares herself "rotten to the core." Similarly,
the chameleonic Maria has become a cynic below her smiling persona. In contrast,
Agnes and Anna have retained more of their original identity, each in their own way
accepting life on its own terms.
Faced with Agnes' illness, science (the Doctor, Erland JosephsonJ is powerless. Once she has died, faith (the Chaplain, Anders Ek) proves as powerless when it
comes to offering hopes for a blessed after-life. The representative fellow-creatures
(Maria and Karin) distance themselves from the dead Agnes even though they are blood
relations, thereby demonstrating the shortcomings of human love. Only Anna has the
strength to console Agnes. In her alone does love prove triumphant.
The theme of isolation-versus-communion pervades the film. Both the dinner
between Fredrik (Georg Arlin) and Karin, husband and wife, and the family gathering
after the funeral signal the frozen relations that are typical of humanity. After Agnes'

150

CRIES AND WHISPERS (1973)

death, the weather has, significantly, suddenly turned colder and it has begun to snow.
The funeral guests, unable to wann one another, "are warmin!: themselves with a cup of
tea and a glass afsherry."

Physical proximity is the symbol of communion. One of Anna's good memories, omitted in the film, is that of how she, her little daughter, and Agnes once built a
house under the dinner table. "There they are as close as a single body.... In this way, they
for!:et their fear." The situation anticipates the pieta scene between Anna and Agnes.

Similarly, Maria reminds Agnes: "Do you remember when we were little and played
together in the twilight? Suddenly, and at the same moment, we felt afraid and cuddled
together and held each other tight."
One of Agnes' good memories is the one of how she once was allowed to
stroke her mother's cheek: "We were very close to each other that time." Its counterpan
is the scene in which Maria is allowed to touch Karin who never wants to be touched and
who nevenheless nourishes "a longing for nearness." In the script, this sequence is accompanied by tender words between the sisters. In the film, the words are reduced to
inaudible whispers which, along with their caresses, express the tenderness between
them. In addition, there is music: a fragment of the sarabande from Bach's suite for cello
in C minor - dark, warm, lofty music for one instrument, close to the human voice, an
adequate expression of spiritual communion between people. (The sarabande returns
later in the film, this time to illustrate the communion between Anna and Agnes.) However. this moment of tenderness between the sisters proves to mean much more to Karin
than to Maria, who later denies its significance.
The theme of communion culminates in the final sequence. For the 6rst and
only time, we see the four women "as close as a single body." The sequence clarifies a
passage from Agnes' diary:
A summer's day.... My sisters, Karin and Maria, have come to see me. It's
wonderful to be together again - as in childhood.... We slowly strolled down
to the old swinging seat in the oak tree. Then the four of us (Anna was there
too) sat in the swing and let it rock to and fro, slowly and gently.
I closed my eyes and felt the breeze and the sun on my face. All my pain
was gone. The people I am most rond of in the world were with me.... I felt
the presence of their bodies, the wanTIth of their hands. I closed my eyes
tightly, trying to cling to the moment, and thought: This is. indeed, happiness.
This ending is quite similar to that of the final vision in The Ghost Sonata, the way
Strindberg originally imagined it. But what with Strindberg is ajoumey into life hereaf-

151

CRIES AND

WHI.~PERS

(1913)

ter, or rather the hope for such a journey, with Bergman it is at most an indication in that
direction. Like the paradisaic final vision of Wild Strawberries, the ending of Cries and
Whispers points to the past, 10 a paradisaic existence in this life, to the communion inher-

ent in childhood that has later been lost. Nevertheless, the final visions of both filmssince both Isak and Agnes are tormented by "the ultimate loneliness": death - connote a
hope that the communion of childhood will return in a coming life. It is precisely this
ambivalence that makes the final visions in these films so meaningful.
What is the significance of the film title? We learn that Mana and her mother,
who were very close to each other, "kept whispering" to one another. Anna "whijpers
inaudible, consoling words" to Agnes. When Karin and Maria after Agnes' death for a

moment are close to one another, they keep whispering. The whispers which, as we have
noted, also accompany most of the reddish dissolves, function as caresses. They express
tenderness, love, communion.
The cries relate to the opposite emotions: anguish, impotence, loneliness.
Maria's attempt to establish contact with her sister suddenly fails:
"I can't," KARIN cries. "I can't. All that which can'l be altered. All the guilt.
It's constant anguish. It's like in hell. r can't breathe any more because of all
the guilt.
The crying and the feelings of suffocation indicale that Karin's inability 10 respond to
Maria's attempt at contact is based on guilt feelings at least partly connected with the
recently dead sister. For this is how Agnes' moment of death is described:
Suddenly she cries: "Can't you help me? Help me, I don't want to. I don't want

to." She utlers a piercing scream and beats about her with her anns until a Ilew
aUack ofchoking cuts offher shrieks and she bends bacrn'ard, mOUlh agape.

The closest formal connection with the title we find in the following passage, testifying
both 10 Agnes' anguish and her longing for communion as well as to the sisters' lacking
sense of her needs: "AGNES calls to her sisters faintly, her lips move and she calls in a
whisper, but they don't hear her."

Already in Through a Glass Darkly, Bergman touched on Ihis theme. After

incest with his sister Karin, Minus falls to his knees, clasps his hands, and prays "whisperinX. God ... God ... help us! Like a cry and a whisper." Naturally, these de profundi.~

situations are designed with regard to the biblical archetype, Christ's sense of desolation
at the moment of death:

152

CRIES ANll WHISPERS {1973l

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eh, Eh, lama
sabachtani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ...
Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. (Mal.
27.46, 50; italics added)
That Agnes' suffering and death are modelled on the Passion appears from a number of
circumstances. Sharing her name with that of lndra's Daughter in A Dream Play, Agnes
functions as an agnus dei, a sacrificial lamb, the symbol of Christ's satisfactio vicaria. 7
Like Jesus, Agnes is pure, chaste. Her suffering at an age comparable to that of Jesus
seems altogether unjust and can therefore be seen as vicarious. When the Chaplain states
that Agnes' faith is stronger than his own and that God has found her "worthy to bear a
heavy and prolonged suffering," he has the parallel to Christ in mind.
Already in the beginning of the film, we see how Maria, who is to keep watch
over her sister, has fallen asleep in a chair. 11 is instead Agnes, who has just stood up, who
keeps watch over her - with a smile expressing both disappointment and forgiveness.
This is Bergman's variant of Jesus' disappointment at the disciples, when they had fallen
asleep in the garden of Gethsemane: "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?"
(Mat. 26.40) Before this happens, we see Maria's face in close-up, overcome by pain as
she is drinking a glass of water - Bergman's allusion to the bitter chalice. When Agnes
later "has bent her head against her chest," her position resembles that of the Crucified.
The same is true of the following description: "Her eyes are closed and herforehead has
beads ofsweat on it. Her mouth is bitten and covered with sores. Now and then her body
shudders with the constant pain." When "she asks for something to drink," it corresponds
to Jesus' "I thirst" (John 19.28). Quite grotesque is the contrast between her quietly

suffering Christ-like face, in close-up, and Maria's off-screen reading aloud from The
Pickwick Papers. a The washing and shrouding of Agnes' emaciated body has a sacred
character. Just before she dies, the fingers of one of her hands are twisted like those of the
Crucified. When she is laid out, there is a high-angle shot of her emphasizing the
cruciform of her body.9 The most obvious parallel is, of course, the famous pieta scene
with its complex fusion of death and birth. lo
What is the purpose of all these allusions to the Passion? Is Agnes a Christ
figure? Does Bergman wish to indicate that there are people - Agnes has a kinsman in
Algot Fruvik in Winter Lighl- who, like Christ, have a scapegoat mission? Do the allusions serve to give fundamental human feelings - pain, fear of death, sense of abandonment - a higher dignity? Or do they merely serve to create an archetypal object of
identification, an emotional correlate? Perhaps something of all of this.
The contrast between mask and face forms a pervading theme in Cries and

153

CRIES AND WHISPERS (1973)

In the pietA ~cene of Cries and Whispers Anna warms the dead Agnes. in fetal position. with her
maternal body.

Whispers. The bedroom of the parents. it says in the script. is beautiful but overloaded.

The dining room has "heavy furniture and dark-red. gilt-leather wallpaper," "thick window curtains," and "solid silver" on the dinner table. Karin, loaded with jewels - gins

from her hushand while he still loved her or. more likely. gifts to disguise his withering
love for her - fits into this environment.
'The women's clothes," Bergman points out, "are lavish, expensive, concealing and revealing." By appearing in a social persona demanding respect, people try

10

keep up their self-respect. But the self-respect is undermined by their awareness that Ihey
are not what they pretend to be.
Sitting before the mirror, Karin is ironically watching her own "irreproach
ablefafade" in no fewer than three mirrors. Similarly, Maria early in the film
walks over to a large mirror which is tilting out from the wall; it has panels of
blurred glass. a marble ledge. and an ornamental gold frame. She stands
before the mirror for a moment, turns herface toward her image and smiles
quickly...

154

CRtES A.Nn WHISPERS (1')73)

Being "blurred," the pretentious mirror in which she sees herself provides poor possibilities for self-knowledge. This applies not only to Maria as an individual; it applies also to
her as a representative of humanity; in the words of SI. Paul: "For now we see through a
glass darkly; but then face to face" (I Cor. 13.12). True self-knowledge is not possible in
this life.
The alternation mask-face is found also in some of the monologues. After
Agnes' death, Karin tells Maria:
We were so fond of her. Suddenly in a different voice. Nothing, no one can
help me. Again in her usual voice. When the funeral is over. I'll ask our solicitor to arrange all the legal formalities .... I think that With a change of voice.
yes, it's true, I've thought of suicide many times.
It's everlastingly the
same, it's In her normal voice. nothing. I mean it's not a serious problem.
Similarly, the Chaplain, "enclosed in the black uniform 0/ office," in the beginning of his
speech sticks to the traditional funereal ritual:
May your Father in Heaven have mercy on your soul when you step into His
presence. May He let His angels disrobe you of the memory of your earthly
pain.
But he soon drops the ritual. and despite its rhetorical anaphorae, the rest of his speech
carries the note of sincere despair at the conditions of mankind:
The CHAPLAIN/ails silent, as though overcome. He stands perplexed with
his eyes shut. Then he kneels down stiffly; ... He passes a hand across his eyes
alld supports himself a!:(linst a chair with the other.
If it is so that you have gathered our suffering in your poor body, if it is so that

you have borne it with you through death, if it is so that you meet God over
there in the other land, if it is so that He turns His face toward you, if it is so
that you can then speak the language that this God understands, if it is so that
you can then speak to this God. If it is so, pray for us. Agnes, my dear lillle
child, listen to what I am now telling you. Pray for us who are left here on the
dark, dirty earth under an empty and cruel Heaven. Lay your burden of suffering at God's feet and ask Him to pardon us. Ask Him to free us at last from
our anxiety, our weariness, and our deep doubt. Ask Him for a meaning to our
lives. Agnes, you who have suffered so unimaginably and so long, you must
he worthy to pfead Ollr cause.
155

CRIES AND WHlSPHRS (1973)

The Chaplain's split prayer may be compared both to the contradictory

speeches of the split protagonist at the end of The Seventh Seal and to Tomas', the vicar's,
opening and closing prayers in Winter Light, the first showing how he clings to the traditional formula, the secund how he gropes for a faith.
The end of the first part, quoted here, sounds like the Student's intercession
for the recently dead Young Lady at the end of The Ghost Sonata: "may you be greeted
by a sun that does not bum, in a home without dusL .."The next part resembles the Poet's
appeal to Indra's Daughter in A Dream Play: "Child of the gods, will you translate lour
lament into language I the Immortal One understands." The Chaplain's prayer is
crammed with "ifs" - as though he doubted the existence of a benevolent god. In line
with this. the perspective of the introductory ritual part is reversed. No longer praying
that God take mercy on the dead woman, the Chaplain asks her to intercede by Him for
the living. To speak with the author ofA Dream Play: It is not the dead but the living who
are pitiable.
When the sisters after the funeral talk to one another, their veils function as
masks. The black-toned sequence. alternately showing their faces, contrasts with the
earlier red-toned communion sequence, in constant two-shot.
A striking characteristic with Bergman is his predilection for mystifying
doublings. In Cries alld Whispers, one actress (Liv UlImann) incarnates both Maria and
her mother. The outward resemblance serves to point to an inner one, which in turn
explains their closeness to one another. In addition, the film contains another. less obvious doubling: the parts of Anna's and Maria's daughter are played by the same actress.
Bergman's own daughter Linn. In this case, the reason for the doubling seems to be that
it enhances the contrast between the two mothers. To Maria, the living daughter is merely
a doll: in the scene where they appear together, the daughter significantly carries a doll,
indicating that it is to her what she is to her mother. To Anna, by contrast, the dead
daughter is fully alive.
One of the most enigmatic elements of the film is Karin's self-mutilation.
Karin's and Fredrik's dinner - dressed in black. they eat fish and drink red (I) wine. for
"perhaps it is Good Friday" - is marked by cold phrases between moments of icy si-

lence. A meal of hatred rather than love, their dinner is an anti-Communion. revealing
their complete lack of contact. Suddenly. Karin fumbles with her glass. It shatters and the
red wine is spilt on the white table-cloth, an ironic visual comment on the formula of the
Communion: "The blood of Jesus, shed for you" Here, it is instead purity that is stained,
perhaps at the moment when Karin is thinking of her secret lover. Alternatively, the spilt
glass and the shed wine (the blood) could be seen as expressions of her longing for death.
Her spilling of the wine is visibly linked with Joakim's (Henning Moritzen) suicide at-

156

CRIES AND WHiSPERS (1973)

tempt: when he has driven the knife into his breast, the blood spreads across his clean,
white shirt.
Karin takes a splinter from the broken glass and says, obviously with reference to life: "It's nothing but a tissue of lies." Once inside her boudoir, she "inserts the
splinter in her vagina." When Fredrik appears, she shows him her bleeding womb, then

smears the blood from it around her mouth, declaring again: "It's nothing but a tissue of
lies."
Karin clearly wants to make herself sexually inaccessible to her husband. But
the sequence means more than that. Having brought the glass in touch with her mouth
(the organ of verbal contact), Karin brings it in touch with her womb (the organ of sexual
contact). The red wine is figuratively identified with the blood that is moved from womb
to mouth. The repeated expression "a tissue of lies" is put in a visual context which
makes it pregnant, indicative both of verbal (spiritual) and sexual (sensuous) contact. To
Karin there is no true communication. Man is hopelessly lonely in life.
When Agnes dies, it isAnna who closes her eyes. We hear someone weeping,
and since Anna, turned away from the camera, is in frame, we believe that it is she. We
soon discover that it is Maria, at the other end of the room, who is weeping. The arrangement of sound and image emphasizes how Anna's unsentimental closeness to Agnes
contrasts with Maria's sentimental distance.
When Agnes is dead, Anna hears "a peculiar sound - very faint, Vety remote,"
soon identified as the desperate crying of a child. Hurrying to Agnes' bed, she discovers
"that the dead woman has been crying, the teurs have run down her cheeks." In the film,

Anna's emotional experience of the dead woman is expressed through a subjective camera movement, a swift zoom-in on Agnes' face. Agnes wears a baby's hood on her head,
indicating that Anna now merges her with her own dead daughter. It is one of the most
dreamlike passages in the film.
For Agnes' miraculous 'resurrection' Bergman gives the following explanation:
Death is the ultimate loneliness; that is what is so important. Agnes's death
has been ("aught up halfway out into the void. I can't see that there's (j/!ything
odd about that. Yes, by Christ there i.l'/ This situation has n<'l'er been known,
either in reality or at the movies.

But it has been known on the stage! In The Ghost Sonata, the ghosts (the Milkmaid, the
Consul) are nothing but people whose death has been "caught up." However,just as these
characters are no real ghosts but incarnations of the Old Man's guilt feelings, so we

t57

CRIES AND WHISPERS (1973)

should not take Agnes' resurrection literally. Rather. we may imagine that whatever
Agnes is doing after she has died is communicated solely through internal narrators.
Anna's compassion for Agnes here converges with the guilt feelings of the sisters. In
different ways. their thoughts revolve around the recently dead woman. Significantly,
Agnes in the Swedish original uses the plural form of the pronoun when she tells Anna:
"For you [Sw. 'er'] perhaps it is a dream."'1
Actually, Agnes' 'resurrection' serves primarily to express, in a pregnant
way. the three women's attitude not to an abstract character called Death, as in The Sev-

enth Seal, but to a dying and dead person. The purpose, however. is the same. In either
case. it concerns man's confrontation with "the ultimate loneliness." Like most of the
characters in The Seventh Seal, Karin and Maria try to escape a confrontation with what
eventually will become their own fate. One is reminded of the medieval idea of the dead
as a .Ipeclllum, a mirror, of the living: "What you are, I have been. What I am, you will be:'
Like the nameless. mute Girl in The Seventh Seal, Anna accepts death. It is
she who hears Agnes' crying. It is she who remains with the dead woman. both literally
by keeping watch over her, and figuratively hy keeping the memory of her alive. When
the sisters and their husbands depart, in a very Chekhovian scene, Anna is left alone with
the memory of Agnes merging with that of her daughter: "Faintly, very far away and
scarcely discernible, she hears the CHILD'S crying,"
The contrast hetween life and death is expressed also spatially. While Agnes
is still alive. her black sick-bed with its hlood-red spread seems located at one end of the
large red living room. When she has died, the bed appears to be in a smaller room with a
door to the living room. The dreamlike change indicates that the room of life has now
been separated from the room of death. Anna is significantly the only one who moves
freely between the two rooms, the only one who accepts both.
In his 1973 staging of The Ghost Sonata, Bergman replaced Strindberg's
hope for divine grace with a belief in human love. The same idea is expressed in Cries
and Whispers, where Anna, not God, dries the tears of the dead woman and where the
fact that Agnes' crying does not cease when she dies seems to contradict the words of the
Revelation concerning the solace awaiting the blessed after death.
However, after the paradisaic flashback of the four women in the swing, the
film ends with the assurance: "Then the cries and the whispers cease," an assurance
pointing to the following passage from Revelation (21 A):
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and there shall be no more
death. neither sorrow, nor crying. neither shall there be any more pain: for the
former things are passed away."

t58

CRIES AND WIIHPERS (11'73)

Unlike the situation in The Ghost Sonata, the final vision in Cries and Whispers is only
implicitly a flashforward of a heavenly

paradi~e;

explicitly it is a flashback of an earthly

one, Through Agnes' diary, we witness the happy communion between the three sisters.
Anna is also present, rocking the sisters as a mother would her children. Unlike the diarywriter, Agnes, we realize that the togetherness of the sisters is purely momentary and that
the only lasting communion is the one between Agnes and Anna.
As the diary-writing Agnes had done earlier, Anna now recalls the happy
moment of communion in the park. Significantly, her reading of the diary takes place in
her own room. Again, we see the flowers and the apples. Anna is sitting on her bed,
looking down at her danghter's empty bed, thinking of Agnes. She lights the candle we
earlier saw her blowout and then starts to read from the diary which she has kept in her
drawer. The white burning candle, slowly dissolving into Agnes, dressed in white, expresses Anna's hopeful faith that Agnes now lives in a blessed hereafter. Agnes at this
point resembles her dead mother. whom we saw earlier in the same environment, she,
too, in white. The Chopin mazurka, which earlier formed a bridge between Anna's intercession for her dead daughter and Agnes' memory of her dead mother, now returns.
Suggestively, the music cumbines the two 'memorial' sequences. When Bergman first
has Anna read aloud from Agnes' diary and then, when the flashback begins, change to
Agnes' voice, it is an expression of how Anna at this moment experiences Agnes as very
alive, very close to her. The whole sound-image arrangement indicates that the dead
Agnes in Anna's imagination merges with her dead daughter. Agnes' words in the diary
about her moment of absolute happiness are applicable also to Anna - but for her, the
feeling of happiness concerns a communion not with the living but with the dead.
For the believing Anna, the fmal words can only mean that Agnes has found
rest in God. Some spectators will share her hope. Others will prefer to see the final
silence simply as a sign that Agnes has found rest in the earth.

t59

CRIES AND WHISPERS (I973)

Autumn Sonata (1978)

As the title indicates, there is a connection between Bergman's chamber film l Autumn
Sonata and Strindberg's chamber play The Gho,\'( Sonata. Bergman's film, which opens
with a sonata by Ha-ndel, comes in facl even closer to chamber music than Strindberg's
drama. The unities of time and place are more strictly adhered 10 than in the play. There

are four central characters corresponding to the four instruments in a string quartet.'
Music plays a dominant role. One of the chief characters is an internationally famous
pianist. Also structurally we may, in analogy with the sonata form, speak of an exposition, a realization, and a short, concluding repeat.

More important than this rather general description oflhe structure' is the fact
that the film medium itself favors the connection with music. In Bergman's words: "I
would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both
affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect." One might add that the visual rhythm
of film is akin to the aural one of music. Both in film and in music we deal with a
dynamic flow that is much more emotionally determined than what we find in fiction.
The script of Autumn Sonata is divided into a Prologue, followed by 18
scenes and an Epilogue. On the level of the present, the action takes place within one
revolution of the sun - as recommended hy classical dramaturgy. Charlotte Ongrid
Bergman) arrives to the vicarage at II a.m. and leaves in the morning the next day - after
a nocturnal confrontation with her daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann). Spatially, the action
takes place in the vicarage, apart from a couple of sequences at the end: Eva in the
churchyard, Charlotte in the train. The spatial unity emphasizes Eva's static existenceas opposed to Charlotte's restless travelling.
The construction of the plot is akin to that of analytical drama. As with lbsen,
it is mainly based on revelations of past events. revelations which le<ld to turbulent psy-

chological interaction. Such disclosures are frequently motivated by the sudden appearance of an outsider. Through their legitimate ignorance, Mrs. Linde in A Doll's House
and Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck help to inform the spectators about circumstances
known to the other characters. While in these plays, we are confronted with a reunion
hetween old friends, in Autumn Sonata the reunion is hetween mother and daughter after seven years. As this indicates, the two have a prohlematic relationship. Why then
does the meeting come about? The outward reason is that Charlotte's lover, Leonardo,
has just died. This causes Eva 10 write a letter of condolence, in which she invites the

160

AUTUMN SONATA (1978)

mother to come and stay with her and her husband, Viktor (Halvar Bjork). What causes
her to do this? Compassion for her mother - despite everything? A need 10 be seen at last
by the mother, now left alone? A wish to rebuke the mother, to dojustice'?l Or a desire for
revenge, albeit unconscious, when the mother, an ageing widow soon to conclude a career as an internationally acclaimed concert pianist, for the first time finds herself in a
weak position?
As with Ibsen and Strindberg, the question of guilt is fundamentaL By linking
the guilt through several generations, Bergman can gradually push it back in time. The
arrangement is very similar to that in Strindberg's chamber play The Pelican, staged
twice by Bergman, where the selfish mother, Elise, appears exceedingly guilt-laden until
the end of the play. There she defends herself against her daughter Gerda's accusations
by referring to the fact that her situation has been no better than the daughter's:
Do you know about my childhood? Do you have any idea of what a bad home
I had, what wickedness I learned there? ... So don't blame me; then I won't
blame my parents, who could blame theirs, and so on!
When Eva reproaches her mother for her egoism, Charlotte defends herself in much the
same way as Elise:
They [the parents] regarded us children with surprised benevolence, but without any wannth or real interest. I can't remember either of them ever having
touched me or my brothers.... Actually I was completely ignorant of everything to do with love: tenderness, contact, intimacy, warmth.
Charlotte finds that she cannot be blamed for her lack of love, For how can you expect
wannth from a mother who has never received any herself? However, the children will
eventually become parents and in turn be confronted with a child generation. Like a
boomerang, the criticism they as children have delivered against their parents will then
hit themselves.
In the confrontation between the two generations. one may feel inclined to
side with the children and see the parents - or one of them - as mainly responsible for the
defects of the children. Or one may side with the parents and see the criticism of the
children as a sign of lacking self-knowledge and need of projections. In Autumn Sonata,
we see both sides and realize that we are dealing, as it says in the film, with different
realities. AI the same time, there is something that unites the generations, "since the
grown-ups are still children who have to live disguised as grown-ups."

161

AUTUMN SONATA (1978)

Contrasting with the physically handicapped but spiritually healthy Helena,

caned Lena (Lena Nyman), are her physically healthy but spiritually handicapped
mother and sister. Eva has lived a life in the shadow of her parents. She worships her
authoritarian mother. She has abstained from the great love of her youth, Stefan, and
chosen a husband, Viktor, who is an obvious father substitute. She has given up her
writing and now devotes herself to piano playing - in imitation of her mother. Being a
clergyman, Viktor is a man of the word. The same is true ofEva-the-author. Charlotte, on
the other hand, has devoted her life to music, the wordless art. The fourth character in this
family drama, Helena, is lacking in words as a result of her illness.
The distrust of verbal communication is a frequent theme with Bergman.
Here, too, Strindberg has been an inspiration. "In silence you can't hide anything ... as
you can in words," says the Old Man in The Ghost Sonata; and a little later. the same idea
returns in the Colonel's remark to his wife: "What's the point of talking. when we can't
fool each other?" The same idea is expressed in Autumn Sonata. To speak often means to
put on a mask, to perform a sOl:ially acceptable role. Charlotte devotes herself to this
kind of verbal cheating. But as an artist. in her music. she is genuine. As one could expect
from an artist. she is a dividcd person. Her antithesis in this respect is Ihe wordless
Helena, Ihe distinctly positive character in the film. Between these two, we find Eva and
Yiktor. Significantly, Eva has changed from writing to piano playing, from the art of
words to that of music. It indicates her increasing distrust of language as a means of
communication. But her writing-desk is still very close to the grand piano.
Viktor seems to undergo a similar development. In the Prologue, he still has
faith in language: ''I'd like to tell her just for once that she is loved wholeheartedly, but I
can't say it in such a way that she'd believe me. I can't find the right words." In the
Epilogue. this naive fixation on words is undermined: "If only I could talk to her. but it's
all just a lot of dusty words and empty phrases."
Already as a child Eva experienced the discrepancy hetween words and the
reality they are supposed 10 describe. "I knew instinctively that you hardly ever meant
what you said," she reproaches the mother. The words, she points out. did not fit the
mother's glances or intonation. This is clearly demonstrated when Charlotte, against her
will. is confronted with Lena. Her declarations of love are here contradicted by her artificial intonation and facial expression. Even more than Eva, Lena distrusts verhal communication. Her illness bears witness to this. Faced with the false words, she has in protest
practically lost the power of speech. Unlike the others, Lena constantly expresses her true
feelings. and she does it through glances, gestures, movements. inarticulate sounds.
In contrast to animals, human beings have a richly differentiated language.
Usually this is taken as a proof that man is a more highly developed creature. To

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Bergman, this is a doubtful truth. Language is for him, as for Strindberg, just as much a
sign of degeneration. Along with the words, dividedness entered into the world. Having
eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, man, no longer naked, learnt to use words, behind
which he could hide his true self. He began to play roles. The Girl in The Seventh Seal,
Anna in Cries and Whispers, and Lena in Autumn Sonata - all women! - are characters
who, in their combination of muteness and goodness, are close to the dumb animals, and
like them unable to play roles.
Opposed to them are the verbal characters, in Autumn Sonata Charlotte, Eva
and Viktor. These are all subject to the 'Original Sin' of language. Eva accuses Viktor of
using "words that have no real sense," of suffering from "a kind of occupational disease."
But the discrepancy between the words and the reality they are supposed to express also
concerns Eva. Even in her initial letter, the phrase "dearest Mother," used three times,
expresses tender feelings which Eva does not at all have.
The first meeting between mother and daughter after seven years is marked
by mutual nervousness and the appurtenant verbal smoke-screens. In the script, only
Eva's reaction is recorded, a cascade of enthusiasm hiding a need to suppress: "Oh, you
do look tired." The power struggle has begun. In the film, we instead hear a dialogue, in
which mother and daughter demonstrate their master/slave relationship. Charlotte's artificial enthusiasm does not concern Eva but the house and the view.
Like Through a Glass Darkly, Autumn Sonata is about a parent who is also a
practising artist and who has had a fatal influence on hislher family. In Through a Glass
Darkly, the play Minus has written is at once a protest against his father's way of writing,
a strange attempt to reach out to him (strange since the father cannot possibly appreciate
Minus' play), perhaps even a form of self-punishment. In Autumn Sonata. Eva's piano
playing, similarly, may be seen both as a pathetic expression of her need to establish
contact with the mother and as an aggressive fonn of masochism, aggressive since
she "places her mother in a situation in which she [the mother) cannot possibly please
her."('
Since language is a writer's working material, an artist who distrusts this
material would rather deal with pictures or tones than with words. In Autumn Sonata,
artistry is connected with music. When Charlotte boastfully speaks of her successes as a
pianist, there is no reason to doubt that she is right. She has been very successful. In her
music, she can be generous to large audiences, while in her life she cannot reach out even
to those closest to her. She constantly falsifies her relations to her own family. Neither the
marriage to Josef nor her relationship with Leonardo has been the way she wants to see
it. Characteristically, the latter asks her to leave him shortly before he dies. She has
deserted her children. She has constantly placed her artistic career above care for her own

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AUTUMN SONATA {l978l

Autumn Sonata: The internationally renowned pianist Charlolle demonstrates to her frustrated
daughter Eva how Chopin should be played.

family. An egocenlric escape from responsibility and human kindness has mingled with
a need to get away from the false words to the truthful music.
A central scene in the film is the one when first Eva, then Charlotte play the
same Chopin prelude. Eva's manner of playing, Charlotte tells her, was defective not so
much because she is technically inexperienced but because her performance was sentimental rather than emotional:
The prelude you played tens of suppressed pain, not of reveries. You must be
calm, clear, and harsh. The temperature is feverishly high, but the expression
is manly and controlled.... This second prelude must be made to sound almost ugly. It must never become ingratiating. lE should sound wrong. You
must battle your way through it and emerge triumphant.
This severe indirect criticism contrasts with Charlotte's evaluation immediately after Eva
has finished playing:

164

AUTUMN SONATA (1978)

EVA. I want to know what r did wrong.

CHARLOITE. You didn't do anything wrong.
This should be compared to the following lines at the end of the nocturnal confrontation
between the two, appearing only in the script:
CHARLOITE.... What did I do wrong?
EVA. You did nothing wrong.
In this latter case, question and answer concern Charlotte's relationship to her family,
especially to her daughters. The phrasing in the two passages is similar. Both mother and
daughter maintain that the other has done nothing wrong. Yet Charlotte dislikes Eva's
manner of playing, and Eva dislikes Charlotte's manner of living. The mother finds her
daughter "sentimental," the daughter considers her mother "emotionally crippled."
When Eva is playing, Charlotte is sitting in the background. Her face reveals
that she is at once moved by Eva and tormented at her manner of playing. When Charlotte is playing, Eva keeps looking at her mother's face, not at her hands. In both cases
Bergman focusses on the listener rather than the player. It is the reaction of the listener
that matters, not least because it is the receiver with whom the spectator most naturally
identifies.
The relationship between art and life seems in Charlotte's case to be antithetic. She has succeeded in music but failed in life. Eva entertains this view. To her, the
mother's ability to enter into music markedly contrasts with her inability to enter into the
souls of other people. Art has become a substitute for life. To Charlotte, by contrast, art
and life are analogous. Her description of how the Chopin prelude should be played and how she herself plays it- is a disguised description of how life should be lived. At the
end of the film, she points out that the warmth and generosity she demonstrates as a
pianist indicate that she possesses these qualities as a human being. Who is right?
As always with Bergman, the characters in Autumn Sonata play different psychological roles. But the roles are not fixed. In the beginning of the film, Charlotte is the
teaching mother, Eva the learning child. Later, during the nocturnal confrontation, the
roles are reversed. Eva here sits in judgement on Charlotte; her implacable face returns
time and again in low angle, Charlotte's perspective. The mother has been reduced to a
helpless child.
Here and there in the film, there are short flashbacks providing glimpses of
the mother-daughter relationship in the past. The long shots chosen for these flashbacks
suggest not only that the spatial distance corresponds to a temporal one: the people in the

165

AUTUMN SONATA (1978)

background are hazy - as is our remembrance of things past. It also signifies a psychological distance between the child in the foreground and the grown-ups in the background. Along with Eva, we look into her past. The camera is on the eye level of a child.
A question to be posed is: How do the biological roles relate to the psychological roles? Eva maintains that "there is no difference between children and grown-ups, since
the grown-ups are still children who have to live disguised as grown-ups:' Nevertheless,
she later blames the mother for what she has done to her as a child: "A child is always
vulnerable...." Charlotte, on the other hand. self-defensively sticks to the psychological
aspect: "I've never grown up...." A weighty exchange of words amounts to the same:
EVA. I was a child.
CHARLOTTE. Does that matter?
Lena incarnates the combination. Biologically grown up, she is treated like a child because of her illness. In her bed, she is surrounded by teddy bears. Just as Agnes in Cries

and WhiWers to Anna is a substitute for her dead daughter, so Lena is to Eva a substitute
for her dead son. She is mothering her younger sister in front of Charlotte - as though she
wants to remind Charlotte of her negligence as a mother. Lena's essential part in the film
is to incarnate, make visible, both Eva's and Charlotte's feelings of helplessness, of long.
ing for safety and consolation. In the beginning, we sense especially the connection between the sisters, Lena's love for Leonardo corresponding to Eva's for Stefan. In both
cases, Charlotte has been an obstacle.
Charlotte's nightmare is illuminating in this connection. In the script, it says:

The door opens. CHARLOTTE is vel}' frightened. Suddenly HELENA

rushes into the room and throws hel:I'eI! over her mother. She is heavy and
strong. Afler a short struggle CHARLOTTE wakes up.
Charlotte is here haunted by guilt feelings toward Lena. In the film, the nightmare is
given another, more suggestive expression. It begins with a close-up of Charlotte's face
and hand in the twilight. Suddenly a woman's hand caressingly creeps into hers. For a
moment, we experience the situation realistically - the way Charlone does in her dream.
The caressing hand remains unidentified, since figuratively speaking it is both Lena's
and Eva's hand. The hand caresses Charlotte's cheeL then moves behind her head. Suddenly, it seems to tear at her hair. Charlotte wakes up screaming. The nightmare has
recreated her experience of her daughters ambivalent attitude to her, their longing for
contact and their need for revenge.

166

AUTUMN SONATA (1978)

At the end of the culminating confrontation scene, Bergman intercuts between Charlotte in a low child's position and Lena, tormented, rolling across the floor.
Charlotte's appeal to Eva - "Eva dear, help me!" - corresponds to Lena's desperate
"Help! Mother, come!" (not in script) - significantly, the only words by her which are
clearly distinguishable. Lena incarnates at this moment both Eva's and Charlotte's longing for communion and understanding.
The film opens with Viktor, in close-up, telling about how he and Eva, visible
in the far background, first met. Plainly expository, the situation serves to provide the
spectator with basic information. It may be compared to the opening of Scenes from a
Marriage, where a reporter from a ladies' journal is interviewing Johan and Marianne.
The polished fa..ade shown to the world will soon crumble, and the hierarchic man-wife
relationship, quite appropriate to the readers of the ladies' journal, will soon appear untenable.
In Autumn Sonata, the purpose is quite different. Viktor turns directly to the
spectator, facing himlher squarely - as though we had asked him, just before the film

Aulumn Sonata opens with Viktor providing e){position ud speetalores in the dark foreground,
while his wife Eva ill the light background is writing a letter to her mother Charlotte.

161

AUTUMN SONATA (1918)

began, to tell us about his private life. Bergman here combines two old dramaturgic
devices: the Prologue of classical drama and the conversation between a stage figure and
his confidant, If the situation nevertheless seems new, it is because the confidant is not a
figure on the screen but the spectator in the auditorium. Viktor is significantly placed
between Eva, who cannot hear what he is saying, and the spectator. The bamer between
screen and auditorium is demolished.
Viktor at this point is slanding in a door opening, in dark clothes against a
dark wall. To the left of him, we look into the light living room where Eva is sitting by the
window next to the photo of her dead son Erik. The striking spatial contrast - reminiscent
of the one opening the breakfast scene in Wild Strawberries - turns Viktor into an outsider, placed by the frame of the 'proscenium' outside the 'stage area' proper.
Proxemically, he is separated from both mother and child, who are bathing in light. (Behind liltle Erik's blond hair one divines a halo of light, visualizing the parents' glorification of the dead child,)
In Autumn Sonata, Bergman abstains from using straight voice-over in connection with soliloquies. (Eva's final suliloquy is, as we shall see, a border case.) The
characters utter their soliloquies aloud - as they would on the stage. This means a
retheatricalization of the film medium - quite in line with Bergman's striving for stylization of a recognizable reality. Presumably, he finds the voice-over technique artificial and
defeating its own purpose. For is ilnot precisely when the words are born spontaneously
on our lips, when our thoughts are immediately verbalized, that the adequate facial expression appears?'
Having failed in their attempt at reconciliation, mother and daughter separate.
Instead of staying "for a long time" in the vicarage, Charlotte departs early next morning.
At the end of the film, Bergman effectively crosscuts between Charlotte's talking to her
agent Paul (Gunnar Bjomstrand) in an elegant first class compartment and Eva talking to
her dead son Erik in the churchyard.
In the script, this passage (Scene 18) covers two pages. The corresponding
sequence in the film is done as follows:
CHARLOTTE, in an elegant beige dress, is silting in a ,first class compart-

ment, smoking. Opposite her, her agent PAUL, in black suit, is readinR a
paper. Outside the compartmenr window a beaulifullandscape -forest and
still waters - is gliding past. Evening sun. Train rattle.
CHARLOTIE in ETJRlish. Paul, it was good of you to come with me. I don't
think I could have taken it alone. I don't know, I had a slight shock, I think.
My daughter Helena was there - quite unexpectedly. And sicker than ever,

16H

AUTUMN .H)NATA II97H)

Why can't she die? Looks out through the window. Pause. Looks again at
PAUL. Do you think it's cruel of me to talk like that?
A churchyard high above a fjord with still water. In the foreground grave-

stones, in the background EVA, in gray coat and black boots, is seen walking.
Daylight.
EVA. Poor little Mother, rushing off like that. She looked so frightened, and

suddenly so old and tired. Her face had shrunk, and her nose was red with
weeping. Now I'll never see her again.
Close-up of PAUL, who has fallen asleep. Train rattle.
CHARLOTTE in English. Paul! PAUL wakes up. Listen, don't go to sleep
now. Pan 10 CHARLOTTE. The critics always say that I'm a generous musician. No one plays Schumann's piano concerto with a warmer tone. Nor the
big Brahms sonata. I'm not stingy with myself. Or am I?
EVA is silting on the wall ofthe churchyard next 10 a big birch. She is looking
at ERIK'S white graveslone in the foreground.
EVA. It will soon be dark, and it's getting cold. I must go home and get dinner
for Viktor and Helena. Dissolve to extreme long shot ofEVA, the birch and
the gravestone. I can't die now. I'm afraid to commit suicide. Maybe God will
want 10 use me one day, and then he'll set me free from my prison.
Red-toned,frontal close-up ofCHARLOTTE. Train raUle.
CHARLOTfE in English. Paul, see that little village. The lights are on already in the houses. People are going about doing their evening duties, somebody is preparing dinner, Close-up of PAUL who takes offhis spectacles. the
children are doing their homework. Red-toned close-up of CHARLOTTE,
minute in-zoom.
CHARLOTTE in Swedish. I feel so shut oul. I'm always homesick, bUI when
I get home I realize it must be something else 1 long for.
Extreme long shot ofEVA in the background, gravestones in theforeground.
EVA. Erik, are you stroking my cheek? Are you whispering in my ear? Are
you with me now? We'll never leave each olher, you and l.
Two-shot PAUL and CHARLOTTE in prOfile, next to each other. Train rattle.
CHARLOTTE in English. What would I do without you') Kisses his nose.

169

AUTUMN SONATA (1978)

And what would you do without me? PAUL kisses her hand. Think what a
trying time you have with your violinists. And what the hell of a noise they
make when Ihey practice. They laugh. He shyly caresses her hand, looks out
of the window. She withdraws her hand, turns towards the window, sees her
own reflection in the black window which is partly hidden behind Ihe lamp in
the compartmenl. Loud lrain rattle.
In the background Ihe vicarage with illuminated windows in the fv./ilight.
EVA, hardly visible in the foreground, is walking up to Ihe house.
EVA. There's a light in Helena's room. Viktor's there, talking 10 her. That's
good. He's kind. He's telling her that Mother has gone away.
Is the silent Paul, whose name means 'humble,' a counterpart of Lena? Is he a man who
has discovered the emptiness of words and who prefers to communicate through glances
and caresses? Or is he an absent-minded gentleman who merely pretends 10 listen when
it is in his interest to do so? Is he perhaps another Viktor, an indication that mother and
daughter are attracted to the same type of man? In the script, Charlotte's statement that
Paul "is kind" is followed by Eva's statement that Viktor "is kind." Is he of flesh-andblood at all or. as his silence may suggest, merely a figment, an incarnation of Charlotte's
needs at this momenl?3 Does he ultimately represent her wishful thinking of death'!'
In the script, we never learn where Eva is soliloquizing. In the film, her environment at this point must be established. Bergman selecls the churchyard. The silent
realm of the dead becomes an effective contrast to the noisy train, and Eva's calm walking along the wall of the churchyard, with the magnificent fjord in the background forms
a parallel-by-contrast to Charlotte's journey through the low-lying landscape rushing by
outside the compartment window. Although the two events seem to take place simultaneously, it is considerably lighter in the churchyard than outside the train. Presumably,
Bergman was less interested in the factual light than in light as an indication of two
stages on the journey of life. Clearly, the setting sun and the approaching darkness are
especially relevant to the ageing woman. When she looks into the darkness, she meets
her own mirrored self on the window pane - a complex metaphor suggesting man's imprisonment in himself, his loneliness before death and his sense of self-confrontation
when facing death. lo
As already indicated, Charlotte's conversation with Paul comes close to a
soliloquy, a thinking aloud. This is especially true when she switches from English to
Swedish, a language which Paul cannot understand. The transition to the mother tongue
characteristically takes place in a passage expressing homesickness.

170

AUTUMN SONATA (1978)

While Charlotte seeks consolation from a seemingly living person, Eva -like
Anna in Cries and Whispers - is in her imagination together with her dead child. The
crosscutting at this point reverses the situation early in the film, when we saw Eva seeking consolation from Viktor, while Charlotte was speaking to the photo of her dead lover.
Here, too, the crosscutting indicates that the difference between dialogue and soliloquy
is negligible, that the dead Leonardo is in fact a better 'listener' than the living Viktor,
that communication with the dead functions better than with the living.
The extreme long shots in the churchyard sequence have a neutralizing effect
diminishing the pathos of the situation. The discrepancy that hereby arises between camera
distance and vocal proximity corresponds to Eva's sense of contact with her dead child.
The letter which shapes the foundation for a happy end has a long tradition on
the stage. Bergman relates to this tradition in the spectacular deus ex machina resolution
at the end of The Magician and, more quietly, at the end of Autumn Sonata. The two
letters in the latter film - one in the Prologue. the other in the Epilogue - serve to frame
the action. Both are written by Eva, both are directed to her mother Charlotte, and both
are kept in a friendly tone. But there the resemblance ceases. Let us look more closely at
the context of the two letters.
The first is a letter of invitation, kept in a humble, almost ingratiating tone.
We learn that mother and daughter have not met in seven years and that Eva is now
anxious to have the mother visit her. The spectator wonders why. As soon as the letter is
finished, Eva enters her husband's study to read the letter to him before mailing it. With
paternalistic benevolence. Viktor approves of the letter. The dialogue between husband
and wife is realistic.
Instead of the idyllic reunion both women have been hoping for now that one
has lost a son and the other a lover, Charlotte's visit leads to a confrontation. The mother,
held responsible for her behavior in the past, proves defenceless against the daughter's
accusations. When she leaves, both she and Eva have a feeling that they will never meet
again. The break is a fact.
Then comes the reversal in the Epilogue. Again Eva is sitting by the window
writing a letter to her mother. This time she intends to mail it directly. without having
Viktor look at it. As it happens, Eva meets him in the hall.As it happens, he is on his way
to the post office. She asks him to mail the letter. And she adds: "You may read it if you
like." She does not try to keep the content of the letter secret. She does not ask for his
approval. Compared with the Eva of the Prologue, the Eva of the Epilogue acts like a
grown-up person.
The coincidences which, of course, dramaturgically are not coincidences at
all mean that the spectator via Viktor is infonned about the content of the letter:

171

AUTUMN SONATA (1978)

Long shot o/VIKTOR reading the letter. He approaches the hall - and the
camera. "I have realized that I wronged you. I met you with demands instead

of with affection. I tonnented you with an old soured hatred which is no

longer real. Close-up of VIKTOR. Dark background. Everything I did was
wrong and I want to ask your forgiveness. Frontal close-up of EVA, with
glasses, open face, tender voice. Lif{hl background. I've no idea whether this

letter will reach you, I don't even know if you will read it. Perhaps everything
is already too late. But I hope all the same that my discovery will not be in
vain. There is a kind of mercy after all. I mean the enonnous chance of looking after each other, of helping each other, of showing affection. I want you to
know that I will never let you go again or let you vanish out of my life. I'm
going to persist! I won 'I give up, even if it should be too late. Fronta/ dose-up
ofCHARLOTIE, without glasses, looking down - as though she were reading EVA'S letter. Light backf{TOund. 1don't think it is too late. CHARLOTTE
raises her face, opens her lips as though she is whispering something and
closes them of{oin. Tender, open, helpless face -like that of a child. It must

nOI be 100 late." Close-up o/VIKTOR, looking down at the letter. Tilt down to
his hands, which put the leller in its enw/ope. Fade-out.

It can be seen that compared with the first letter, the second one is presented indirectly
and subjectively. It is in Viktor's imagination that the faces of the two women are evoked,
and the way in which it is done reveals his hope that a final reconciliation between
mother and daughter will be possible. By itself, the letter is hardly unambiguous. Eva's
assurance that she win never let the mother "go again" may sound rather authoritarian.
But this is toned down by the way in which it is said - in Viktor's imagination.
More striking than the face of the wife is thal of the mother. Here we deal
with a subjective flashforward. Viktor not only imagines that Charlotte receives and
reads the letter, something Ihat is questioned by Eva herself; he also envisages how she
reacts to it. While Charlotte earlier needed her glasses to be able to read, she can now do
wilhout. She has taken off the protective mask. By contrast, Eva keeps her glasses while in the earlier confrontation scene she look them off. To Viktor, she apparently
seems less conciliatory than the mother.
It should also be noticed that the camera gradually approaches the faces. We
get a little closer to Eva than to Viktor, and yet a little closer to Charlotte - after which we
return to the somewhat greater distance to Viktor. The distances here contribute to the
emotional loading which culminates in the words accompanying the Charlotte frames.
But the differences are small, and the main impression is that the two women (the sender

172

AUTUMN SONATA (1918)

and receiver of the letter) now try to reach out to one another with greater honesty than
they have shown before. Viktor's hope that a reconciliation is possible is transmitted
emotionally, via the

173

c1ose~ups

of the women, to the spectator. 11

AUTUMN .sONATA

(11'7~)

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Fanny and Alexander exists in two versions, a shorter one released for cinema transmission

and a longer one meant for television. It is the latter, which agrees better with the published
script and is regarded as the proper one by Bergman,' that will be considered here.
Intended in the first place as a television series, the script of Fanny and Alexander is divided into five "acts," 10 which are added, in classical theater idiom, a Pro-

logue and an Epilogue.

In the Prologue, which figures only in the script, we are introduced to the
lown in which the drama unfolds. The town, which boasts a castle, a cathedral, a university, and a theater, is never named; that would diminish its universality. The year is 1907.
Act I describes the Christmas celebrations, first in the theater, then in the
Ekdahl home. In Act

n,

the managing director of the theater, Oscar Ekdahl (Allan

Edwall), suffers a stroke during a rehearsal of Hamlet, is driven home, dies. and is buried.
In Act HI his young widow Emilie (Ewa Frbhling) is remarried to Bishop Edvard
Vergerus (Jan Malmsjo), breaks with the theater, and moves with her children Alexander
(Bertil Ouve) and Fanny (Pemilla Allwin) to the Bishop's residence. Act IV charts the
"events of the summer" of 1909; scenes from idyllic Eknas, the Ekdahls' summer place
in the archipelago, are intertwined with scenes demonstrating the strict routine in the
Bishop's house, where Emilie and her children are 'imprisoned.' Act V begins with a
description of how the children are rescued from the Bishop's residence and taken to Isak
Jacobi's (Erland Josephson) mysterious antique shop and apartment, after which these
two contrasting environments are intertwined. In the final scene of this act. omitted from
the series, Emilie returns to the theater after the Bishop's death.
In the Epilogue we are back among the Ekdahls, now happier than ever. It is
May (Sw. 'maj'), the lilacs are in bloom, Emilie and the nanny Maj (Pernilla Wallgren)
have each given birth to a daughter, and it is the day of the joint christening. We have
some fragmentary impression of what the future holds for Maj, Oustav Adolf's (Jarl
Kulle) daughter, and Emilie. In the closing images, lacking in the script, we see Alexander in the lap of his grandmother Helena (Gunn W1illgren) who reads Strindberg's Explanatory Note to A Dream Play aloud to him.
The title of Fanny and Alexander may appear trivial and slightly confusing,
since Fanny's part in the film is rather small compared with Alexander's. Actually, the
title is quite meaningful. Refening to the names of two children, brother and sister. it

174

FANNY AND AT.EXANDER (1982)

indicates that it is the child's perspective - and the artistic Ekdahls have by and large
retained this perspective - that predominates in the film. In Bergman's view, there is no
fundamental difference between the perspective of children ,md grown-ups since, in the
words of Eva in Autumn Sonata, "the grown-ups are still children who have to live disguised as grown-ups." Like the author of A Dream Play, Bergman sees human beings as
children (Sw. 'rnanniskobarn').
That Fanny's name is mentioned tirst, despite her being the younger, scarcely
springs from conventional etiquette. It is a discreet indication of the women'5 prominent
role in the TV series - in contrast to male society's 'Adam and Eve:
The blonde, eight-year-old Fanny, who was already "healthy and plump"
when she was born, stands for earthiness and affirmation, while her darker brother Alexander, the elder by two years, "small and weakly" from the cradle, is an introvert brooder
and seeker, a day-dreaming misanthrope with his gaze directed towards a reality beyond
the visible one. It is significantly he who remains in contact with the dead father.
The light and the dark, woman and man, anima and animus, yin and yang - in
the final analysis, Fanny and Alexander give shape to the conflicting tendencies in man,
dramatically split up into two individuals, as we know it from Bergman's earlier films:
Antonius Block and kms in The Seventh Seal, Ester and Anna in The Silence, Elisabet
and Alma in Persona. However, this time it is not gender but age that links the names.
The family to which Fanny and Alexander belong is called Ekdahl, a name
that ever since Ibsen's The Wild Duck has become synonymous with people consoling
themselves with illusions about life. Like lbsen's Ekdals, Bergman's socially superior
Ekdahls - note the inserted 'h' - have a need to embeIlish reality in order to endure it. "If
you deprive an average man of his illusions you simultaneously steal his happiness," says
Relling in Ibsen's play. "Rob a man of his subterfuges and he goes mad and begins
hilting out," declares Gustav Adolf Ekdahl in Bergman's film.
Ibsen contrasts the uncompromising childhood world of Hedvig and Gregers
with the adult "life lie" existence of the Ekdals. In the same way, Bergman sets the childhood purity of Fanny and Alexander against the "subterfuges" of the grown-ups, their
fapde mentality and role-playing.
At the same time, there is an undercurrent connecting the children with the
grown-ups. As we have seen, Alexander, too, feels the need to escape from harsh reality.
Contrary to his younger sister, who has the strength to accept existence on its own terms,
he is already on his way to the adult world. Seen from this standpoint, their difference in
age is significant: Fanny and Alexander are incarnations of stages on life's way.
Correspondingly, the elderly grandmother, Helena Ekdahl, represents another phase of existence, the experience of old age. The frankness of the children and the

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FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1\182)

old lady's ability to see things in perspective gives all three of them a sense of those
essentials of existence that are lacking during the chaotic "middle period" - adult life.
Fanny and Alexander also have their theatrical counterparts - as do the cheerful Gustav Adolf and his tragic brother Carl - in the happy mask of Comedy and the
melancholy mask of Tragedy. Significantly, the opening shot of the series, showing the
Acropolis as the backdrop in Alexander's toy theatre, includes these two masks.
The series shows predominantly two contrasting environments: the cozy
Ekdahl household, with its close attachment 10 the theater (illusion), and the ascetic
Bishop's residence, with its ties to the church (religion). The tension between these two
milieux, these alternative ways of life, is one that may be traced through Bergman's
entire film career, even aesthetically. Alongside a series of multifaceted fIlms, rich in
setting and characters, he has also created his pared-down chamber films. These two
kinds correspond, if you will, to the over-decorated, dazzlingly colored Ekdahl milieu
and the austere Vergerus one with its restricted color scheme reminiscent of black-andwhite film.
The question about the meaning of life that features so strongly in
Strindberg's Dream Play, and the answer to which one expects to find behind the mysterious door with its four-leaf clover hole, is also posed in Fanny and Alexander. Like
Strindberg, Bergman emphasizes the unreality of life itself. What became of "the whole
long interval," Helena asks herself, rather like the aged Nina Leeds in O'Neill's Strange
Interlude. She is referring to the adult period between childhood and old age, but in the

context - she addresses the question to her dead son - her speculation also refers to life as
such, that brief journey from something unknown to something unknown.
It is true that most of the Ekdahls do not ponder over life's larger issues. "We
Ekdahls have not come into the world to see through it," Gustav Adolf declares in his
Epilogue speech. But in this respect, they contrast with the brooding Hamlet figure of
Alexander, with Edvard Vergerus, who attempts to solve the mystery ofhfe with the aid
of a harsh and punitive God, and with Isak Jacobi's animistic monism.
The door with the four-leaf clover has its Bergman equivalent in the invisible
jib-door that separates Helena's apartment from Oscar and Emilie's. Psychologically,
this door symbolizes the undercurrent relationships that exist despite the impression people give of being separated from one another, incapable of 'entering' one another. Metaphysically, the jib-door raises the question whether or not there is an exit from life, a
'room' beyond earthly existence.
The metaphysical aspect becomes dominant when Alexander is confronted in
Jacobi's apartment with "a black-painled jib-door," from which a screaming god
emerges. On closer inspection, this god turns out to be merely a huge marionette that

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flops to the floor when the man who pulls the strings, the atheist Amn, releases it. This
god, identical to the one worshipped by Edvard Vergerus, is unveiled as a man-made
construction. The unmasking of the marionette-god anticipates that of the Bishop, whose
domineering posture finally degenerates into an abject crawling about the floor.
The Christian dualism of grace and punishment, heaven and hell, gives way
to a Jewish, pantheistic monism, a belief that "everything is alive, everything is God and
the thought of God, not only the good but also the cruellest things." This belief plays the
same cathartic role in Fanny and Alexander as the Brahmin myth of the Fall of Man in A
Dream Play. lsak's perception of God may also be compared with the psychological
monism that is contained in the names Fanny and Alexander.
Although Alexander, who is haunted by the ghost of his dead father, should
be susceptible to the pantheistic belief in demons, he adheres rather to a personal god, be
it a "piss-and-shit-god." Characteristically, the Bishop's sacrorhetorical image of God is
repeatedly contrasted with Alexander's blasphemous catalogue of expletives, expressive
of his sexual inferiority complex vis-a-vis his stepfather.
Freud chose to locate the reason for Hamlet's not immediately taking revenge
on his stepfather in the Prince's own repressed childhood desire: the yearning to get his
father out of the way so that he himself might enjoy his mother's favors. Because the
stepfather has already performed both actions, Hamlet's energies are numbed and replaced by self-reproach, since "he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he
is to punish."l
This model can also be applied to the triangle fonned by Edvard, Emilie.
and Alexander. l Their correspondence to the leading characters in Hamlet is blatantly
underlined when Emilie tells her son: "Don't act Hamlet, my son. I'm not Queen
Gertrude, your kind stepfather is no king of Denmark, and this is not Elsinore castle,
even if it does look gloomy." What for Emilie are fantasies or pure lies are realities for
Alexander.
In Bergman's script, Gertrude's 'infidelity' has its equivalent in the insinuations that Alexander and Fanny are not Oscar's children - compare his role as Joseph in
the Nativity play - but this allusion to Emilie's amorous escapades does not figure in the
screen version.
Alexander's erotic attraction to his mother and concomitant hatred of his
stepfather has an obvious Oedipal tinge. Already in the prelude to the film, we see Alexander snuggle down into his granny's ample bed and pull the cover over himself. A little
later Helena fusses over him. The vague impression that the contact between mother and
son may not be what it should he is reinforced when Maj, the children's nanny, is shown
to function as a substitute mother - like so many servants of former times.

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During the pillow fight in the nursery, Maj plays out a sexual situation with
Alexander. And when, not long afterwards, he is lying in bed, she comes to him and
whispers:
Tonight you can't sleep in Maj's bed because Maj will have a visitor, you see,
and Maj can't have any number of men in her bed, can she now? All the same,
you're Maj's sweetheart, you know that, don't you?
At which point Alexander turns abruptly away from her,
Here the mother's 'treachery' toward her son, in favor of another 'man,' is
clearly anticipated. As opposed to the young Hamlet (whose age is indetenninate),Alexander is still a child and so cannot compete on sexual terms with the adult Edvard. His
constant chaltering to himself about sexual matters testifies to his problem in this area.
The contrast between child and grown-up and the linking of the religious and
sexual spheres are manifested most significantly when the marionette-god asks Alexander in Edvard's abstract, rhetorical tones: "Is there anything greater than love?" and in
Alexander's concrete, blasphemous response: "Well, if there is it would be His Grace the
bishop's cockstand. I can't think of anything else as I'm only ten years old and haven't
much experience." The (archetypal) loathing of the boy for the adult has, in other words,
a double cause, and it is precisely in his combination of virile ladies' man and punitive
clergyman that Vergerus appears so menacing an opponent in Alexander's eyes.
Appears. For it is clear that the film accommodates elements of strong subjectivity. They include Oscar's numerous returns after his death; through differences in
costume and lighting it is made clear that we are dealing here with a subjective reality.
They also include Alexander's story about &lvard's "murder" of his first wife and their
two children, a fantasy engineered by his hatred for the Bishop and at the same time a
harbinger of the fate that will soon befall Edvard's second wife and her children.
But often it is tantalizingly vague as to where Ihe demarcation line runs between objective and subjective reality. (s one, for example, to accept the enormous
Ekdahl apartment as an authentic replica of a patrician home? One certainly can. But one
may also see it as absurdly large by virtue of its being viewed through the eyes of a child.
Bergman seems 10 choose to imply this later Oil, when at the start of the film he places
Alexander beneath a table and lets him peep out at the room from this low position; this
is a pictorial indication that what follows is dominated by the child's point of view.
In the script, the Prologue consists, we recall, of a panoramic description of
the town in which the action unfolds. "A river with a fairly swift current and several
small cataracts and waterfalls flows throu[fh the town," it says here. The Prologue of the

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PANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982)

film is quite different. It contains no description of the town. And although the swift river
is visible in the opening shots, it is no longer realistic but mythic; streaming towards a
foaming waterfall, marked by an obvious border, it represents life's inevitable movement
towards death. Synchronized with the images of streaming water, as though in appraisal
of Ihis transient life, are the light, exuberant bars from the second movement of
Schumann's piano quintet op. 44. Alternatively, the nondiegetic romantic music replacing the diegetic sound we would expect - the roar of the waterfall- may be seen as an
expression of man's need to exorcise death by means of art (music). A similar combination of music and image - with marked seasonal changes, indicating the phases of life is repeated in the beginning of each act/part of the film as a reminder of life's inconstancy
and brevity.
As soon as the Prologue proper begins, Bergman cuts from this wide perspective of the stream of life to the small one of Alexander and his world. Significantly, we
first see him via his puppet theater. The sequence begins with a close-up of the theater,
causing us to believe thal we are confronted with the Royal Theater in Copenhagen.
Already here Bergman attunes us to Alexander's mingling of reality and fantasy. And the
key word in this process is "thealer." The red curtain is lifted, and we witness a romantic
setting. When the backdrop is lifted, we see Alexander's huge face behind the tiny paper
figures on the stage.
What we witness here is an inward movement which is at the same time a
movement from illusion to reality. What is presented is the child living in a self-created
fantasy world, a world that can be surveyed and controlled. But it is also the director as
creator of illusion, as magician. Eventually, Alexander is to meet a kinsman in Aron
(Mats Bergman), who also rules over a self-created world of puppets. Behind the boards
representing the world, there is a hidden manipulator who controls everything happening
on these boards. The same may be true of the world mirrored on the stage. Also behind
the world in which we live there is - perhaps - a hidden Director.
From the world of the theater, we move to the affluent Ekdahl interior, seen
from the child's low optical point of view, this, too, a theatrical world filled with lots of
properties. Along with Alexander, we explore the gigantic apartment. Moving from one
room to another he keeps shouting: "Fanny! Mother! ... Siri! ... Maj! ... Granny!" It is as
though only women can fill the emptiness around him. Eventually, he lies down on his
back under a table and clasps his hands as though he were praying. In a long, low-angle
shot we see, with him, two large rooms in a suite. The spectator has taken his position in
front of a deep 'stage."
Suddenly, the lighting changes miraculously. The half-naked woman sculpture by the window is strongly lit by the sun,s and the room behind it turns intensely red.

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FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982)

The glass prisms of the crystal chandelier, in close-up, begin to move. The woman sculpture raises one arm. A dull sound appears to emanate from a scythe drawn through the
carpet, and soon we see a grinning skull in a black, hooded cloak stealing towards the
woman behind the leaves of a potted palm. 6 Alternating with these visions, we see Alexander's bewildered or thoughtful face in close-up. In the child's imagination, the apartment has turned into a world where the white woman and the black-clad skeleton
represent not only life and death or - as in the opening shots of the river - the transformation from the one to the other, but also point forward to the struggle between the white
Oscar and the black Edvard, between him who is a living dead and him who is dead in
life.
The brittle, childish, music-box music accompanying the miraculous visions
is suddenly replaced by an unpleasant clash which returns Alexander, and us, to reality.
The visionary light fades. The 'theater performance' is finished and is replaced by gray,
everyday reality. A servant is putting coals into the iron stove in the corridor. Then grandmother Helena enters and takes care of Alexander.
A child experiences reality differently from an adult. For the child, it frequently appears startling, secretive, terrifying. This is connected not least with the
behavior of grown-ups. He who wants to present a child's experience of life to an adult
audience is therefore compelled to make it differ, in one way or another, from the reality
familiar to that audience. Bergman achieves this by means of stylization and a touch of
the grotesque. What strikes us as dreamlike, unrealistic may be seen as manifestations of
a reality we left behind when we grew up. Bergman's tendency to blur the border between objective and subjective reality is apparent in the Ekdahl interior. By and large, it
looks perfectly realistic. An opulent bourgeois home at the turn of the century might have
appeared like this.? Confirmation of this may be found in the following description of the
living conditions of the Swedish bourgeoisie around this time:
When one examines pictures of these overloaded interiors. it is the theatrical
element that is most conspicuous. As never before, families were investing
time and money into the shapinR of their living quarters, building up an entire
landscape and atmosphere in room after room ... The home became the stage
on which the family displayed its opulence and its social status .... This conscious or unconscious theatrical way of thinking corresponded well to the
new image of man as a refined actor.

The warm colors, the generous

curves, and the soft material, all radiated sensuality. The home became a
theater box from which the family gazed out at the world.!

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FANNY ANIJ Af.EXANIJER (1982)

As appears from this description, the graceful feminine and theatrical features in the
scarlet interiors of the Ekdahl home are not of Bergman's fabrication. On the contrary,
they constitute a social and ideological sign-language that is to be found in the turn of the
century environment mirrored in the film.
However, the connection between theater and home is much stronger in
Bergman's version. We cut directly from the theater to the Ekdah! house opposite it, so
splendidly lit up and decorated for Christmas that it assumes a theatrical character. This
impression is kept up also in the interior. The Ekdahl living room "is framed by heavy
velvet curtains, reminiscent of the curtain in a theater - which, moreover, have the same
calor as the curtain of Alexander's puppet theater."9 Similarly, we cut from the theater's
Play about the Joyful Birth of Christ to the reading aloud about this same event in
Helena's living room. Already at the theater, we participate in the material good cheer
when Gustav Adolf Ekdahl storms in at the head of his restaurant staff, thereby anticipating the long dance to the Ekdahl kitchen that we are soon to witness.
By blending the two settings in this way, Bergman illustrates one of the series' basic premises: that life and theater are intimately related to each other. But while
the actors on the stage consciously perfonn their roles, in ordinary life we constantly
devote ourselves to role-playing without being aware of it.
Helena, like Elisabet in Persona before her, brings the two areas together
when she speaks by turns of her roles on stage and in life; the one kind seems as real to
her as the other. Even the funeral of her son, Oscar, becomes a perfonnance in her eyes.
When it is said of him that he is a poor actor, it is metaphorically a positive assessment.
Oscar does not play any roles in life. His love is pure and unequivocal, like a child's. In
his way, he corresponds to Ibsen's Hedvig.
Part of the social role-playing consists in appearing more remarkable than
one really is. This is noticeable in the royalist aspirations of the Ekdahls. Oscar Ekdahl
Sr. and Oscar Ekdahl Jr. correspond to King Oscar I and King Oscar H. Oscar Ekdahl lr.'s
brothers are caned Gustav Adolf and Carl, just like the crown prince and prince at the
time. The series begins at Christmas, 1907. A couple of weeks later Oscar dies and is
succeeded as director of the theater by his wife. It is an 'accession' that rhymes not only
with that of Hamlet I and Claudius but also with Gustav V's succession to the throne
following the death of Oscar 1I in December 1907. The amorous adventures of Gustav
Adolf and Carl are on a regal level. "Have you ever seen such a crown prince?" cries the
former in an intimate scene with his mistress Maj. Carl's wife Lydia is German just as the
then Queen Viktoria, and the daughter of Gustav Adolf and Maj is christened Helena
Viktoria in the Epilogue. Helena wears royal decorations. Oscar lies on his bier like a
monarch, and the cortege from the cathedral has the look of a state funeral.

181

FANNY AND ALEXANDER (l'JR2)

As already suggested, all these allusions dovetail with the conservatism of the
Ekdahl family, their need to embel1ish existence by embellishing themselves. The same
mentality may be discerned in their lbsenite forebears. But the references also form a
historical and ideological framework around the story. We find ourselves in the Oscarian
realm of Sweden, with its bourgeois standards and values. At the same time, we are
reminded of another monarchy with a dubious double morality. "the rotten state of Denmark," encountered in Hamlet. The combination of a 20th century Swedish reality and a
fictional Danish one some 400 years earlier implies that then and now, theater and life,
are interwoven, and that human nature remains remarkably stable in its instability.
But kings, princes, and princesses are creations we also associate with the
world of fairy tales, and thus with childhood. As children we identify with such figures.
Life still lies before us, tempting and promising. Carl (Borje Ahlstedt) refers to this when
he laconically sums up life in these teons: "First I'm a prince, the heir to the kingdom.
Suddenly, before I know it, I'm deposed. Death taps me on the shoulder."
The Ekdahls cling to the ideals of a vanished era. The Divine Right of Kings
was already an anachronism in 1907. The foundations of a male-governed, conservative
society were beginning to totter. There is an amusing comment to this development in the
Prologue: "God, finally, holds his hand over the king, and the waltz from The Merry
Widow is played as a duet in almost every family that owns a piano."IU The combination

of the King and the Merry Widow is naturally an allusion to Claudius and Gertrude. But
the waltz also refers to the dawn of female emancipation; The widow Helena takes over
the running of the theater in the wake of her husband, and the widow Emilie follows in
her footsteps. When Emilie moves to the Bishop's residence, Gustav Adolftakes over the
business but he cannot manage it, and not until Emilie returns to the theater is there any
sign of a renaissance. "Prince" Carl and "second-rate Napoleon" Gustav Adolf will never
inherit the kingdom. Instead, it will be the latter's illegitimate daughter who is proclaimed "empress."
Fanny and Alexander, it has been said, deals with "the downfall of the patriar-

chy, its degeneration, disintegration and eventual collapse."1l There is a certain truth in
this. It is no mere coincidence that it is two girls who are honored at the christening in the
Epilogue and that they are named Helena Viktoria and Aurora. But the future belongs to
the women not so much because now, almost a century later, we know that history has
developed in this direction. The reason is rather that women in Bergman's eyes are
stronger than men by virtue of being "close to life" - to quote one of his film titles. As is
usually the case in Bergman's films, the women cherish tender and loving contacts,
while the men tend to be sliff, lonely, alienated.
The erotic relationships also illustrate the power struggle between men and

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FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982)

women, not least during the sexual act. Gustav Adolf fails when he assumes the traditional male position atop his mistress; a satisfying intercourse takes place only when she
straddles him. Gustav Adolf's problems in this area are again demonstrated in the sex
scene with his wife Alma; once more he ends up in the supine position. Similarly, Carl
sinks down exhausted on the marital bed, even more pitiful than his not particularly
powerful wife. As for the third brother, Oscar, it is suggested in the script that he is
impotent.
A central theme in the series is the contrast between the big and the small
world. In Oscar's speech to the perfonners - yet another Hamlet reference - the small
world, tantamount to that of the theater, is defended. We need theater (illusion) as a
consolation and protection against "the hard world out there." The theater is referred to
as "a small room of orderliness, routine, conscientiousness, and love." The implication is
that it possesses everything that the big world lacks.
When Emihe is about to exchange the illusory world of the theater for, as she
believes, the more truthful one of religion, she gives a speech - not included in the screen
version - to the company which directly contradicts Oscar's. The theater's capacity for
creating illusion is equated now with life's falsehoods. Actors deceive themselves into
identifying with the roles they play instead of discovering their own identity. They also
try to imagine that their own small world is more important than the big one outside. That
is the easy way out.
When Gustav Adolf returns to this theme in the Epilogue, he declares:
We might just as well ignore the big things. We must live in the little, the little
world. We shall be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it.
Suddenly death strikes, suddenly the abyss opens, the stonn howls and disaster is upon us - all that we know. But let us not think of all that unpleasantness.
During this speech, all the Ekdahls and their closest friends are gathered around a huge
table, the circular shape of which emphasizes the sense of hannonious togetherness. (At
the Christmas dinner they were sitting at a large square table; at the funeral dinner, the
table was in cruciform shape, with the Bishop in the middle.) Emilie has realized that her
escape from the theater to the church was an error, and she is once again happily restored
to the illusory existence of the Ekdahls.
By the small world, Gustav Adolf is referring not merely to the world of the
theater but also to everything that human beings have around them and that can make
them happy: "good food, gentle smiles, fruit-trees in bloom, waltzes." It is an epicurean

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FANNY AND ALEXANDER 0\182)

carpe diem concept that the restaurateur enunciates here, a defence of the idyll close at
hand that one can trace back through Bergman's films to Jof and Mia's wild strawberry
meal in The Sel'enth Seal. But it amounts to more than this.
The theme is expanded upon in Gustav Adolf's speech in two important respects. Firstly, the small world, the private happiness, is now not just in contrast to the
larger world without, the global world of suffering. but also to the unknown world that
lies beyond Jife. The small world is equated with this world, this life, the only one we
know. Gustav Adolf's pleading for the small world amounts to a repudiation of all transcendent endeavors. His worldly outlook agrees to a considerable extent with what
Bergman, ever since The Silence - originally called God's Silence - has been a spokesman for.
When Gustav Adolf voices his love for the sman world. he is standing behind
Fanny, Alexander, and his own daughter. Jenny. His position strengthens the impression
that the small world is related to the world of the children, while the big world by inference is associated with that of the grown-ups. To "cultivate, make the best of' the small
world is to create a hopeful future for mankind. But living in a children's world also

The baptismal meal in the Epilogue of FUIlIlY and Alexander takes place al a 'democratic' circular
table, 10 the accompaniment of life-affirming waltz music. In his speech, Gustav Adolf. here facing
the children in the background. pays homage to "the little world."

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FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982)

implies that one retains the childlike mind, its spontaneity and sense of being close to
life. This is what children, women, and artists have in common.
Gustav Adolf's cheerful, earthbound gospel does not apply to Bergman's alter ego, Alexander. Like Isak, he dwells in a world of demons. His thoughts and feelings
are dominated by his white-clad father and his black-clad stepfather, the representatives
of good and evil. Gradually, the white ghost disappears from his consciousness, first
visually, then acoustically when the three high notes Oscar plays on the family's piano
finally die away. The stepfather perishes, through Alexander's telepathic wish, energized
by lsmael, in the hellfire he himself unleashes, 'murdered' by his own inner cancer,
embodied in the bloated, scrofulous, bestial figure of the aunt (played by a man), as
repulsive as Vergerus is attractive.
The character of Ismael, whose wailing lament resounds through the final
segment of the film, is one of the more enigmatic features of Fanny and Alexander.
According to Bergman, he is not so much "the son of a servant" as the prototype for the
rebellious avenger, the titan, the Prometheus bound. "His hand will be against every man,
and every man's hand against him," says Ismael, describing himself in the relevant biblical tenns. In lsmael, Bergman has drawn the picture of a hybrid personality; even in
speech - he speaks Finno-Swedish - Ismael's androgynous nature is brought out (the
part is played by a woman, Stim Ekblad). lsmael unites the male and the female, Fanny
and Alexander, and precisely because of this, he appears deviant and supernatural. Like
Alexander, lsmael is a Hamlet figure. He is dressed in "a black suit mu(h too small for
him and a scaif', gifted, learned, misanthropic, mad or pretending to be so, with "awkward talents," "dangerous," and therefore "introvert."
When Alexander, of whom it is said that he "ou!?ht 10 have been a girl," has to
write down his name, he writes that of Ismael. "Perhaps we are the same person. Perhaps
we have no limits; perhaps we flow into each other, stream through each other, boundlessly and magnificently," Ismae! comments. This line of thought, which is linked to
Isak's monistic image of the world, is visually emphasized when the two boys stand
close to each other, cheek to cheek. This situation, reminiscent of the double face of
Persona, marks the culmination of that longing for togetherness that has in various ways
been present throughout the film. Alternatively, Alexander and bmael may be seen as
two distinct voices within the same self and their dialogue as a soliloquy, one voice
representing a passive tendency, the other an active one. "It's nol I talking. It is yourself,"
says Ismael to Alexander.
While in the script the stepfather is conspicuously absent at the end and thus
seems to have been defeated by Alexander, he pops up at the close of the screen version,
as he appeared in life, in a most telling situation. Alexander has secretly been helping

tSS

FANNY AND ALeXANDER (1982)

himself to biscuits, when suddenly the black-clad Bishop looms up behind him. Alexander falls down beside the stove, stunned. The Bishop's golden cross dangles above his
head, and he hears a voice hissing, "You won't escape me!" Alexander gets up, rushes to
his granny Helena, and puts his head in her lap, just as he did in the beginning when he
was frightened by Death. His flight is one from the masculine god to the female lap, from
the transcendent to the immanent, from coldness to warmth, from death to life.

Fall")' and Alexander: Grandmother Helena reads to Alexander fmm Strindberg's

Note to A Dream

Play: "Anything can happen, everything is possible and probable."

Thus, Fanny alld ALexander concludes with a picture of Helena and Alexander, the old
and the young, in loving union. His desolate calling out to the women and lonely meandering through the empty apartment in the opening has found a response in the fonn of
maternal consolation. The gray crocheted shawl worn by the grandmother at the end is
significantly a combination of the star-covered coverlet being knitted by the maternal
Doorkeeper in A Dream Play, and the warm and comforting shawl she wears and that is
later handed over to Indra's Daughter. At the end, Emilie suggests that she and Hdena
should act in Strindberg's recenlly published drama. '2 Tne shawl indicates that Helena is
to play the part of the Doorkeeper, while Emilie undoubtedly intends to keep the part of

186

FANNY A.ND A. l.EXIl NOER (l9112)

Indra's Daughter for herself. The relationship between the two is indicated in their costumes: Helena in dark, brownish red and Emilie in a lighter, warm red, indicating that life
has returned to her,IJThese references remind us that while Strindberg's play is about a
divine daughter who descends to the Earth only to return to her celestial origin at the end,
in Bergman's series the opposite movement occurs. Here an actress 'ascends' from the
sensual world (the theater) to the spiritual world (the church) only to return to the world
of the senses at the end. A transcendental perspective has been replaced by an immanent
one.
In the final lines - no! appearing in the script - the grandmother promises,
with Strindberg, that "anything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time
and space do not exist. Against an insignificant background the imagination spins and
weaves new designs." Her quotation offers a key to the pattern of Fanny and Alexanderthe interweaving of dream and reality - and gives voice, moreover, to an approach to life
that recognizes the indispensability of the imagination.
That Strindberg is given the final word in Fanny and Alexander is a clear
indication of the dreamplay character of the series. It is also a tribute to the writer who
has meant the most to Bergman, both ideologically and aesthetically.

t1l7

FANNI' AND Al.EX,HVDER (1982)

PART 3
THE RADIO DIRECTOR

Strindberg, Easter (1952)

One of the central idea's in A Dream Play is the recurrent discovery that our imagination

far exceeds reality. This tenet explains the attraction theater and film exercise. But it is
perhaps especially relevant with regard to radio drama. For "as imagined pictures may be
more beautiful and powerful than actual ones, the absence of the visual component in

this form of drama may well be a considerable asset." Listening to a radio play is "more
akin to the experience one undergoes when dreaminx than to that of the reader of a novel:

the mind is turned to a field of internal vision." Radio drama "approximates musical form
- which is not surprising as both have sounds in time as their raw materia!."]

In view of these circumstances, so close to Bergman's central concerns, it is

not surprising that he has taken a lifelong interest in radio drama. Starting in 1942, he
sent a manuscript entitled The Trm'el Companion, based on a tale by Hans Christian
Andersen, to the Swedish radio; the play was refused. A few years later, he tried to get
other plays of his own broadcast: Rakel and the Cinema Doorman, Jack Among the Actors, To My Terror. "Unsuitable for radio," was the harsh comment he received, by which
was meant that these plays were too coarse for a mass audience. l
Bergman's debut as a director of radio drama came in 1946, when he turned
his own stage version of a contemporary Swedish play, Bjorn-Erik Hoijer's Requiem,
into a radio play. To date he is responsible for 39 radio productions, including eight
Strindberg, three Hjalmar Bergman and three Ingmar Bergman. In the following, we
shall examine two of these productions, beginning with his pioneering adaptation of
Strindberg's Easter, eventually regarded as onc of his most successful radio petfonnances.
As the title indicates, Strindberg's Easter (1901) is patterned on the Passion
of Christ. The first act plays on Maundy Thursday, the second on Good Friday, the third
and last on Easter Eve. Each act has its own lighting - opening with a last ray of sun and
ending with sunshine streaming into the Heyst living room, where all the acts are set.
Each act is preceded by a part from Haydn's The Seven Last Words ojOur Saviour on the
Cross, Act I by the introductory maestoso adagio, Act II by "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do" (Luke 23.34) as largo, and Act III with "I thirst" (John
19.31) as adagio.
The daughter in the family, Eleonora, is the Christ figure of the play, and her
sarisjactio vicaria represents one of the play's basic themes. Another is what has been

191

STRINDBERG, EASTER (1952)

called the benevolent nemesis, that is, the idea that good deeds are rewarded. I The plot
revolves around Elis' (and his mother's) change from implacability to conciliation.
Bergman's production of Easter was a radical departure from earlier radio
versions of the play. Although Easter is not unduly long even for radio, more than onefourth of the text was cut. Deviations from what Bergman considered the main plot were
mercilessly omitted. Seeing Elis as the central character, Bergman excluded many of
Eleonora's speeches, especially her occultist lines. He also reduced the schoolboy
Benjamin\ part.
When his version was first broadcast, in 1952, several critics were opposed to
the reduction of Eleonora's part, seeing her as the central figure. But Bergman felt that
although she may he so ideologically and thematically, dramaturgically she is not. Being
a Christ figure, she is not, like EEs, a divided character who undergoes an inner change.
This may be true, but Elis is a problematic protagonist for another reason: his rather
vague conversion takes place exceedingly late in the play. More personal reasons
own affinity with the male figure

his

no doubt contributed to Bergman's decision to make

Elis the focal character.

Haydn's Die siebell Worte des Erldsers am Kreuze (1785) exists in four different versions: instrumental, string quartet piano, and oratorio. Strindberg does not
specify which of these versions he has in mind. Since Easter has all the characteristics of
a chamber play, Bergman logically settled for the string quartet version. He also expanded
on Strindberg's scheme and had Haydn's music intoned not three hut seven (!) times.
The first time it is heard, it 'embraces' the narrator's announcement "Maundy
Thursday." Later in Act I, the chiming of church bells, that forms the background for
Elis' (Anders Ek) and his wife Kristina's (Barbro Hiort af Orntis) somber dialogue, 'dissolves' into Haydn's more harmonious music when the young Eleonora (Maj-Brilt
Nilsson) and Benjamin (Birger Malmsten) 'enter the stage' Haydn's music is heard,
softly, as Eleonora voices her pantheistic universalism - "For me there is no time and no
space," etc.

and it concludes Act r when Eleonora ~ referring to the concert Kristina is

going to with Pelrus and where precisely Haydn's Seven Last Words will be performedsays "Mother, sce thy son!"' (John 19.26) and starts to cry.
There is another 'dissolve' from Haydn's music to the ticking of a clock
opening Act 11. soon followed by the narrator's anllouncement "Good Friday." The striking of the clock tells us that it is 6 p.m.; presumably it is also an allusion to the darkness
of "the sixth hour ... unto the ninth hour" (Mat. 27.45) surrounding the death of Jesus.
The chiming of church bells, that is heard as Kristina leaves Elis for the concert, 'dissolves' again into Haydn's music as Eleonora quotes: "But I have prayed for thee" (Luke
22.32). A fragment from Sewn Last Words concludes Act 11 and 'embraces' the narra-

192

STRINDRERG, EASTER (1952)

tor's "Easter Eve" opening the last acl. At the end of the play Eleonora and Benjamin are
left alone 'on the stage':
ELEONORA. We'll get to the country, Benjamin! In two months! If they'd
only go fast! Now I tear the sheets from the calendar and strew them! See how
the days go! April! May! June! And the sun is shining on all of them! See! .
Now you're to thank God, who helped us to get to the country!
BENJAMIN shyly. Mayn'tl say it silently?
ELEONORA. Yes, you may say it silently' For now the clouds are gone and
then it can be heard up there I
Accompanying these hopeful, final speeches is the seventh and last joyous fragment
from Haydn's opus with which the performance is concluded. The wonderfully naive
way in which Maj-Britt Nilsson phrases Eleonora's faith in her final speeCh is, as it were,
carried over into Haydn's serene strings.
As appears from this description, sound effects are used very selectively hy
Bergman in this performance to emphasize the two conflicting moods of the play. The
somber, monotonous chiming of the church bells contrasts with Haydn's melodious,
graceful music, just as suffering and a sense of punishment, associated mostly with Ells,
contrast with joy and a sense of reconciliation, associated with Eleonora.
Focussing on these two sounds, Bergman, one critic wrote,
abstained from all the usual sound effects. No steps, no doors which opened
and closed, no swish-swish from Lindkvist's galoshes.... People never came
or left, they were just suddenly present or suddenly absent. It lent a mood of
unreality and dream to the piece..
The benevolent nemesis in the play is incarnated by Lindkvist, the creditor, whose announced visit, the Heysts fear, will ruin them. Strindberg skilfully prepares for his arrival
by having Elis, standing by the window, discover him outside in the street already in Act
I; the end of his speech, with its frequent use of onomatopoeia, reads:

EllS ....those overshoes! "Swish, swish" like the Easter switch ... listen to
those overshoes ... "wolves, wolves, mad, madder, maddest, swish. swish!"
Watch it! He sees me I He sees me! .. Bows toward the street. ... He greeted
me first! He's smiling! He's waving his hand ..and .. Sinks down by the desk
weeping He went byl

193

STRINDBERG. EASTER (1952)

A stage director may stick to Strindberg's piece of teichoscopy, and have Elis report
what he sees 10 the other characters - and to the audience - who do not share his vision.
But many directors prefer to make Lindkvist partly visible in the form of a shadow appearing outside the drawn curtains. As the man approaches, the shadow grows higger.
When the shadow has become gigantic, it adequately corresponds to the fear of the unknown that the Heysl family nourishes at this moment.
In Bergman's radio version, lacking the visual code, their fear is expressed
solely by verbal and paralinguistic means on the part of the aclor playing Elis. Anders Ek
gradually raises his voice and increases his tempo until Lindkvist's (Gunnar Olsson)
friendly greeting of him makes him break down in happiness from a feeling of undeserved grace. "As he is telling," one critic wrote, "he makes the shadow grow:'-' The
speech is rendered with many subtle verbal and paralinguislic nuances, difficult to pinpoint in a performance analysis, yet of utmost importance in radio drama, which generally speaking is a more actor- and less director-oriented type oftheater than the one seen
on stage or screen.

194

STRINDBERG, EASTEN (1952)

A Matterofihe Soul (1990)

Bergman '8 A Matter ofthe Soul was first broadcast, under his own direction, on January

14, 1990.) In September of the same year, it won the jury's special Pox I1alia. Virtually a
monodrama -only toward the end is a second voice heard briefly- the play has a formal
affinity with Strindberg's The Stronger, O'Neill's Before Breakfast and Cocteau's La
ybix humaine; Bergman directed Cocteau's drama for the radio in 1956.

The play is divided into 11 short scenes. It opens on a winter morning at half
past ten with a gloomy Viktoria (Jane Friedmann) still in bed. As a reminder of her ageshe is 43 - one of her teeth is coming loose, a situation similar to that in Strindberg's oneact The First Warning (originally entitled The First Tooth), which Bergman directed for
Ihe radio in 1960. In an authoritarian tone, Viktoria asks Anna to help her wilh various
household matters; it is unclear whether Anna is a servant, a temporary nurse, or a
grown-up daughter. She then reproaches her husband Alfred, who is a professor, for his
indifference to her sexual needs. Scene If takes place al the opening of an art exhibition,
where Viktoria addresses several people. In the following scene, she visits the house of
her parents and addresses first her father, then, in another room, her mother. In Scene IV,
she reports a dream she has just had about a mysterious woman. In the next scene, she is
opening a bazaar in the presence of her husband; she publicly accuses him of adultery,
after which she discovers that he has suddenly died; it seems likely that he has committed
suicide - as does the unfaithful husband in Before Breakfast, also called Alfred. At the
end of Scene VI, featuring Alfred's funeral, Viktoria tries

10

unmask her husband by

puiling him oul of his coffin by the ears. Accompanied by Anna, she is in the following
scene on her way 10 a mental hospital in Switzerland. Having escaped from the hospital,
she next finds herself in a hotel room together with a worker, whom she alternately seduces and abuses - sharing Miss Julie's attitude to Jean. In Scene IX, she is moved to a
ward for the disturbed, after an attempt to kill a professor (1) at the hospital. In Scene X,
she addresses a girl "aged eleven or twelve" dressed "in institutional clothes" - obviously
her own youthful self. Recognizing in the final scene thal Viktoria is no longer a suitable
name for her (for reasons indicated inA Dream Play, from whence Bergman has obviously
borrowed the name), she discovers that this girl- her alter ego - is nameless and "deaf and
dumb." Toward the end of Ihe scene another voice is heard, that of an Old Woman.
Early in Ihe play, Viktoria complains: "I just speak all Ihe time and people
don't answer or they just walk away from me." This is verified in the monodrama form

195

A MATTER OF THE SOUL (1990)

Bergman has chosen for his play, a form half-way between dialogue (since someone is
being addressed) and monologue (since the addressee remains mute).
If A Malterofthe Soul had been a stage play, we would have heen able to tell
whether the addressees are real or imagined. But since we are dealing with a radio drama,
this cannot be ascertained. And this is precisely the point. As readers of the published
script, we are inclined to assume that the characters Viktoria addresses are physically
present. But if that is the case, the time references are confusing. We learn that Viktoria as
a student contacted Eugene Carriere shortly before he died in 1906. If we assume that she
was about 20 at the time, it follows that the action is set around 1929. Since Caruso, who
is singing at the bazaar (Scene V), died in 1921, this scene must describe a situation
preceding the one in Scene 1 and must consequently he a memory that Viktoria recalls,
The question is then: How do the scenes temporally relate to one another" Is the development on the whole linear, or does the initial scene represent the latest stage in Viktoria's
life? There is no clear answer to this question. We are free to see the play either as a study
of Viktoria 's development from sanity to insanity or as a dcscription of memories and
fantasics in the head of a woman who contemplates taking her own life. It is hardly a
coincidence that the play ends with the word "poisoning."
It should be noted that whereas the first scene in the published script contains

such acting directions as "A knock at the door." and "ALFRED leal'('.I" {he room,", such
directions are later lacking. This could be taken as an indication that Anna and Alfred are
physically prescnt only in Scene L and that in the following scenes both they and the rest
of the addressed characters are merely imagined. Viewed in this way, the play moves
from dialogue to monologue, from realism to fantasy.
As listeners to the performance, we are more inclined to let the fantasy aspect
prevail. Abstaining from the sound of doors or footsteps, even in the beginning. to indicate the appearance and disappearance of the characters, Bergman suggests that Viktoria
is totally alone and that even Anna and Alfred are present only in her imagination. Similarly, the performance supports the idea that in the scenes following the initial one,
Viktoria is vividly reminiscing about past events in her life and even wishfully inventing
some of them, like the meeting with Richard Strauss.
Viewed as a monologue, the people Viktoria addresses are unwilling to answer her. Viewed as an interior monologue, they cannot answer her, since in this case
they are only present in her mind. What Bergman is attempting in A Mattrrofthe Soul, I
would suggest, is to make the characters surrounding Viktoria as real to the listener as
they are ID her. Here again, he tries to break down the barrier between performer and
recipient. And precisely because we are dealing with a monodrama, the radio medium
assists him in this endeavor.

196

A MATTER OF THE SOUL (1990)

"When life comes close to its end," the Poet in A Dream Play says. "everything and everyone rushes by in a single procession." Bergman's monodrama may be
seen as a description of what passes through Viktoria's mind as her life is coming close to
its end. Already in the first scene, she voices her suicidal inclinations. The mysterious
lady, who keeps her face half-veiled and who suddenly begins to cry and then disappears;
the dark, swift-moving river which turns into "a pond with deep black water"; and
Viktoria's own discovery that she is "getting cold," yet cannot leave "this terminus" - all
these dream elements are rather transparent references to death. In the final scene, these
references, now with biblical connotations, become explicit "There is a stonn on the
way. Such a strange light, my heart beats fast, can you feel') Maybe this is the day of
Judgement."
Throughout the play, Viktoria has been addressing numerous people, No one
answers her. In the mental hospital, she is confronted with her own self, a little girl
lacking a name and completely unable to communicate with the world around her, more
truthful in her 'nothingness' than the role-playing grown-up Viktoria. When finally her
monologue turns into a dialogue, her speaking partner is an Old Woman, who is at once
a nurse at the hospital and an incarnation of death related to the veiled mysterious lady
but now a benevolent mother figure, handing her a precious red stone, "no bigger than a
drop of blood," that "makes your hand warm" Viktoria's longing at the end of Scene HI
- "There you are atlast l Mummy! My dearest darling mummy!" - has been fulfilled.!
In the performance. the feeling that Viktoria is gradually being drained of life
is strengthened by the strategic use of music. Contrasting with the orchestral waltz in the
art exhibition scene and the piano music ("The Maiden's Prayer") in the bazaar scene,
Arvo Part's 'celestial' Fmtres for 12 cello's is heard four times, softly as though from a
great distance, the last time after Viktoria has been quoting from the Revelation 6.12-14
and told the girl- herself -to go to sleep. Like the Young Lady at the end of The Ghost
Sonata, Viktoria seems to be on her way to another shore.

Bergman at times resons to acting directions in the script which cannot be

realized in the finished product. When Viktoria moves from her father's to her mother's
room, this is indicated by an acting direction- "She walks through twilit rooms." - that
cannot be communicated to the listener. This is complemented by an acoustic indication:
"Opens a doO/:" In the performance, the sound of the door is replaced by another and

more meaningful sound. While Viktoria is still in her father's room. we hear the licking
of a clock. When she moves into the mother's room, the ticking stops. Since the ceasing
of the sound is also synchronized with the father's falling asleep, the impression is communicated that Viktoria's moving from one room to another is tantamount to her moving
from life 10 death.

197

A MATTER OF THE SOVL (1990)

Bergman also employs suggestive aural 'dissolves,' as when the train whistle
at the end of Scene VI, representing the anguish experienced by Viktoria as she tries to
unmask her husband, grows louder and turns into a real train whistle when, in Scene VII,
we find her in a train compartment. Similarly, the worrying tolling at a railway crossing
in Scene VII 'dissolves' into the tolling of a church bell in Scene VIII.
Viktoria's many-faceted part is a challenge for any actress, and Jane
Friedmann manages the paralinguistic recreation of her abrupt alternating between the
public and the private, 'mask' and 'face,' aural 'long shots' and 'close-ups: superbly.
This is especially noticeable in Scene

rn,

where her way of addressing four different

people reveals four different attitudes, and in Scene VIII where, in a matter of seconds,
she declares herself to be - and plays the roles of - actress, mental patient. and whore,
indicative of her disintegrating ego.
The mere fact that Bergman, after a number of TV productions, has chosen to
write a play for the 'old-fashioned' radio medium is an indication that to him, this is a
medium in its own right, with special possibilities. With its obvious limitations, it is, or
can be, both more intimate and more poetical than visual theater. Having not only a sharp
eye but also an exceedingly sensitive ear,-' Bergman must feel a natural attraction to what
has aptly been called the theater of the ear.

198

A MATTER OF TilE SOUL (l990)

EPILOGUE

Between Stage and Screen

To call a film theatrical is still for many the same as rejecting it. For a long time, directors
have tried to set film off against theater by accentuating that which theater could not
express easily: realistic exteriors, mass scenes, swift changes in time and space, dynamic
visual transitions, close-ups. The arrival of television has created a new situation. Theater
no longer appears a threat to film. The threat comes from television, which favors many
of the techniques traditionally associated with film and which, like film, is regarded as a
mainly realistic medium. Just as photography a century ago caused artists to paint in a
different, less realistic mode, so one would expect that television might work a similar
reorientation on the part of filmmakers, away from realism and in favor of a retheatricalization of film.
It is here that Bergman's directorial profile comes in. His extensive work as a
stage director has saved him from the deadly realism characterizing the products of many
'pure' filmmakers. Characteristic of Bergman as a film director is precisely the alloy
between what we traditionally regard as distinctively theatrical (concentration on the
characters, stylization) and what we see as typical for the film (realism in the description
of the characters and their environment). For Bergman, these distinctions are exceedingly relative. In his films, 'authoritarian' cinematic close-ups mingle with 'democratic'
theatrical long shots in a meaningful way. In his artistic universe, there are few waterproof bulkheads between theater and film. Both in his stage and in his screen productions, he knows how to mediate expressively between what we conventionally regard as
inherent to the two media.
Naturally, each medium has its own characteristics that to a great extent affects the shape of the perfonnance. The temporal and spatial flexibility of film, its power
to make instant use of flashbacks and f1ashforwards, to approach characters and objects
from various distances and angles, and to get closer to the human face than we ever do in
real life - all these things make film very different from theater. Yet it is worth considering, that at about the time when the film was born, Strindberg demonstrated in his Dream
Play that "time and space do not exist" and that "the characters split, double, redouble,

evaporate, condense, fragment, cohere." In other words, the boundaries between theater
and film are not as fixed as we often imagine. As we have seen, Bergman's directorial
vision frequently surpasses, or at least diminishes, media differences. Besides, the fact
that he has constantly alternated between productions for stage, radio and screen in-

201

BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEN

creases the possibility of a certain spill-over from one production to another, irrespective
of the medium.
In the preceding examination of some of his outstanding stage, screen, and
radio performances, the cohesion of Bergman's work as a director has frequently been
indicated. It is now time to consider to what extent he has been a film director in his stage
productions and a stage director in his screen productions; and the possible impact on his
work in both these media from radio where only sound counts. In short, it is time to look
for a coherent directorial vision behind the media Bergman has chosen and the techniques he has employed.
A far-reaching 'cinematic' element in Bergman's stage performances is the
tendency to reduce the dialogue considerably and replace words with suggestive groupings, gestures, and mimicry, that is, visual instead of verbal signifiers. Another step in the
direction of film is the tendency to replace the traditional division of plays into acts with
a looser structure - a series of scenes or tableaux. This restructuring leads to a more
dynamic flow of the stage perfonnances, which is increased even further when they are
presented without an interval.
The wealth of audiovisual signifiers that in a stage performance is communicated to an audience more or less simultaneously is a problem for any director. How
much uf this multitude can the spectators cope with? Characteristic of Bergman 's direction is the careful distribution of signifiers, so that the audience has time to notice and
experience them. This kind of distribution, which involves suppressing simultaneity in
favor of consecutiveness, may well owe something to the filmmaker's concern for shot
succession, the consecutive distribution of signifiers within each film sequence.
In a stage performance, we can never get as close to the characters as in a
film. Bergman nevertheless approaches the screen media by having the major characters
appear as much as possible within the area where they "are strongest," most visible,
usually a rectangle at center downstage,'
Lighting has, due to the fast technical development, become an exceedingly
important element in stage performances. Bergman's experience as a film director, working closely with outstanding film photographers like Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist,
has certainly helped to make him aware of the potentials of light, also in the theater.
Referring to Nykvist, he once told an interviewer; "Our common passion - and I feel this
even on the stage - is to create light: light and faces surrounded by shadows. This is what
fascinates me!"2 In another interview, he gave an illuminating example:
The actors' relation to the stage is also a part of the rhythm of the performance, and if you change the angle at which the light strikes the stage, you
achieve a completely new rhythm. J
202

BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEN

If Bergman's varied lighting by itself contributes highly to Ihe visual suggestiveness of

his stage perfonnances, the relative lack of stage properlies further aids the audience in
paying attention to the lighting. Of primary importance is the strong frontallighling. This
is not per se a cinematic device. Rather, it testifies to Bergman's 'cinematic' concern
with the human face, his anxiety to make it fully visible to the audience. The preference
for strong frontal lighting is thus subordinated 10 the director's central concern: the character on the stage - in whom the audience are mirroring themselves.
To the most obvious cinematic effects in Bergman's stage perfonnances belong the back projections, which can instantly appear and disappear. If frequently resorted to, back projections create an environment on the stage which is, in fact, more
cinematic than theatrical. This is never the case with Bergman, who either makes incidental use of such effecls (The Ghost Sonata, Long Day's Journey) or employs them as a
modest background (To Damascus, A Dol/'s House). Since a stage performance is necessarily three-dimensional and 'in color: the two-dimensional, usually black-and-white
projections indicate that we are dealing here with a different, inner reality. By annexing
cinematic projections to the theatrical event, Bergman transcends the inability of theater
10 enter the souls of the characters.
Choreographically, Bergman at times chooses to freeze the movements of the
characters, a cinematic device resorted to in the initial circling of The Dream Play and,
intennittently, in the commentatory dancing of The Winter's Tale. The instant stasis that
is hereby effectuated punctuates the fluidity of the performance and paradoxically makes
us at the same time more involved in it - since the sudden change activates us mentallyand detached from it, since the artificiality of the action makes us more aware that we are
wilnessing a performance.
Films from the last decades usually contain a pre-title sequence. This can
have an expository function, showing briefly some events leading to the situation in the
film proper, as in Joseph Losey's A Doll's House. Or it can emblematically present the
theme of the film, as in Alf Sjoberg's Miss Julie. While Bergman has rarely made use of
pre-title sequences in his films - Wild Strawberries and Persona being exceptions - he
has frequently offered what we may call a play-before-the-play in his stage performances. This was the case in his 1955 production of Moliere's Don Juan, where, in the
initial pantomime, an unromantic Don Juan in nightshirt was seen being dressed in his
seductive costume by a maller-of-fact Sganarelle. From the very beginning, this Don
Juan was unmasked. By placing him in front of a mirror,4 Bergman could at once point to
his fundamental weakness: his narcissism, his inability to love anyone but himself. Both
the pantomime and the mirror appeared again in the opening of Bergman's Hedda
Gablerproductions, where the director, unlike Ibsen, immediately revealed not only that
Hedda was pregnant but that she hated being 'misformed.' Scrutinizing herself before

203

BETWEEN STAG": ANU SCREEN

the mirror, she violently pressed her hands against her abdomen, suggesting her desire to
have the expected child

aborted.~

As we have seen, an additional pantomimic and em

blematic play-before-Ihe-play occurred also in [,()1It? Day's Journey and - with but a few
words spoken - in A Doll's House. Whether or not inspired by the convention, in cinema,
of beginning with a pre-title sequence, establishing the real or symbolic situation,
Bergman in all these cases chose to open his production with an enigmatic, suspensecreating piece of 'silent film:
Turning now to the opposite situation, let us see to what extent theatrical
elements can be found in the films. The first thing that strikes one is that most of the early
films are, in fact, qua structure disguised plays. Characteristically, several of them are
divided into acts or scenes. Gradually, however, the script-writer freed himself from the
yoke of intrigue drama and his later films have a looser shape; they are theme-oriented
rather than plot-oriented. In this respect Bergman's development, in fact. runs parallel
with Strindbergs.
Bergman, it has been said, is more interested in pictorial composition than in
camera movement" (There are, significantly, more spectacular camera angles in Torment, directed by AII' Sjoberg, than in the Bergman films directed by Bergman himself.)

As in the case of Orson Welles - another director who has divided his time between stage
and screen - Bergman's relatively fixed, calm or slow camera reflects not so much a
national temperament as "a desire to show an image that is uniformly understandable and
that compels the spectator to make his own choice.'"
Other characteristics that may owe something to Bergman's work in the
theater are his adherence, on the whole, to continuity editing, his preference for panning
above CUlling, and his interest in long takes, Marta's reading of her letter to Tomas in
Winter Light, lasting for several minutes, being an extreme example. The film trilogy,

one critic asserts. "possesses several affinities with the theatrical," for example "the
deemphasis of cinematic framing in favor of stage settings, and the elimination of high
and low angle photography in favor of straight-on angles."8 In the TV play After the
Rehearsal, which is set on a stage, Bergman suggestively oscillates between cinematic

dose-ups, showing the naked, vulnerable faces, and theatrical long shots, suggesting that
although the characters are dealing with very personal problems, they are nevertheless
frequently performing, playing parts, to one another.
Just as Bergman in some of his stage productions has resorted to a playwithin-the-play technique - we have seen examples of this in connection with The
Dream Play and, notably, The Winter's Tale - so he has frequently induded some sort of

performance in his films. Q Apart from the examples provided earlier in our discussion of
The Seventh Seal, Persona, and Fanny and Alexander, many others could be mentioned.

204

BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEN

Thus, in Illicit Interlude. the 'made-up' world of the ballet contrasts with the purity of
nature in the Stockholm archipelago. In The Naked Night, the life of the roving circus
artists is contrasted with that of the settled burghers, and the world of the theater with that
of the circus. in The MaKician, the itinerant mesmerist Albert Emanuel Vogler and his
troupe offer hypnotic seances ~ read: stage and screen performances - to the bourgeoisie.
In Throulfh a Glass Darkly, David, a novelist is treated to a Chekhovian stage performance by his children Karin and Minus. Anna, in The Silence, visits a music-hall. where
she witnesses a sexual performance both on stage and in the auditorium. The RitlUll deals
with the relationship between three actors and their censor. After the Rehearsal focusses
on a director who is planning his fifth Dream Play production, and the whole play is
acted out on a stage among the properties belonging to some of his earlier productions as well to those of his originator. In the preface to The Best Intentions, Bergman says that
he has shaped the series in a "cinematographic, dramatic" form; at the same time, he
remarks that in his imagination the main characters "in this considerable mise-en-scene"
appear "on an intensely lit stage."
As these examples suggest, the thematic constellation 'performance versus
life' is central to Bergman's work. The antithesis that is implied in this constellation is
that hetween role-playing and authenticity, mask and face. Rather than claim that the
artists devote themselves to role-playing, whereas the non-artists are authentic. we might
say that the former wear many masks. while the latter - Edvard in Fanny and Alexander
being a lucid example - wear only one. Moreover, while the artists are conscious of their
role-playing in life - the actresses Elisabet in Persona and Helena in Fanny and Alexander are very explicit about this - the non-artists are naively unaware of it. By mixing real-

life situations with performance situations, Bergman can effectively demonstrate how
role-playing is as common in life as in art. Moreover, he can organize suggestive reversals and show how role-playing on the stage can actually signify authenticity while
seeming authenticity in life can actually be a form of role-playing.
As is generally the case concerning directors, Bergman's work for stage and
screen has hitherto been examined primarily with regard to the visual and verbal components, while the aural ones have been largely neglected. This is a pity since the latter
whether sound effects or music

form an important integral part of the total stage or

screen production. Although Bergman is by nature exceedingly sensitive to sounds, it is

reasonable to assume that his work for the radio has increased his awareness of what
sound can do also in other media.
As we all know, music is usually used much more sparsely on the stage than
on the screen, where it figures more frequently on the big than on the small screen. In his
early films. Bergman adjusts to the tradition and makes ample use of music. In his later

205

BETWEEN STAG ..: AND SCRU;:N

films - when he was living with the brilliant pianist Kabi Laretei - music is used much
more sparsely. As a result, it becomes a vital part of the thematic 'message,' an universal
'language' of community as opposed to ordinary, verbal languages which promote separateness, isolation. Music used in this thematic sense is prominent, because occasional.
in The Silence and, as we have seen, in Cries and Whi.\pers and Autumn Sonata. The
universal power of music is emblematically emphasized in the ouverture of the TV opera
The Magic Flute, significantly set in a theater. Here the camera picks out male and female faces of different age and color, all attentively listening to Mozart's music. Within
this collective, one recurrent face is singled out: that of a little girl. Comparable to the
face of the very young Mozart, shown once, she becomes the mediator between the composer and the audience. Being a child, she is the ideal, open-minded recipient.
It is often said that theater focusses on characters, film on their environment.
This is a doubtful truth, since the possibilities in film to use close-ups makes it even more
character-centred in a sense than theater. In Bergman's case the difference is in any case
not very marked. In some of his films, notably the chamber films, he has proven almost
as ascetic in his environmental description as in the theater, and although most of his
filmic environments, in obedience to the medium, are reasonably realistic, this does not
mean that the frames are cluttered with paraphernalia. Since Bergman's camera is usually close to the characters, we nornlally see very liltle of the background per shot and
what we see is carefully chosen. In other words, the medium helps to provide the selectivity that secures concentration on the human beings.
Conversely, Bergman has rarely offered his audience a play on an empty
stage, as he did in Hamlet. In King Lear, the bare stage was furnished - apart from two
emblematic props on the forestage: the crown and the map of Lear's kingdom - by the
servants, who were reduced to chairs for the royalty to sit on. One reason why Bergman
usually does not relish an empty stage is that he wants to show his audience a stage that
in the course of the performance becomes empty, in conformance with the human unmasking taking place. When Bergman on the stage prefers a sparse environment with
few props, he distils, so that the spectator can concentrate on what is essential - the
human figures - and fmd time to take in what is around them. The high amount of selectivity leads to a heightened, stylized realism.
As for the temporal environment, it is obvious that the non-specificity he
frequently subscribes to on the stage is more difficult to retain in the films, although in
many of the later films, shot in the existential landscape of his beloved island, Faro, he
deliberately seems to avoid temporal signifiers. If any period is preferred by him, both on
stage and screen, it is the early part of this century, perhaps because it is a period that an
audience today can relate to. perhaps for more personal nostalgic reasons.

206

BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEN

More striking than Bergman's environmental concern is his interest in the

characters inhabiting the various environments, especially their faces. The significant
groupings of characters and faces function as metaphors of human relations. We deal
with a number of pregnant, carefully composed images, a kind of tableaux vimnts. The
'holy' trinity at the end of The Ghost Sonata, the 'mirror scene' toward the end of Miss

Ju/ie, the 'bridal gown scene' concluding Long Day's Journey, the dance of death at the
end of The Serenth Seal, the paradisaic vision concluding Wild Strawberries, the divided
double face in Persona, the pieta scene in Cries and Whispers - these are but some of the
visual emblems that remain imprinted in our memory long after the show is over. It is no
coincidence that these images frequently appear toward the end of the perfonnances. Not
until we have been emotionally involved in the characters and their destinies will such
'still lives' be truly engaging. At the same time they will, at this late stage, be metaphorically pregnant.
The varying relations between the characters is registered through symbolic
changes in their grouping. In the films, it may also be indicated by varying camera distances and angles. The shot transitions in the settlements between Isak and Alman,
Elisabet and Alma, Eva and Charlotte, Edvard and Alexander offer rich examples in
expressive imagery. There is in all these cases a suggestive uncertainty of whether we are
dealing with two individual egos or two parts of the same ego. Here the ability, inherent
in moving images, to visualize and metaphorize both inner events and inner relations is
vividly demonstrated.
For all their importance, media aspects are in Bergman's case always subordinated to thematic concerns. These concerns can be summarized in a simplifying way as
'mask versus face,' 'life versus art' and 'dream versus reality.'Yet since film to Bergman,
unlike theater, is 'hypnotization,' it follows that the last opposition can be presented
more effectively on the big screen than on the stage. This has partly to do with the different situations of reception, When watching a film, you sit "in the dark, very silent, very
far from other people:'lO
This brings us to a question that has always been of primary importance to
Bergman: the relationship between perfonner and recipient. The true performance, he
never tires of reminding us, takes place neither on the stage nor on the screen but in the
mind and heart, especially the heart, of the recipient. The spectator or listener is invited
to take part in the performance via his or her own imagination. To increase this cooperative possibility emotionally, Bergman has constantly tried to bring the characters as close
as possible to the audience. In the theater, this can be done quite resolutely by adding an
apron stage to the ordinary one, as Bergman did at the City Theater in Malmo, or by
having the audience surround the characters, as he did in his production of Woyzeck. lI

207

BETWF.F.N STAGF. AND SCREEN

More often he has turned the stage into a mirror of the auditorium. In Hedda Gabler, the
red living room was a continuation of the classically red room in which the audience was
seated. In The Wild Duck, the attic - created here merely by light and shadow - was
placed on the forestage and, by implication, in the auditorium, "its eXilct shape and dimensions left to the

imagination,")~

so that the chamcters did not turn away from the

audience when looking at the invisible duck but faced it, enabling the spectators to see
their reilctions. The example illustrates how Bergman, like the directors of art cinema
generally, is "concerned less with action than reaction."]) For the same reason. the house
in The GhoSI Sonata was placed in the auditorium and on the stage. where its horseshoe
form mirrored the shape of the auditorium. Again, in King Lear, the red calor of the huge
concave 'wall' that closed in the acting space corresponded to the traditional theater-red
horseshoe of the auditorium. The same shape was given to the art nouwau salon in The
Winter's Tale - a synthesis between the auditorium and the quadrangular foyer of
Dramaten. In all these cases, Bergman was breaking down the barrier between stage and
auditorium, performers and recipients, and, ultimately, between theater and life, in the
attempt to create a sense of communion, a feeling that "all the world's a stage" and that
we are all 'actors' in this lheatrum lIIulUJi.
This sense of communion has been further emphasized by Bergman's habit in
later perfonnances of having the ilctors remain on the stage even when they are 'offstage,' so that they fonn an 'audience' mediating between the on-stage characters and the
rea! audience. This was done not only in The Misanthrope,14 where it could be justified
historicaIly,ll but also in The Dream Play, King Lear, and, as we have seen, A Doll's
House and The Winter's Tale. When Bergman, in The Dream Play, at times placed the
Poet at his desk, center downstage, with his back to the audience, which so to speak
witnessed the play from behind his shoulder, he was providing 'a point of view shot,'
indicating that if the Poet was the dreamer of the play, so was the audience.
In the many films in which a perfonnance of some sort takes place - one of
the most striking features of Bergman's cinema - we have by definition a second audience. This diegetic screen audience serves 10 mediate between the characters and/or
events observed both by them and the real audience. The screen audience can be heterogeneous, as in The Seventh Seal or The Muxician, where reactions to the perfonners are
divided.'" It can be an audience that, being less informed than the real one, is unable to
distinguish between 'art' and reality - as when the circus performance in The Naked
Night turns into a ferocious fight, believed to be part of the program. The communion
between the screen audience and the real one, which is here ironically detached, is at
other times strongly suggested, especially when the optical point of view of the two
audiences is more or less identical. Thus, the most worrying aspect of the rape in The

208

BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEN

Virgin Spring is not the brutality of the

rapist~

but the passivity of the eyewitness, Ingeri

(Gunnel Lindblorn), since it is she who, as spectator of this 'performance,' is a stand-in

for the real spectator.
But communion with the audience can also be established by having the characters look straight at the audience. As we noted earlier, Bergman made Ihis possible in
The Wild Duck and The Ghost Sonata by placing the attic and the house respectively not

backstage, as the text has it, but in the auditorium, so that the characters could face the
audience. In the same way, the Stockholm production of Hedda Gabler, one critic noted,
opened with Hedda staring "into the darkness, where we sat."]7 A similar position, breaking with the illusion of the fourth wall, was given to Mary Tyrone, when she was soliloquizing at the end of Lon!: Day's Journey. However, in both cases the frontal positions of
the characters suggested not so much their communion with the audience as their desire
to escape from their stage environment.
Much more surprising than the characters' facing of the audience in these
realistic plays is the corresponding situation in a realistic film context. When Monika in
Summer with Monika, in close-up, suddenly looks straight at the audience, it is a shock

effect not least because Bergman here violates an unwritten law in cinema. A similar
elIect is attained when Elisabet in Persona, also in close-up, raises her camera and takes
a snapshot of the audience. In either case, we may speak of a face-ta-face situation or
mirror effect serving to attack the audience and thereby engage it directly in the screened
events.
Drama, it is often said, is an objective art form. Lacking an external narrator
who can freely enter the characters' interiors, the recipient of a play, unlike the reader of
a novel or the spectator of a film, can only infer from what the characters say and do what
they are thinking and feeling - as we do in real life. However, it is questionable to what
extent drama after Strindberg can still be called objective. In As we have seen, several of
Strindberg's protagonists appear as observers of the action we see unfolding on the stage.
Mediating between the audience and the characters, their function is to bridge the distance between stage and auditorium - much as the classical Greek chorus even spatially
bridged the distance between the three individual characters and the spectators. Relating
to this at once old and new tradition, Bergman in some of his stage productions at times
isolates one character from the rest - Agnes in The Dream Play, the Student in The Ghost
Sonata, Cordelia (Lena Olin) in KinK Lear, Ophelia (Pernilla Ostergren) in Hamlet,

Edmund in Long Day's Journey - allotting him or her the role of ohserver of the other
characters, in this activity comparable to the watching audience or even to the film camera. Do such mediators make the perfoonances more or less subjective? There can be no
clear answer to this question. Insofar as they are individuals, appearing as internal 'narra-

209

BETWEEN STACE AND SCREEN

tors,' they will increase the subjectivity of the perfonnances. We are asked to experience
the play not directly but via one of these figural narrators - as though what is enacted on
the stage, although it may seem to represent reality, actually represents his or her experience of reality. The characters function as filters. I" On the other hand, these characters,
precisely because of their mediating function, help to 'objectify' the staged events. For
how can we experience as subjective what we ourselves share in? It is hardly a coincidence that the mediators tend to be young. Remaining outside or at the periphery of the
sinful world in which the other characters dwell, they may be compared to children set
off from their guilt-laden parents, the adults, by virtue of their innocence. Insofar as they
serve as reminders to the recipients of their own past, they have a universalizing function.
With his deep concern for the relation between dream and reality, Bergman
pursues, in all the media, a tradition launched in drama by Strindberg and in theater by
Olof Molander. The key tenn within this tradition is Strindberg's "half-reality," used by
the author to characterize his own To Damascus and meaning "reality seen from a point
of view reminiscent of that found in

dreams."~o

No! only in his productions of

Strindberg's so-called dream plays, where it is called for, but also in many of his other
stage productions, Bergman has emphasized this aspec!. Thus, in his 1989 version of A
Doll's House, Nora "acted out a dream of life from which she was struggling to awake"
and "scenes of almost blatant reality" alternated with "a mood of dreamlike detachmen!."" In agreement with the quotations from Shakespeare and Dowson, LfJnx Day's
Journey was set in a dreamlike mood. "Bergman has transfonned Peer Gynt into a dream

play," wrote a critic after the opening in 1991. 11

This tendency is even more marked in Bergman's films, where we are often
confronted with an oscillation between realistic (objective) and dreamlike (subjective)
sequences. Such an oscillation lends itselfto film which, unlike theater, can express swift
transitions from an outer to an inner reality and vice versa. This is also saying that the
film medium lends itself to expressing conflicts between an outer reality and an inner
one, visualized in the form of dreams and visions.
Bergman's concern for an inner reality is demonstrated not least in his predilection for mental point of view shots, shots in which we share not only a character's
optical or perceptual point of view - this happens in virtually every film - but also his or
her experience of it. Jof\, Isak's, Anna's, Maria's, Viktor's, Charlotte's, and Alexander's
visions or fantasies are examples of mental point of view shots which call for an unrealistic approach (soft focus, slow motion, extreme camera angles, etc.). What is remarkable here is that Bergman usually abstains from such spectacular effects and prefers
almost imperceptible transitions, By this means, he creates the impression that the dream
does not essentially differ from what we call reality. When in Wild Strawberries, old Isak

210

BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEN

is standing in the dark hall, experiencing the light dining room of his childhood in the
background, there is nothing in this shot that is visually unrealistic. Even so, it demonstrates how the Isak of the present reminisces about a situation in the past which he has,
slrictly speaking, not experienced himself. Similarly, Karin's self-mutilation in Cries
and Whispers is presented in a completely realistic way; yet retrospectively, we are inclined to see it as a self-destructive and revengeful fantasy.21 The most extreme case of
oscillation between dream and reality we find in Persona, where the spectator often does
not know whether (s)he is witnessing an outer or an inner reality or whether these shots
express Alma's or Elisabet's experience. The borders are blotted out.
Even in such a gray-realistic film as Winter Lir:ht, there are two sequences in
which we witness Tomas' inner struggle. In one case this occurs explicitly. As Tomas is
reading Mana's letter to him, the extremely long take showing her face straight-on, in
close-up, forces us to see Mana the way Tomas at this moment experiences her. Bergman
in this way creates the maximal identification between the addressee of the letter and the
spectator. The second case is more implicit. When Tomas is visited by Jonas, we first
experience the situation as realistic. Not until later do we realize thal the visit has taken
place only in Tomas' imagination. Like Tomas, we initially take for reality what turns out
to have been a fantasy. Again, the device serves to increase our identification with the
tormented parson. The border between objective and subjective reality is blotted oul. In
all these cases, Bergman subtly applies the Strindbergian principle of half-reality.
As we have seen, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries. Cries and Whispers
and Autumn Sonata all end with mental point of view shots. Jof envisages how Death
guides six human beings to "the dark lands' and how "the rain washes their faces and
cleans the salt of Ihe tears from their cheeks." Isak has a vision of his parents, long dead.
Agnes comes alive in Anna's memory. Viktor imagines how Charlotte will react to her
daughter's letter. These are endings which can be relatively harmonious precisely because they are highly subjective. Objectively speaking. they are much darker. As a result,
our impressions are mingled, and we are left with unresolved, ambiguous endings. The
same is true of the ending of Fanny and Alexander. In a subjective shot we see, along
with Alexander, the dead Bishop, now incamating the guilt feelings that will continue to
haunt the boy_ Then follows the objective series of shots showing how Alexander seeks
protection and consolation at the bosom of his grandmother.
In the beginning of Fanny and Alexander, Bergman takes us from Alexander
busying himself with his puppet theater to his experience of the Ekdahlliving room as a
'theater,' and from there to his experience of the nursery with its magic lantern as a
'cinema: 24 We move, so to speak, from the director for the stage 10 the one for the screen.
As a conjurer of moving images in both rooms Alexander is the ideal recipient, since he

211

BETWEEN STAGE AND SCREEI'<

is so involved in his self-invented performance that it becomes a second reality to him. 1l

Alexander is obviously the kindred spirit of his creator, who in his youth experienced the
magic of theater when he saw how the Lawyer in A Dream Play handled a hairpin.
"There was no hairpin, but I saw it.")"
As these emblematic situations indicate, Bergman's primary concern has always been how to stimulate the imagination of the audience, so that they become emotionally involved in what he and his actors offer them. No one has described this basic
problem of communication as communicatively as Bergman himself in the parable of the
magic chair:
You are an actor and you take up this terrible chair ... and you put it up here on
the table, and then you tell the audience: "My dear friends, you may think this
chair looks terrible but you are mistaken. This is the most expensive and most
beautiful diamond-encrusted gold chair ever created. It was made for a small
Chinese empress six thousand years ago; shc died sitting on it. and it was
buried with her. Now it's here - and it is very, very fragile. Bm now take care
of it, for I must leave you for a few moments." Then you come back as a
scoundrel, and you begin to knock the chair around - and the entire audience
will hate that scoundrel. They will become anxious because they have accepted the suggestion and have developed feelings about the chair. And that is
theater. 17
Since the situation described here is dramatized in the nursery scene of Fanny and Alex-

ander, the parable applies not only to theater but also to film and. in facl, to any performance, since in a performance everything has a representative function and is dependent
on our suspension of disbelief. What matters is the director's, the actors' and not least the
audience's own ability to let the performance take place in the imagination - the heartsof the receivers, the only 'medium' that ultimately counts. Few directors, if any, have
taken this fundamental communicative task as seriously as Bergman - and managed it as
well.

212

BETWEEN STAGE AN> SCR}:EN

Notes

The Stage and the Screen

Benmger in Steene (1972), p. 14.
Cowie (1992), p. 18.
For a discussion of Bergman's work with his actors while preparing a stage or film
production, see Sjoman, Sjogren (1969), and Tomqvist (1973a and b).
Sjoman, p. 102.
Bergman (1973), p. 99.
(,

Bergman (1973), p. 163.

Steene (1972), p. 43.
See especially Young, passim.
Koskinen (1984), p. I 1.

10

In his Erasmus speech (1965) Bergman stated that "people today can reject the
theater," since in the TV age they "live in the midst of a drama which is constantly
exploding in local tragedy." See Bergman (1972), p. 14.

11

Zern, p. 59.

12

Bergman (I 994b), p. 11.

l]

Bergman (1973), p. 24.

"
I,

Tomqvist (1973), p. I 1I.

AssayaslBjorkman, p. 19.

lo

Bergman (1989), p. 73.

l7

Steene (1972), p. 44.

I'

Donner, p. 81.

19

Sjoman, p. 13.

20

Strindberg (1959), p. 19.

21

Strindberg (1959), p. 19.

22

Bergman (1973), p. 168.

1J

Sjoman, p. 24.

~.

Cowie (1992), p. 141.

Zj

Quoted from Marker (1992), p. 60. Bergman claims (1989, p. 33) that he was merely
12 when he saw A Dream Play for the first time, but this is hardly possible since the
play was no! performed in Stockholm around Ihat time. Molander's brilliant first
production of A Dream Play opened at Dramalen in 1935, when Bergman was 17.

213

NOTES

~6

Sjogren, pp. 91-3,130,177.

l'

A detailed account of the relationship between Bergman's scripts and films is found

2R

Sjoman, p. 25.

1"

Bergman (1975), p. 92.

JO

Bergman (1973), p. 166.

JI

Bergman (1976), p. 8.

12

Bergman (1989), p. 73.

JJ

Bergman (1994b), p. 14.

-'4

Mos!ey, p. 18.

in Steene (1987).

-,,, Esslin, p. 172.

Strindberg, The Dream Play (1970)

Originally entitled Dromspelel (The Dream Play), Strim1berg changed the title into
Ell driimspel (A Dream Play) in the second, 1904, edition.
Riisler i Radio, No. 17. 1963.

Bergman (1989), p. 36.

Ollen. p. 34.
For a discussion of this question, see Lunin, p. I82ff.
[n his introduction, the translator, Michael Meyer, remarks (p. xvi) that A Dream
Play "in its original form. scarcely any longer seemed theatrically valid" to Bergman

in 1970. However, in his fourth production, in 1986, Bergman (1989, p. 36) "wanted
to play the text with no changes or deletions, just as the writer had written it." Ironically, this faithful version turned out 10 be the leasl successful of his four attempts at
the play.
For Slrindberg's scene division, see Tomqvist (1982), p. 149.
Ake Janzon in Svenska Dagbladel, March 15, 1970,
Marker (1992), pp. 117-18.
W

See Tornqvist (1988), p. 284.

11

Bark, p. 153,

12

Per Erik Wahlund in Kviil!sposten, March 15, 1970.

Marker (1992), p. Ill.

,-,
L<

Marker(1992),p.119.

Il

The affinity with Pirandello's Six Characters in Search ofon Author, which Bergman
had staged in 1953 and again in 1967, is evident.

214

NOTES

Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata (1973)

Falck, p. 53.
Bryant-Bertail, p. 307.
Rokem, pp. 66-8.
This is a mirror, found in many old Swedish houses, enabling people indoors to see
what is happening in the street without being seen themselves.
I use the term 'sequence,' in relation to drama texts and stage performances, for a

section whose beginning and end are determined by a change of character constellation, of place andior of time. As a film term, 'sequence,' of course, has the different
and looser meaning of being a segment "involving one complete stretch of action"
(Bordwellrrhompson, p. 496),
In his pioneering study of the play, Northam (pp. 41, 48) draws attention to this.
Tornqvist (l973a), p. 3.
Bergman in Tornqvist (1973b), p. 192.
Tornqvist (I 973a). p. 8.
10

cr Northam, p. 41.

11

Tornqvist (1973a), p. 10.

I~

Tornqvist (1973b), p. 108.

Strindberg, Miss ]ulie (1985)
Marker (1983).
Bergman in Marker (1983), p. 32.
Marker (I983), p. 17.
Bergman in Marker (1983), p. 17.
GuniIJa Palmstierna-Weiss in a taped interview with ET. Oct., 1987.
Bergman in Svenska Daghladet, Dec. 3, 1985.
Bergman in Marker (I983), p. 15.
Sprinchom (pp. 22-3) was the first to draw attention to this significant parallel.
For a transcription, see TornqvistlJacobs, pp. 173-5.

10

The theater program only lists the actors/actresses, not their parts. r have here given
them individual names in conformance with the practice in the Munich production.
Cf. Marker (1983). p. 37.

11

Bergman in Marker (I983), p. 15.

I)

Bergman in Marker (1983), p. 14.

IJ

Bergman in Svenska Daghladet, Dec. 3, 1985.

215

NOTES

O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night (1988)

Statement by O'Neill quoted from Krutch, p. xVii.
Olsson, p. 103.
Svenska Daf{bladel, Feb. 16, 1972.
Eldridge, p. 287.
Gunilla Palmstiema-Weiss in a taped interview with E.T., May, 1988.
A photo of the veranda with the young Eugene, his brother Jamie, and his father
lames was reproduced in the theater program.
Bergman apparently expected the spectators to identify the projected house with the
O'Neill summer house, allhough there was no pholo of it in the program.
CL the mask-like, neo-classical New England columns prescribed by 0' Neill for the
mansion in Mourninf{ Becomes Electra.
Tomqvisl (1969), p. 101
10

In a deeper sense, Bergman's Edmund was less akin to Trigorin than 10 Konstantin,

11

ing for death and his wish thal he had been born a seagull.
See Tornqvisl (1969), pp. 239-40.

"

Frenz, p. 3.

Ihe young writer who kills first the seagull, then himself. Compare Edmund's long-

Ibsen,A Doll's House (1989)

The German script has been published in English translation in Marker (1983), pp.
47-99. The book also contains a lengthy discussion of the production, pp. 19-31.
The impact of Ibsen's play on Bergman's screen works, notably Scenesfrom a Marricwe, is examined in Tornqvist (1995), pp. 163-8.
For an analysis of the drama text, see Tomqvist (1995), pp. 11-49.
Marker (1983), p. 23.
Marker (1983), p. 20.
LeifZem in &'pressell, Nov. 18, 1989.
The new technique used 10 creale this background is known as Scanaprint.
Bcrgman was not the first director who set the ending of the play in the marital bedroom. In his 1953 London production, Peter Ashmore did just that.
lO

Tove Ellefsen in Dagells Nyheter, Nov. 18, 1989.

It is noteworthy that another Swedish director, Ba Widerberg, in recent TV productions of Strindberg's The Father and Ibsen's The Wild Duck, has focussed on the
victimized single children, bOlh daughters, in the two plays.

216

NOTES

11

Cr. Bergman's Wild Strawberries, where three generations, born out of cold wombs,
are fatefully linked to each other.

Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (1994)

"Nar lagger du av, Ingmar? Anna Salander samtalar med lngmar Bergman" Dramat,
No. 3, 1994, p. 38. Although the interview is no doubt a fake and Anna Salander none
other but the director himself, the references to Bergman's childhood should be heeded.
Libretto by the LP recording of Bergman 's Magic Flute, Sveriges Radio, Stockholm,
1975, p. 34.

Dramat, No. 3,1994, p. 38.

Libretto of The Magic Flute, pp. 21-22.
"Forord till en oversattning," in KunK Lear, Program, No. 9, Stockholm, 1984, p. 6.
This will appear in the following, where quotations from the dialogue of the play do
not render the original Shakesperean text but are fairly literal translations of the
Swedish text used by Bergman.
Theater program of Vintersagan, pp. 11-12.
LeifZern in Dagens Nvheter April 30, 1994.
Ingamaj Beck in Dramat, No. 3, 1994, p. 30.
W

Cf., for accessibility, the originaL where the corresponding passage reads:
Th'offences we have made you do, we'll answer,
If you first sinn'd with us, and that with us

You did continue fault, and that you slipp'd not

With any but with us. (Act 1.2)
11

Christina Lundberg in Sundsvalls TidninR, May 3,1994.

[2

John Labrin The New Yorker, Oct. 3, 1994, p. 106. Lahrrightly points out the similarity between the dance at this point and Edvard Munch's The Dance of Life, noting
that the exclusion motif appears in both. It might be added that both with Munch and
Bergman, the bright red dress of the young woman, who seems enamoured with her
dancing partner, strongly contrasts with the mat costumes of the other dancers.

IJ

Lahr, p. 106.

...

Lennart Mark in Dramat, No. 2, 1994, p. 26.

15

Pafford in Shakespeare (1993a), p.lxxxii.

I"

Compare, for example, little lngmar and Mamillius witnessing a row between their
parents; the father's and Leontes' momentary inclination to kill themselves; the dead
mother as seemingly alive and the 'resurrection' of Hermione. See Bergman (1989),
pp. 7,17.

17

Olle Gri:instedt in NU, May 19, 1994, p. 9.

217

NOTES

The Seventh Seal (1957)

The American translation of the film is published in Bergman (1960).
Sjogren (1968), p. 119.
Bergman in Steene (1972), pp. 70-71
Bergman in Donner, p. 138.
Cr. Sarris, p, 87, Bergman's Peer Gyn/, with Max van Sydow in the lead, opened at
Malma City Thealer three weeks after The Seventh Seal had its premiere.
Bergman (1973), p. 117. The nuclear threat later figures in Win/er Ligh/ and Shame.
Steene (1983), p. 594,
In 1974, Bergman staged To Damascus J-ll at Dramaten.
Bergman (1973), p. 1l7. In Bergman's staging of Ur-Faust at the City Theater in
Malmo in 1958, Faust (Max van Sydow) and Mephistopheles (Toivo Pawlo) were
"masked like a couple of twins" (Sjagren, 1968, p. 221).
I(l

"

This reading is not in the script.

12

Steene (1968), p. 62.

Cowie (1992), p. 142,

I.'

Cr. Bergman (1994a), p. 236: "Bengt Ekerot and I agreed thal Death should have the
features of a white down. An amalgamation of a clown mask and a skull:'

I~

Wood, p. 82.

I.'

Sarris, p. 84.

16

cr. Cowie (\992), p. 144.

11

The exuberant description in this scene may well have been inspired by Pieter
Brueghel Jr:s famous painting of a village market and theater performance. See
Gascoigne, PI. XIV

I~

As has often been pointed OUl, The Seventh Seal is inspired by Strindberg's historical
drama The Saga of the Folkungs, which Bergman saw in OlofMolander's production
at Dramaten in 1937. The resemblances concern especially the flagellant scene.

'" The description of the flagellant procession and of the Monk may well owe something tolP. Jacobsen's short story "The Plague in Bergamo" (l881).
!u The scene could be compared to the near-authentic Communion with which Winter
Ligh/ opens.
!I

In the script, she exchanges a few lines with Jans when she first meets him. By omitting these speeches. Bergman could give added emphasis to the Girl's

"CO/l-

summa/urn est.'"
22

Ironically, the best known of all Bergman's images has always been wrongly reproduced. Unlike the situation in the reproductions, the dance of death in the film goes
uphill, from right to left.
218

NOTES

'-'

Silhouette effects were frequently resorted to in Bergman's 1958 production of Ur-

~.

Faust.
Wood, p. 89.

2l

Sarris, p. 89.
Wild Strawberries (1957)

It is significant that at a conference devoted to the relationship film/dream, the films

of Bergman were selected as objects of study. See PetriC.

Bergman (1973), p. 44.
Bergman (1960), p. xvii.
Bergman (l994a), p. 48.
As has often been pointed out, the initials correspond to those of his creator:

Em~t

Ingmar Bergman. In Bergman (1994a), p_ 20, it states: "Isak Borg equals me.! B
equals Ice and BorR (the Swedish word forjortress) . ... I had created a figure who, on
the

out~ide

the

~umame

looked like my father but was me, through and through." The first time
is mentioned in the script, it is "Berg" rather than "Borg." We may also

note the autobiographical endings of such names as Alman and Akerman, the latter
an amalgamation of Akerblom, the maiden name of Bergman's mother, and
Bergman.
According to Swedish academic tradition, you become ajubilee doctor - not to be

10
L1

12

I)

14

confused with an honorary doctor - 50 years after you have received your doctorate.
CL the statement in Bergman (1994a), p. 22: "Actually I am living permanently in
my dream, from which I make brief forays into reality."
For a more detailed description of the narrative levels, see Branigan, pp. 104-5.
The hearse sequence may be seen as a homage to Victor Sjbstrbm's famous silent
film The Phantom Carria{?e (1921), a film which according to Bergman (l994a,
p. 24) "has influenced [his] own work, right down to minute details."
Steene (1968), p. 71.
In the script, the parallel is even more striking. When Alman tries to get his car started
again, it states that "the car had gone a few feet when one of the front wheels rolled
off and slid down into the ditch."
The relationship Isak-Evald comes very dose to that between Werle and his son
Gregers in Ibsen's The Wild Duck, staged by Bergman in 1971.
CL the marioneue god in Fanny and Alexander.
Just as in Strindberg's To Damascus!, the protagonist is confronted with a 'funeral
procession," and just as there the corpse functions as the protagonist's alter ego. See
Tomqvist (1982), pp. 79-80.
219

NOTRS

I,

By giving the same Christian name

10

lsak's fiancee in the past and the hitchhiking

girl in the present and moreover letting the same actress play both parts, Bergman
could emphasize lsak's inability or unwillingness to keep the two women, Ihe past
and the present, apart.
16

As we have seen, Bergman staged Peer Gynt in the spring of 1957, shortly before he

17

wrote the script for Wild Strawherries.

Wood, p. 76.

I~

Gado (p. 223) has made an attempt to interpret the text on the blackboard. This is
love's labor lost, since the point is precisely that we should not understand it.

19

The scene seems inspired by the rape in Kurosawa's Rashomoll, a film which
Bergman viewed "dozens of times" (Gado. p. 241).

20

About the final scene, Bergman has said (1994a), p. 20: "I was looking for my father
and my mother, but I could not find them. In the final scene of Wild Strawberries,
there is a strong element of nostalgia and desire..

Strindberg, Storm (1960)

Anglo-American

tran~lators

have suggested no fewer than five different English ti-

tles for Strindberg's first chamber play: The Storm, The Thunderstorm, Storm,

Stormy Weather and Thullder illlhe Air.

The transmission, throughout Scandinavia (Nordvision), took place on January 22
(Strindberg's birthday), 1960.
Carl Johan Elmquist of Politiken in Ol1en, p. 20.
But see Johns, pp. 292-303.
Strindberg's stage directions in Storm are closely examined in relation to 1907
Ostermalm reality in Hanes Harvey, pp. 185-245.
Cr. Ake Perlstrom's remark in Gotehorgs-Posten (Jan. 23, 1960): "the austerely
closed nature of Birgilta Morales' scenery interestingly reflected Strindberg's [suggestion of] constraint and cramped space around the characters of the play." It is,
however, Bergman rather than Strindberg who suggests these things.
Cr. A Dream Play, where the Mother, who is soon 10 die, keeps trimming the burning
candle in front of her and where quickly alternating light (day) and darkness (night)
represent the passing oftime.
This was actually the original title of the play.
Sight and Sound, Vol. 29, No. 2,1960, p. 98.

22(}

NOTF.S

Persona (1966)

For a further comparison, see Blackwell (1986), pp. 100-102.

This sequence, sometimes referred to as the film's prologue corresponding with its
meta-filmic epilogue, has been extensively but not exhaustively dealt with by Simon
(pp. 225-52, 308-10), Kawin (pp. 106-19), B1ackwell (1986, pp. 11-38), and Gado
(pp. 324-27).
Kawin, p. 110.
Bergman (1973), p. 202.
Kawin, p. 107.
Bergman (1973), p. 202.
Cf. Sontag, p. 263: ''The surface he touches suggests a movie screen, but also a portrait and a mirror."
In the list of characters appearing in Svenskfilmografi, 6, p. 288, it explicitly says:
"Jorgen Lindstrom The boy, Elisabet's son."
Bjorkman (p. 82) rightly points out that the boy's gesture can be seen both as one of
rapprochement and one of rejection.
10

Cowie (1970), pp. 193-4.

11

Bergom-Larsson, p. 63.

12

Simon, pp. 243, 309. The former expression is Bergman's.

]) Livingston, p. 181.
14

Blackwell (1986), p. 19.

I,

Bergman staged Pirandello's play in April 1967, shortly after he had finished Persona.

16

Bergman (1973), pp. 198-9.

17

Bergman (1973), p. 199.

IS

Bergman (1989), p. 202.

19

Cf. the director's telling Liv that she should "gather all her feeling into her lips" when

10

listening to Alma's narration. See Bergman (1973), p. 208.

Simon, p. 309.
Cries and Whispers (1973)

Bergman is said to have been inspired concerning this title by the description of
Mozart's 21st piano concerto given by a Swedish music critic. The slow movement
of this concerto formed the leitmotif of Bo Widerberg's film Elvira Madigan (1967),
ending in Liebesfod.

221

NOTES

The situation resembles that in Edvard Munch's painting Death in the Sickroom.
Gado. p. 408.
Cf. the distant voices in the pre-credit morgue sequence of Persona.
Cf. "the death-watch" in The Ghost Sonata, the clock that is slOpped by the Mummy
when she condemns the Old Man to death.
Mellen, p. 302.
The name may also be combined with Agncs de Jesus, who published her sister's, St.
Theresa's (1873-97). autobiography, Histoire d'une ame (1898). In Cries and Whispers, Karin regards a painting of "St. Theresa in the sacred third stage afprayer."
However, Bergman complicates the situation by having Maria read from the same
red book that the mother had been reading in the early garden flashback. Via The
Pickwick Papers, Agnes is reminded of the dead mother.

Cr. the significance of the

red book in To Damascus.

This shot is very reminiscent of Edvard Munch's Death Struggle.
10

Cf. Marty, p. 160: "l'etrange similitude entre la Vierge tenant son enfant mort et la

"

Mosley (p. 159) somewhat vaguely speaks of the sequence as "a vehicle for the ex-

Vierge ber\ant son nouveau-ne.'

pression of collective guilt." At the same time he sees it as an expression of Anna"s
"dream of Agnes resurrected."
], Strindberg originally planned to have these words inserted "in fiery writing above
Toten-lnsel" at the end of his Ghos! Sonata. Letter 10 Emil Schering April 7, 1907.
The idea was, however, abandoned.

Autumn Sonata (1978)

This is what Bergman himself has called the film.

er Gado, p. 481.

CL Gado, p. 482: "the film is a kind of sonatada camera played by four instrumenls."
What Bergman originally had in mind was something more poetical and 'musical'
than was finally realized: 'Three acts in three kinds of lighting: one evening light,
one night light, and one morning light. No cumbersome sets, two faces
(Bergman, 1994a, p. 335). In another statement the connection wilh music is made
even clearer. The film, Bergman says. was originally meant as "un mouvement, ou
plut6t trois mouvements comme dans une sonate" (Assayas, p. 22).
Bergman (1960), p. xvii.
Gado, p. 483.
Livingston. p. 247.
It should be observed, however, that Bergman resorts to voice-over in Wild Strawberries and in the beginning and end of his teleplay After the Rehearsal.
222

NOTES

Cr. Hedda Gabler's desire to travel by train with a male companion, not her husband.
Bergman has staged Ibsen's play three times.
q

Cr. Bergman's view that Miss lulie in the end "takes death for her companion"

10

The death connotation is obvious whether we experience the darkness outside the

(Marker. 1983, p. 17).

compartment window as a sign that night has suddenly fallen or, likeCowie (1992, p.
325) and Gado (p. 485), as an indication that the train is entering a tunnel. Already in
1956, Bergman directed Par Lagerkvist's The Difficult Hour I, in his version called
11

The Tunnel, for the radio.

Bergmall's view (l994a, p. 328) that the two women's "hate becomes cemented. The

daughter can never forgive the mother. The mother can never forgive the daughter"
implies that we must wholly reject Viktor's wishful thinking. BUI can we really? And
how does this view agree with Bergman's statement that the film "peut paraitre
pessimiste, mais si je rai reussi, ce sera mon film le plus optimiste" (quoted from
Marty, p. 181)?
Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Bergman (l994a), p. 377.

Freud, p. 367,
Bergman staged Hamlet at Dramaten in 1986. It is hard to tell whether Fanny and
Alexander inspired him to produce Shakespeare\ play or an early plan to do the play
inspired him to make the film.
Bergman'sown childhood home, which has partly been a model for the Ekdahl apartment, also inspired him in the stage design for his fourth (1986) production of A
Dream Play. Cf. Bergman (1989), p. 37.

Cf. the sun-lit woman sculpture in Act I of The Ghost Sonata.

For the autobiographical background of this passage, see Bergman (1989), p. 21.
The exterior of the house in fact bears a dose resemblance to the so-(;alled Red
House in Stockholm, where Strindherg lived from IQOI to IQOR. This housf" was
pulled down some years ago, and a new apartment house, where Bergman chose to
live for some time, was erected in its place.
FrykmanlLOfgren, pp. 105, 110.
Koskinen (1983), p. 260.
I(l

Bergman staged Franz Lehar's operelta with great success at Ihe Malmo City Theater

11

in 1954.
Camillalordan Daasnes in Vindllet, No. I, 1983.

II

Bergman here deviates from authenticity. As we have seen, A Dream Play was al-

223

NOTES

ready published in 1902 together with two other plays and was first produced in
1907. The play did not exist as a separate publication in May 1909, when the film
ends.
]) Vos, pp. 70, 72.

Strindberg, Easter (1952)

Esslin, pp. 172, 177,181.
Lars Ring in Svenska Dagbfader, July 14, 1988.
Lamm, 2, p. 205.
Urban Stenstrom in Srenska Dagbladet, April 15, 1952.
Ole Hessler in Da/?ens Nyheter, March 22,1989.

A Matter ofthe Soul (1990)

An English version was broadcast 011 BBC's Radio 3 in March 1990 with Anna
Massey in the main part.
The situation is strikingly similar to the dream sequence in Bergman's early film
Prison, where Birgitta Carolina meets a girl in mourning - her alter ego - whose

black-gloved hand offers Birgitta Carolina a radiant stone, "the most beautiful stone
I've ever seen." Later when Birgitta Carolina has knifed herself and is about to die,
this dreamy woman appears again, hands her the shining stone, and consolingly tells
her: "Don't be afraid. Carry on. I shall stay with you all the time. It's me, your
mother."
The singular forms are literally the appropriate ones. For a long time, one of the
world's outstanding directors has had to manage with one good eye and one good ear.
See Bergman (1994b), p. 13.

Between Stage and Screen

Bergman in Marker (1992), p. 17,
Bergman (1975), pp. 129-30.
Bergman in Marker (1992), p. 17.
Mirrors abound in Bergman 's stage and, particularly, in his screen productions. For a
penetrating examination of the filmic mirrors, see Koskinen (1993), pp. 61-153.

cr. Sjogren (1968), pp. 255-6 and Marker (1992), pp. 201-2.
Hook, p. 165.

224

NOTES

Bazin, p. 92.
9

Blackwell (1981), p. 61.

For a discussion of the film-aesthetic aspects of the play-within-the-film with regard
to Bergman, see Koskinen (1993), pp. 155-262.

'" Bergman in Marker (\992), p. 32.

I1
Sjogren (1969), p. 12.
12

O'Reilly, p. 84.

Il

Bordwell, p. 208.

'4

An extensive semiotic analysis of the Copenhagen production of this play is found in

l5

Wiingaard.
Marker (1992), p. 162.

16

Livingston, pp_ 23, 79-80.

17

Siegfried Me1chinger as quoted in Marker (1992), p. 200.

IR

See Szondi, pp. 28-9, 46-7.

19

For the narratological significance of the term, see Chatman, p. 143.

20

Brandell, p. 266.

Marker (1992), pp. 233, 243.

Lars Ring in Svenska Dagbladet, April 28, 1991.

2J

ef. Long, p. 136.

:'.4

Koskinen (1983), p. 260.

2,

Interestingly, Alexander perfectly fits Bordwell's definition (p. 62) of the implied
author, "the invisible puppeteer, not a speaker or visible presence but the omnipotent
artistic figure behind the work."

26

Bergman (1989), p. 33.

Marker (1992), pp. 20-21.

225

NOTES

Selected Bibliography

References to reviews arc found only in the Notes.

Assayas, Olivier and Stig Bjorkman, "Conversation avee Ingmar Bergman," Cahiers du
cinema. No, 436, Oct. 1990
Bazin, Andre, What is Cinema'?, Vol. 1, trans. Hugh Gray, Berkeley: University of Cali-

fornia Press. 1967

Bergman, lngmar, Four Screenplays: Smiles ofa Summer Night, The Seventh S('al, Wild
Strawberries, The Magician, lrans. Lars Malmstrom and Davit! Kushner, London
and New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960

Wood Painting, trans. Randolph Goodman and Leif Sjoberg, Tulane Drama Review.
Vul. 6, Winter, 1961

Persona and Shame, trans. Keith Bradfield, London and New York: Marioo

BOYll[S,

1972
Bergman

011

Bergman, ed. by Stig Bj6rkman, Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima, trans.

Paul Britten Austin. New York: Simon & Schusler, 1973

"Each Film is my Last" (1966) and "Ingmar Bergman: An Interview" (by Charles
Thomas Samuels, 1972). reprinted in

Stuart M. Kaminsky (ed.),

In~mar

Bergman. Essays in Criticism, LDndon-Oxford-New York: Oxford University

Press, 1975
Four Stories by Inxmar Bergman: The Touch, Cries and Whispers, The Hour of the
Wolf, A Passion, trans. Alan B1air, London: Mariao Boyars, 1976
Autumn Sonata. trans. Alan Blair, New York: Pantheon, 1978
Fanny and Alexander, trans. Alan Blair. New York: Pantheon, 1982
The MaXic Lantern: An Autobiography, trans. Joan Tate, Hannondsworth: Penguin,
1989
A Maller of the Soul, trans. Eivor Martinus. in New Swedish Plays, ed. by Gunilla
Anderman. Norwich: Norvik Press, 1992
The Best Intentions, trans. Joan Tate, New York: Arcade, 1993
Images: My Life in Film, trans. Marianne Ruuth, London: Bloomsbury. 1994a
Femte akten. Stockholm: Norstedts, 1994b
Bergom-Larsson, Maria, Ingmar Bergmon oell den borgerliga ideo!ogin. Stockholm:
Norstedts,1976
Bil1quisL Fritiof, Inxmar Berxman - leatermanllen ochjilmskaparen, Stockholm: Natur
och Kultur, ! 960

2U

SELECTED HlHLlOGRAPHY

Bjorkman, Stig, "Det oatkomliga," Chaplin, Vol. 30, Nos. 2-3, 1988
Blackwell, Mari1yn lohns, "The Chamber Plays and the Trilogy: A Revaluation of the
Case of Strindberg and Bergman," in Marilyn lohns Blackwell (ed.), Structures of

Influence: A Comparative Approach to August Strindberg, Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press. 1981

Persona: The Transcendent Image, Urbana, Ill. and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1986
Bordwell, David, Narra/ioll in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge, 1988
Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 4th ed.. New York:
McGraw-Hill,1993
Brandell, Gunnar, Strindberg ill Inferno, trans. Barry Jacobs, Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1974
Branigan, Edward, Narrative Comprehension and Film, London and New York:
Routledge. 1992
Bryant-Bertail, Sara, "The Tower of BabeI: Space and Movement in The Ghost Sonata,"
in Goran Stockenstrom (ed.), Strindberg's Dramaturgy, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1988
Chatman, Seymour. COIning to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film,
Ithaca and London: Comel! University Press, 1990
Cowie, Peter, Sweden 2, Screen Series, London: A. Zwemmer Ltd. and New York: A.S.
Bames & Co., 1970

Inf!,mar Berf!,man: A Critical Biography. London: Andre Deutseh. 1992

Dunner, Him, The Personal Vision oflngmar Berwnan, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1972
Eldridge, Florence, "Reflections on Long Day's Journey into Night: First Curtain Call
for Mary Tyrone," in Virginia Floyd (ed.), O'Neil/: A World View, New York:
Frederick Ungar, 1979
Esslin, Martin, Mediations: Essays on Brecht, Beckett and the Media, London: Methuen,
1980
Falck, August, Fern ar med Strindberg. Stockholm: Wahlstrom & Widstrand, 1935
Frenz, Horst (ed.), American Playwrights on Drama, New Yurk: Hill & Wang. 1965
Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation ofDreams, trans. lames Strachey, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1991
Frykman, lonas and Orvar Uifgren, Den kultiverade manniskan, Malmo: Liber, 1979
Gado, Frank, The Passion of lngmar Bergman, Durham: Duke University Press, 1986
Gascoigne, Bamber, World Theatre, Boston and Toronto: Little Brown, 1968
Hanes Harvey, Anne-Charlotte, Srrindberg's Symbolic Room: Commanding Fonn for Set

Design in Selected Strindberfi Scripts, /887-/907, diss., University of Minnesola, 1984

227

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hook, Marianne, InRmar BeQiman, Stockholm: Wahlstrom & Widstrand, 1962

Johns, Marilyn E., "Journey into Autumn: Oviider and Smu/tronstiillet," Scandinavian
Studies, VoL 50, No. 3,1978
Kawin, Bruce, Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film, Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1978
Koskinen, Maaret, "Teatern som metafor: En analys av Bergmans Fanny ochAlexander,"'
Chaplin, Vol. 25, No. 6,1983
'The Typically Swedish in lngmar Bergman," Chap/in, 25th Anniversary Issue, 1984
Spel och speglinRar: En studie i InRmar Bergmans jilmiska eslelik, Stockholm: Department of Theatre and Cinema Arts, 1993
KIutch, Joseph Wood, Introduction to Nine Plays by Eugene 0 'NeW, New York, 1932
Lamm, Martin, Strindbergs dramer, Vol. 1-2, Stockholm: Bonniers, 1924-26
Livingston, Paisley, InRmar Bergman and the Rituals ofArt, Ithaca and wndon: Comell
University Press, 1982
Long, Robert Emmet, /ngmar Bergman: Fi/m and Slage, New York: Abrahams, 1994
Lunin, Strindhergs Dramen, Emsdetten: Lechte, 1962
Marker, Lise-Lone and Frederick 1., Infimar Bergman: A Project for the Theatre, New
York: Frederick Ungar, 1983
/ngmar Bergman: A Life in the Theater, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992
Marty, Joseph, /ngmar Bergman: Une poitique du disir, Paris: Les Editions du Cerr,
1991
Mellen, Joan, "Cries and Whispers: Bergman and Women," in Stuart M. Kaminsky (ed.),
Ingmar Bergman: Essays in Criticism, London-Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1975
Mosley, Philip, InRmar Bergman: The Cinema as Mistress, London and Boston: Marion
Boyars, 1981
Northam, 1.R., "Strindberg's Spook Sonata," in Carl Reinhold Smedmark (ed,). Essays
on Strilldberg, Stockholm: The Strindberg Society, 1966
Ollen. Gunnar, Strindberg i

rv, Stockholm: Sveriges Radio. 1971

Olsson, Tom 1.A., O'Neill och Dramaten, Stockholm: Akademilitteratur, 1977

O'Reilly, Willem Thomas, Ingmar Bergman's Theatre Direction, 1952-1974, diss., University of California, 1980
Petric, Vlada (ed.), Film and Dreams: An Approach to Ingmar Bergman, South Salem, N.
Y: Redgrave, 1981
Rokem, Freddie, Theatrical Space in lbsen, Chekhov and Strindherg: Puhlic Forms of
Privacy. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Umi Research Press, 1986

2211

SELECTIi:D BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sarris, Andrew, 'The Seventh Seal," in Birgitta Steene (ed.), Focus on The Seventh Seal,
Englewoord Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hal!, 1972
Shakespeare, Wi1liam, Kung Lear, trans. Britt Hatlqvist, Stockholm: Dramaten, 1984

The Winter's Tale, The Arden Shakespeare, ed. by J.H.P. Pafford, London and New
York: Routledge, 1993a

En vintermga, trans. Britt G. Hallqvist and Claes Schaar, Stockholm': Ordfront,

1993b
Simons, John, Ingmar Bergman Directs, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1972
Sjogren, Henrik, Ingmar Bergman pJ temern, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1968

Regi: Ingmar Bergman: DaghokfrJn Dramaten 1969, Stockholm: Gebers, 1969

Sjoman, Vilgot, L 136: Diary with Infimar Berfiman, trans. Alan Blair, Ann Arbor, Mich..
Karoma, 1978
Sontag, Susan, "Persona: The Film in Depth," in Stuart M. Kaminsky (ed.), Ingmar Berg-

man: Essays in Criticism, London-Oxford-NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1975

Sprinchorn, Evert, "Julie's End," in Carl Reinhold Smedmark (ed.), Essays on Strind-

berg, Stockholm: The Strindberg Society, 1966

Steene, Birgilta, Ingmar Bergman, Boston: Twayne, 1968
(ed.) Focus on The Seventh Seal. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972

"Det sjunde inseglet: Filmen som angestens och nadens metafor," Svenskfilmografi,
Vol. 5, Stockholm: Svenska Filminstitutet, 1983

Ingmar Bergman: A Guide to References and Resources, Boston: a.K. Hall & Co.,
1987
Strindberg, August, Open Letters to the Intimate Themer, trans. and introd. Waiter
Johnson, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1959

A Dream Play, adapted by Ingmar Bergman, introd. and trans. Michael Meyer, London: Seeker & Warburg, 1973
Szondi, Peter, Theory of the Modem Drama, trans. Michael Hays, Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1987
Tornqvist, Egil, A Drama of Souls: Studies in O'Neill's Super-naturalistic Technique,
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969
"Ingmar Bergman Directs Strindberg's Ghost Sonata," Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 3, No.
11, July-Sept. 1973a

Bergman och Strindberg: Spoksonaten - drarfUI och iscensiitlning, Dramaten 1973,

Stockholm: Prisma, 1973b

Strindberftian Drama: Themes and Structure, Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell,

Int., and Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982
"Staging A Dream Play," in Goran Stockenstrtim (ed.), Strindberg's Dramaturgy,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988

229

S"L"CTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Transposing Drama: Studies in Representation, London: Macmillan, 1991

Ibsen. A Doll's House, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995

Tomqvist, Egil and Barry Jacobs, Strindberx 's Miss Julie: A Play and its Tran.lpositiom,
Norwich: Norvik Press, 1988
Vas, Marik, Drdkterna i dramat: Mitt ar med Fanny och Alexander, Stockholm:
Norstedts. 1984
Wingaard, Jytte, Ti;'utersi;'miolO/ti, Copenhagen: Berlingske, 1976
Wood, Robin, Inxmur Berxman, London: Studio Vista, 1969
Young, Yemon, Cinema Borealis: Ingmar Bergman and the Swedish Ethos, New York:
David Lewis, 1971
Zern, Leif, Se BerXman, Stockholm: Norstedts, 1993
Ahlander, Lars (ed.), Sl'enskfilmof!.rafi, Vols. 4-7, Stockholm: Svenska Filminstitutet,
1980-88
Note: Extensive filmographies are found in Bergman (1973 and 1994a), Cowie (1992),
Gado, Livingston, Marty. Steene (1987) and Ahlander. Lists of Bergman's theater productions are found in Cowie (1992), Hook, Marker (!992) and Sjogren (1968).

230

SF.I,ECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

List of Illustrations

Scene from The Dream Play, Dramaten 1970.

Photo Beata Bergstrom.

26

Scene from The Dream Play, Dramaten 1970.

Photo Beata Bergstrom.

28

Ground plan for The Ghost Sonata. Dramaten 1973.

42

Selling for Act I of The Ghost Sonata, Dramaten 1973.

Photo Beata Bergstrom.

42

Final scene from The Ghost Sonata. Dramaten 1973.

Photo Beata Bergstrom.

44

Scene from Miss Julie, Dramaten 1988.

Photo Bengt Wanselius.

55

Scene from Miss Julie. Dramalen 1988.

Photo Bengt Wanselius.

56

Opening of Long Day's Journey into Niffht. Dramaten 1988.

Photo Bengt Wanselius.

63

Scene from LonR Day'.\" Journey into Night, Dramaten 1988.

Photo Bengt Wanselius_

65

Scene from A Doll's House, Dramaten 1989.

Photo Bengt Wanselills.

75

Final scene from A Doll's House, Dramaten 1989.

Photo Bengt Wanselius.

77

Opening setting for The Winter's Tale, Dramaten 1994.

Photo Bengt Wanselius.

84

Scene from The Winter's Tale. Dramaten 1994.

Photo Bengt Wanselills.

86

231

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Scene from The Seventh Seal, 1957. Swedish Film Industry.

Photo Louis Huch.

106

Scene from The Seventh Seal, 1957. Swedish Film Industry.

Photo Louis Huch.

109

Scene from Wild Strawberries, 1957. Swedish Film Industry.

Photo Louis Huch.

120

Scene from Wild Strawberries, 1957. Swedish Film Industry.

Photo Louis Huch.

125

Scene from Storm, 1960. Swedish Television.

132

Scene from Persona, 1966.

Swedish Film Industry.

139

Scene from Persona, 1966. Swedish Film Industry.

141

Scene from Cries and Whispers, 1973.

Swedish Film Industry.

148

Scene from Cries and Whispers, 1973.

Swedish Film Industry.

154

Scene from Autumn Sonata, 1978.

Swedish Film Industry. Photo Arne Carlsson.

164

Scene from Autumn Sonata, 1978.

Swedish Film Industry. Photo Arne Carlsson.

167

Scene from Fanny and Alexander, 1982.

Swedish Film Institute. Photo Arne Carlsson.

184

Scene from Fanny and Alexander, 1982.

Swedish Film Institute. Photo Arne Carlsson.

186

232

LIST OF ILI,USTRATIONS

Index

acting
areas, 50
style, 83-4, 85
actors in Bergman productions
Ahlstedt, Borje, 85, 184
Atzom, Robert, 69
Benktsson, Benkt-Ake, II
Berggren, Thommy, 67
Bergman, Mats, 179
Bjelvenstam, Bjom, 123
Bjork, Halvar, 164
Bjomstrand, Gunnar, 11,98,117,168
Edwall, AlIan, 11, 174
Ek, Anders, 11,36,105,150,192,194
Ekerot, Bengt, 97
Elfstrom, John, 130
Fridell, Ake, 106
Oranath, Bjom, 72
Ouve, Bertil, 174
Henning, Uno, 130
Henrikson, Mathias, 34
Henriksson, Krister, 85
Josephson, Erland, 72,150,174
Kjellson, Ingvar, 132
Kulle, Jarl, 60, 67, 68,174
Lindstrom, Jorgen, 138
Malmsjo, Jan, 174
Malmsten, Birger, 11, 192
Mattsson, Per, 72
Moritzen, Henning, 156
Ol5son, Gunnar, 105, 194
Pawlo, Toivo, 11,34
Poppe, Nils, 97
Priizelins, Gosta, 87
Sjoberg, Gunnar, 115
Sjostrand, Per, 119
Sjostrom, Victor, 113, 128, 137

233

INDEX

Stormare, Peter, 46, 67, 68

Strandmark, Erik, 104
Sundquist, Folke, 123
Sydow, Max von, 11, 97
Arlin, Georg, 27,150
actresses in Bergman productions
Adolphson, Kristina, 27, 92
Allwin, Pemilla, 174
Andersson, Bibi, 11, 67, 68, 90, 97,
118,139,142
Andersson, Haniet, 11, 146
August, Pcmilla, 72, 85, 174
Bergman, Ingrid, 160
Bergman, Linn 156
Bjork, Anna, 88
Brostrom, Gunnel, 124
Dahlbeck, Eva, 11
Ek, Malin, 27
Ekblad, Stina, 185
Fridh, Gertrud, 11, 36, 37,124
Friedmann, Jane, 195, 198
Frohling, Ewa, 174
Gill, Inga, 106
Goranzon, Marie, 46
Hansson, Maud, 98
Hiort af Ornas, Barbro, 192
KavIi, Karin, 11
Kulle, Gerti, 46
Landgre, Inga, 99
Lindblom, Gunnel, 11,99,209
Maim, Mona, 130
Nilsson, Maj-Britt, 11, 192-3
Nyman, una, 164
Olin, Lena, 209
Richardson, Marie, 72
Russek, Rita, 69
Sylwan, Kari, 146

Thulin, Ingrid, 122, 146

Tomqvist, Kristina, 90
UlImann, Liv, 138, 142, 146, 156, 160
Wallgrcn, Pemilla, see August, PerniHa
Willlgren, Gunn, 174
Ostergren, Pernilla, see August, PerniIla
adaptation, 11, 17,69,79
amplific<ltion of text, 17,27,53,73,83
deletion of text, 17, 18, 19,24,37,43,
53,56,60,66,68,69,70,83,192
rearrangement of lext, 25, 43, 51, 69,
82, 89, 92
Almqvist, Carl Jonas Love, 83, 84, 89
see also under music: Almqvist
Andersen, Hans Christian
The Travel Companion (Reisekammeratm), 191
audience, 140-1
in relation to stage, 29, 34, 70, 71, 79
screen, 208
stage, 26, 29, 70, 208
see also recipient
auditorium, 34
shape of, 34, 84, 208
authenticity, 50, 61, 84,139-40
auto-intertextuality,68, 143
Bakhtin, Mikhai1. 85
Baudelaire, Charles, 137
Beckett, Samuel, 62, 68
WaitingjorGodOl,135
Bergman, Hjalmar, 14, 191
Mr. Sleemanls Coming (flerr Sleeman
kommer),ll
Bergman, lngmar
films
Autumn $onala (Hiislsonalen), 13,
16, 19-20, J60-73, 175, 206,
207,211
Brink of Life/So close to life (Niira
livel), 13, 182

234

INDEX

Cries alld Whispers (Viskningar

och rop), 20,108,146-59, J66,
171,206,207,211
Crisis (Kris), 11
Hour ofthe Wo!f(Varglimmen), 15
llIicil Inlerlude/Summer Interlude
(Sommarlek), 15,205
The Mar:ician/The Face (Ansiklet),
12,17,171,205,208
The Naked Night/Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton), 205,

20'
Persona, 13, 15, 16, 68, 137-45,
175,181, 185,203,204,205,
207,209,211
PrisonlThe devil's Wanton (Fiillxelse),143
The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde
inseglel), 12, 13, IS, 16, 17,45,
46,95-111, 126, 132, 135, 143,
150,156,158,175.184,204,
207,208,211
Shame (Skammen), 113
The Silence (Tysl11aden), 13, 15,
16.143.175,184,205,206
Smiles of u Summer Night (Sommamaltens leende), 13, 17, 143
Summer with Monika (SommarCII
med Moniku). 209
Three Strange LoveslThirst (Ttirs!),
15
Thmugh a Glass Darkly (Sa.wm i
en sper:el), 14, 15. 16, 17, 19,
34.127.142,152,163.205
TormentlFren::.y (Hets), 11, 13,204
The Touch (Beroringen), 62,149
The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukiillan),
208-9
Wild Strawherries (Smultronstiillel), 15, 17, 112-27, 128-9,
131-6,143.150,152,168,207,
210.211
Winter Lighl/The Communicanls

14, 15,
16,20,143,153,156,204,211

(Nattvardsgiisterna),

plays
The Fifth Act (Femte akten), 19
Jack Among the Actors (Jack hos
skiidespe!arna),191
Rake! and the Cinema Doorman
(Rakel och biograjVaktmiiswren), 191
To my Terror (Mi/? till skriick), 191
The Travel Companion (Reslw.mraren),191
Wood Painting (Triimalning), 13,

95
radio play
A Matter of the Soul (En
ange!d/?enhet),195-8

~jdlslig

TV opera
The Ma/?ic Flute (Trollf/ojten), 204

TV plays
Ajier the Rehearsal (Efter repetitionen), 204, 205
The Ritual (Riten), 205

TV series
The Best Intentions (Den /?oda
I'iljan), 59, 205
Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte),

19,34
Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och
Alexander), ll, 13, 15, 19, 88,

174-97,204,205,211,212
Scenesfrom a Marriage (Scener UT
ett iiktenskap), 13, 69, 76, 167

biblical allusion, 39
apple, 118, 124,147
Communion, 156
cross, 24, 105, 123
crown of thorns, 27
crucifixion, 27, 98,105,110,123,152
Original Sin, 30, 119, 124, 148, 150,
163
Last Judgement, 98, 99, 102, 111
see also character: as Christ figure

235

INDEX

Brecht, Bertolt, 70
Bruckner, Anton, 60
BUchner, Georg
Woyzeck, 207

Bufiuel, Luis, 145

Bocklin, Amold
Toten-Insel, 30, 33
camera
angle, 20, 204, 207, 210
bird's eye view, 102, 105
close-up, 24
crosscutting, 18, 167-8, 171
cutting, 204
dissolve, 20, 23, 24
distance, 20, 171-2,207
extreme close-up, 24
level, 105, 166
long shot, 204
long take, 204, 210
movement, 204
off-screen character, 108, 135
out-of-focus, 125-6, 135, 140, 166
panning, 109,204
point-of-view shot, 102, 103, 117,
208
mental,21O
optical, 210
slow motion, 210
soft focus, 210
still photo, 130
two-shot, 98, 169
zoom, 31,157
Carriere, Eugene, 196
Caruso, Enrico, 196
censorship, 19
channel
olfactoric, 19, 27, 50, 52
visual, 194
character
age of, 114, 175
and role-playing, 142, 165-7, 181,
197-8,205

androgynous. 88, 185

archetypal, I ! 1
as alter ego, 27, 66, 68,123, 130, 136.
137,185
as animaL 52, 99, lOO, 103-05, 134
as child, 27, 69, 73, 88
as Christ figure, 23, 153, 191
as dreamer, 24. 25, 29
as filter. 140,210
as mediator, 34, 70, 209-10
as observer, 25. 119, 128, 140, 209-10
as prompter, 106
as protagonist, 14,97,128,192
as substitute, 147, 162, 166, 177
as type, lID
as victim, 106, 153
coherence, 201
doubling of, 98, 117, 132, 156. 185
entrance of, 63, 70. 100
exit of, 70
final,79
hubris of, 103
interaction, 68,145
Jewish,39
name of, 23, 36, 139, ISO, 175, 182.
195,197
silent. U5, 140-1, 147, 163, 170
supernatural, 95, lOO, 180, 186
symbolic, 135
universality of. 101, 124
Chekhov, Anton
The Seagull, 66, 205
Three Sisters, 149
Cocteau. Jean
La Voix humaine, 195
color, 14. 19.24, 37, 46, 52, 60, 76, 83,
203
black-and-white. 76, 99,176,203
pattern, 36, 149, 176
correspondence
between characters, 38. 53
between situations, 33. 53
costume, 20, 101. 150, 154

236

INDEX

as property. 84,186
as sign of inner division, 47, 67
change of, 37
calor of, 47, 53, 67, 148
symbolic. 85, 90,150,186
contrast of. 50, 56, 58
indicating season, 28, 33. 126
lack of information in text. 36
simplicity of, 25, 77
similarity of, 78, 88,122,147
style of. 72-3, 79
Cusian, Albert. 139
Dante Alighieri, 30, 35
Divino Commedia, 115
deus ex machina. 171
Dickens, Charles
The Pickwick Papers, 153
director
as hypnotizer. 14
as improviser, 18
Dramaten, sce theater: The Royal Dramatic Theater
dream, 81, 83.191,210
cinematic. 113
daydream, 113
nightmare. 112-3. 115, 166
nocturnal,112-3
report, 113
stimulus, 116
wish-fulfilling. lB, 125, 127
dubbing. see under translation
editing, 24
cutting continuity, 18
Eisenstein, Sergei, 12
Ekerot, Bengt, 59
see also under actors
Eldridge, Florence, 60
Electra, 140-1
environment, see setting
Essen, Siri von, 51
ethnic signifiers. 47, 51. 53
Everynum.97, 100. 126

Feuer, Donya, 88
film
and the unconscious, 14
animated, 143
black-and-white, 14, 102
director's copy of, 19
fealUre, 11
production, 19
reviews, 19
script, 12, 17-20, 95, 116, 121, 124,
142-3,146,149,163,174
Fischer, Gunnar, 202
Freud, Sigmund, 113, 127, 167
Oedipus complex, 177
Traumdeulung, 116
Faro, 206
genre
Aristotelian drama, 14
analytical drama, 160
chamber film, 128, 146, 176
chamber play, 16,34,68,128,192
comedy,97,176
conjlictus literature, 109
drama of penance, 15
dream play, 61, 186
fairy tale, 182
meta-fi1m, 137-8, 140
meta-p1ay, 26, 29
monodrama, 195
morality play, 100
non-Aristotelian drama, 23
nouveau roman, 145
poem, 96, 145
station drama/film, 15, 98, 115
tragedy, 62, 68, 97,186
Gierow, Karl Ragnar, 60
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,
Ur-Faust,12
Faust,98
Griffith, D.W., 12

237

INDEX

Hallqvist Brit! G., 81

Hanson, Lars, 55, 62
Homer
The Odyssey, 96
Hoijer, Bjom-Erik
Requiem, 191
hypnosis, 58
Ibsen, Henrik, 12, 14, 61, 161
A Doll'~' House (Et Dukkehjem), 13,
69-80,149,160,203,208,210
Hedda Gabler, 13, 76, 203, 208-9
Peer Gynt, 13,96,97,98, 121, 126,
150,210
The Wild Duck (Vildanden), 13, 34,
160,175,181-2,208-9
imagery,
acoustic, 20
oral, 145
verbaL 20
visual,20
Johnson, Eyvind
Return to lthaca (Striindernas sval!),

96
Joyce, James, 113
Ulysses, 145
}ugendstil, see period style: art nou.'eau
Jung, Carl Gustav
collective unconscious, 113
kinesics, 38-9, 44, 51-2, 63-4, 76, 88,101,
l39
Lagerkvist, Par
Barabbas, 96
Laretei, Ktibi, 206
Larsson, Carl, 84
laterna ma/:ica, 11, 14, 211
Lermontov, Mikhail
TheHeroojOurTime, 137, 143
libretto, 11

light, 20, 25, 202

almospheric, 35-6, 62
bright, 36, 45, 62, 77, 179
'celestial',45, 126
cold, 36
cosmic, 144
diegetic, 131, 135
dim,36
functional, 35-6
realistic, 35-6
silhouette, 99, 102, 110, 122-3
soft, 45
spotlight, 28
symbolic, 35-6, 85,170
warm, 36
weather conditions, 14,61,99, 151
location, see setting
Losey, loseph, 203
Maeterlinck, Maurice
Intirieur,135
Mahler, Gustav, 60
make-up, 51
hair, 38, 46, 88
March, Fredric, 67
Martinson, Harry
Aniara, 96
medium
audiovisual, 18
Biblia pauperum, 95-6
'film' on stage, 60, 201-3
international, 12
national, 12, 19
opera, II
realistic, 201
texlual, 18, 20
'theater' on screen, 204-7
unspecifified,18
mimicry, 64
Molander,Olof, 16-17,27, 130,210
Moliere (pseud. for lean Baptiste Poquelin),14
Don Juan, 13,203

2.18

INDEX

The Misanthrope (Le Misanthrope), 13

motif, see lheme
movement
dance, 99, 110
freezing of, 25, 27, 88,140,203
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 206
see also Schikaneder, Emanuel
Munch, Edvard
Jealousy (Sialusi), 119
Scream (Skrik), 104
music, 102, 122, 191. 205
Almqvist, Carl Jonas Love
"The Flower of the Heart" (Hjartat$ blomma), 90
Sonxes, 83, 85
Bach, lohann Sebastian
Suite for cello, No. 5, C minor, 151
barrel organ, 25
chamber, 16, 17, 160
Chopin, Frederic
Funeral March, C minor, op. 7212,

27
Mazurka, A minor, op. 17, No. 4,
148,159
Prelude, No. 2, A minor, 164
coda,16
diegetic, 122
Dies irae, 99
harp, 44-5, Ill, 126
Haydn, Joseph
The Seven Last Words of Our
Saviour on the Crus's (Die
.\'ieben Worle des Er!users am
Kreuze),/91
Handel, Georg Friedrich
Sonala, F major, op. J. 160
Lehac, Franz
The Merry Widow (Die lu.\'tige
Witwe),182
"The Maiden's Prayer" (Jungfruns
bon), 73,197
music-box, 71
non-diegetic, 122, 134

"On a lily branch a dove is perched"

(Det siuer en duva pa liljekvist),
107
oratorio, 16
organ, 34, 108
piano, 118, 148
Part, Arvo
Fra/res,197
Schumann, Robert
"Triiumerei" (from Kinderszenen),
71
Piano Quintet, op. 44, 179
singing, 108, Ill, 118
sonata, 16, 160
string quartet, 160
symphony, 16, 61
Vivaldi, Antonio
"Autumn" (from Quattro S/axioni), 134
Waldteufel, Emil
Plui d'Or, 130
Mark, Lennart, 26, 28, 84
narrator
external, 138, 140, 192,209
internal, 114, 116-7, 125, 158, 209
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 61, 62
Nykvist, Sven, 202
offstage action, 53, 55, 70
Olivier, Laurence, 67
omission, see adaptation: deletion of text
O'Neill, Eugene
Before Breakfast, 195
The Grea/ God Brown, 68
Long Day's journey into Night, 59-68,
72,203-4,209-10
Strange In/erlude, 176
O'Neill, Carlotta Monterey, 59, 60
Palme, Ulf, 56
Palmstierna-Weiss, Gunilla, 47, 50, 56, 59
pantomime, 58, 63-4, lOS, 106, 133-4

239

INDEX

paralinguistics, 12,39,58,64, 146, 152.

159.194
Pavlova, Anna, 88
period style
art nouveau. 34, 71-3. 77, 79, H4-5,
147
jin de siecle, 72
Pirandello, Luigi, 29
Six Characters in Search of an Author
(Sei personaf!gi in cerea d 'autore),
12.13-14.70,110.142
Plato, 138
plausibility, see verisimilitude
presentationa! mode
dreamlike, 70, 72, 84,158,180,210
Droste effect, 78, 83, 88
half-realistic, 210-11
mirror effect, 34, 72, 84, 209
naturalistic, 50, 68
objective, 14,24,29,87,96, 110-11,
146,178,180
prose, 97
realistic, 50, 201
shock effect, 145
stream of consciousness, 145
subjective, 14,24.29,35,87,110-11,
128-9,139.146,152,159,171-2,
175,178,180,187,210
theatrical, 20 I
tubleau vivant, 62, 73, 105
verse, 98
blank,82
primary text (dialogue)
wnfession, 103
discrepancy dialogue-action, 55-6
monologue, 65, 66
onomatopoeia, 193
quotation in, 60, 64, 66, 98, 186, 197,
210
Dowson, Ernes!, 210
Swinburne, Algemon Charles, 64,

66
soliloquy, 87,168,170-1,185

off-screen voice, 99
voice-over, 114, 168
projection, 33, 61-63, 72, 203
out-of-focus, 35, 42
Toten-Insel, 33, 43
property, 52, 73, 77, 84, 86,101
as attribute, 28, 39
changeability of, 23
emblematic,206
lack of, 25, 203
letter, 171-2
mirror, 27, 33, 56, 58,121,154,170
photo. 136, 139, 147-8
Proust, Marcel, 113
Remembrance of ThinKS Past (A la recherdle du temps perdu), I 18
proxemics, 20, 37-8, 45, 63, 64, 66, 79, 88,
107-9,154, 168, 1H4
choreograph~ 65, 75, 79, 203
teichoscopy,194
radio, 196
drama, 20
production, II
recipient, 19, 27, 61, 69
age of, 180, 206
and empathy, 67, 78, 124, 139, 196,
211

and imagination, 14, 20, 144, 186,

191,207-8,212
and period, 82
and perfonner, 207
as confidant, 168
social class of, 95
listener, 191
reader, 20
spectator, 20
religion
deus abscondiIus, 117
dualism, 177
fate, 68, 100, 140
monism, 177, 185
pantheism, 177, 192
rhythm, 18,79,160,202

240

INDEX

scenery, see setting

scenography, 24
Schaar, Claes, 81
Schikaneder, Emanuel and Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart,
The Magic Flute (Die Zauberjliile),
81,92
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 23
secondary text
acting directions, 36, 56, 65,196-7
cue designations, 39
dramatis personae, 23
stage directions, 29, 59, 62
indicative, 19
prescriptive, 19
subtitle, 17, 19
title, 97, 137-8, 152, 174
setting, 14,46,59-61
and acoustics, 61
ascetic, 206
authenticity of, 6 I, 130
as photograph, 76,130
character and, 71
claustrophobic, 70, 103, 170
empty, 25, 28-9
geographical, 82-3, 85
mirroring state of mind, 100, 103
pennanent, 25
unity of, 30, 61,70, 146, 160
Shakespeare, William, 12, 14, 61, 97, 210
Hamlet, 68, SI. 88, 174, 177, 181-2,
185,206,209
Killl! Lear, 81-2, 206, 208-9
Macbelh.13
A Midsummer NiXh!'s Dream, 84
The Wifller's Tale, 81-92, 203-4, 208
situation
emhlematic, 73, 74
Sjoberg, Alf, I I, 46,129,149
Sjostrom, Victor, 12, 100
see also under actors
"The Song of the Sun" (S6Iarlj6d), 43
sound, 20, 193,205
absence of, 196

clock, 92,133,149,192,197
correspondence of, 104
diegetic, 102, 118, 179
'dissolves,' 198
foghorn, 64
church bells, 34, 41, 130-1, 192-3. 198
non-diegetic, 105
silence, 99,100,101,104-5,134
steamship bell, 34
space
as symbol of mental condition, 103.
149
as temporal signifier, 119
cinematic use of, 31
spatial reversal, 34
stage area
curtain, 35, 72, 83
cyclorama, 42, 60
inner. 61, 70
proscenium, 34. 168
stage design, see scenography
Strauss, Franz Josef, 69
Strauss. Richard, 196
Strindberg, August, 12, 14, 15, 16, 24, 35,
59,100,113,130,136,186,191
The Blue Books (BM bOckerna), 33
The Crown Bride (Kronbruden). 17
A Dream Play (Ett dromspel), 13, 16,
17,23-29,61,66,72,81,82,89,
111,112,123-4,133,138,142,
144-5.146,153,156,174-87.1867,191,195,197,203-5.208-9,212
Easter (Pask), 191-4
ErikXIV.17
The Father (Fadren), 70, 88
The First Warning (Farsta varningen),
195
Getting Married (Giftas), 74
The Ghost Sonata (Spoksonaten), 13,
14,15,16,17,30-45,69,110,126,
144, 147, 151. 156-9, 162, 197,
203,207-9
The Great Highway (Stora landsvaf:en).138

241

INDEX

Master Olof(Master Olof), 16

Memorandum to the Members of the
Intimate Theater (Memorandum
till medlemmarne av Intima
teatem),16
Miss Julie (Froken Julie), 13,46-59,
69,85,95,129,149,195
The Occult Diary (Ockulta dagboken),
38
The Pelican (Pelikanen). 16, 161
The Saga of the Folkungs (Folkungasagan),17
Storm (Ovader), 128-36
The Stronger (Den starkare), 137
To Damascus (Till Damo.skus), 14, 17,
89,98.123,210
Totenlnsel,33
structure
act, 23
circular, 142

eod
happy, 73, 78, 90
open, 211
epic, 96
epilogue, 114, 143, 160-1, 171, 174,
1R2

exposition, 114, 167

interlude, 52
linking of acts, 30
loose, 98, 202
nemesis, 192-3
opening-ending, 111
perpetuum mobile, 73, 78, 79
prologue, 24, 26,100,114,143,160-1.
168,171,174,182
reversal, 171
scene, 23, 24
scene shift, 24
sequence, 31, 41
pre-credit, 114-5, 126, 137-45
subtext, 76, 88
Soderberg, Hjalmar
"A Dog without Master" (En herrelos
hund),103

television, 201
black-and-white,24
production, J J, 24
series, 69
theater
and illusion, 26
director's, 17
program, 83
puppet, 11,81,88, 179, 181,211
tlleatrum mundi, 29, 34, 92, 208
theaters
The City Theater (Malmo), 207
The City Theater (Stockholm), 70
The Intimate Theater (Stockholm), 30
Master Olofsgarden (Stockholm), 11
Residenzthealer (Munich), 46, 69
The Royal Dramatic Theater (Dramaten, Stockholm), 12,25,34,46.47,
59.69,81
The Royal Theater (Copenhagen), 88,
179
theme/motif, 16, 17
adults/children. 13, 161, 180
art/life. 13, 138. 165, 180,205,207
chess game, 95,135-6
churchltheater, 105. 176
coitus, 52-5, 74,106,124,144-5,157
rape, 87, 209
communionlisolation, 13,63,77,1068, 120, 122-3, 126, 149-52, 159.
167-8
communication, 13. 15,30.157,171,
212
doll. 71-3. 77,156
dreamlreality, 13, 14. 142, 146.207
eyesight, 99-100. 117
food, 39,102
wild strawberries. 107-8, 117-20.
125, 184
gender relations, 13.88
generation, 35. 73, 79. 161
good/evil. 13. lOO, 139.185
guilt 121. 166

242

INDEX

humiliation, 13,27.50,88
illness, 162, 166
AIDS. 97
cancer of the ulerus. 147, 150
plague, 96-7, 103
journey. 15, 30, 34, 35. 66, 98, 102.
151-2,170,176
language, 12, 15.69,162-3, 170, 185.

206
leitmotif, 23
love, 30, 81, 85, 88,108, 147
mask/face. 13. 14, 15,31. 35, 37, 39,
58,62,68,77,103, 117.129.138,
147,153,155.162,172,195,198,
207
maternity, 39,149,197
mortality. 105, 116, 158
music, 13,30,160, 162-4
play within play/film, 85, 204-5
sa/is!actio I'icaria, 24, 27,153,191
self-realization, 79
sexuality, 144-5, 157
vampirism, 15,39,141, 144
see also under bihlical allusion
Tidblad, Jnga, 56. 63
time
compression of, 105, 122
consecutiveness, 202
flashhack, 146, 158-9, 165.201
Oashforward, 159, 172,201
historical, 70, 83, 84, 96, 206
implicit, 102
interval, 35, 202
lapse, 82
playing, 25. 59, 100, 102
progression of, 102
prolepsis, 102, 115, 142
season, 47, 50, 53, 56, 85. 89, 129
simultaneity, 202
tempo, 41
unity of, 30, 160
visualized. 102
transcription of performance passages, 38,

40-41, 43, 48-50, 55, 57-8, 74, 86-7,

90-2,104,107,133,168-70,172
translation, 17,69,81-2,101
defective, 19, 110
deletion in, 124
dubbing, 19
simultaneous. 12
Tudor, Antony, 88
Vane, Sultan
Outward Bound, 11
verisimilitude, 66. 70, 71, 75, 79, 87, 88

INDEX

Vas, Marik, 42
WaHin, Johan Olof
"Where is the Friend for whom I'm
ever yearning" (Var ar den Van
som iiveralltpg siiker), 127
Welles, Orson, 204
Williams, Tennessee
The Rose Tattoo, 17
Zero, Leif, 27