Though often described as a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, Saraband is not so much an interrogation of that famous relationship which saw divorce rates rise across Sweden as it is an observation of the imprint it has left on those younger generations left to carry its legacy. There are a couple of fresh faces present here in Börje Ahlstedt and Julia Dufvenius, while for Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson this film marks the end of an era. Not only is it their final collaboration with Ingmar Bergman, but for the celebrated Swedish director it is also his last work before he passed away in 2007, and a notable return to form after many years of creating less-than-admirable television movies.
Saraband may not be the first time he has contemplated regrets of old age, though compared to the pensive meditations of Wild Strawberries and Autumn Sonata, this screenplay is far more grounded in Bergman’s firsthand experience of the matter. Save for a few minor dreams and flashbacks, these narrative diversions are excised altogether, and instead this story of reunited ex-lovers is delivered through a series of ten chapters not unlike the six parts of Scenes from a Marriage.
Liv Ullmann breaks the fourth wall in the prologue and epilogue, pouring over a table of photographs capturing pieces of Marianne’s life.
The result is a film that takes the form of a written memoir, framing an aged Marianne as our first-person narrator who pours over photographs of her life, and whose direct addresses to the camera bookend the narrative in a prologue and epilogue. Her absence from so many chapters is not an oversight on Bergman’s part. Each scene in this chamber drama is purposefully written as a two-hander, crafting rich dynamics from all the possible pairings between our four central characters – Marianne, Johan, his estranged son Henrik, and his freedom-seeking granddaughter Karin. Among them, Marianne appears to be the only one who is most content with herself, having put her psychological demons evident in Scenes from a Marriage to rest many years ago. She does not seek to become an active part of Johan’s family drama, but instead she carries a largely observational and counselling presence, offering warm wisdom to those willing to listen.
Warm burgundy colours in the costume and production design when Marianne and Johan reunite after many years. Saraband’s main drama is not about them – they are at peace with their divorce.Contrary to what one might have assumed from Bergman’s last few projects, he has not lost his touch with these intimate close-ups. Neither has he apparently lost his penchant for disturbing relationship dynamics with Henrik’s sexual abuse of his daughter.
For an elderly Johan staring down the end of his life, Marianne’s impromptu visit couldn’t be timelier in helping him make peace with his own psychological troubles. It is somewhat surprising how little animosity there is between them, especially given how firmly he holds onto old grudges against Henrik which consequently left a broken family in their wake. In the absence of his alienated father and deceased wife Anna, Henrik has made the unsettling decision to attempt filling every role in his daughter’s life, thus not only positioning himself as her cello tutor, but also, quite disturbingly, as her lover.
It’s not quite The Seventh Seal or Winter Light, but there is an austere beauty to Bergman’s wide shots and tangential contemplations of religion.
The messiness of human entanglements has long been at the centre of Bergman’s writing, and sixty years after his early melodramas in the 1940s he is quite astonishingly still finding new angles on the jealousy and insecurity that hides within our most intimate relationships. Much like Johan and Marianne’s arguments in Scenes from a Marriage, Henrik’s seething expressions of acrid resentment reveal far more about his own spiteful soul than the target of his derision, taking perverted pleasure in the suffering he mentally projects on his father.
“I hate him in all possible dimensions of the word. I hate him so much, I would like to see him die from a horrible illness. I’d visit him every day, just to witness his torment.”
Ironically enough, it isn’t too hard to imagine Karin a few years down the track holding similar feelings towards the man who speaks these words. Bergman struggles to develop a strong visual aesthetic in Saraband, though the strained relationship between Henrik and Karin becomes abundantly clear in his trademark composition of their parallel faces lying horizontal in bed, as he desperately begs her to audition for a nearby music conservatory so she can stay close by his side.
That horizontal blocking of parallel faces appearing for the last time in Bergman’s filmography, and this time he hangs on the shot as the camera drifts between close-ups of both.
It isn’t until after speaking with Johan and Marianne individually that Karin finds the courage to set out on a new path, following her friend to Hamburg to perform in an orchestra, and thereby rebelling against her father’s isolative preference for her to pursue a career as a solo cellist. There is a beautiful synchronicity between this arc and the accompanying music too, ringing out the lonely lament of a single cello throughout much of the film, before growing into a full orchestral symphony as Karin envisions a future of her own choosing. Bergman is not a director who typically makes extensive use of film scores, though certainly his love of classical music has persisted through his work ever since 1950’s To Joy, elegantly expressing his characters’ deepest yearnings.
One of the very few breaks from reality in Saraband, escaping into this white void in Karin’s mind as she plays the cello, the whole world opening up to her.
Perhaps the most profound of all these longings though is for a figure who is almost completely absent in Saraband, represented only in the framed photographs that adorn Johan, Henrik, Karin, and even Marianne’s personal spaces. The grace that Anna brought to their lives is sorely missed, and it is only thanks to her that Karin ever really knew what it meant to feel the kind, unselfish love of a parent. Through Anna, Henrik was made fully aware of his failings as a father, and perhaps he might have even been able to fix them had she not passed away. As it is though, all she was able to leave him was a letter written shortly before her death, professing her love yet warning him against further wounding his relationship with Karin.
Anna is the fifth primary character, and yet is physically absent from Saraband having passed away long ago. She continues to leave a mark on those left behind though, each of them keeping a framed black-and-white photo close in their homes.
Unlike virtually everyone else in this ensemble though, Henrik cannot simply let go of those who are ready to move on without him. His failed suicide attempt after Karin’s departure for Berlin is the bleak conclusion to his story, though Bergman decides to sit a little longer with those two characters whose richness and authenticity secured his place in popular culture thirty years prior. As an anxious Johan finds comfort in Marianne’s arms after a night of restless sleep, the two bear their naked bodies to each other for the first time in decades, finding an intimate, humbling honesty that cuts through the existential terror of old age. In the last moments of Bergman’s last film, there are no vicious verbal attacks or extreme acts of spiritual desecration to be found. Much like Marianne, Bergman too finds peace in the act of introspective reminiscence, allowing him to finally appreciate the pure bond between lovers, parents, and children that transcends all other worldly distractions.
A raw, naked union of bodies under the sheets, these ex-lovers finding comfort in each other’s arms and accepting old age together.
The theatre stage is not just a canvas for director Henrik Vogler to mount his eloquent artistic expressions of pain and desire. After each rehearsal, when it has emptied of cast and crew, it also becomes place of deep meditation, where the stories and lives that have passed across its floorboards settle inside him.
“All the emotions, real and make believe, all the laughter, rage, passion, and who knows what else. It’s all still here… enclosed… living its secret, uninterrupted life. I hear them sometimes. Often. Sometimes I think I can hear them. Demons, angels, ghosts… ordinary people… intently going about their lives. Closed off. Secretive. Sometimes we speak to each other, but just in passing.”
The line between life and fiction fades away, lifting him outside time itself until he too becomes an actor in his own fantasy. Not that he would accept that label – Henrik is adamant that he does not participate in the drama, but merely gives it form. His rehearsals are operations, he claims, “where self-discipline, cleanliness, light, and stillness prevail.”
Ingmar Bergman couldn’t disagree more. With After the Rehearsal playing out entirely on Henrik’s stage, everything that unfolds here effectively becomes a play in itself, frequently setting wide shots far back in the audience to frame the theatre director as a character in his own drama. Like his actors, he too is subject to the chaos of art that exposes his true self, letting his internal voiceovers disdainfully drown out his conversations with the two women who approach him mid-reflection.
The first of these is Anna, the lead in his production of A Dream Play. Her search for a missing bracelet is evidently little more than an excuse to talk with her director, seeking one-on-one guidance for her character of Agnes, the daughter of a Vedic god who has descended to Earth and now witnesses the suffering of its mortals. On top of this, there may also be romantic intentions here too – the same kind that Henrik has shared with so many other actresses before her, including her own late mother, Rakel. Anna’s memories of the woman are bitter, recalling in a pained monologue the way she fought with her father and pushed her into a theatre career, though it is Henrik’s recollection of Rakel which proves to be even stronger.
Just as Anna reaches the peak of her resentful nostalgia, reality shifts, freezing her in a single moment of time while Rakel approaches Henrik with a smile. For the first time in Bergman’s career, we are finally afforded the opportunity to watch Erland Josephson and Ingrid Thulin play off each other – one as a prideful director, the other as a volatile actress, and both caught up in a passion that swings between extremes. “Distance. Indifference. Weariness. Fear. Impotence. Impotent rage. Distance,” his internal voice mutters, convincing himself of his own apathy towards her, though at the same time her ability to cut through his sensitive ego is apparent.
“Theatre is shit, filth, and lechery. Turmoil, tangles, and trouble. I don’t believe for a second your theory about purity. It’s suspect, typical of you.”
Henrik speaks of his desire for order and precision, and yet his affection for Rakel tells a different story, seeing her embody all the chaotic emotions that inevitably manifest in his artistic expression. Meanwhile, a frozen Anna continues to burn the imprint of her red outfit into the faded blue couch between them, becoming an enduring reminder of the impact Rakel has left on his life long after her passing.
These memories and distortions barely seem out of place within Henrik’s mind, especially as the illusion of real time persists, yet Bergman’s understated surrealism weaves its way through in subtle ways. In the corner, he sees a younger version of himself hiding under a thunder sheet, while actresses playing Anna as an adult and pre-adolescent appear to swap places without so much as a cut. Only in the theatre could Henrik create a bubble of nostalgia so cut off from the outside world that it conforms to the whims of his own subjective mind, spurring a profound self-reflection on his art and relationships.
Even in the objective reality of the setting though, this stage is filled with artefacts of past plays, each one with some story behind it that Henrik could talk at length about. This is not an exceedingly beautiful film, particularly given its confinement to a single location, but Bergman blocks his actors around its stained mirrors, rustic furniture, and lighting rigs with delicate care, and especially builds his visual storytelling to a peak following our return to Henrik’s reality in the final act.
It is here as After the Rehearsal winds to a close that Anna’s attempt to make their relationship more intimate is met with a gentle rejection. “If I were ten years younger!” Henrik softly laughs, accepting the maturity that has come with age, and perhaps a little bit from his relationship with her mother. With his arm around her shoulder though, they walk among painted backdrops and discuss what could have been, narrating all the ups and downs of their hypothetical future together. Against the image of a city street, their romance becomes argumentative, and though they try to salvage it from jealousy and anger, their breakup is inevitable. Still, they will remain on amicable terms, Henrik muses, before breaking the immersion.
“That’s how it would be.”
This is clearly the work of an older director not just looking back on his career, but his relationships as well. It is no secret after all that Bergman conducted multiple affairs with his leading ladies over the years. There is some regret and self-loathing mixed in with this, but also a great appreciation for those women who have softened his edges and offered him inspiration. After the Rehearsal may mark the beginning of a final chapter for Bergman that never saw him reach the heights of Persona or Fanny and Alexander, but even as the scale of his ambition decreases, there is a new humility and maturity here taking eloquent form.
After the Rehearsal is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.
There is a whimsical horror threaded through Fanny and Alexander that only its ten-year-old protagonist has the open-minded curiosity to confront. He gazes in wonder at his toy paper theatre illuminated by nine flickering candles, before wandering around an exquisitely cluttered apartment draped in red, green, and gold fabrics, like a lonely child lost in a world of endless possibilities. He calls out to his family’s maids, but no one replies. The clock chimes three, a set of cherubs rotate on a music box, and a half-nude marble statue in the corner slowly begins to dance. Suddenly, a soft scraping noise emerges beneath the eerie melody, and we catch a glimpse of a scythe being dragged across the carpet. The grim reaper has arrived, but not for young Alexander. Though this magical realist prologue might be the most undiluted manifestation of his vivid imagination, the heavy presence of death underlies all five hours of this Gothic family drama set in 1900s Sweden, marking his childhood with both merciless damnation and divine salvation.
A fantastical prologue setting up Alexander, his imagination, and the huge, magnificent apartment of his grandmother, Helena. Drapes of green and gold hang over cased openings and windows, creating immaculate frames all through the interior space.
In the haunted Christmastime setting of Fanny and Alexander’s opening, an air of Dickensian fantasy settles over the extended Ekdahl family, revelling in the warm festivities of their annual traditions. Religious celebrations and commemorations form the basis of these gatherings, rotating through the generational cycles of life in funerals, weddings, and christenings. Accompanying these occasions are large meals spread across expansive dining tables, though none are so magnificent as the spread on Christmas Eve night which dominates the first act of the film.
Here, Ingmar Bergman delights in splendidly designed sets of vivid crimson hues, weaved all through the patterned wallpaper, velvet curtains, and holiday decorations illuminated by the golden light of chandeliers and oil lamps. With such profuse warmth commanding the mise-en-scène, there are abundant opportunities to embellish it with small flourishes of emerald-green, popping out in festive wreaths, holly, and indoor plants that snugly crowd out the foreground of his shots.
One of Bergman’s finest achievements in production design, dotting his rooms with candles and festive decor, and filling them out with red, green, and gold hues in stunning arrangements. These shots are cluttered but cosy, immersing us into 1900s Sweden.
Matching Bergman’s rich use of colour is his impeccable blocking of a large ensemble, defining the status and identity of each character by their position within immaculately staged shots of family unity around overflowing dining tables and across plush lounges. For all the misgivings and arguments that arise within the theatre-loving Ekdahl family, there is no doubting the intimacy between them as they gather in the vast, splendid apartment of their widowed matriarch, Helena.
Warmth and unity in Bergman’s blocking during the first act over Christmas Eve, bringing the entire extended Ekdahl family together within gorgeously composed frames.A noticeable shift in the staging following the death of Oskar – reserved distance between each family member, each relegated to their own position and pose.
It is a lengthy setup which Bergman conducts here, insulating us in these family celebrations like a warm, protective barrier from the freezing snow that blankets the village outside. Within its open living areas, we witness their artistic passion emerge in scenes of poetry recitations and musical performances late into the night, each becoming extensions of the plays they perform for the local community. Between the elegantly draped frames connecting each room as well, Bergman stages them like actors within proscenium arches, turning the apartment into its own theatre brimming with enormous personalities. Even greater depths are revealed behind closed doors, bringing a delicate texture to the family’s joys and troubles – Alexander’s uncle, Adolf Gustav, is a cheerful womaniser with a fragile ego, and Carl Ekdahl possesses significant contempt towards his German wife.
Bergman transforms the Ekdahl family home into a theatre of sorts, with the drapes framing its key players in a proscenium arch – remarkable formal mirroring between these scenes and those sets in actual theatres.
It isn’t hard to see where Alexander fits in here with his elaborate tall tales and instinct to escape into fiction when reality grows too harsh. Right from the film’s first frame of the young child peering into his toy paper theatre, there is a robust formal mirroring between the Ekdahls and their art, manifesting with levity in their lively Christmas festivities, and tragedy in the Hamlet-adjacent death of Alexander’s father, Oskar. It is fitting too that he first collapses during a rehearsal of the play, while he is performing the part of Hamlet’s deceased father. “I could play the ghost now really well,” he jokes on his deathbed, leaving his wife to remarry the cruel Bishop Edvard who presides over his funeral – a truly compelling stand-in for Hamlet’s treacherous uncle Claudius if there ever was one.
Even outside the scope of family homes, Bergman finds a bright but chilly beauty in the frozen streets of Sweden, even while he lights up his interiors with a blazing warmth.
The narrative that follows is heavily Shakespearean in both structure and characterisation, though there is also a touch of dreamy self-awareness as Bergman considers the multitude of stories woven into the fabric of his art. “We are surrounded by many realities, one on top of the other,” Alexander learns as he takes refuge within a curiosity shop of puppets, and indeed he seems to possess an imagination that can penetrate each of its metaphysical layers. When the voice of God speaks to him from a dark cabinet, he is filled with a great existential terror and total belief in its veracity, right up until he sees its true form – just another puppet, propping up the artifice of Christian piety.
In this consideration of organised religion as a hollow construct, Fanny and Alexander becomes an act of catharsis for Bergman who, in playing to these archetypes of corruption and innocence, reflects large portions of his own childhood. The fond memories of a flawed but welcoming family exist in stark contrast to the oppressive dynamic that pervades the bishop’s bare, colourless home, and caught between the two is the overly active imagination of a boy who struggles to differentiate between fantasy and reality.
The curiosity shop of puppets once again turns theatre and art into a sanctuary for Alexander, and doubles as a metaphor for the many stories that make up the lives and worlds beyond our own.
As such, there is also a distinct fairy tale quality that takes hold of Fanny and Alexander, accompanying the introduction of the wicked stepfather with ghosts and demons directly inspired by those religious tales which the children are raised on. Being deprived of a supportive father figure himself, Bergman carries great empathy for Alexander, understanding his immaturity and naivety as a natural stage in his own creative development.
Perhaps it is this lack of emotional inhibition which grants the young boy the means to deal with his grief, letting him lash out in ways which, while not entirely polite, are honest to his thoughts and feelings. In one evocative scene after he hears his mother’s guttural cry erupt from somewhere in their grandmother’s apartment, he creeps out of bed with his sister Fanny to peer through the crack of a door, where they see her wailing in private over her husband’s cold body. Unlike Alexander’s coping mechanisms that are freely expressed out into the world, the overwhelming feelings of adults must be repressed to those small, remote corners where no one else can see. This is a lesson that the bishop beats into him even harder with a “strong and harsh love,” reframing Alexander’s innocent efforts to understand the world as sinister transgressions that will damn him to hell.
A thin frame caught in the crack of a door, as the children get out of bed to see their deceased father and their wailing mother pacing back and forth.With a shift in location to the bishop’s house, the splendid drapes and decor of the Ekdahl home is replaced with austere, colourless walls and quiet, unwelcoming dinners. Not a trace of eye contact to be found in these family gatherings.
The move from Helena’s vibrant, festive home of expressionistic décor to the stark white halls of the bishop’s Spartan house lands with a quiet dread, and with it comes a shift in Bergman’s blocking. Gone are the large family gathering of characters arranged in relaxed formations across plush couches and dining halls. These rooms are made of stone and wood, unembellished and projecting the bishop’s cold hostility through every communal space. The housemaid, Justina, effectively becomes a scary old witch in this household as well, using the children’s wild imaginations against them through her unsettling cautionary tales. Harriet Andersson refreshingly proves her range here in playing the total opposite of what she represented in her earliest collaborations with Bergman – tedium and severity, in place of youth and beauty.
Harriet Andersson is superbly cast as Justina the housemaid – she is thin, severe, and unsmiling, representing the inverse of the young, beautiful protagonists she played in Bergman’s earlier films.
The grip that both villains hold over our protagonists is suffocating. The bishop’s demand that Emilie and her children lose all their old possessions as if “newly born” is delivered with a faint chill, forcing them to conform to his pious standard of sparse minimalism, and kicking off a long line of attempts to rewrite their identities. Bergman captures this devastating isolation wreaked upon the young siblings with harsh, angular frames, gazing out the windows of their depressing bedroom, and crumpled on the attic’s grey, dusty floor beneath a fallen crucifix, as if slain by a domineering force of spiritual corruption.
Bergman shoots the bishop’s house like a prison with his desolate compositions, trapping Fanny and Alexander in these restrictive frames.A fallen crucifix and the crumpled body of Alexander, banished to the attic for his disobedience, and slain by a domineering force of spiritual corruption.
His immaculate staging of his actors goes beyond wide shots too though, as he particularly focuses on the thoughtful arrangements of their faces to understand their joys and frustrations on a psychological, intimate level. As Oskar lays on his deathbed with his face turned to the side, Emilie’s profile leans up against his cheek in pensive mourning, simultaneously revealing both the intimacy of their final days of marriage and the tension that is pulling them apart. In contrast, a later shot at the bishop’s house which frames Fanny, Alexander, and Emilie lying on their sides in bed captures them all looking towards the camera, united in their melancholy. With each face slightly obscuring the one behind it, Emilie is set up at the back as the quiet protector of her children, shielding them from the bishop who stands alone and unfocused in the background.
Bergman shoots arrangements of faces that uncovers the subtlest emotions, expressing melancholy longing, maternal protectiveness, and a ghostly terror.
Jan Malmsjö brings a sadistic venom to this role, though he takes care to only reveal his villainy bit by bit. His first handling of Alexander’s lies is stern but relatively fair, keeping us at a distance from the bitter, angry man who lies beneath the cool veneer. It is difficult to get a good reading of him here, but by the time we arrive at his next chastisement of Alexander, his malevolence is exceedingly clear. In response to the bishop’s degradation and punishment, the young boy grows more obstinate in his disobedience, and yet even he can only stand so many beatings before being forced into submission. Watching on, Fanny silently recoils from the bishop’s touch, and Emilie’s contempt for her husband grows. With all paths of escape cut off, they become a broken, trapped family, suffering in an austere hellhole.
Alexander facing the bishop’s wrath, isolated even from his own sister in this shot while the bishop sits back with his family and house staff.
Still, visions of Oskar’s ghost continue to haunt Alexander like reminders of a brighter past, bearing witness to the depression left behind in his wake. These transcendent experiences extend to other family members too, as late in the film Oskar also appears to Helena, his bereaved mother. He speaks little, instead simply becoming the audience to her eloquent soliloquy on the process of accepting her grief, as well as the multiple coexistent truths at the core of Bergman’s dramaturgical metaphor.
“Life, it’s all acting anyway. Some roles are nice, other not so nice. I played a mother. I played Juliet and Margareta. Then suddenly I played a widow or a grandmother. One role follows the other. The thing is not to shrink from them.”
Oskar’s ghost manifesting to both Alexander and Helena, always in his white suit and silently pacing the halls of the family home.
And yet, even as an actress with a deeper understanding of the human condition than her grandson, the pain is no less present.
“My feelings came from deep in my body. Even though I could control them, they shattered reality, if you know what I mean. Reality has remained broken ever since… and oddly enough, it feels more real that way. So, I don’t bother to mend it.”
Bergman’s screenplay flows like poetry through these thoughtful contemplations of life-changing events, bringing this story full circle with the restoration of the family unit. Just as celebrations of Christ’s birth open the film, so too is new life breathed into the Ekdahl clan with the christening of Alexander’s newborn baby sister, reviving the cycles of tradition which connect one generation to the next. Still, even as the conclusion of this epic drama sees the bishop damned to hell in a house fire, four words punctuate its ending with a lingering thread of trauma, keeping his ghost alive in Alexander’s mind.
“You can’t escape me.”
Surreal visions emerging at moments when Alexander is overcome with emotion, transporting him to a new location altogether as he is entranced by a story.
The fantastical imagination of Bergman’s young protagonist is evidently as dangerous as it is enchanting, filtering the world through a lens that distorts every intense emotional experience into a memory that will never fade away. Not only does it manifest as supernatural creatures and visions, but it is also baked right into those dazzling bursts of colour that decorate the fabrics and textures of his family’s home, leaping out like nostalgic recollections of a youth that was only partially lived in the real world. By simply dwelling within this perspective, Fanny and Alexander becomes a deeply sentimental work for Bergman, magnificently distilling his own dreams into expressions of childhood wonder and terror.
A return to family tradition, though with a change in decor – the reds and greens of Christmas Eve are replaced with pastels to represent a christening, signifying a birth and renewal within the Ekdahl clan.
Fanny and Alexander is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.
Ingmar Bergman splits Peter Egarmann’s visit to the brothel where prostitute Ka works in two halves, but much like the rest of From the Life of the Marionettes, they do not unfold in the order they occur. His sudden snap, brutal murder of Ka, and necrophilic rape makes for a viscerally disturbing opening, seemingly coming out of nowhere during a gentle embrace between the two. Red lighting drenches the interiors with an air of lust and danger, but Ingmar Bergman also continues to draw that palette through the walls and furniture that Ka hides behind in terror.
When the terrible deed is done, all colour drains from Bergman’s cinematography in a single fade to black-and-white, not to be seen again until the film’s final minutes. When that time comes though, we finally witness Peter’s initial arrival at the brothel, quietly nervous but not hinting yet at a murderous rage. Ka, we find out, is short for Katarina – the same name as his wife, who we know by now has been the subject of his barbaric dreams. This time, Bergman spares us from witnessing his brutal eruption, but afterwards as we hang on a close-up of his eyes, his monochrome perspective slowly fades back into colour.
While everything in between these segments cuts non-linearly across the greyscale months preceding and following what Bergman labels the “disaster,” the implications that Peter only finds colour in his world through this murder are horrifying. His defiling of Ka’s body is an atrocious expression of the psychological torment that has plagued him since childhood, breaking through his pretence of masculinity with a vivid, honest assertion of his repressed anger and desire. Bergman has long considered the fragile minds that lurk beneath mild personas, but From the Life of the Marionettes is easily his most violent rupturing of that veil, seeking whatever logic lies at the source of this random outburst.
Not that the eventual resolution Bergman presents us with is terribly compelling. The psychiatrist’s reasoning that involves latent homosexuality and emotional blackouts is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s similar diagnosis at the end of Psycho, with its heavy-handed superficiality doing little to tie it all together. It is rather by sorting through the build-up and aftermath of the disaster that Peter’s mental unwellness properly comes into view, pieced together by the fragments of second-hand stories.
The structure of From the Life of the Marionettes thus takes the form of a Citizen Kane-inspired narrative, though with clumsy intertitles between scenes unfortunately over-explaining the context of each. Bit by bit, we come to understand Peter’s childhood through his mother, his sexual insecurity through his wife, and his final days before the disaster through her coworker, Tim. It is his spiteful jealousy and sexual feelings for Peter which became the catalyst for the disaster in the first place, seeing him purposefully introduce him to Ka so that a wedge may be driven into his marriage. Peter’s attempted suicide two days before murdering Ka also heavily indicates a man on the verge of doing something drastically destructive, but even this cry for help falls on deaf ears. This is a man who has been isolated by others, and thus further isolates himself.
Perhaps the most revealing sequence of all arrives when From the Life of the Marionettes fully penetrates Peter’s subconscious mind, consuming him in the vast, white void of his dreams. Within this realm, Bergman fully expresses his trademark surrealism in dreamy dissolves, low frame rates, and obscured close-ups as Peter examines the body of his naked wife, trying to make love to her yet failing. In response to her mocking smile, he attacks her in a frenzy, and although his rage quickly dissolves in her warm, maternal embrace, it comes too late. Katarina is dead, and he knows he is responsible.
“Do I live at all? Or was that dream, as it was, my only short moment of life? Of truly experienced and conquered reality?”
More than any psychiatrist’s diagnosis, it is this surreal passage which most profoundly roots Peter’s action in some psychological foundation. To destroy what he deems the source of his masculine insecurity is to finally see his life in vibrant colour, despite there being new emotional prisons confining him inside a physical one. If he considered himself emasculated before, then he is even more sapped of his identity here, spending his days playing chess against computers and neglecting any contact with the outside world. As he lays in bed, he clutches his only shred of self left – a teddy bear kept from his childhood. Perhaps some blame can be pinned on society at large for failing Peter in From the Life of the Marionettes, selfishly manipulating him into emotional isolation, but this murderer’s retaliatory self-degradation is totally of his own tragic making.
From the Life of the Marionettes is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.
True to Ingmar Bergman’s seasonal metaphors drawn through so many of his films, Autumn Sonata oversees a harvest of the emotional kind unfold in the twilight years of one mother’s life. For the entirety of her daughters’ childhoods, Charlotte has been dedicated to her career as a classical pianist, and held both Eva and Helena to standards as rigorous as those she imposes on herself. Perhaps she has wanted to see them succeed in similar fields, letting them enter the world as even more refined versions of herself, though now with a more mature mind and decades’ worth of hindsight, this does not seem the case to Eva. All at once, the insecurity which haunts Charlotte’s mind simultaneously turns them into similarly flawed copies, and ensures that their successes may never exceed her own. Bergman’s framing of them as echoes of each other represents just as much too, as both habitually grasp at their faces in close-up while Eva levels biting accusations at her mother.
“The mother’s injuries are handed down to the daughter. The mother’s failures are paid for by the daughter. The mother’s unhappiness will be the daughter’s unhappiness. It’s as if the umbilical cord had never been cut. Is that true? Is the daughter’s misfortune the mother’s triumph? Is my grief your secret pleasure?”
Shared habits carrying across generations of women in a single shot – brilliant acting from both Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman, but also an excellent framing of their faces.
For Eva, this grief most prominently manifested in the form of an abortion forced on her at age 18, introducing her to the profound trauma of losing a child that would strike her again many years later in the death of her four-year-old son Erik. So too does she blame her mother’s abandonment for indirectly causing Helena’s severe disability, leaving her paralysed and unable to speak. In the grand scheme of things though, it is the accumulation of subtle, cruel acts which have left the deepest psychological imprints. With a childless void left in Eva’s life, and Helena feeling the absence of her mother, a surrogate relationship has formed between the two that cuts Charlotte out altogether, seeing one sister become the other’s caretaker. Now with Charlotte suddenly visiting their home after many years of silence though, the time has come for her to reap the seeds of misery she has sown – not merely neglecting the wellbeing of her daughters, but wholly sabotaging their attempts to lead happy lives.
The earthy, autumnal colours of Bergman’s exteriors seep indoors, grounding his film in the season of harvests.
Besides the symbolism of growth and harvest that Ingmar Bergman attaches to Autumn Sonata, it is fitting that this is the season he left until last as a figurative representation of his career, having previously used Spring, Summer, and Winter in cinematic illustrations of life’s cycles. At this point he still had a couple more decades of filmmaking ahead of him, including one of his greatest accomplishments in Fanny and Alexander, but the large bulk of his work from the 1980s onward would largely be in television productions that inhibited his creative freedom. As such, Autumn Sonata is located near the edge of his sharp artistic decline, reflecting Bergman’s concerns of old age and mortal regrets in its central mother figure.
Maybe this is also why he finally resolved to collaborate with the last truly great Swedish actress of the era that his path had not crossed yet, Ingrid Bergman. Autumn Sonata marks her final film performance before she would pass away four years later, but even so she makes every minute onscreen count, embodying a severe repression that holds back any displays of maternal affection. Quite significantly, this coldness extends to her music as well. Though her face breaks into soft tenderness while listening to her daughter play the piano, this is not something she can express verbally. Instead, her only remark is an aloof correction of her stylistic interpretation, and a far more refined demonstration of how the piece should be played instead. The way she speaks of music, it might as well be a form of self-punishment, proving her wilful endurance against the temptation to connect with her audiences.
“Chopin was emotional, but not sentimental. Feeling is very far from sentimentality. The prelude tells of pain, not reverie. You have to be calm, clear and harsh. Take the first bars now. It hurts but he doesn’t show it. Then a short relief… but it evaporates at once, and the pain is the same. Total restraint the whole time… The prelude must be made to sound almost ugly. It is never ingratiating. It should sound wrong. You have to battle your way through it and emerge triumphant. Like this.”
The piano scene succinctly captures everything about this mother-daughter dynamic and boils it down to a piano piece played twice over. Everything about this is brimming with subtext, from the musical performances to the monologue on how Chopin should be played.
On the other side of this relationship too, Ingmar sets up Liv Ullmann perfectly as the daughter dealing with her own repressed pain, only now bitterly recognising flaws in the woman she had been seeking praise from for so long. As Ingrid Bergman plays the same piano piece we heard a few moments earlier with greater technical proficiency, Ingmar captures both their faces in a shared close-up, though it is Ullmann’s defeated expression of contempt, exasperation, longing, and sadness which draws our attention. Very slowly, her gaze slowly shifts between Bergman’s face and hands, recognising how this single demonstration of snobbish superiority captures their entire relationship. When Bergman finally finishes playing, the only remark she can muster up is a feeble acknowledgment – “I see.” She has no words yet to express the emotional isolation she feels from her mother, but by the time the final act of Autumn Sonata arrives, they will start flowing freely like notes on a piano.
Tremendous acting from Ullmann in this shot – an expression of contempt, exasperation, longing, and sadness as her gaze moves between her mother’s face and hands.
In the meantime, verbal expressions of this grating tension are predominantly expressed through monologues in separate rooms. While they independently prepare for the evening meal, Ingmar Bergman intercuts back and forth between their petty jabs, each one imagining what the other is thinking and trying to outsmart them. “Watch carefully how she dresses for dinner. Her dress will be a discreet reminder that she’s a lonely widow,” Eva gripes to her husband, only barely masking her resentment with an air of humour. As if reading her daughter’s mind from across the house, Charlotte mutters her response. “I’ll put on my red dress just to spite Eva. I’m sure she thinks I ought to be in mourning.”
Besides Helena, it is that fourth member of the household who acts as a neutral witness to this malicious dynamic, at times even becoming a surrogate for the audience. Viktor has long grown distant from his wife, dealing with the grief of losing his son far more internally than Eva’s outpouring of emotion, and so within Autumn Sonata he becomes a framing device of sorts who opens and closes the narrative with direct addresses to the camera. He often silently watches from neighbouring rooms, refusing to involve himself in their drama, and it is often this perspective that Ingmar Bergman takes with his consistent framing of actors through doorways, mirrors, and casings.
A superb framing device in the fourth wall breaks by Viktor, Eva’s husband, peering in at this complicated relationship as an outside observer.
On one level, these beautifully curated interiors invite us into their warm, orange colour palettes, reflecting the seasonal exteriors in the lighting and décor of Eva’s cosy home. Its inhabitants frequently dress in bursts of red and other earthy tones, and there is even a cosiness to the light clutter of flowers, chandeliers, and striped wallpaper which decorate the mise-en-scène. Still, there is an undeniable harshness to Ingmar Bergman’s blocking, integrating a touch of Yasujirō Ozu’s aesthetic in his rigorous setting of frames in family environments. From this distance, Eva and Charlotte are totally isolated, oppressively bound together within close domestic quarters yet failing to reach any emotional understanding of each other.
Some of Bergman’s most extraordinary visuals can be found in his framing of domestic interiors and blocking, painting out scenes of family discontent and isolation.
This sense of peering into the lives of this family is magnified even further when Ingmar Bergman slips into dreams and flashbacks, imbuing each with the uneasy surrealism of their repressed memories. Easily the most horrific of all these scenes unfolds in Charlotte’s sleep, unfolding her nightmare of being choked by Eva while she lays helpless in bed, though our brief journeys into their subjective recollections of the past develop a far more wistful tone. Not once does Bergman submit his camera to close-ups when we are in this subjective realm, instead dedicating a single, wide tableau to each scene and thereby refusing to engage too intimately with such sensitive traumas. When a much younger Charlotte shuts herself away to play piano, her daughter waits patiently outside the room, further revealing the unnurtured roots of a relationship painfully captured in one long dissolve dominating the tiny child Eva with a close-up of her mother’s aged face.
We too feel as if we are examining the past from a cold distance through Bergman’s tableaux, setting his camera back in wide shots for each flashback and looking through doorways.Long dissolves dreamily connect the past to the present, underscoring the formidable dominance of Charlotte on her daughter’s life in this specific composition.
When the seal is finally broken on Eva’s wounded silence and the past comes pouring back into the present, there is no longer any holding back the honest anger between both women. “I distrusted your words. They didn’t match the expression in your eyes,” Eva recalls, reflecting on the lie of her mother’s smile when she was clearly mad. Her attempts to live up to her mother’s beauty, intellectualism, and musical talent were never compensated with any sort of recognition. From that desperate insecurity grew hatred, which in turn gave birth to an insane fear, clearly stunting her emotional growth which has echoed through to her adult years.
Although Eva is effectively reduced to the mentality of a distressed child in her sobbing, there is at least a conscious connection being formed for Charlotte when, for the first time, she embarks on her own self-reflection. She too recalls her childhood where she was never touched by her parents, whether out of affection or punishment, and so she turned to music as a form of expression. She did not want to be a mother, she confesses, desiring to be held rather than the one who does the holding, though Eva does not hesitate in calling out the obliviousness of this desire.
“I think I wanted you to take care of me… To put your arms around me and comfort me.”
“I was a child.”
The final act of the film is where mother and daughter can finally speak honestly, leading to a showcase of virtuosic acting from both Ullmann and Bergman, and almost convincing us that they may move past their mutual traumas.
With Charlotte’s cold, stone heart finally breaking and recognising the trauma that has spread from one generation to the next, Ingmar Bergman almost gives us hope that there may be some change on the horizon for both women. Quite despairingly though, it only takes until the next day when she is on her way back home that old habits and attitudes rear their head, summoning them back into the toxic cycles which originally drove them apart. As far as Charlotte is concerned, she can’t be that terrible a person – after all, she plays concertos with warmth, and she isn’t at all stingy. Even more painfully, Eva has completely reverted into her submissive desperation for acceptance, resolving to write an apology letter to her mother.
“Dear Mama, I realise that I wronged you. I met you with demands instead of affection. I tormented you with an old hatred that’s no longer real. I want to ask your forgiveness.”
Falling back into old habits as the reunion comes to an end – Charlotte blaming her daughter for their breakdown, and Eva shamefully taking the blame.
Ingmar Bergman’s characters may be cruel and cowardly, but this is not a barrier to establishing empathy in Autumn Sonata. He has the utmost compassion for those who have experienced the profound depths of the human experience, emerged as maladjusted individuals, and faced up to their repressed desires and insecurities, even if they are unable to reconcile them with their outward expressions. Like the persistent rotation between immaculately framed wide shots and close-ups, and the seasonal changes which echo across his broader filmography, both mother and daughter here are trapped within cycles set in motion several generations before either were born. At the root of all emotional and psychological problems in Autumn Sonata, Bergman simply finds the inescapable reality of a past we never had any control over, inextricably connected to our defiant, tormented humanity.
Autumn Sonata is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV. The Autumn Sonata DVD can also be purchased on Amazon.
Adolf Hitler is given no more than a few passing mentions in The Serpent’s Egg, largely being associated with a failed coup d’etat that has branded him a joke among the wealthy intelligentsia of 1923 Germany, including those who conduct the sort of unethical human experiments he might very well be endorsing within a couple of decades. These scientists may not realise it yet, but their vision of a society that stomps on romantic ideas of man’s goodness and reshapes people into machines of pure efficiency bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the future dictator they label an “incredible scatterbrain.” Therein lies the insidious subtext of the metaphor that Professor Hans Vergérus poses when the purpose of his shady work is brought to light.
“It’s like a serpent’s egg. Through the thin membranes you can already discern the already perfect reptile.”
The fascism that would destroy millions of lives in years to come is merely in its infancy here, not yet possessing the intellectual capacity and brute strength it will one day use to commit widespread genocide. Still, to underestimate the potential of its inhuman cruelty would be a grave mistake.
It isn’t that there is any particular weakness in the construction of this cold-blooded metaphor, but within the context of Ingmar Bergman’s broader filmography one might be struck by how relatively simple it is. The Serpent’s Egg is his second film to be written partially in English after The Touch, and the first to be produced within the confines of Hollywood, despite being shot in Germany. The creative constraints he felt working under these conditions are evident. Gone are the abstract, psychological examinations of human vulnerability and isolation, and in their place are surface-level renderings of both in the romance between alcoholic American immigrant, Abel, and his German sister-in-law, Manuela.
Even in her supporting role as a grieving widow and boisterous cabaret performer, Liv Ullmann often comes out looking better than her co-star David Carradine, continuing to prove her versatility as a woman driven to survive in the squalid pits of modern society. It is largely thanks to her that the relationship between Manuela and Abel is given any depth beyond their shared mourning of his brother and her husband, Max.
What The Serpent’s Egg lacks in a compelling narrative though is partially compensated for in Bergman’s thorough world building of 1920s Germany, raising his camera in crane shots above low-lit urban streets and sinking his characters into shabby, cluttered interiors. With the Russian Revolution just a few years in the past and a fear of Bolsheviks hanging over the people of Berlin too, cultural tensions permeate every corner of society, occasionally bursting into outright violence as soldiers overrun the brothel where Manuela works and kill its owner. Meanwhile, the starving masses are driven to cutting up dead horses on the street for meat when the food shops close, though perhaps even more chilling is the image of its bare skeleton a few scenes later, with passers-by accepting it as just another part of the urban scenery.
For those who are merely looking to survive, dark mysteries that swirl in the background of everyday life are the least of their concern, though Bergman never quite loses track of their danger. While Abel is investigating his brother’s seemingly random suicide, dead bodies are simultaneously appearing on nearby street corners, and he quickly comes under suspicion by antisemitic authorities. As conspiracies come to light, the formal thread connecting both subplots is revealed to be much tighter than we initially suspected, tying them all back to the same shady hospital. After all, it is no coincidence that wealthy doctors are able to conduct their exploitative human experiments in such dire circumstances, psychologically driving one mother to kill her baby out of sheer frustration and locking a man in total isolation for a week. The incentives are glaringly simple.
“People will do anything for a little money and a square meal.”
Suddenly, the future of Germany looks more desolate than ever. If this is where its power over the masses starts, with common people voluntarily submitting their bodies to the ruling elite, then there is no holding back Hitler’s manipulation of their insecurity. It is clear that Bergman has far greater interest in this conspiracy than in its direct impact on his characters, as the moment it is resolved he brings the film to an abrupt close with nothing but onscreen text filling in the rest of Abel’s story. Even as The Serpent’s Egg marks a strange departure from Bergman’s usual screenwriting strengths though, the menacing tension it builds in its bleak political statement can’t be denied, witnessing the birth of fascism amid dystopian landscapes of fear, starvation, and corruption.
The Serpent’s Egg is not currently streaming in Australia.
The firm line that Dr Jenny Isaksson draws between her professional work as a psychiatrist and her own personal traumas can only hold the façade of composure together for so long before it shatters. At first, it is barely shaken when she meets with her mentally troubled patient Mari, played by Kari Sylwan as the exact inverse of her saintly character from Cries and Whispers – tormented, withdrawn, and disdainful of those who claim a higher moral ground. On one hand, her cutting accusation of Jenny as a woman incapable of love could be little more than an attempt to inflict her self-loathing on others, but there are also psychological parallels here between doctor and patient that offer her vitriol a measure of truth.
When Jenny comes home to her empty house one day and finds Mari curled up on the floor, Ingmar Bergman splits the space between them with a wall, manifesting that line dividing the two isolated halves of Jenny’s mind. Her confident authority as she calls for help on the telephone is almost instantly destroyed the moment a pair of trespassers appear and try to rape her, only to find penetration too difficult. Instead, they leave her lying on the floor in the same wounded state as Mari, with Bergman mirroring their anguish across both sides of the split shot that he has held for the entire agonising scene. Jenny’s psyche is still as fractured as before, but the bitterly repressed trauma that speaks to her through Mari has finally spilled out into reality, forcing a violent reckoning with her own physical and emotional fragility.
Bergman splits this frame right down the middle with a wall in Jenny’s house, and holds the shot for several minutes as she is confronted by a pair of intruders who try to rape her. By the end of the scene, she too is left lying crumpled on the floor like Mari – a mirror image of her inner and outer self.
Much like Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman’s intent with Face to Face was to produce a miniseries for Swedish television, and then to cut it down to a film version for international distribution. Unlike his marital epic though, this intensive study of mental illness has faded into relative obscurity and consequently become broadly underrated. Neither this nor Scenes from a Marriage necessarily stand among his greatest aesthetic accomplishments, but his intuitive staging of profound personal struggles in both supports a pair of sharply written screenplays, seeking to understand the psychological weaknesses that force humans into emotional isolation.
So too is Face to Face yet another showcase of Liv Ullmann’s immense acting talent, earning Bergman’s close-ups with a vulnerability that exposes the raw horror of her internal conflict. In Jenny’s mind, pain and pleasure are virtually indistinguishable, as she confesses her dark desire that those trespassers were able to follow through with their rape just so she could feel some sort of connection to her humanity. With these conflicting emotional responses suddenly surfacing all at once, Ullmann seamlessly shifts from manic laughter into full-bodied sobbing and back again, and in refusing to cut away from his long takes of such visceral turbulence, Bergman proves himself equally dedicated to the realism of her plight.
This showcases some of Ullmann’s greatest acting in an already incredible career, seamlessly shifting from manic laughter into full-bodied sobbing and back again. Her character is deeply tormented, and can only hold her cool composure together for so long before it cracks and reveals her vulnerability.
At a certain point though, realism is not enough to express the depths of her emotional torment. As she silently wanders through the bare, furniture-less house that she intends to sell, and later the cottage of her grandparents she is staying with, both become surreal limbos not unlike the hotel of The Silence or the family manor of Cries and Whispers. While her former home isolates her in bare rooms and corridors stripped of all their comfort, the dark green interior of the other is cluttered with photo frames and antique furniture that reek of old age. There, ticking clocks resonate through the repetitive sound design, as she disappears into dreams of an elderly woman with a single black eye. It isn’t just death that she fears, but the degradation of the mind and body that foreshadows its inevitable arrival at the end of one’s life, and Bergman wraps it all up into this sinister omen of mortality.
Superb production design noting the difference between Jenny’s empty home mid-move, and the cluttered, green decor of grandparent’s cottage. Both become claustrophobic limbos that she uneasily wanders through.A one-eyed crone stalks Jenny through her dreams, becoming a sinister omen of her deepest fear – death.
The mental disturbances that one man expresses to Jenny early on in Face to Face manifest even more tangibly as she sits on the verge of taking her own life, planting the self-destructive paradox in her head – could anyone feasibly take their own life out of fear of dying? It is certainly possible at least for Jenny, who seeks to take control of her fate by leaving a suicide note, overdosing on prescription pills, and quelling the inner turmoil that she has repressed for so long.
“I suddenly realise that what I’m about to do has been lurking inside for several years. Not that I’ve consciously planned to take my life, I’m not that deceitful. It’s more that I’ve been living in isolation, that’s become even worse. The line dividing my external behaviour from my internal impoverishment has become sharper.”
This is her “recovery from a lifelong illness” she claims, confessing that she cannot even find the tears to cry over her inability to appreciate beauty, before submitting to the creeping unconsciousness. Bergman’s camera gracefully follows the movement of her hand tracing the patterns of the wallpaper before it drops out of the frame, and as if accompanying her soul out of the room, we continue to drift along to the persistent ticking.
A lengthy tracking shot follows Jenny’s finger tracing the patterns on the wallpaper as she slowly submits to the creeping unconsciousness. It drops out of the frame, but Bergman’s camera continues to float through the room, as if following her soul outside.
This is not the end for Jenny though, but merely a journey deeper into her subconscious, where Bergman’s surreal imagery exposes the fears that she has only ever verbalised to this point. This is also where Sven Nykvist’s cinematography truly strengthens, absorbing her into shadowy, decrepit dreams of her grandmother reading grim fairy tales to unsmiling audiences, inaudible whispers, and patients begging for her to cure their existential ailments. Her ineffective prescriptions do little to calm the crowd who grasp at her like lepers, holding her back from her daughter, Anna, who keeps running away.
Though Jenny drifts in and out of consciousness at the hospital, her grip on reality remains hazy in Bergman’s dreamy long dissolves, constantly pulling her back into those uneasy nightmares. The vivid red robe that she wears on this slippery descent to the core of her trauma makes for a number of striking shots against otherwise dark backdrops, framing her as a denizen of her own personal hell with that one-eyed crone as her only companion. Very gradually, the deathly terror surrounding this peculiar figure falls away, until Jenny embraces her strange maternal compassion by accepting her shawl for warmth.
The darkness threatens to swallow Ullmann hole in her dreams, but she stands out with her blood red robes. This section has some of the strongest visuals of Face to Face, submitting to the surrealism.Long dissolves bridging Jenny’s consciousness and dreams, forming some stunning compositions through close-ups.
Still, the foundations of her insecurities are not so easily vanquished, as Bergman finally draws her to the childhood ordeal that started it all – the sudden death of her parents in a car accident. Ullmann reverts to the mind of Jenny’s nine-year-old self as she faces their abandonment, banging on doors and heaving with sobs over her guilty conscience, only to hatefully scream at them to leave the moment they return.
“It’s always the same. First I say I love you, then I say I hate you, and you turn into two scared children, ashamed of yourselves. Then I feel sorry for you, and love you again. I can’t go on.”
The core of Jenny’s trauma emerges in this encounter with her deceased parents. There is little resolution to be found as she reverts to the mind of her nine-year-old self.
It is one thing for Jenny to enter an unimaginable grief as an orphan, but it is another entirely to be completely cut off from any chance at resolving her troubled relationship with them, effectively damning her to a life of loose ends. It is no wonder she chose to become a psychiatrist. On some subconscious level, she sees herself in her patients, and through them feels just a little less alone in her suffering.
“To hold someone’s head between your hands… and to feel that frailty between your hands… and inside it all the loneliness… and capability, and joy, and boredom, and intelligence, and the will to live.”
Not that she has ever been able to offer them the same comfort. In its place she has established a cold emotional detachment, deciding that death is little more than a vague concept rather than a reality that encased her childhood in a tomb of endless mourning. Only now can she see it for what it is, as in one last dream she traps a copy of herself inside a coffin, nails it shut, and sets it alight, stifling her own panicked screams.
Profound symbolism as Jenny shuts her double inside a coffin, damning herself to her deepest fear of death.
Healing may not come so easily through this renewed self-awareness, especially with the news of her grandfather’s stroke still hanging the shadow of mortality over her life, and yet for the first time she is able to view his old age with neither aloofness nor fear. As she watches her grandparents face their final days together, instead she sees “their dignity, their humility”, and confesses feeling the presence of something she has never experienced before.
“For a short moment I knew that love embraces everything, even death.”
Behind Jenny’s façade of stability is an overwhelming numbness, further masking a deeply repressed terror, yet buried even deeper than that within her psyche is an innate, abiding belief in humanity’s capacity for selflessness and devotion. It isn’t that she is incapable of love, as Mari tells her, but she has simply let it lie dormant to protect herself from the pain of continual loss – a pain that can only be ignored for so long, and whose only cure is a gracious acceptance of its inevitability. Even by Bergman’s standards, Jenny’s characterisation is profoundly layered with immense psychological depth, treading a fine line between realism and surrealism as thin as that which stubbornly divides her outer and inner identities. Only when this denial dissolves entirely and both come crashing into each other can any sort of self-actualisation be found in Face to Face, finally drawing a resounding peace from the chaos and trauma of being.
Face to Face is currently available to rent or buy on Vimeo.
True to its title, Scenes From a Marriage never sways from its tight focus on six isolated episodes of Johan and Marianne’s married life, using each to piece together a collage of a fragmenting relationship across ten years. The couple often speaks of other people who are important to them, including their unseen children and extramarital lovers, yet the only characters who ever take up a substantial amount of screen time are those who act as counterpoints to them. In one scene we watch Marianne’s mother reflect on how disconnected she felt from her late husband, while at a dinner party two married friends, Katarina and Peter, pour out a verbal stream of visceral disgust at each other.
“I find you utterly repulsive. In a physical sense, I mean. I could buy a lay from anyone just to wash you out of my genitals.”
At first, Johan and Marianne might seem like the most ideal couple of them all, and their friends even acknowledge this when considering the awkward situation that has arisen from their unbarred scorn. “It will do their souls good to catch a glimpse of the depths of hell,” they joke, but perhaps that glimpse was more of a stimulus than they realise.
An awkward dinner party with friends Peter and Katarina foreshadows the vicious conflict to come between Johan and Marianne.Bergman plays with the distance between his actors all throughout Scenes From a Marriage, emphasising their disconnection in these perfectly staged wide shots.And then bringing them together in these tightly framed, intimate close-ups.
When we first meet Johan and Marianne, they are pushing the false image of their unwavering love in a magazine interview, speaking about the ten years they have been wed. Conversation unfolds organically in Ingmar Bergman’s dialogue, painting a portrait of Marianne as a woman who is no stranger to separation. Not only has she ended a marriage once before, but she continues to see clients undergo the same experience in her profession as a divorce lawyer. Perhaps it is because she is so familiar with others’ problems, or maybe she just possesses a deep-rooted desire for stability, but clearly she has considered the subject from every angle save for a personal one. In this interview, the illusion of her marital contentment is only ever broken in the journalist’s uncomfortable interruptions, as she constantly arranges them into poses for the camera which expose the artifice behind it all.
Bergman sets his film in motion with a naturalistic conversation between Johan, Marianne, and a journalist interviewing them on their marriage, intermittently breaking up the flow with her requests to pose for the camera.
Ingmar Bergman’s writing is some of the strongest it has ever been here, dispensing with his usual traces of surrealism for a realism that confronts the awkward complexities of his characters head-on. In doing so, he is also creating his most forthright examination yet of bitter conflicts that divide once-passionate lovers, in slight contrast to almost every other film of his over the past decades which have lingered such interrogations on the edges of other more faith-based questions.
Also quite unusual for Bergman is his move to a television format, simultaneously serving the extended, episodic structure of his story, yet unfortunately compromising on his usually impeccable visual style. Even with his regular cinematographer Sven Nykvist at hand, the tiny budget that the network gave them does not allow for the sort of lush production design of Cries and Whispers.
Despite being largely contained within small, minimalist sets though, Scenes from a Marriage is anything but stage-bound, as Bergman lifts it into a cinematic realm through his reliably sharp blocking bodies of faces. By cutting between wide shots and close-ups, he paints out the flow of isolation and connection between Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. Doorframes often confine them in oppressive compositions, but both actors especially excel in tightly framed shots of their faces partially concealing each other, or otherwise slightly turning away from the camera in displays of restraint.
Some very solid framing through doorways in wide shots, closing the domestic space in around them.It is just as much about how Bergman frames his actors in close-ups as it as about their expressions, at times partially concealing their faces through profile shots, and in this key scene, flipping them upside-down.
When emotional extremes run high at the climax of Marianne and Johan’s breakdown, the two collapse on the floor and begin to make love. As they finish, Bergman frames their faces resting against each other from an upside-down angle, literally turning this intimate expression of love on its head in the midst of a bitter feud. That she almost immediately tells Johan afterwards that all she felt was “lukewarm affection,” Bergman once again damages any hope that they might reconcile. Instead, it appears as if they are doomed to fluctuate between passion, civility, and loathing for eternity.
A classic Bergman composition with the parallel heads on the bed, illustrating the unity and division between lovers.Ullmann’s head partially obscures Josephson’s face in this shot, fusing them together while impeding on his physical presence.
When Bergman’s camera pulls back from close-ups, these intimate interactions effectively turn into tennis matches, staging his actors symmetrically on either side of a bed, table, or couch as they trade barbs across the court. When Marianne begins to consider how their separation might be judged by her parents and friends, Johan impatiently shuts her down, demanding that this separation remains solely about their own personal issues, though even he cannot stand by his own rules.
One thing the couple can agree on at least is that Katarina and Peter’s troubles come from not speaking the same emotional language, and Johan and Marianne are eventually forced to admit that they are guilty of this too. Despite being highly intellectual individuals, they are self-described “emotional illiterates” who don’t understand a thing about their own souls. There is certainly some therapeutic growth here in recognising this, as Marianne reads aloud self-reflections from her diary on how she has hidden her true self to please others, but when Bergman shifts his camera to Johan, the only reaction we find is his sleeping face. When he awakes, he is apologetic and Marianne offers forgiveness, but the distance between the two has only widened.
So ingrained is this mutual miscommunication that even when Johan’s affair with Paula first comes to light, Marianne expresses total disbelief that anything was ever wrong between them. Ullmann’s eyes widen in fear and anguish, but most of all it is confusion we read on her face as Bergman’s camera lingers in close-up, tracing those tiny micro-expressions that flicker and disappear within milliseconds. Only now does Johan reveal that he had been desperate to get out of this marriage for years, and when Marianne calls her friends to tell them the news, they too admit their knowledge of his cheating. Clearly the reality of this marriage was evident to everyone but those wrapped up in its raw emotions, incapable of turning their perceptive minds inwards.
Ullmann is a powerhouse in Scenes from a Marriage, even more than Josephson. It is also a very different performance from Persona with the heavy verbal acting, but the subtle facial expressions are still there.
More than just an interrogation of a relationship, Bergman dedicates his series to examining the institution of marriage itself, and how the limitations of this contract restrict their bonds rather than nourish it. No longer do Johan and Marianne feel comfortable being their natural selves as husband and wife, as these rigid roles are thrust upon them by a one-size-fits-all culture. Their identities have been warped beyond recognition, and Marianne even reflects on how little the two resemble their younger selves who got married all those years ago.
“When I think of who I used to be, that person is like a stranger. When we made love earlier, it was like sleeping with a stranger.”
When Marianne considers remarrying too, Johan cynically articulates that she will just move through the same cycles all over again, finding only disappointment. He should know as well – he has not found love with his mistress, but just another kind of loneliness worse than being alone. Paula has ultimately turned out to be little more than a distraction from the inadequacy he feels from having his identity so closely intertwined with Marianne’s, and even in that role she is failing.
Johan and Marianne find a strange unity outside the boundaries of marriage, the closest thing either will get to a resolution.
What are we to make then of the affair they conduct with each other so many years after finalising their divorce? Has the absence of a rigid contract freed them from their bitterness? There is evidently still a deep love there, as in Marianne’s sleep she is haunted by nightmares of losing her hands, and thus being unable to reach out to Johan for safety as she crosses a dangerous road. In this imagery though, she also implicitly blames herself for their separation. They might never recreate what they used to have, but there is some hope that they might forge something new outside the boundaries of marriage if they can somehow resolve the fact that they would be threatening their own current relationships. “We love each other in an earthly and imperfect way,” Johan reassures his ex-wife, putting to rest her concern that she has never felt true love.
When words can no longer do these lovers justice, all that is left for them is to sit in silence, whether it be out of contempt, understanding, or both. For all the acerbic quarrels that Scenes from a Marriage expresses so eloquently, it is through a pair of silent images that Bergman creates the most perfect representation of this relationship.
On the verge of signing their divorce papers, Johan sits across a table from Marianne with his head in his hands, and she reaches a hand out to comfort him, only to pause and withdraw before he notices. Later in the same scene as they sit on either side of a couch, he reaches out to hold her hand, and they finally make contact. Within this formal mirroring, Bergman reveals the chasm which exists between these “emotional illiterates”, turning their marriage not into a battle of husband versus wife, but rather lovers versus the space between them.
Wide gaps between Johan and Marianne, often either driving them apart or filled in a simple act of openness.
Scenes From a Marriage is available to stream on The Criterion Channel.
Merely describing the vibrant colour palette that consumes the four women of Cries and Whispers as red wouldn’t quite do its richness justice. Its carpets, furniture, and drapes are shaded a deep, vibrant crimson, bleeding an arresting sensuality throughout the 19th-century Swedish manor which most of its inhabitants are incapable of expressing themselves. This is the colour of the human soul, Ingmar Bergman rationalises in his screenplay, but it also represents blood and passion, drawing this family household to the edge of its sanity where an almost fantastical dream state takes over.
The white and black tones which puncture Bergman’s neatly curated interiors offer a stylistic counterpoint to these saturated reds, though they too confine characters within a rigorous dichotomy, presenting purity and life on one side while grief and death beckon from the other. Neither Karin’s cold severity nor Maria’s flighty temperament can offer the solace that their dying sister Agnes needs in her final days, and so the spiritual strength that their housemaid Anna finds to escape this scarlet membrane brings a redemptive grace to her mortal suffering.
Cries and Whispers is simply one of the greatest displays of mise-en-scène put to screen, drifting through these powerful colour compositions of red, black, and white with masterful blocking.
The Madonna and Christ allegory which Bergman draws so delicately in his imagery is especially apparent in this relationship between Anna and Agnes, seeing the latter abandoned by all her loved ones save for a single mother figure. Through her cries and screams, she expresses the pain that others would much rather stifle in a “web of lies,” while finding maternal nourishment in Anna’s warm embrace. It isn’t hard to see where this nurturing compassion comes from either – early on we find Anna praying for her deceased daughter, simultaneously mourning her lost innocence and demonstrating an unconditional faith in God. As she bears her breast and reads from a storybook, Bergman nestles her face against Agnes’ in a tightly framed composition of profound intimacy, filling in the void that each feel in their respective losses of a biological mother and child.
Even while Bergman’s photography flourishes in its wide shots, his trademark blocking in close-ups is still very present, especially in the intimate bond between Agnes and Anna.
It is a wonder that this love abides in a household of such glacial friction, distilled so hauntingly in one dream sequence following Agnes’ death. Both she and Anna’s daughter are effectively resurrected here with Christlike parallels, as it is the sound of a young girl’s crying which leads Anna through the mansion’s red corridors to the bedroom where Agnes lies. Outside, Karin and Maria stand frozen. Agnes’ face is barely seen as she speaks to each of them, disembodying her voice as she invites them inside. “I want nothing to do with your death,” Karin cruelly asserts before exiting, while Maria’s show of affection crumbles into fear the moment her sister reaches out and grasps her hand. Only Anna is there to nurse Agnes’ frail body through the pain, as Bergman arranges them in an extraordinary tableau evoking the Pietà – the theological icon of Mary cradling Christ’s body after his descent from the cross. This is also one of the few shots in Cries and Whispers which sees Bergman relinquish his crimson palette to clean, white tones, bathing both women in a sea of spiritual purity.
A divine tableau evoking the Pietà, as Anna cradles a mortal Agnes in her arms.
Even beyond this explicitly surreal sequence, there is an atmosphere of otherworldly detachment that persists in the narrative’s quiet, languid flow, echoing Bergman’s previous film The Silence. “I hear only the wind and the ticking of clocks,” Anna remarks at one point, reflecting on the subtle, dialogue-free sound design, representing the “wind” as Agnes’ rattling gasps for air. Together, these rhythmically embody what editor Ken Dancyger describes as “the continuity of time and life,” and merge with formal cutaways to swinging pendulums and moving minute hands. The mystical pull of mortality is felt on every level of Bergman’s direction, luring us into the uneasy mind of each sister and empathising with their emotional disconnection.
“I sometimes wander through this childhood home of ours, where everything is both strange and familiar… and I feel like I’m in a dream, and some event of great importance lies in store for us.”
Bergman runs this superb formal motif of ticking clocks through his sound design and cutaways, making the passage of time fully tangible.
Key to Bergman’s construction of this reverie are those scarlet fades which elliptically bridge one scene to the next, lifting us outside the passage of time altogether. They also formally mark our escapes into his characters’ minds, pairing with close-ups of each woman’s face half-obscured in shadow and drenching them in his bloodred hue, before entering the deeper levels of their subconscious. While Anna’s thoughts manifests as a dream, Agnes, Karin, and Maria’s backstories emerge in flashbacks, blurring fantasy and memories in a magical realist style presaging Fanny and Alexander.
Bergman’s other main motif in Cries and Whispers are the elliptical red fades over close-ups, often as we slip into the dreams and flashbacks of his characters.
This is also where Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann excel in further developing the prickly weaknesses of their characters, seeing both distance themselves from their husbands to violent results. While Maria’s affair with a visiting doctor drives Joakim to feebly attempt suicide via seppuku, Karin turns a shard of shattered glass on herself in a self-mutilating display of hatred. After cutting her genitals in front of Fredrik, she smears the blood across her face with a contemptuous smile, simultaneously absorbing the red palette of her surroundings and destroying any means of sexual connection.
Viscerally uncomfortable violence and self-mutilation spills out from the silent contempt between husbands, wives, and sisters, driving each other further away.
In the present, both continue to live with the consequences of their selfishness and hatred. Karin recoils at the slightest touch of affection, paradoxically rejecting the kindness of her sister even as she craves it, and Maria is still a slave to her own fickle desire for pleasure and attention. When the doctor returns, her attempt to rekindle their affair meets nothing more than a cold description of how her appearance has festered with her apathy, and of course Bergman plays the entire monologue out in a single close-up studying every detail of Ullmann’s silent reaction.
“Look in the mirror. You’re beautiful. Perhaps even more than when we were together. But you’ve changed and I want you to see how. Now your eyes cast quick, calculating, side glances. You used to look ahead straightforwardly, openly, without disguise. Your mouth has a slightly hungry, dissatisfied expression. It used to be so soft. Your complexion is pale now. You wear makeup. Your fine, wide brow has four lines above each eye now. You can’t see them in this light, but you can in the bright of day. You know what caused those lines? Indifference. And this fine contour from your ear to your chin is no longer so finely drawn – the result of too much comfort and laziness. And there, by the bridge of your nose. Why do you sneer so often? You see that? You sneer too often. You see it? And look under your eyes. The sharp, scarcely noticeable wrinkles from your boredom and impatience.”
Liv Ullmann is on a transcendent run at this point in her career. Even though Erland Josephson is delivering this monologue, it is her face that Bergman’s camera lingers on, examining the details written into its creases and glances.
When we consider how favoured Maria was by her mother above her sisters, the psychological roots of her shallow vanity and strained family relations become evident. It is a clever formal touch from Bergman to double cast Ullmann as the mother as well in Agnes’ childhood flashbacks, suggesting that the two characters she plays are not so different, and sensitising us even further to the subjective nature of these sisters’ memories.
Within this ensemble, only Agnes seems to treat these recollections with some self-awareness, so it is fair to reason that this is why her recollections eliminate those dreamy red fades and instead play out with the pensive voiceover of her diary. Though her mother could be a “playfully cruel” paradox at times, Agnes also confesses that she understands her much better with age, empathising with “her boredom, her impatience, her longing, and her loneliness.”
Ullmann also has the brief but significant role of the mother, only ever appearing in flashbacks – it is her ghost that hangs over the sisters in the present day. This would be Harriet Andersson’s last role in a Bergman film until Fanny and Alexander in 1982, and though her screen time is far less than Ullmann or Thulin’s, she makes her mark with her tortured, dying screams.
Given how walled off Karin and Maria are from their own spiritual conscience, the redemptive peace that their sister discovers in her suffering is not one that either can grasp at this point in their troubled lives. For Agnes at least, salvation can be found just beyond the red walls of her physical confinement, as Bergman ends Cries and Whispers on a memory that is entirely free of that radiant hue. Only when we look to a happier past can we venture outside this oppressive manor and into bright, sunny gardens, as she walks with her Karin, Maria, and Anna in white dresses. In the triad of tones which form Bergman’s dominant palette, it is that colour which represents grace that lives on in Agnes’ legacy, illustrating her profound gratitude for life.
One of the few shots in the film where red is entirely absent, instead emphasising the pure whites which cloak each sister and their maid in flashback.
“Thus, the cries and whispers fall silent,” Bergman’s epitaph reads, drawing spiritual peace from humanity’s emotional and physical anguish. His wrestling with matters of faith has never been so vividly illustrated as it is here in a film that stands among the greatest uses of colour in cinema, untangling the stunted relationships and regretful insecurities of these four women through their surreal, tortured dreams.
Cries and Whispers is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.
David’s motivation to come to Sweden might come down to the recent archaeological discovery of a 500-year-old Madonna statue in a medieval church, but it is his affair with housewife Karin that compels him to stay. Between both these influences on his life, Ingmar Bergman draws strange, almost mystical parallels in The Touch – this Madonna figure bears a striking resemblance to his deceased mother, and later the breakdown of his relationship with Karin manifests physically in its decay, mixing Christian and Freudian symbolism. There is also something primal about those centuries-old, hibernating insects which now eat away it from the inside, reflecting the baby which later grows in Karin’s womb as a constant reminder of her failed relationships. Faith may not be at the centre of Bergman’s interrogation here as it has been so many times before, but its corruption is tangibly present in this divine motif.
No doubt this is a relatively new direction for Bergman at this point in his career, who for the first time writes a screenplay largely in English and casts an American in a leading role. Elliot Gould is volatile as David, violently swinging between overbearing affection and withdrawn melancholy, and offering a trauma-ridden counterpoint to Bibi Andersson’s apprehensive Karin. The barrier between them extends far beyond emotional misunderstanding – culturally, the two come from completely different places, with David bearing the scars of the Holocaust concentration camps, and Karin knowing little of the world beyond her Swedish town.
Given that Bergman was targeting this film to American audiences, it isn’t surprising that he shapes its style to a more typically Nordic aesthetic than usual, lingering on the delicate scenery of historical villages and autumnal foliage. When it comes to the upbeat folk score of piano and woodwinds, Bergman falters a little more, striking a jarring tone that doesn’t always match the film’s pensive sorrow. The Touch possesses neither the stylistic grandeur nor the allegorical richness of The Virgin Spring, but these elements still work in service of a similar Garden of Eden metaphor, carefully designing an idyllic paradise that is slowly leeched of colour the longer David is around to exert his corrupting influence.
If David represents Satan in this case, then it is only due to the influence of evil from elsewhere in the world. With most of his Jewish family falling to the Nazi regime, he has been left with a blend of unresolved traumas and toxic behaviours, leaving him to unintentionally inflict his own trauma upon others. The notion of original sin is even suggested in the mention of a congenital condition that he inherited from his ancestors and will pass onto his children, and serpentine imagery often surrounds him in Bergman’s mise-en-scène. There is no doubt that he is the one who brings temptation into Karin’s life, but we cannot brand him as totally evil – merely a sufferer of a greater historical tragedy that even a neutral country such as Sweden cannot keep from penetrating its borders.
It stands to reason then that Max von Sydow is the God figure in this tale, with Andreas’ occupation as a life-giving doctor standing in contrast to David’s archaeological fascination with death. His home life with Karin is peaceful, if not particularly passionate, and when she contemplates following David to London he effectively ousts her from the garden. Gone are the warm colours of falling leaves and sunny skies, and in their place are the frigid landscapes of a harsh Swedish winter.
Even with some decent cinematographic work from Sven Nykvist on display though, The Touch sits among Bergman’s more stylistically plain efforts, grating up against a screenplay that is often awkwardly written. Gould fares a little better than Andersson here who struggles with her dialogue, and the isolated choice to depict some letters through talking heads marks a clumsy formal flaw. This messiness continues right through to the very final scene, jarringly ending at a climactic peak of emotion with little resolution, and unfortunately detracting from its gorgeous wide shot on a riverbank which is otherwise one of the film’s strongest compositions.
Nevertheless, The Touch is not a failure by any means, but simply a lull between two fruitful periods of Bergman’s career. On one side, his magnificent run through the 1960s set him up as one of history’s truly great directors, while in the 70s he would push his formal experimentation further with Cries and Whispers and Scenes from a Marriage. Regardless of how this measures up in comparison, his wielding of theological symbolism to interrogate a broken love triangle is deft, bitterly driving the Madonna’s image of degraded goodness between his doomed, corrupted lovers.
The Touch is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.
Scene by Green 