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Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman during production of Wild Strawberries (1957)
Born
Ernst Ingmar Bergman
Years active1944 – 2005
Spouse(s)Else Fischer (1943–1945)
Ellen Lundström (1945-1950)
Gun Grut (1951–1959)
Käbi Laretei (1959–1969)
Ingrid von Rosen (1971–1995)
ChildrenLena Bergman (b. 1943)
Eva Bergman (b. 1945)
Jan Bergman (b. 1946)
Mats Bergman (b. 1948)
Anna Bergman (b. 1948)
Ingmar Bergman Jr. (b. 1951)
Maria von Rosen (b. 1959)
Daniel Bergman (b. 1962)
Linn Ullmann (b. 1966)
AwardsNYFCC Award for Best Director
1973 Viskningar och rop
1974 Scener ur ett äktenskap
1983 Fanny och Alexander
NYFCC Award for Best Screenplay
1973 Viskningar och rop

Ingmar Bergmanⓘ (IPA: ['ɪŋmar 'bærjman] in Swedish, but usually IPA: [ˈbɝgmən] in English) (July 14 1918 – July 30 2007) was a Swedish stage and film director. He is regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema. [1]

Biography

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala, Sweden to a Lutheran minister of Danish descent, Erik Bergman (later chaplain to the King of Sweden), and his wife, Karin (née Åkerblom). He grew up surrounded by religious imagery and discussion. , His father was a rather conservative parish minister and strict family father: Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting the bed. "While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang or listened," Ingmar writes in his biography Laterna Magica,

"I devoted my interest to 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 ceilings and walls. There was everything that one’s imagination could desire — angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans."

He performed two five-month stretches of mandatory military service and attended Stockholm High School and Stockholm University, not completing his course in literature and art but instead becoming interested in theatre and later in cinema (though he had become a "genuine movie addict"[2] by the early 1930s).

Although he grew up in a devout Lutheran household, Bergman stated that he lost his faith at age eight but came to terms with this fact only when making Winter Light.[3]

Since the early sixties Bergman lived much of his life on the island of Fårö, Gotland, Sweden, where he made a number of his films. Bergman moved to Munich for a while following a protracted battle with the Swedish government over alleged tax evasion, and did not return to make another film in Sweden until 1982, when he directed Fanny and Alexander. Bergman said this would be his last film, and that he would go on to direct theater. Since that time he did make a number of films for television, but later retired to Fårö, stating in 2004 that he would never again leave the island.

Ingmar Bergman died peacefully at his home on Fårö, in the early morning of July 30 2007, age 89.[4][5]

Career in film

Technique

As a director, Bergman favored intuition over intellect, and chose to be unaggressive in dealing with actors. Bergman saw himself as having a great responsibility toward them, viewing them as collaborators often in a psychologically vulnerable position. He stated that a director must be both honest and supportive in order to allow others their best work.

His films usually deal with existential questions of mortality, loneliness, and faith; they also tend to be direct and not overtly stylized. Persona, one of Bergman's most famous films, is unusual among Bergman's work in being both existentialist and avant-garde.

File:Ingmar Bergman and Sven Nykvist.jpg
Ingmar Bergman with his long time cinematographer Sven Nykvist during the production of Through a Glass Darkly, 1960.
Ingemar's father, Erik Bergman pictured at Hedvig Eleonora Church in Stockholm

While his themes could be cerebral, sexual desire found its way to the foreground of most of his movies, whether the setting was a medieval plague (The Seventh Seal), upper-class family life in early 20th century Uppsala (Fanny and Alexander) or contemporary alienation (The Silence). His female characters were usually more in touch with their sexuality than their men, and were not afraid to proclaim it, with the sometimes breathtaking overtness (i.e. "Cries and Whispers") that defined the work of "the conjurer," as Bergman called himself in a 1960 Time magazine cover story. In an interview with Playboy magazine in 1964, he said: "...the manifestation of sex is very important, and particularly to me, for above all, I don't want to make merely intellectual films. I want audiences to feel, to sense my films. This to me is much more important than their understanding them." Film, Bergman said, was his demanding mistress. Some of his major actresses became his actual mistresses as his real life doubled up on his movie-making one.

Love -- twisted, thwarted, unexpressed, repulsed -- was the leitmotif of many of his movies, beginning, perhaps, with Winter Light, where the pastor's barren faith is contrasted with his former mistress' struggle, tinged with spite as it is, to help him find spiritual justification through human love.

Bergman usually wrote his own scripts, thinking about them for months or years before starting the actual process of writing, which he viewed as somewhat tedious. His earlier films are carefully structured, and are either based on his plays or written in collaboration with other authors. Bergman stated that in his later works, when on occasion his actors would want to do things differently from his own intentions, he would let them, noting that the results were often "disastrous" when he did not do so. As his career progressed, Bergman increasingly let his actors improvise their dialogue. In his latest films, he wrote just the ideas informing the scene and allowed his actors to determine exact dialogue.

Repertory company

Bergman developed a personal "repertory company" of Swedish actors whom he repeatedly cast in his films, including Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson, the late Ingrid Thulin, and Gunnar Björnstrand, each of whom appeared in at least five Bergman features. Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, who appeared in nine of Bergman's films, was the last to join this group (in the 1966 film Persona), and ultimately became most closely associated with Bergman, both artistically and personally. They had a daughter together, Linn Ullmann (b. 1966).

Bergman began working with Sven Nykvist, his cinematographer, in 1953. The two of them developed and maintained a working relationship of sufficient rapport to allow Bergman not to worry about the composition of a shot until the day before it was filmed. On the morning of the shoot, he would briefly speak to Nykvist about the mood and composition he hoped for, and then leave Nykvist to work without interruption or comment until post-production discussion of the next day's work.

When viewing daily rushes, Bergman stressed the importance of being critical but unemotional, claiming that he asked himself not if the work is great or terrible, but if it is sufficient or if it needs to be reshot.[citation needed]

"Message"

Bergman encouraged young directors not to direct any film that does not have a "message," but rather to wait until one comes along that does, yet admitted that he himself was not always sure of the message of some of his films. By Bergman's own accounts, he never had a problem with funding. He cited two reasons for this: one, that he did not live in the United States, which he viewed as obsessed with box-office earnings; and two, that his films tended to be low-budget affairs. (Cries and Whispers, for instance, was finished for about $450,000, while Scenes from a Marriage — a six-episode television feature — cost only $200,000.)

Exile

1976 was one of the most traumatic in the life of Ingmar Bergman. On January 30, 1976, while rehearsing August Strindberg's Dance of Death at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, he was arrested by two plainclothes police officers, booked like a common criminal, and charged with income-tax evasion. The impact of the event on Bergman was devastating. He suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the humiliation and was hospitalized in a state of deep depression. Even though the charges were later dropped, Bergman was for a while inconsolate, fearing he would never again return to directing. He eventually recovered from the shock, but despite pleas by the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, high public figures, and leaders of the film industry, he vowed never to work again in Sweden. He closed down his studio on the barren Baltic island of Fårö and went into self-imposed exile in Munich, Germany. Although he continued to operate from Munich, by mid-1978, Ingmar Bergman seemed to have overcome much of his bitterness toward his motherland. In July of that year he was back in Sweden, celebrating his 60th birthday at Fårö and partly resumed his work as a director at Royal Dramatic Theatre. To honour his return, the Swedish Film Institute launched a new Ingmar Bergman Prize to be awarded annually for excellence in filmmaking.[6]

However, he remained in Munich until 1982, returning in that year to his homeland to direct Fanny and Alexander. Bergman stated that the film would be his last, and that afterwards he would focus on directing theatre. Since then, he directed a number of television specials and wrote several additional scripts, while continuing to work in theatre. In 2003, Bergman, at 84 years old, directed a new film, Saraband, that represented a departure from his previous works.

Introspective view on career

Ingmar Bergman and actress Ingrid Thulin during the production of The Silence (1963)

When asked about his movies, he said he held Winter Light,[7] Persona, and Cries and Whispers in the highest regard, though in an interview in 2004, Bergman said that he was "depressed" by his own films and could not watch them anymore.[8] In these films, he said, he managed to push the medium to its limit. While he denounced the critical classification of three of his films (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence) as a predetermined trilogy, saying he had no intention of connecting them and could not see any common motifs in them.[9] This contradicts the introduction Bergman himself wrote in 1964 when he had the three scripts published in a single volume: "These three films deal with reduction. Through a Glass Darkly - conquered certainty. Winter Light - penetrated certainty. The Silence - God's silence - the negative imprint. Therefore, they constitute a trilogy". The Criterion Collection sees the films as a trilogy: they have released all three on DVD individually and as a boxed set. It should be noted that Bergman, like many creative artists, was sometimes apt to express himself in a sweeping way, even on his own work, and he stated on numerous occasions (for example in the interview book Bergman on Bergman) that The Silence meant the end of an era when religious questions were a major concern in his films.

Theatrical work

Although Bergman was universally famous for his contribution to cinema, he was an active and productive stage director all his life, and was manager and director of a number of the most prestigious theatres in Sweden, notably the Malmö city theatre in the 1950s and the Stockholm Royal Dramatic Theatre [the national stage of Sweden; executive director there 1963-66 and active as stage director into the 1990s] as well as the Residenz-Theater of Munich, Germany (1977-84). Many of his star actors were people with whom he began working on stage, and a number of people in the "Bergman troupe" of his 1960s films came from Malmö's city theatre.

Family life

Bergman was married five times:

  • 25 March 1943 – 1945, to Else Fischer, choreographer and dancer (divorced). Children:
    • Lena Bergman, actress, born 1943.
  • 22 July 1945 – 1950, to Ellen Lundström, choreographer and film director (divorced). Children:
    • Eva Bergman, film director, born 1945,
    • Jan Bergman, film director, born 1946, and
    • twins Mats and Anna Bergman, both actors and film directors and born in 1948.
  • 1951 – 1959, to Gun Grut, journalist (divorced). Children:
    • Ingmar Bergman Jr, airline captain, born 1951.
  • 1959 – 1969, to Käbi Laretei, concert pianist (divorced). Children:
  • 11 November 1971 – 20 May 1995, to Ingrid von Rosen (widowered). Children:
    • Maria von Rosen, author, born 1959.

The first four marriages ended in divorce, while the last ended when his wife died of stomach cancer.

He was also the father of writer Linn Ullmann, with actress Liv Ullmann. In all, Bergman had nine children that he has acknowledged to be his own. He was married to all but one of the mothers of his children. His last wife was the mother of Maria von Rosen, who was born twelve years before the marriage.

Awards

Academy Awards

In 1971, Bergman received The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Academy Awards ceremony. Three of his films have won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: The Virgin Spring in 1961; Through a Glass Darkly in 1962; and Fanny and Alexander in 1984.

Many filmmakers worldwide, including Americans Woody Allen and Robert Altman, the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, have cited the work of Bergman as a major influence on their work.

BAFTA Awards

Cesar Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Filmography

Screenwriting works

Stage productions and radio theatre credits

List of plays that Ingmar Bergman directed for the stage and/or radio theatre as per [10]

Documentary works

See also

References

  1. ^ "Ingmar Bergman, Famed Director, Dies at 89". New York Times. July 30, 2007. Retrieved 2007-07-21. Ingmar Bergman, the "poet with the camera" who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  2. ^ Ingmar Bergman: His Life and Films, by Jerry Vermilye, 2001, p. 6
  3. ^ The Films of Ingmar Bergman, by Jesse Kalin, 2003, p. 193
  4. ^ http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1058&a=675505
  5. ^ http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=114&sid=1204057
  6. ^ Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia, New York : HarperCollins, 5th ed., 1998
  7. ^ http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/05/34/winter_light.html
  8. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3616037.stm
  9. ^ stated in Marie Nyreröd's interview series (the first part named Bergman och filmen) aired on Sveriges Television easter 2004.
  10. ^ http://www.ingmarbergman.se/work.asp?guid=96804AD6-4ACD-418D-9D2C-03ABABE34267

Bibliography

  • Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman. By Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, and Jonas Sima; Translated by Paul Britten Austin. Simon & Schuster, New York. Swedish edition copyright 1970; English translation 1973.
  • Filmmakers on filmmaking : the American Film Institute seminars on motion pictures and television (edited by Joseph McBride). Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983.
  • Images: my life in film, Ingmar Bergman, Translated by Marianne Ruuth. New York, Arcade Pub., 1994, ISBN 1-55970-186-2
  • The Magic Lantern, Ingmar Bergman, Translated by Joan Tate New York, Viking Press, 1988, ISBN 0-670-81911-5

All of Bergman's original screenplays for films directed by himself, from Through a Glass Darkly onwards—and the screenplays he has penned since the 1980s for other directors—have been published in Swedish and most of them translated into English and other languages. Some of his screenplays have also come to use in stage theatre, often without the knowledge or license of the author (e.g. Scenes from a Marriage, Smiles of a Summer Night, After the Rehearsal).

In 1968, when the Swedish film magazine Chaplin published an "anti-Bergman issue" to clear the air from the slightly suffocating presence of the genius director, who was collecting Oscars and Palmes d'Or by the handful, Bergman secretly contributed one of the more acerbic pieces, signed by "the French film critic Ernest Riffe". The word soon began to spread that he was the author himself, and though he half-heartedly denied this, in Bergman on Bergman he admits to the truth of the allegation.

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