- (PROJECTOR CLICKS ON) - (FILM REEL WHIRS)
NARRATOR: This is Ingmar Bergman, a 38-year-old film director.
The year is 1957, and he suffers terrible stomach pains.
When he can't sleep, he writes.
This January, he writes the following to his friend, Sture Helander, a doctor:
ACTOR (AS BERGMAN): "I never sleep longer than until 4:30".
"That's when my stomach turns inside out and my angst fires up a blowtorch".
"I don't know what it's about, but it's beyond description".
"Maybe I'm afraid of not being good enough".
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): With these insanely high expectations
and these impossible demands,
not only here in Sweden, but around the world, generally,
it amounts to a lot of pressure.
So one just has to try and forget these demands on one's person.
NARRATOR: Ernst Ingmar Bergman suffers constant and persistent angst.
1957 is completely pivotal for him.
Right now, he has an active stomach ulcer, but no time to deal with it.
Because he's got six productions opening this year.
STRÖMGREN (IN SWEDISH): The year of 1957...
When it comes to Bergman's tremendous productivity, all I can do is ask:
"How was it possible?"
NARRATOR: It's January 1957,
and in a few weeks, The Seventh Seal will be released.
Bergman shot it the previous summer.
He's been making films for 13 years,
and this is the first time he's allowed to do exactly as he wishes.
(IN SWEDISH) Who are you?
(IN SWEDISH) I'm Death.
(IN SWEDISH) - Is that your ride back there? - Yes.
A bit antiquated, eh?
NARRATOR: This film will be named Wild Strawberries.
In January 1957, Bergman has neither conceived of it, nor filmed it yet.
But before the year is over, it, too, will premiere.
How this is possible is beyond comprehension.
LINDBLOM (IN SWEDISH): It's impossible to imagine
how he could cope with such an enormous workload.
- (CLATTERING) - (SHE GASPS)
NARRATOR: This year, Bergman also makes a film for television,
and a feature film in a hospital setting, and four theatre productions...
REPORTER: Directed by Ingmar Bergman.
NARRATOR: ...two of which are simply huge.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): When I try to date something,
I date it according to films and plays.
I don't remember much of my private life.
I can't remember when my children were born.
I can't tell their ages. Only roughly.
But I can't remember which years they were born.
NARRATOR: This summer, Bergman will turn 39.
Already, he has six children with three different women.
And this is the year when he finally understands
that if his films are to be great, they have to be about him.
He is, after all, Ingmar Bergman - and the year is 1957.
A YEAR IN A LIFE
(IN SWEDISH): Well, shall we get started?
Right, let's start. Let's ask them to turn off the lights.
- (PROJECTOR CLICKS ON) - (FILM REEL WHIRS)
NARRATOR: Ingmar Bergman is a mystery.
He is the world's most famous film director
surrounded by a monumental myth.
Mainly because he wrote a number of books about himself,
filled with contradictory information.
When Bergman writes about himself, nobody knows what's true or false.
If you look for Bergman, the only place you find him is in his films.
In his films, Ingmar Bergman is completely honest.
He starts this practise in 1957.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Every artist who creates intense depictions
of his own problems,
which he believes not only to be important to him, but also to others,
needs to use himself.
And then, the issue of egocentricity will always pop up.
It's inevitable, actually.
(IN SWEDISH): Uncle Isaac is a selfish old man.
Totally ruthless and refusing to listen to other people.
TROELL (IN SWEDISH): He got a lot of inspiration from his own life,
and dressed himself up as all those different characters.
That's how I've seen it.
(IN SWEDISH): I would like to be warm, tender and alive...
BERGGREN (IN SWEDISH): That's all Ingmar's own shitty life, as he'd describe it.
He told me: My life is piss-awful. All I have is my work...
- But your marriages, and your kids...? - My life's still piss-awful.
(IN SWEDISH) Why the angry look? Are your nerves playing up?
Are you feeling tormented?
Shut up! Shut up!
DE GEER (IN SWEDISH): I think this is obvious in many of his films.
Take Autumn Sonata, in which a pianist
lives for her art, but neglects her children.
ACTRESS (IN SWEDISH): Help me!
DE GEER (IN SWEDISH): All these films, which people think are about someone else
are always, without fail, about Bergman himself.
NARRATOR: The path Bergman chooses in 1957,
to explore the human soul by making films about himself,
leads to immeasurable success all over the world.
By the 1970s, when this interview takes place,
there's a name for the craze: Bergmania.
Sitting next to me is one of the most admired and even worshipped men
in the movie world, and the entire entertainment and theatrical industry:
Ingmar Bergman has directed an astonishing number of masterpieces.
The Magician, The Virgin Spring... The list goes on.
Through a Glass Darkly and The Passion of Anna.
I've left out a great number of them...
CAVETT: I'd had a desire to interview Bergman for some years,
but I was told it'd never happen.
I even thought: Maybe he won't show up. Who knows how weird he is?
First, I must compliment you on being exactly on time today.
I know that you like punctuality. We met last night, and...
NARRATOR: World-famous, Dick Cavett, moves his entire studio to Stockholm
to be granted an interview with Bergman, at last.
During this interview, Cavett is the one who is nervous.
CAVETT: My image of what Ingmar Bergman would be like when we met
was that he'd emerge from a cave with cobwebs and low lighting
dressed as Count Dracula.
NARRATOR: Cavett gets a film title wrong:
CAVETT: Masterpieces like Wild Strawberries, Smiles of A Summer Night,
and The Seventh Veil... Seal.
INTERVIEWER: You said The Seventh Veil instead of The Seventh Seal.
I know! God...
I think I'd repressed that, and I've just remembered it.
There was at least one more.
I said "Ingrid Bergman" instead of "Ingmar Bergman".
Almost anyone should be able to tell them apart.
- You, too, were a little bit nervous. - Yes, I was.
NARRATOR: Dick Cavett, who has interviewed countless dignitaries,
is so nervous that he stutters and bows before a poorly-dressed Swede
with a very unusual accent.
What was it that Bergman did?
How did he become such an enormous icon?
REPORTER (IN SWEDISH): ...the Swedish Film Society Plaque
to Ingmar Bergman and Viktor Sjöström.
INGMAR BERGMAN'S NEW FILM
(IN SWEDISH): Do you like wild strawberries?
I know where they grow. Shall we go?
NARRATOR: In the early 1950s, Bergman finds a recipe for success:
Young, nude bodies in a romantic Swedish archipelago setting.
This is a huge hit abroad,
and sex-starved people all over the world flock to see Summer with Monika.
ACTRESS (IN SWEDISH): We can do it. We can go where we want!
NARRATOR: After Summer with Monika, his international breakthrough,
Bergman gets more interested in people's inner lives.
THE SEVENTH SEAL - BEST SWEDISH FILM THIS YEAR
REPORTER (IN SWEDISH): No Swedish dramatist has narrated about medieval Sweden
with such passion since Strindberg's The Folkunga Saga,
and it's all the more amazing we have the resources to do it on film...
NARRATOR: February 7th is the opening night of The Seventh Seal.
This is the first big event for Bergman in 1957.
(CAMERAS CLICK)
(IN SWEDISH): I see - the camera's over there.
When I got there, people whispered: Ingmar is over there. Better be quiet.
That kind of thing. Ingmar was there, like the mast in the middle of the ship.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH) After that success,
no one has ever meddled with what I wanted to do.
I've been allowed to do what I wanted.
One of the best-known living Swedes and one of the greatest film directors,
Ingmar Bergman, has portrayed, in one of his films a fragment of this
dark, brutal, plague-ridden Sweden of 600 years ago.
- Okay, I got it! Ready? - Yes.
When I first saw The Seventh Seal, I was struck by its black-and-whiteness.
It's stark difference to some of the Hollywood musicals of the same time.
WEINSTEIN: With The Seventh Seal, of course, one sees a kind of
panorama of medieval Sweden, or 14th century Sweden, hit by the Black Plague.
"Digerdöden", I think it's called in Swedish.
(IN SWEDISH) - The plague! - Stay on that side of the trunk!
(HE GASPS FOR AIR)
(IN SWEDISH): I'm afraid of dying! I don't want to die!
LINDBLOM (IN SWEDISH): I remember the scene where Erik Strandmark gets so scared
of the approaching Death in his black robes
so he climbs a tree and settles on a branch.
And Death gets closer and closer...
ACTOR (IN SWEDISH): Damn, is it my tree he is sawing down?
Drat you, you scoundrel! What's with my tree?
That guy's up in the tree and Death is chopping it down.
He says "Why are you doing that?" "Well, your time is up."
(IN SWEDISH) - No! I haven't got the time. - No time, eh?
(IN SWEDISH): Then, the fool says:
(IN SWEDISH): Is there no escape? No exceptions for actors?
Nope. Not in this case.
(IN SWEDISH): "No exceptions for actors?" Such a wonderful line.
- (CRACKING) - (IMPACT THUD)
(FILM REEL WHIRS)
NARRATOR: With The Seventh Seal, Bergman is given complete artistic freedom
but very little time and a tiny, tiny budget.
LINDBLOM (IN SWEDISH): He was careful where the camera went
to avoid filming the blocks of flats.
They were there, not far from what we called the forest.
NARRATOR: Bergman searches for the perfect beach
together with actress, Bibi Andersson, and cinematographer, Gunnar Fischer.
They finally find it: Hovs Hallar in Skåne.
Bergman shoots his most iconic scene ever, here.
(IN SWEDISH) - Who are you? - I'm Death.
- Have you come for me? - I've been by your side a while now.
- I know that. - Are you ready?
I had never seen and couldn't have conceived a film where Death is visible.
Death in a clown face, who opens his cape and the screen goes black.
(IN SWEDISH) - One moment! - You all say that. I give no respite.
But you do play chess?
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): "Who are you?" And the man in black replies: "I'm Death."
Then, either you accept that he is Death
or you think: "No way, that's Bengt Ekerot."
"His face has been whitened and he's wearing a robe."
But that's the amazing power of suggestion.
That's the amazing excitement when you do things
and make people believe it all.
(FILM REEL WHIRS)
NARRATOR: The Seventh Seal mirrors Bergman's inner world.
All his life he's had an enormous fear of death,
and this is what the film is about.
(HIS WHISPER ECHOES OUT)
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): This film was an attempt
at ridding myself of my fear of death.
And to a certain extent, it worked.
I grew up in a rectory family.
I'm the son of a priest, and as such, you live quite close to death.
NARRATOR: Ingmar Bergman grows up in Stockholm in the 1920s.
He has an older brother, Dag, and a younger sister, Margareta.
His mother's name is Karin and his father, Eric, is a clergyman.
(HE INHALES DEEPLY)
(IN SWEDISH): Alexander, my dear boy...
Before these witnesses, you've accused me of murdering my wife and children.
What?
(DEEP RUMBLING)
NARRATOR: There are many priests in Bergman's films.
The most well-known one is Bishop Vergérus in Fanny and Alexander.
This character is based on Ingmar Bergman's own father.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): There. He walks...
That's it.
(IN SWEDISH): Portraying that cold, cold character was great fun.
He was...
A character made up of so many unsound beliefs.
(IN SWEDISH): I don't understand... Do you think a person can go unpunished
after dishonouring another person?
MALMSJÖ (IN SWEDISH): It was a horrific scene, that whipping scene.
And Bergman said: "Goddammit, you really remind me of my father."
Yes, I resembled his dad.
(IN SWEDISH): What form of punishment would you like?
Cane, castor oil or dark cupboard?
- How many strikes with the cane? - Ten.
The cane.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): I dealt with my upbringing by lying and pretending.
And by assuming an identity which...
- ...my parents could view as acceptable. - (WHIP CRACKS)
I lied unreservedly and with ease.
Every now and then, one was found out and heavily punished.
PRIEST (IN SWEDISH): Stand up, Alexander!
- What would you like to say? - Nothing.
You should apologise to me.
NARRATOR: Bergman describes the abuse in his autobiography Laterna Magica.
"The Magic Lantern."
However, this book isn't always a reliable source.
(IN SWEDISH): Like so much else in Bergman's life,
he projects some of the things that his brother experienced on himself.
It's very odd. It could be beatings, for example.
Ingmar wasn't the one who was beaten, it was Dag.
NARRATOR: Dag Bergman is four years older than Ingmar.
The two brothers are always fighting, and Dag, being older, often wins.
DAG (IN SWEDISH): I remember one summer at our country place.
I was ten years old and he, five or six.
He was coming fishing with me.
I didn't want his company. He babbled and scared the fish.
I said he could come on the condition he kept the worms in his mouth.
He agreed, and I can see him with worms sticking out of his mouth.
Half-crying, he was. He probably swallowed a few.
(IN SWEDISH) - I'll put the coin here. - What do you want me to do?
- You're going to eat this worm. - What?!
- Shut your gob and stop looking silly. - Alright, give me the bloody worm.
(HE GULPS)
NARRATOR: As they grow up, Dag keeps trying to ruin Ingmar's life.
Dag's version of the film Torment,
is diametrically opposed to the general interpretation of the film.
DAG (IN SWEDISH): Let me tell you: Ingmar was the favourite pupil.
We had the same teacher in some cases.
One day in front of the entire class, this teacher said to me:
"This morning, I taught your brother,"
"Master Bergman in whose knowledge there are no gaps".
"Looking at you, you're master Bergman in whose gaps there's no knowledge".
TEACHER (IN SWEDISH): Open your book. The homework for today.
Faster! Faster!
(IN SWEDISH): "The battle lasted for three days".
NARRATOR: Torment depicts a Swedish high school in the 1940s.
It's the first film set that Bergman attends.
He has written the screen play and works as a script boy on the film,
but dreams of directing.
INTERVIEWER (IN SWEDISH): But haven't Swedish critics believed
that Ingmar was referring to himself as a kind of self-portrait?
Well, it can't have been, as Ingmar was a little angel at school, loved by all.
That was the case until he graduated.
(IN SWEDISH): That's cheating, Sir. Cheating!
(CLAP)
NARRATOR: When this interview with Dag was to be broadcast
on Swedish national TV in the 1980s,
Ingmar Bergman protested violently,
finally getting the last say in their life-long argument.
The interview, which was scrapped, can now be shown for the first time.
(IN SWEDISH): Well, Ingmar was, without doubt, our father's favourite child.
I was Dad's whipping boy.
Dad hit me more or less whenever he saw me.
Ingmar didn't really suffer, and was happy to spend time with Father.
He soon realised that if he asked clever questions
on the life of angels and what little Jesus and Heaven were like,
he was often rewarded with hot cocoa and biscuits.
(BELL TOLLS)
(IN SWEDISH): Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Heaven and earth are full of His glory.
(BELL TOLLS)
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): My brother was in many ways
a human being who...
was totally and irreparably damaged
because of the way he was brought up.
And in some way, I had a similar upbringing.
You could almost say I was brought up in the same way as my brother.
The damage was long-lasting.
And I have...
spent most of my life sorting myself out after that upbringing.
(IN SWEDISH): There's no getting rid of me.
NARRATOR: Bergman's films Torment and Fanny and Alexander are autobiographical.
He went to that school. He had that father.
But maybe he isn't the main character.
Maybe Ingmar Bergman is actually the girl, Fanny,
daring to admit that he stood by in silence; a witness to the abuse.
(FLOORBOARDS CREAK)
PRIEST (IN SWEDISH): What are you reading, Alexander?!
Good night, my boy.
NARRATOR: Around this time, young Bergman begins his escape
to the illusory world of film.
It's a less violent place. He likes it there.
BERGMAN: I think I was six years old when I saw my first picture.
It was about a horse - Black Beauty or something.
Then, you know, I was a passionate cinema goer from that moment.
As much as my parents allowed me to go.
There was only a very small film in it.
A round one, about three metres long.
A young lady sitting on a meadow.
She was asleep, she woke up, she was dancing around and out to the left.
And then you started again and again...
That is my most...
tremendous, enormous cinematic experience.
I could make her move!
If I made it slow, she moved very, very slowly,
and if I made it fast, she was dancing very fast and out.
And even today,
when I sit at the editing table, you know,
I can sit and find it extremely fascinating, extremely...
Just the magic of the movements. The shadow on my little screen.
It's still exactly the same very childish fascination.
NARRATOR: Often, Bergman tells one story about episodes in his life,
while the archives and reality tell another.
Bergman has said he was sent to Nazi Germany
as an exchange student as a small boy.
In reality, he is 18 years old - almost a man.
BOETHIUS (IN SWEDISH): In the 1930s, it was very common to send
middle-class and upper-class children to Germany to learn German.
In those days, Germany was the great cultural nation we admired and loved.
Even bigger than the US is today.
ACTOR (AS BERGMAN): "After church, we had coffee in the parish hall".
"Many were in uniform, and there was ample opportunity to say 'Heil Hitler'."
(GERMAN GENERAL SHOUTS)
BOETHIUS (IN SWEDISH): Ingmar Bergman, himself, has described that stay in Germany
as life-changing.
He came from a rather grey and dull life
into a world where people believed in something and could die for something.
He admired this fantastic speaker called Hitler.
He was on Germany's side throughout the war.
ACTOR (AS BERGMAN): "We came to Weimar at noon".
"And the parade and Hitler's speech were on for 2:30".
"The city was already buzzing in anticipation".
"I had never seen anything that came close to this massive display of power".
"I shouted like the others. I raised my hand like them".
"I bellowed like them - and I loved like them".
NARRATOR: In Laterna Magica,
Bergman writes that he rejoiced in Hitler's success
and grieved his defeats.
Upon seeing the photos from the concentration camps,
he thinks they have been staged for propaganda purposes.
Not until 1946, at the age of 28, does Bergman reject Hitler.
He's ashamed of his support and swears never again
to get politically engaged, not even in his films.
DEGEN (IN GERMAN): I just could not understand that he still, after the war,
when the concentration camps were opened up...
That still, after the war, he maintained that he supported Hitler.
And...
...that he still, even then, defended him!
That is horrific.
NARRATOR: At the same time that Bergman supported Hitler,
he is close to a young Jewish refugee from Germany, Dieter Winter,
who is staying in the Bergman home.
WINTER (IN SWEDISH): My father didn't really take this too seriously.
On the contrary, he was quite angry with Bergman's way of describing that.
I'm pretty sure my dad regarded that side of Bergman
as little more than posing.
As if he somehow wanted to show off with feigned Nazi sympathies in his youth.
BOETHIUS (IN SWEDISH): Some people are hesitant
and find it difficult to believe Bergman when he says he was a Nazi.
I can somehow understand that.
Ingmar Bergman is a master of mythicism.
He weaved stories, including around his own life.
You might think he was trying to make himself - this famous man - look ugly.
There are such syndromes...
But after having spoken to him in depth,
I'm convinced that he really did have such sympathies.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Sometimes, my reality is completely distorted.
I manage to contrive of a reality
which is completely... ludicrous, to tell the truth.
What are your views on psychiatry?
- What did you say? - Psychiatry?
- I know what it is. What do you mean? - I mean...
- My views? My views of psychiatry? - You're often analysed in your work.
I have been to a psychiatrist once in my life.
It is now about 15 years ago. I've got restless legs, you know?
- When you lie down, your legs start... - You get that, too?
- I get that all the time. - It's terrible! Have you had that...
NARRATOR: Ingmar Bergman often gets his facts mixed up.
To this interview, he brings along actress Bibi Andersson for support.
Maybe he shouldn't have...
There was something you mis-remembered with the psychiatrist.
I was around and know the psychiatrist didn't say he was extremely healthy.
- He did not? - He said he was so full of neurosis...
so if he took them away, he'd probably stop making films.
- That came out extremely... - I can't remember that. I'd forgotten.
NARRATOR: In 1957, Bergman sees a psychologist
for the first and last time
to seek help for his restless legs.
That's also the year his films become his therapy.
There's no shortage of material: he fears the dark, has stomach pains,
he is jealous, claustrophobic,
and has problems with food, germs and animals.
Bergman happily distorts the truth and he's plainly a workaholic.
In retrospect, I've often thought... I hardly dare voice it, but...
Today, we talk a lot about diagnoses...
I suppose today, he'd be said to have an untreated diagnosis of some kind.
NARRATOR: After a painful childhood, Bergman's teenage years offer no relief.
(IN SWEDISH): I was tall, hunched up and terribly, terribly thin.
Like a scratch in a photographic negative.
On top of that, I had terrible acne.
And I was most unhappy with my body.
And besides, the girls used to think that I...
that I looked incredibly funny.
THUNBERG (IN SWEDISH): He didn't socialise much with other youngsters.
He didn't know how to dance, play tennis or fiddle with motorboats.
Nor could he dive head first off the jetty.
He mainly sat in his room, performing plays with his puppets.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): From very early on, the world of women
was a separate country to me.
Unknown territory, and I eagerly decided to start mapping it out.
NARRATOR: Of Bergman's early girlfriends, Karin Lannby is probably most influential.
She's an actress, a poet and a spy.
They set up a theatre together in Stockholm.
THUNBERG (IN SWEDISH): Karin Lannby and Ingmar Bergman
met in an Old Town collective.
This was a dramatic period,
when we'd seen Denmark and Norway being occupied by Nazi Germany.
One of the first things he said to her was supposedly:
"We're just as mad, both of us".
There's every indication that it was a stormy relationship.
Bergman was very jealous.
This was confirmed by many who worked with him.
NARRATOR: Karin Lannby is the role model for Ruth in Woman Without a Face
which Bergman wrote the script for.
(IN SWEDISH) - Are you already jealous? - I can't take you being unfaithful.
- Will you come home and kill me then? - Indeed.
Well - do it!
THUNBERG (IN SWEDISH): And Karin did have a secret life.
She was signed up by Swedish intelligence.
She was to spy on people in restaurants.
On foreigners that were suspected of various things.
But Bergman didn't know this.
NARRATOR: A jealous man dating a secret spy is not a perfect match.
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
NARRATOR: In an early draft of Laterna Magica which Bergman later scrapped,
he writes about a fight that goes on for days
and culminates when Lannby, naked and battered, tried to stab him.
Bergman lashes out with a stool and hits her.
Her face discolours; her movements are jerky.
Bergman writes:
ACTOR (AS BERGMAN): "I realise I am strangling her".
"I'm beating her head against the floor and I've entered her".
"She wants me to kill her, and I'm ready to oblige".
NARRATOR: Why did Bergman edit this section out of his book?
THUNBERG (IN SWEDISH): Why wouldn't it be true?
The first draft he wrote was for his autobiography,
and at the same time, in the same autobiography he wrote
that Karin Lannby meant a great deal to him,
also on a sexual level.
He puts it like this: "She opened the bars and let out a lunatic."
NARRATOR: In his films, Bergman often returns
to the mad jealousy he experienced together with Lannby,
including the destruction such jealousy can cause.
But the warped tension between them is crucial to his artistry.
(SHE STRUGGLES TO BREATHE)
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): One's writings can sometimes have a therapeutic quality.
(TYPEWRITER CLICKS)
THUNBERG (IN SWEDISH): Karin Lannby kept saying to him:
"You have to produce something".
"You can't just go on dreaming about projects and ideas".
And what happened was that once their relationship was over,
then he started to produce masses of stuff.
It was a bit like a battery that had been left to charge
throughout their relationship, and suddenly, the sparks start flying.
NARRATOR: After Lannby, Bergman starts making films.
He is inexperienced and many people interfere.
He directs other people's bad scripts.
(HE SHOUTS ANGRILY)
(THEY JOKE IN SWEDISH)
NARRATOR: When he finally gets to direct his own material
he's too novice, too alone, too nervous.
(BULLETS RING OUT)
- CAVETT: Did you call it The Prison? - BERGMAN: Yes, The Prison.
BERGMAN: My first film on my own script.
CAVETT: What should we know about that? Most people probably haven't seen it.
It's a very bad picture.
FARAGÓ (IN SWEDISH): The critics were rather nasty.
However, some recognised his talent but knew he still had to get there.
He was accused of being a juvenile joker.
NARRATOR: Seeing his early films often makes Bergman cringe.
There's one film Bergman is so ashamed of
that he has banned it from screening for evermore.
Neither stills nor the poster may be displayed - not even today.
The film is called This Can't Happen Here.
DIRECTED BY: INGMAR BERGMAN
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): My first film, Crisis, was made at the Swedish Film Studio premises.
I was unmanageable and generally loathed by everyone.
And I was incredibly insecure.
LANDGRÉ (IN SWEDISH): He was shouting and ranting throughout the shooting of Crisis
because of his own insecurity and his ambitions, probably.
This was his chance to make films.
I think he wanted to exude:
"I'm Ingmar Bergman, up-and-coming director!"
But I think Ingmar was more nervous than anyone else.
He was worried and suffered from stomach aches.
And he didn't utter a directive word!
But he kept harassing our very kind cinematographer, Gösta Rosling.
He obviously wasn't well.
He was forever having stomach pains.
He was always tormented, he wouldn't be up to scratch.
PALMSTIERNA-WEISS (IN SWEDISH): I'm not a therapist or psychoanalyst.
I have the greatest of understandings for his anxiety.
Anxiety is part of that European way of making art.
(SHE CRIES OUT)
(IN SWEDISH): I can't. I just can't! I have so much angst.
NARRATOR: With time, though, he improves.
Back to 1957 -
Bergman's most productive year.
After The Seventh Seal opens in February,
the opening of the mega production Peer Gynt at Malmö City Theatre
is only three weeks away.
(BAG POPS)
THE BIGGEST DRAMATIC PRODUCTION EVER
STRÖMGREN (IN SWEDISH): It wasn't a rehearsal, it was worship.
The atmosphere was palpable. The air vibrated...
There was structure, a system and rules.
He worked and directed according to a rhythm.
The practical work... Everything had a rhythm.
Ingmar was obviously talented as hell and very good,
and he'd decided to get what he wanted, at any cost.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): There is something odd about the fact that I constantly produce
and I am always on the verge of starting a new film, a new play or something.
That means that the now is all that exists.
If I've finished a film, it's gone. The same goes for a play...
STRÖMGREN (IN SWEDISH): He may not have been world-famous,
but he was the one in the theatre world.
BERGMAN DIRECTING (IN SWEDISH): And then, there's the two of you.
You're meant to be over here.
Let's put you over here. Right...
PETTERSSON (IN SWEDISH): While Bergman worked there,
there was a huge sign over the entrance into the main theatre.
STRÖMGREN (IN SWEDISH): It read, in several languages:
- PETTERSSON: Håll käften! - STRÖMGREN: Halten Sie den Mund! Shut up!
PETTERSSON (IN SWEDISH): People didn't even dare sneeze!
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): What's that bloody speaker?
How the hell can you put it there?
Quiet!
Move that bloody microphone.
Can you just shut up in the corner!
In my headphones, I hear a constant hissing.
Silence! Hey!
By all means destroy my play.
STRÖMGREN (IN SWEDISH): His eyes were always half shut.
And sometimes, he'd do this and turn around...
He'd turn to his side, look out through the window,
and say something very clever and very profound.
And then, he'd look back at us. We'd sit there with our mouths open.
He was always talking about demons, but he was quite demonic himself.
NARRATOR: Peer Gynt is considered impossible to stage.
Bergman is pushed to the brink.
His version of the play is over five hours long.
He has a huge cast, but no one to confide in apart from his diary.
ACTOR (AS BERGMAN): "At least today's Sunday. It's been a never-ending rehearsing week".
"You just can't get through it, no matter what".
"I don't think this will be a good play".
"Sadly, it's because of me. I wasn't prepared".
"Nor have I kept it together."
(IN SWEDISH): Then, when you got to see the dress rehearsal of Peer Gynt...
The play was five hours long.
It was so amazing that after those five hours, my only thought was:
"I need to get a ticket to see it again. Now!" That's how brilliant it was.
PETTERSSON (IN SWEDISH): How does he do it? How did he do it?
The dynamics were unparalleled. It was unbelievable.
STRÖMGREN (IN SWEDISH): It's hard to put one's finger on.
Sometimes, you can't specify it.
You just feel something come over you.
PETTERSSON (IN SWEDISH): This is all adventure movies rolled into one.
(AUDIENCE CLAPS AND WHISTLES)
(PROJECTOR CLICKS)
NARRATOR: The next day, Sweden's leading paper Dagens Nyheter writes:
"All that remains is to urge every person for whom it is possible..."
"...to travel to Malmö, fast".
"This is currently Sweden's dramatic centre, and probably that of all Europe."
(PROJECTOR CLICKS)
- (IN SWEDISH): That's better! - Right.
BERGMAN: There... Okay.
Quiet everywhere.
Silence.
Camera!
146-171, first.
FISCHER (IN SWEDISH): As a director, he was exciting.
He was curiously enthusiastic himself.
He'd often look at the settings through the camera.
He'd say: "Stop there. Advance! Yes, bloody good!"
He'd build the whole experience in an enthusiastic way.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Like this... Then, see, there's the other one.
And then it's down again.
PETTERSSON (IN SWEDISH): He's totally convincing.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Look at her.
PETTERSSON (IN SWEDISH): I think that's because
he mostly has well thought-through ideas
and he proposes things for a reason.
DEGEN (IN GERMAN): He was unique, because he gave the actors such scope
to use their own ideas
and also their own intuition.
He watched them with excitement.
He couldn't stand when an actor
would only act on the director's instructions.
He wanted to see the actors' own inspiration.
LARSSON (IN SWEDISH): I always felt that Ingmar was very sensual.
A sensual person in relation to the artistic work itself.
And he was very physical.
When he worked, he was an anti-intellectual.
Then, he let go of any thoughts of the result.
He was 100 per cent present
and had a beautiful way of touching the actors.
He was totally present. Seductive.
He was sensitive and incredibly caring.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): What do you want done differently?
ACTOR (IN SWEDISH): Maybe it's my own...
(IN SWEDISH): He'd put his arm around you and say:
"She walks over, turns, and there he is... and Goddammit!"
He almost created a kind of...
Instead of wasting too many words, he'd make some emotional gesture.
If you were attentive, that would give you a lot.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Great! Bloody good!
GOULD: "You're closing your eyes."
He said: "I will never mislead you. I cannot mislead you.
I need your eyes to be open, because even if there's nothing there,
that's what the scene is about...
That's the most profound direction I could ever get.
When I visited Elliott who was making a picture for Ingmar Bergman,
I was fascinated and watched for several days,
thinking how lucky Elliott was.
There was Ingmar Bergman on his knees below Elliott.
The camera was on Elliott's close-up
and Ingmar was talking him through a scene.
Because I was such an admirer, I remember feeling...
jealous of Elliott, that he was having such a brilliant director guide him.
NARRATOR: There is no limit to what Bergman will do to get the best out of his actors.
During the filming of Winter Light,
Bergman feels the main character, Gunnar Björnstrand, is too happy.
FISCHER (IN SWEDISH): The way he dealt with that
was to ask his doctor and friend
tell Gunnar that the disease he was suffering from was quite serious.
Gunnar was put on medication, and actually became depressed.
Then, he was perfect as a doubting priest lacking faith in God.
And that, you might feel, is going a bit far.
(IN SWEDISH): I'm tired of your concern.
Your mother-henning.
Your good advice.
Your pretty candleholders and tablecloths...
I'm sick of your short-sightedness...
your fumbling hands...
and your anxious way of showing you care.
You force me to concern myself with your physical condition,
your troublesome stomach, your eczema...
and your days.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): When looking at the footage afterwards,
I notice that the camera has seen a lot more than I did.
It is such a phenomenal tool
when it comes to registering the human soul.
The way it reflects in a person's face.
The more familiar I become with film as my chosen medium of expression,
the more I perceive every film I make
as a way of expressing memories, experiences, tensions,
situations and forces.
Thanks!
NARRATOR: It is now April 1957.
Only a month after the opening of Peer Gynt, it's time for another premiere.
Television has only been in Sweden for one year,
but Bergman has already made his first TV production, Mr Sleeman Is Coming.
INTERVIEWER (IN SWEDISH): Do you feel you lose out
because of the more limited scope of television?
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): On the contrary. The fascinating thing with television
is that I can produce close-ups.
NARRATOR: One day after Mr Sleeman Is Coming, it's time again: yet another premiere.
PRESENTER (IN SWEDISH): Radio Sweden presents The Prisoner by Bridget Boland,
directed by Bergman.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): We were working ceaselessly,
either because we were rehearsing,
or there was another opening night.
Or we might have been preparing for some performance.
(IN SWEDISH): It was almost a neurosis of his.
I think that was it. He obsessed about not being able to stop,
to put his pen down or to stop filming.
PETTERSSON (IN SWEDISH): His time must have been used extremely carefully,
like something very precious.
(IN SWEDISH): I can't get the equation to work.
But he paid a price, of course.
NARRATOR: Looking at Bergman's tempo and focus in 1957,
you wonder if he's on drugs.
The question has been raised.
Have you been curious to see if drugs make you see things differently?
You are so interested in visual things.
No, I... I don't use sleeping pills.
And drugs even less, because it would scare me to death.
EKMAN (IN SWEDISH): He supposedly tried alcohol in his youth,
but that didn't strike a chord with Bergman.
Apparently, he behaved very strangely and violently.
LINDBLOM (IN SWEDISH): He only ever ate Swedish yoghurt.
When others had lunch, he had yoghurt.
(IN GERMAN): After three hours, he took a break and went up to his room...
where he had his Swedish yoghurt.
NARRATOR: But Swedish yoghurt isn't Bergman's only addiction.
(CAMERA CLICKS)
EKMAN (IN SWEDISH): He had his special diet and his dry Marie biscuits.
SVENSSON (IN SWEDISH): He had a special table where he had his script,
and the Marie biscuits he kept eating on account of his irritable stomach.
(IN SWEDISH): When he'd gone outside,
it was tempting to take a biscuit to see if he noticed.
DO NOT TOUCH
FISCHER (IN SWEDISH): He was a control freak and knew what was what.
Not many people dared to take one of his biscuits.
Once, an actor showed off by taking a biscuit and Bergman never noticed.
So, someone from the team went to take one, too, but he put it back.
"Shit, there may be consequences if I pinch this biscuit."
ENDRE (IN SWEDISH): We all waited until he'd had a biscuit.
He didn't have the top one, in case someone had touched it.
Instead, he'd fiddle out one from underneath.
It wasn't Max who took that biscuit. Stig Järrel, perhaps? No, no names...
RICHARDSON (IN SWEDISH): To think he wasn't undernourished,
and that he had such stamina.
I don't think he ever ate vegetables. He spoke very negatively about veg.
Kind of as if vegetables were something of a threat.
Something to watch out for.
It was... I think he must have had an eating disorder.
Before anyone knew of the concept of eating disorders, he had one.
(IN SWEDISH): Time for a coffee break.
- Coffee break! - Okay.
Coffee!
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): I had stomach and intestinal ulcers all the time.
I was admitted to hospital, was patched up and sat there and wrote.
ACTOR (AS BERGMAN): "Sofiahemmet Hospital. Tired on the verge of lunacy".
"But it's peaceful here, and I'm grateful to Sture who's fitted me in".
"This is the only way of finding harmony and a structure..."
"...and being able to produce something decent".
(IN SWEDISH): Ingmar could produce a film...
He almost wrote one at the end of the shooting of the film
when his stomach problems got him into hospital
and I had to run back and forth with scripts for typing.
At the same time, he was preparing for a repeat performance of Peer Gynt,
which had been on, the previous spring,
and he was also preparing a new play, Faust, which was opening that autumn.
But as I understand it, while Ingmar was ill enough to be hospitalised,
he nevertheless managed to write a new film script.
NARRATOR: In May 1957, over-stressed and hospitalised,
Bergman, in a matter of weeks, writes the masterpiece Wild Strawberries:
MALE READS (IN SWEDISH): "I'm Professor Isak Borg".
"I'm still alive, both spiritually and physically".
"It's half past three a.m."
FILM AUDIO (IN SWEDISH): ...Isak Borg, and I'm 78 years old.
Tomorrow, I'll be awarded the title of Doctor Jubilaris in Lund Cathedral.
NARRATOR: Only one month later, the film shoot begins.
Bergman says he constantly revisits his childhood,
just as the old man in the film does.
This is Victor Sjöström, the first Swedish name in cinematic history.
In some way, Sjöström is an old version of Bergman,
and his character has Bergman's initials:
Eberhart Isak Borg - Ernst Ingmar Bergman.
Sara?
(IN SWEDISH): Sara? This is your cousin Isak.
I've grown a bit old, though...
NARRATOR: This is when it happens.
Bergman takes a huge leap and lets someone else play himself,
a leap that seals the fate of his artistic production.
In Wild Strawberries, Bergman looks critically at himself,
doesn't hide his shortcomings, and asks:
"What happens to people who, like him, neglect everything but their work?"
FILM AUDIO (IN SWEDISH): ...and sadness came over me,
but I soon surfaced from my dreaming.
NARRATOR: In his work book, Bergman writes the following about his script:
ACTOR (AS BERGMAN): "I can't say why this film materialised".
"But I know that the important thing is to use myself both as tree and axe".
"In the end, that's all I have".
EKMAN (IN SWEDISH): He wasn't even 40 when he had the old Victor Sjöström
in Wild Strawberries, returning to his childhood, his family and all that.
He more or less revises his whole life,
as if he was standing at death's door.
FILM AUDIO (IN SWEDISH): I dreamt that I, on my morning walk,
had got to a part of town I didn't know
where the streets were empty and the houses derelict.
WEINSTEIN: What most strikes viewers, initially, are the nightmare scenes.
(CARRIAGE CREAKS)
Then, of course, all the logic of a nightmare is that
the top opens and you see a hand reach out...
Nightmares don't get more grisly. Like a Stephen King type of terror.
And as I've got older, it's occurred to me that what's being told to us,
but not yet to him,
is that perhaps he is dead, and perhaps he has been dead all along.
And that's the grim, grisly unbearable news of the film.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): We were forever arguing.
I had a latent stomach ulcer,
which started to play up then, of course.
I was wondering what would happen
if Victor was to say he was too old and couldn't cope.
But hell, did he cope!
EKMAN (IN SWEDISH): I remember it as a nice summer.
Young actresses were sunbathing off scene.
There were common denominators.
You knew that in this hen house, that hen hadn't always been over there,
and that cockerel hasn't always had so many feathers...
(IN SWEDISH): Sometimes, I even think to myself
a significant reason why I chose the theatre
was to be able to meet girls naturally.
However, that's a somewhat awkward theory and only a speculation of mine...
NARRATOR: Bergman invites his first wife, Else, to the shoot of Wild Strawberries.
That's her, on that blanket. And his first daughter, Lena.
He's also included his lover, Bibi.
Bergman doesn't always make it easy for himself.
(IN SWEDISH): I have to say that Ingmar always went for interesting women.
I think these women have also had a major influence
on the way he looked at film and art.
That involves mutual giving and taking.
NARRATOR: Bergman almost always had relationships
with women who worked beneath him somehow.
His first wife, Else Fisher, was his choreographer,
as was his second wife, Ellen Strömholm.
Ingmar Bergman's love life is a mess, to say the least.
And in 1957, it gets messier still.
(IN SWEDISH): Yes, but I thought Harriet came...
INTERVIEWER (IN SWEDISH): First Harriet, then Bibi.
Yes, but Gun Grut first, and then Harriet, wasn't it?
(IN SWEDISH): I can't remember who he was with at that time.
Maybe it was Bibi? I don't know!
NARRATOR: Ingmar Bergman is seeing Bibi Andersson in 1957.
Harriet Andersson was the year before that.
This year, '57, he will also meet his wife-to-be, Käbi Laretei,
and will also start seeing Ingrid von Rosen, who'll be his wife after that.
All the while being married to Gun Grut.
(IN SWEDISH) I was in Stockholm and I'd fallen in love with a girl.
Her name was Gun.
- Here she is. - Yes...
FANT (IN SWEDISH): When I saw her the first time with Ingmar,
I was reminded of his words at the Råsunda Film Studios:
She was Battleship Femininity.
He kind of fell for her hook, line and sinker.
NARRATOR: Gun Grut inspired more Bergman characters than anyone else,
maybe because she is the most deceived.
Maybe Bergman's films are confessional?
(IN SWEDISH): And I'm making art out of your art,
your immortality, your boastfulness and your stupid, intolerable virility.
So there!
- My young wife said you were around 50. - The little witch!
- You're creating an opera overture. - Have you been unfaithful?
Indeed.
NARRATOR: Bergman remembers Gun Grut years later.
He writes Faithless, about how Bergman and Grut betray their families
and escape to Paris together in the late 1940s.
And about their violent and unhappy love story.
FILM AUDIO (IN SWEDISH): David asks funny, kind of informed questions.
And we laugh...
That night, after our meal... We had drunk more than normal...
That evening, all hell breaks loose.
What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Let me go! David!
What the... Stop it, David!
I told you to stop!
You're bloody insane! Let go of me! Stop!
I knew about the story with Gun and found it horrible.
So I asked if we couldn't change it so he was forgiven,
or have him ask for forgiveness,
but he refused and said that nothing could be changed - nothing at all.
(IN SWEDISH): I had a flat, you know, with some bits of furniture in it.
And I got married quite a lot,
and then, that was meant to be some kind of home.
I was never really that interested in how it was furnished and that...
OSTEN (IN SWEDISH): Spontaneously, I see it as a wonderful world to inhabit.
Out of the real world. We're now talking Fassbinder's pace.
Fassbinder was on amphetamine. Maybe Bergman was on sexuality?
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): For large parts of my life,
this unfaithfulness has been a trauma.
I've been notoriously unfaithful, both in my love life and in friendships.
LINDBLOM (IN SWEDISH): And also, my best friends were his...
wives, mistresses or his women or whatever they were.
LARSSON (IN SWEDISH): Talk about erotomaniac.
He must have lived in a testosterone-filled hubris bubble.
NARRATOR: The summer of 1957 is drawing to an end.
At the end of August, the shoot of Wild Strawberries is over.
Bergman ought to be near a breakdown:
The women, the theatre, the films, his stomach...
Instead, he takes a break in Stockholm
and records yet another film, Brink of Life, set in a delivery ward.
(IN SWEDISH): Mother... I'm having a baby.
That's why I've been unwell.
I've wanted to get rid of it, but I can't.
(SHE SCREAMS IN PAIN)
ACTOR (AS BERGMAN): "I recall the film's medical adviser allowing me..."
"...to be present at a birth".
"It was a shocking, character-building experience".
"Despite having five children myself, I'd never witnessed a delivery".
(WOMAN STRAINS)
NARRATOR: Bergman is wrong. He has six children at the time.
But now when his career is taking off, he has no time for his family.
EKMAN (IN SWEDISH): These women in their various stages
were probably all current in Bergman's life.
Either losing a foetus, developing one or on the way to deliver a baby.
That somewhat bloody situation
was probably very close to Ingmar's own balls.
Or to his heart. It all depends on one's angle.
(IN SWEDISH): I felt very guilty until...
I realised that this bad conscience thing
for something so fundamentally serious as leaving one's children,
that's sheer coquetry.
It's showing the world a scrap of suffering
which can never, ever be compared with the suffering these people must endure.
I've been lazy around my families.
I haven't made any effort whatsoever around my families.
(IN SWEDISH): Mother actually once made a comment on Ingmar
that she couldn't see why he needed to marry all the girls he slept with.
A statement from a long-standing pillar of the church.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): I was deeply in love with my mother.
She was very beautiful and in many ways unattainable.
She changed between being very cold and very warm,
and she would reject us children on and off.
You never quite knew what she would do.
But I was very certain of one thing: I loved her passionately.
That's one of my earliest childhood memories.
That I had such strong ties to my mother.
NARRATOR: Bergman's mother has had a huge presence in his films.
In several major productions in the 1990s,
Bergman continues to expand his filmic autobiography
by exploring his parents' relationship and above all, his mother.
(IN SWEDISH): I've been planning on taking the children and leaving you for a while.
(IN SWEDISH): You don't like my family. You want to humiliate my mother!
You want to get even in a sophisticated way.
You might as well admit it!
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): I think that because one's first relationship with women
was one's mother
and other people's mothers and missis this and aunty that...
That gave you a very odd idea of women.
We lived with the Victorian ideal of the woman being the mother
who was unimpeachable and complete.
And there was also this total hostility towards sexuality.
That's how I was raised, anyway.
(IN SWEDISH): Go and wait in the room.
We're taking a nap.
(IN SWEDISH): That made women into something mysterious and risky
having to be studied
and being regarded with enormous fascination and massive dread.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Both theatre and film are undeniably activities
with a very erotic charge.
In those circumstances, it's very easy for sensual sparks to start flying.
(IN SWEDISH): He was a researcher into something
which he was very curious about.
He wanted to understand and allowed it to take up his time.
You can see this in his scripts
as well as in his way of making the most of actresses and telling their story.
NARRATOR: Bergman's advanced portrait of women, The Silence
includes elements that are still challenging today.
The film is censored and much debated from the very start.
(IN SWEDISH): In my experience, he had a lot of the female in him.
I felt that he really, really understood women.
We had huge spectra and endless colours to play with.
OSTEN (IN SWEDISH) They are very powerful, but also very full of aggression.
Like in Cries and Whispers, where she cuts her vagina to shreds.
Still, I'd defend those scenes, because there's other stuff in there as well.
These women are strong, intrepid or tender.
He was ambivalent to women, I think,
but what male creator doesn't feel ambivalent to women?
WEINSTEIN: It's been argued that in some sense his women characters
became the sounding board or the screen
on which he could project an imagined human feeling. Human sensibilities.
ULLMAN (IN SWEDISH): I didn't take any roles from my female friends and actresses.
No, I took roles from Max von Sydow and Erland Josephson.
Because otherwise, he'd have written a film that was about a man,
and not about a woman.
He had something to tell about this thing: being human.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): I'm still happy about Persona,
but today I might have made it differently.
But if you always knew what you were doing, you probably wouldn't do it.
(IN SWEDISH): Persona sprang from a kind of crisis around truth.
I had to decide what the truth was, and when we speak the truth.
In the end, it got so difficult that I felt the only truth was being silent.
But then, taking that one step further,
it became clear that that was playing a role, too.
It's just another mask, so I had to find one more level.
NARRATOR: Even Persona is about Bergman himself.
The women in Persona are two sides of the director:
One is silent to avoid lying, the other one babbles on.
(IN SWEDISH): The water is cold after the storm. Too cold to swim.
Let's not part as enemies.
WEINSTEIN: We're not very far from what's happening in a film like Persona,
where the artist is the person who makes use of others.
Studies them and makes use of them.
I think in some sense, Bergman is using his actors
to make visible to us, to externalise for us,
things he has to know first-hand, inside himself.
(IN SWEDISH): You've used me.
I don't know for what, but now I'm not needed so you throw me away.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): I actually had the idea for this film
when I saw a photo of the girls.
They were sitting next to one another, sunbathing.
I thought it was terribly interesting and would make a good film.
Persona and Cries and Whispers are the two films I single out.
I can't go any further than that.
(FIRE ROARS)
NARRATOR: During the filming of Persona, Bergman was married to Käbi Laretei,
but he and Liv Ullmann become a couple.
ULLMAN (IN SWEDISH): When Ingmar was just Ingmar in his everyday life,
he was the most normal, everyday man you could possibly live with.
Only when he was Ingmar Bergman did he have his rules.
"Don't come into my office when I'm creating".
"When the door is closed, it's closed".
"I need to have breakfast alone. I'm creating".
He loved things like television,
like The Forsythe Saga and different series, which he loved.
We went for walks.
We took the ferry to the mainland and bought the evening papers.
We did simple things.
We talked a lot in our bed, which looked out onto the sea.
Everything we'd ever dreamed about and hadn't dared tell anyone else,
that's what we talked about and fantasized about.
Silly, childish things like there'd be pirates coming over from Russia
to attack us.
And ghost stories!
We told those in bed. He was a master of ghost stories.
He was the best...
The very best friend I've ever had.
He's never, ever done...
anything to me. Ever.
That's one thing I know.
(SHE SNIFFS)
BERGMAN: If you have made a picture and some million people have seen it,
and one or two people feel better,
or get a new light over the landscape of their souls, it is not useless.
(BIRDS TWEET ON FILM)
(LEAVES RUSTLE)
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): I have always seen filmmaking as an amazing opportunity
to go beyond the limits.
To stick my hand through the membrane of reality,
to reach other worlds,
to concentrate events and tensions.
What, in my view, makes film so mysterious and extraordinary
is the fact that it bypasses the intellect and speaks directly,
which also makes it dangerous.
It speaks directly to your consciousness and subconsciousness.
- (IN SWEDISH): Should we do it now? - No, let's move on.
(MACHINE CLICKS AND WHIRS)
Exactly there. And forwards...
There! Now reverse.
And forwards... Yes! That's it!
NARRATOR: During the autumn of 1957 Bergman edits Wild Strawberries.
(IN SWEDISH): Film is something totally based on rhythm.
It's all a matter of breathing and rhythm.
NARRATOR: On November 16th, the radio production of Gogol's The Gamblers premieres.
REPORTER (IN SWEDISH): Radio Sweden performed Falskspelaren,
directed by Ingmar Bergman.
NARRATOR: One month later, Moliere's The Misanthrope
opens at Malmö City Theatre.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): That was the best time of my life from a theatrical point of view,
because no one interfered in my work
and I had one of Sweden's best casts.
It was an absolutely amazing time.
NARRATOR: When Bergman stages The Misanthrope in 1957, it is all smooth and easy.
He works with his favourite actors and fills the house.
When Bergman wants to revisit the positive atmosphere 40 years later,
by staging the same play in Stockholm, things are not the same.
Times are different, the actors are young,
Bergman is old and has become inexplicably powerful.
REPORTER (IN SWEDISH): ...tax raid in Stockholm,
possibly the biggest ever made...
...against a director and a few actors.
NARRATOR: In the 1970s, Bergman is accused of tax fraud.
He has an offshore company in Switzerland
but the investigation is closed down.
Nevertheless, Bergman feels publicly humiliated and leaves Sweden, enraged.
PRESS MAN: Can I talk about the day you were taken in to be questioned?
I was completely confused.
Two days after, the depression was a fact.
PRESS MAN: They insulted you and treated you like a criminal?
NARRATOR: He settles in Germany,
but is still angry with the Swedish authorities.
(IN GERMAN): You see, I cannot work, nor consequently live,
in a country where the bureaucratic representatives
have publicly and groundlessly insulted me and called my honour into question.
NARRATOR: The experience is traumatic, both for Bergman and Sweden.
(IN SWEDISH): We miss you here.
Your natural workplace is Sweden: Fårö and Stockholm.
We would love you to come back.
NARRATOR: When Bergman returns to Sweden in the early 1980s,
a lot of people are feeling guilty.
Bergman can do as he pleases.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Things are looking very promising.
There's a wave of well-schooled, capable, very promising young actors.
I'm really looking forward to working with them.
INTERVIEWER (IN SWEDISH): Can you already single out some
that may become Bergman actors?
They are always around. Definitely.
- You have your favourites? - Yes, I permit myself that.
(IN SWEDISH): Ingmar Bergman was the king. The emperor.
Anyone who wanted to act at the best theatre in the world needed his consent.
He had to like you.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Sit down!
(IN SWEDISH): The overall atmosphere was tense because Bergman was there.
When Bergman rehearsed, you didn't make a noise. You tip-toed.
(IN SWEDISH): When you acted in his play, you knew if he was in the audience.
ENDRE (IN SWEDISH): It was like being put on a silver tray.
Nothing was allowed to disturb things. The floor had to be scrubbed.
Everything had to be perfect so we could sit in awe about what was about to come.
LARSSON (IN SWEDISH): Everyone was basically afraid.
Afraid of forgetting the right props, or if a piece of music came in late.
Then you knew that his wrath would be almost annihilating.
- (IN SWEDISH): You just stay here, Ingmar... - Damn right I will!
Yes. Yes! Fucking hell...
- Ingmar...? - Yes!
(IN SWEDISH): Every morning before he entered the rehearsal hall
the floors were washed, windows opened,
and his director's desk had to be in place.
There had to be silence. Ventilation systems were shut down.
(MACHINES CLUNK)
Not one noise. And all that made you think he was immensely serious.
But it was also a neurotic power game.
NARRATOR: Bergman makes some incredible stage productions, and his power grows.
He now decides who gets the leading positions
at the Swedish Film Institute,
Swedish National Television and the Royal Dramatic Theatre.
And if you dare criticise Bergman, you will have a major problem.
(IN SWEDISH): The worst thing of all was the call from the Dramatic Theatre:
Now Ingmar Bergman had taken ill on top of everything else.
That's your fault.
Imagine... Imagine if he dies!
Then, you would be the cause of it.
BERGGREN (IN SWEDISH): Ingmar is like Santa Claus, handing out the presents.
By opposing some, rejecting some, allowing some.
Because he's always manipulated and had a finger in every pie.
No one came or went unless he was in charge.
- (IN SWEDISH): Or maybe I should stand by... - Yes. Yes, exactly.
- Yes... Ouch! - Oh dear.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): What? Something seized up. Fuck.
OSTEN (IN SWEDISH): Everyone was fussing around him.
This blatant lack of moral courage built him up as a monument.
BERGGREN (IN SWEDISH): The arse-licking that went on was stupendous -
totally unparalleled.
Classic schoolyard bullying. Unsavoury games...
And everyone knew
that acting in a Bergman film opened doors to a career abroad and everything.
PERSBRANDT (IN SWEDISH): I felt that he's a fucking predator.
He's a carnivore, Ingmar.
So I decided to take no shit.
I was dead scared of not knowing my lines.
I didn't want to give him that.
And when I got to my monologue, he said:
"Hey, Dickey-Micky, I shortened this bloody thing a bit".
"There was a hell of a lot of nonsense".
- "What do you want me to do?" - "Come forth, do your slur and leave".
"Slur? You mean my monologue?"
- "Yes. Do you mind?" - "No, not in the least."
"Did you all hear? Mikael doesn't mind my directing".
NARRATOR: If Bergman has problems working with people,
it gets worse when he's not working with people.
(CAT MEOWS)
FISCHER (IN SWEDISH): You quickly learn that animals are not easy to shoot,
but it looks nice with a few animals.
Bergman didn't often include animals, apart from the odd cat.
But cats never do what you want them to, even if your name's Ingmar Bergman.
We fed them and tired them out,
or drugged them lightly, but they still ran off.
(HORSE WHINNIES)
(BUZZER)
(CAT MEOWS)
(BUZZER)
FISCHER (IN SWEDISH): Maybe he was too boisterous for them.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): No! Bloody pussycat!
(HE CHUCKLES)
ANDERSSON (IN SWEDISH): It might have been in Sawdust and Tinsel
they wanted a bear.
They'd managed to get a bear from a zoo or something,
and at some point, Bergman got really annoyed at the whole thing
and said something condescending like: "Get rid of that bloody bear".
And the owner of the bear took offence,
and he was a really stubborn man, that owner.
He felt his bear had been unfairly treated.
And he said that for them to continue, Bergman had to apologise to the bear.
Imagine! There's the proud and self-centred Ingmar Bergman
having to apologise to a bear in order to continue.
- (BEAR GROWLS) - (AUDIENCE CHEER)
(BEAR GROWLS)
NARRATOR: Many have known Bergman's fury.
He has ruled the Royal Dramatic Theatre for years.
And now, it's time for The Misanthrope for the first time since 1957.
The lead goes to star actor and director, Thorsten Flinck.
FLINCK (IN SWEDISH): What's this strange world we live in?
Where openness and talking is considered misplaced.
Where anyone can call anyone their friend.
(BROODING MUSIC)
HAAG (IN SWEDISH): Thorsten Flinck was the next major up-and-coming director genius.
And Ingmar Bergman was at the end of his career.
And Thorsten was... hot as anything.
FLINCK (IN SWEDISH): There won't be a realistic setting.
We won't be playing in a classroom with a blackboard.
Nope. We'll be playing behind bars. In a cage.
PYK (IN SWEDISH): Thorsten Flinck definitely had
an aura of someone who'll make a difference
and who's exceptionally talented.
Both as an actor and a director.
OSTEN (IN SWEDISH): If someone feels threatened by someone else's talent,
they like to...
to form their own judgement.
It was like Ingmar wanted to sweep the yard clean.
PYK (IN SWEDISH): When we rehearsed The Misanthrope,
Ingmar's wife was very ill.
He knew she wouldn't make it.
It was a distinctive phase in his life.
NARRATOR: Ingrid von Rosen, Bergman's fifth wife,
is the big love of his life.
They have been married 25 years and Bergman is devastated.
For the first time in his long career, Bergman is unable to focus completely.
(IN SWEDISH): He wasn't quite there.
He was on strong medication and was extremely unhappy.
NARRATOR: The Misanthrope opens and runs, sold out, for a year,
but Bergman doesn't check on his play.
He is sad and stays at home.
PYK (IN SWEDISH): He really washed his hands of that performance.
This much later, I can't say how much it had slid off target
but I'm sure Thorsten experimented with the scenery and things.
NARRATOR: Bergman hasn't seen his play for a while,
but comes to see the last performance before the play is due for New York.
EKMANNER (IN SWEDISH): I actually think that Ingmar had a shock.
It suddenly became obvious to him that he, himself,
was guilty of an effort that left a lot to be desired.
And he was clearly unable to accept that responsibility.
(APPLAUSE)
HAAG (IN SWEDISH): People entered and someone asked Bergman if he was coming too.
"No, not me. Come and sit down. Are you all here?"
FLINCK (IN SWEDISH): Everyone was sitting around the large oak table,
and it happened to be my birthday.
Virtually every seat was taken by actors and technical assistants.
The only free seat was the one opposite the grand master, so I sat there.
(IN SWEDISH): Everyone thought it would be
the usual dry biscuits and juice with soda water.
And then, in the weird silence which I remember
although it's 25 years ago...
everything suddenly turns,
paving the way for something extremely unpleasant.
And then, Ingmar speaks:
"Hey everyone, let's gather round like one large bloody family".
"What I have to say is not much bloody fun".
"We're not going to New York!"
(IN SWEDISH): Ingmar went into a total rage.
"The scenery is off. There will be no tour".
"And that's one person's fault. If you all look... I said look!"
(IN SWEDISH) He was disappointed in everyone, but most of all in Thorsten.
(IN SWEDISH) That was his view of things - that this was all Thorsten's fault.
(IN SWEDISH): He was criticised as a person. In every way.
(IN SWEDISH): This was among the worst I've ever experienced
in terms of psychological torture.
(IN SWEDISH): People were totally dumbstruck.
(IN SWEDISH): Something happened that no one in that room had been expecting.
Then, we were told to get out.
(IN SWEDISH): "But not you. You're staying." He pointed at me.
(IN SWEDISH): And I also had to stay, so we sat there.
(IN SWEDISH): "You repulsive bastard. You're so..."
No, seriously, don't tell me you're having one more go? But he does.
(IN SWEDISH): I remember sitting there feeling nauseous with a churning stomach.
(IN SWEDISH): "I had to ask Antonia to go outside and fetch a bucket".
"My vomiting reflex kicked in because he's so fucking ugly".
"Can't you see? And it's all his fault".
"You've ruined my play".
HAAG (IN SWEDISH): It was like the last scene in a Shakespeare play.
This was the king's power struggle with the prince, the next director genius.
(IN SWEDISH): This was not a case of...
He wasn't trying to make him see he'd spoilt a play.
He wanted to crush him.
It did affect me. Very much.
NARRATOR: Bergman starts to disengage himself from the Royal Dramatic Theatre,
staging only five more productions.
He escapes the world to Fårö.
Truth be told, he's always escaped the world.
He has escaped wives, escaped children, escaped his country and competition,
escaped responsibility, escaped reality.
In his films, he has created a world of his own.
One where he tells us what it's like to be the human being Ingmar Bergman.
(MAN WHISTLES)
(IN SWEDISH): I can never tell whether my wife is crying for real or affecting it.
But now, I wonder if it is for real. Yes, I think so.
- Yes, that's what seeing death is like. - Just shut up.
LARSSON (IN SWEDISH): There's a limit to how bad you can behave
and how heavily you can tread on others.
But history shows repeatedly that we forgive the great artists
a lot when the result is so beautiful and the films and plays so magnificent.
Maybe it's even... But not at the cost of trauma to others.
But it probably can't be achieved without that dark, twisted streak.
NARRATOR: It is now December 1957.
Wild Strawberries opens on Boxing Day.
Right now, Bergman is soaring - but this is only the beginning.
The artistry that he begins with here puts Sweden on the map as a country
and resonates all over the world.
The unfathomable tempo, the extreme quality...
All this starts in 1957.
(CLAP)
(IN SWEDISH) Bergman - second take.
NARRATOR: Bergman films The Magician,
The Virgin Spring...
Through a Glass Darkly,
Winter Light, The Silence, Persona...
And then, he is unstoppable.
(IN SWEDISH) I'll never be like you. Never. I change all the time.
INGMAR BERGMAN'S THE SILENCE
INTERVIEWER (IN SWEDISH): In Cannes, you were awarded five first prizes in the 1950s.
You've had two first prizes in Venice and the Golden Bear in Berlin.
And you've had two Oscars. All this in the 1950s.
And in the 1960s, awards and medals have kept pouring in.
You are doubtlessly the most richly awarded man in the entire film history.
(APPLAUSE)
REPORTER (IN SWEDISH): Ingmar Bergman has won the coveted Oscar film award
two years running.
- Did you expect that? - No, not this time.
I thought once would be it.
There's no one like Ingmar Bergman. An artist. A craftsman.
A master.
(ACTORS GIGGLE)
WEINSTEIN: Bergman is a great mapmaker.
We talk of the 16th and 17th centuries when people discovered new continents.
I think he has that kind of role as an explorer and a filmmaker.
He has that kind of almost colonising ambition.
To take arenas that have otherwise been off-limits to us or not available to us.
Not known to us.
To bring them to visibility. Again, that's the project of film.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH) ...that search to find the journey of a soul
and try to illustrate that.
(IN SWEDISH): You were determined you had neglected me,
and you were going to make it up to me.
I defended myself as best I could, but I was helpless.
NARRATOR: At the end of the 1960s, Bergman starts to shoot in colour,
and keeps making brilliant films about his life and relationships.
ACTRESS (IN SWEDISH): There!
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Look like you cared for one another.
Yes, exactly. Freeze that! Great!
- Thanks, that's me done. - Are you on for some more?
(IN SWEDISH): His new assignment is a great honour, even if he jokes about it.
He's very successful. Forever. Amen.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): What if we keep focusing on him?
NARRATOR: Then, it's the 1980s, and he makes his most famous film ever,
the film about his childhood.
(IN SWEDISH): Playback and music! And the chatter.
Playback, please! Ready?
You're on!
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
WEINSTEIN: Fanny and Alexander can rightly be seen as his magnum opus.
His grandest film.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): And then, we'll position the puppet.
That's the greatest magic there is...
One, two, three!
(THEY ALL SCREAM)
(HE LAUGHS)
(IN SWEDISH): I think this is one of my happier films.
I think I have somehow always put this film in an up-beat category.
OSTEN (IN SWEDISH): He tried dodging again, making an extra lap in an anonymous taxi,
but was seen and followed.
He had to get to work, and this time, no secret doors could help him.
REPORTER (IN SWEDISH): First question: How are you feeling?
(IN SWEDISH): I'm feeling good. I have a lot to do.
- What's it like to have won four Oscars? - I didn't win them. The winners were...
Sven Nykvist, Anna Asp, Marik Vos and the film itself.
It's great. I'm very glad.
- Do you think...? - Isn't it tricky, walking backwards?
- (HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH) - (CAMERAS CLICK)
(APPLAUSE)
(TELEPHONE RINGS)
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Hello?
INTERVIEWER (IN SWEDISH): Hi, Ingmar. How are you doing?
I've been down in the Valley of Death.
- Have you? - Yes, I've been very bad.
- Have you? - Yes.
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH) These days, I basically live on my own.
All on my own, which suits me very well.
(IN SWEDISH): I could see his naked loneliness.
There was never a lonelier person.
It felt as if he was walking around, bleeding.
Can you give me some human warmth?
Then he wanted you to stand behind him, once he'd finished eating,
and massage his shoulders for a few minutes or so.
It was quite touching.
Then, he'd say after a while, maybe four minutes or so:
That's enough human warmth. You can go now.
(SOLEMN CELLO MUSIC)
BERGMAN (IN SWEDISH): Thanks!
(IN SWEDISH): Yes, I think you're completely right.
He was lonely to the soul.
There's no alternative to being alone
if you're to accomplish as much as Ingmar did.
There's no time for a normal family life.
Nor for a normal circle of friends.
NARRATOR: In Cannes 1998, Ingmar Bergman is awarded the Palm of the Palms.
The jury consists of the world's greatest directors.
Today, over 20 years later, he keeps inspiring.
(IN SWEDISH): He means everything to me, that stupid shit.
But I do love him dearly.
LANDIS: It's extraordinary for an individual to have that kind of legacy.
He may have been a schmuck! Who knows? But... Man!
He's left this body of work. And that's forever!
HUNTER: He was just so unafraid.
So unafraid...
He was putting the camera at the most intimate angle...
(IN CHINESE): His time, and all that his world was facing, created his genius.
His masterpieces affected all humanity.
It had to be that way.
(IN SWEDISH): I want Ingmar Bergman to be remembered
as a contributor to film and theatre of enormous significance.
He's one of the masters of filmmaking.
(IN SWEDISH): We'll... We will never again see an artist as great as that in Sweden.
Bergman has meant more than Strindberg.
BERGMAN'S DAUGHTER: My father has asked me to ask you
to forgive an old man for not being here tonight.
He said: After years and years,
of playing with the images of life and death,
life itself has finally caught up with me
and made me shy and silent.
NARRATOR: So far, Bergman is the only one to have received this award.
(IN SWEDISH): But if I get my ears into the hat...
(HE LAUGHS)
- INTERVIEWER (IN SWEDISH): Doctor Bergman... - Eh...?
NARRATOR: Ingmar Bergman dies on July 30th, 2007 at the age of 89.
This year, he would have been 100 years old.
One of the most beautiful close-ups I have got in my life
is from the end of this picture.
He thinks back, suddenly, on his early youth
and his first love and his parents, and there, I have a long close-up.
That is one of the most beautiful close-ups I have got in my life.
NARRATOR: 1957 is at its end.
Two film openings, two film shoots,
one film for television and four plays in one year.
An inexplicable private life with four relationships and six children.
And a narrative approach that is a new and crucial turn,
paving the way for a life full of unprecedented magic in films.
It makes you wonder: What does Bergman think about his mad year?
INTERVIEWER (IN SWEDISH): Imagine if 1957 was your greatest year.
- Why would it be? - Well... What do you think?
- Two of your greatest films... - No.
No, that's not how I see it.
I don't grade... That's not how I think about it.
You see...
You see, I have a film...
Did I just shift your camera setting?
- Don't worry. - My bum started getting numb.
(HE LAUGHS)
Translation: Katharina Lyckow www.undertext.se