Ingmar Bergman's birthday

One of the world's greatest directors. I am a big folower of Bergman, especially the early introspective years. It is ironic that Bergman was introduced to the world via Kroger Babb's distribution of Summer with Monika [ Kroger Babb and exploitation ].

The Writer's Almanac...

Today is the birthday of Swedish director and writer Ingmar Bergman, born in Uppsala (1918). His father was a very strict Lutheran minister who gave out harsh punishments for even the smallest childhood misdeeds, and Bergman lost his religious faith by the age of eight. When he was nine, he traded his toy soldiers for a "magic lantern," a rudimentary projector, and began putting on shows.

He studied theater in college, and made his way into the film business in 1941, rewriting screenplays. Over the next decade, he wrote and directed more than a dozen movies. His first big international success came in 1955, with Smiles of a Summer Night, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries followed in 1957.

Bergman became known for making films about mortality and isolation. In a 2004 interview, he admitted that he couldn't watch his films anymore because he found them depressing. He influenced an entire generation of young filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, who said, "If you were alive in the '50s and the '60s and of a certain age, a teenager on your way to becoming an adult, and you wanted to make films, I don't see how you couldn't be influenced by Bergman." And Woody Allen called Bergman "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera."

Ingmar Bergman [Wikipedia]

Ingmar Bergman and the "three o'clock" movie

Film maker on film maker...Martin Scorsese on Ingmar Bergman

A Bergman satirical short..."De Düva"

The end comes for all, but there are questions

"Det sjunde inseglet"--"Spirit In The Sky"

Deceased--Erland Josephson

Deceased--Gunnar Fischer 

 

And this short letter to Bergman from Stanley Kubrick...

[Thanks to Patrick Neas]

July 7th, 2011

Letters of Note

You are the greatest film-maker at work today

Stanley Kubrick wrote the following gushing letter of praise in 1960 to the man he considered to be "the greatest film-maker at work today," and who he later cited as a major influence on his work: Ingmar Bergman. Bear in mind also that Kubrick was only 31 years of age at the time and yet to produce the masterpieces he is now widely remembered for; Bergman was ten years his senior. Altogether a wonderful snapshot.

I understand the letter is currently held at Berlin's Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen.

 

 

Transcript follows. Enormous thanks to Max Eichel for supplying the image.

 

UNIVERSAL-INTERNATIONAL PICTURES
    UNIVERSAL CITY, CALIFORNIA

February 9, 1960

Dear Mr. Bergman,

    You have most certainly received enough acclaim and success throughout the world to make this note quite unnecessary. But for whatever it's worth, I should like to add my praise and gratitude as a fellow director for the unearthly and brilliant contribution you have made to the world by your films (I have never been in Sweden and have therefore never had the pleasure of seeing your theater work). Your vision of life has moved me deeply, much more deeply than I have ever been moved by any films. I believe you are the greatest film-maker at work today. Beyond that, allow me to say you are unsurpassed by anyone in the creation of mood and atmosphere, the subtlety of performance, the avoidance of the obvious, the truthfullness and completeness of characterization. To this one must also add everything else that goes into the making of a film. I believe you are blessed with wonderfull actors. Max von Sydow and Ingrid Thulin live vividly in my memory, and there are many others in your acting company whose names escape me. I wish you and all of them the very best of luck, and I shall look forward with eagerness to each of your films.

Best Regards,

(Signed, 'Stanley Kubrick')

Stanley Kubrick

Deceased--Erland Josephson

Erland Josephson
June 15th, 1923 to February 25th, 2012

"Erland Josephson obituary"

Swedish actor known for his roles in Ingmar Bergman's films and television dramas

by

Ronald Bergan

February 26th, 2012

guardian.co.uk

Although the actors who comprised Ingmar Bergman's repertory company all went on to make their own prestigious careers, they will for ever be associated with the great Swedish film and stage director. Erland Josephson, who has died aged 88 after suffering from Parkinson's disease, was artistically linked with Bergman even more than Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin. Josephson appeared in more than a dozen of Bergman's films, and played a Bergman surrogate in Ullmann's Faithless (2000).

In middle and old age, he was chosen by directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos for the qualities he revealed in the Bergman films – a certain self-centred introspection and a deep melancholy, etched on his lined and grizzled features. Because he became a leading film actor in his 50s, he seems never to have been young.

His work with Bergman dated back to the 1940s, when they were at the Municipal theatre, Helsingborg. They then worked together at Gothenburg Municipal theatre and the Royal Dramatic theatre, Stockholm, where he took over from Bergman as artistic director in 1966.

Josephson was born in Stockholm into a cultured family (his father owned a bookshop). He studied at the university there before taking up acting. "I am of the international upper class, the Swedish petit bourgeoisie of Jewish extraction with poor language skills, a conveyor of a few expressions and faces, with some intonation that combines ancient human experience with timely coquetry," he once said.

He made his screen debut in Bergman's second film as director, It Rains on Our Love (1946). His first substantial role for Bergman was one of the three husbands waiting in a maternity ward in So Close to Life (1958). In The Magician (aka The Face, 1958), he looks surprisingly youthful as a weak-willed, cuckolded consul who humiliates and interrogates a troupe of performers.

It was 10 years before he returned to making films. He played a sinister baron in Hour of the Wolf (1968) and an unhappily married man in The Passion of Anna (1969), playing second male lead (to Von Sydow) in both. This would change in 1973 with Scenes from a Marriage, a six-part TV series edited down to 168 minutes for cinematic release. The film, an acting tour de force played largely in close-up, focuses on the trauma of a beleaguered marriage, as the wife (Ullmann) tries to cope with the infidelity of her husband (Josephson) with a younger woman (Bibi Andersson). He co-starred with Ullmann again in Face to Face (1976), as a sympathetic doctor who rescues her from a nervous breakdown.

Meanwhile, he began appearing, less happily, in films by other directors. He was a febrile Nietzsche in Liliana Cavani's preposterous Beyond Good and Evil (1977); an opera-loving gay man in To Forget Venice (1979); a chauvinist in Montenegro (1981); and a former ambassador hovering in bars in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988).

There were better roles, especially in Tarkovsky's last films, Nostalgia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986), proving that few actors could more convincingly express modern angst than Josephson. In the former, he believes that the end of the world is nigh (although the end of the film never seems near). In the latter, at the start of a nuclear war, he is a writer who makes a pact with God that he will renounce his family and possessions if the world is allowed to return to normal.

In contrast, he demonstrated great warmth in Fanny and Alexander (1982), one of Bergman's most optimistic films, and was lively and lovable in Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze (1995). "In Bergman's world I represented a sort of intellectual, sceptical, ironic person, rather cold and frustrated," he said. "When I went abroad and made films in Italy and other places, I was used in different ways. I was often cast as crazy people … I think perhaps that changed how Ingmar saw me. Suddenly I was on the more magical side of his world, playing the people with fantasies, variety, the artists."

Josephson starred in Bergman's television dramas as the director's alter ego, Vogler. Bergman directed him on stage in A Doll's House (1989), The Bacchae (1996), The Ghost Sonata (2000) and Mary Stuart (2000). In 1988, he gave a vital, engaged performance in English as Gaev in Peter Brook's production of The Cherry Orchard in New York.

It was inevitable and fitting that Josephson should have appeared in Bergman's last work, Saraband (2003), which follows the couple from Scenes from a Marriage long after their divorce. In a prologue, 10 scenes and an epilogue, featuring four speaking characters, Bergman's rapport with Josephson is at its height.

As well as teaching drama and chairing many theatrical institutions (he was active in Swedish Equity), Josephson wrote novels, stories, plays, scripts and poems. He was married to the actors Kristina Adolphson and Barbro Larsson, and is survived by his five children and his wife, the dramaturge Ulla Åberg.

"Erland Josephson dies at 88; Swedish actor, Bergman collaborator"

Erland Josephson, the Swedish actor who collaborated with his friend Ingmar Bergman on such films as 'Scenes From a Marriage' and 'Cries and Whispers,' dies at 88.

February 27th, 2012

Los Angeles Times

Swedish actor Erland Josephson, one of fabled director Ingmar Bergman's closest friends and collaborators, known for his portrayals of aloof intellectuals and often Bergman's alter ego in such celebrated films as "Scenes From a Marriage" and "Cries and Whispers," died at a Stockholm hospital Saturday. He was 88.

His death from Parkinson's disease was announced by a spokeswoman for Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theater, which the actor headed from 1966 to 1975.

Josephson was one of Bergman's favorite actors and longest-running collaborator, appearing in more than a dozen Bergman movies, including the director's first film in 1946 ("It Rains on Our Love") and his last, in 2003 ("Saraband").

In "Faithless," a 2000 movie written by Bergman and directed by his former lover and leading lady Liv Ullmann, Josephson's character — an aging director visited by the spirit of an actress he once loved — is even named Bergman.

"To make movies with Ingmar has been one of life's great pleasures," the actor, who won several Swedish film prizes, told The Times in 1985.

Josephson was born in Stockholm on June 15, 1923, into a family of artists and intellectuals who were descended from Sweden's first Jewish settlers. His father owned a famous bookstore that was one of Stockholm's intellectual hubs.

Interested in acting as a youth, Josephson was just 16 when he participated in the play "The Merchant of Venice," directed by Bergman. He had no formal acting education but continued to appear in several Bergman stage plays in the 1940s and 50s, and received a minor part in "It Rains on Our Love."

For the first two decades of his career, he considered himself a stage actor even though he had appeared in a half a dozen Bergman films during that time. Among the films he made with the director during that time were "The Magician" (1958), "Hour of the Wolf" (1968) and "The Passion of Anna" (1969).

His passion for film acting began with "Cries and Whispers," the 1972 film that proved a commercial breakthrough for both Bergman and Josephson.

Made as a six-part television movie in Sweden, it starred Ullmann as a dying woman; Josephson was a doctor.

"I was not interested in film acting until 'Cries and Whispers,' when I suddenly got something from it I had not gotten before," Josephson told the New York Times in 1988. "And when Bergman saw Liv Ullmann and I work together in that, he saw that we gave something to each other, and he started to write 'Scenes from a Marriage' because of it."

In "Scenes," Bergman's 1973 masterpiece chronicling the dissolution of a marriage, Josephson plays the unfaithful scientist-husband of Ullmann, a lawyer. It turned Josephson into an international star. His portrayal of Johan won high praise from critics, including The Times' Charles Champlin, who said Josephson offered "a rending study of a man in painful change."

After that, he received offers to appear in many international film productions. He played Friedrich Nietzsche in Italian director Liliana Cavani's 1977 "Beyond Good and Evil." He appeared in Philip Kaufman's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1988) and made memorable performances in Andrey Tarkovskiy's "Nostalghia" (1983) and "The Sacrifice" (1986).

Among his later films for Bergman was "Fanny and Alexander" (1982), a family saga in which Josephson, in a departure from his previous roles as philanderers and other unpleasant types, rescues two children from an abusive bishop. In "Saraband," a sequel to "Scenes from a Marriage," he and Ullmann reprise their roles as the feuding couple years after divorcing.

He made his American stage debut in 1988 in director Peter Brooks' New York production of "The Cherry Orchard," for which he received the Off-Broadway Theater Award for best performance for his role as Gaev.

Also known in Sweden as a prolific writer, Josephson wrote novels, poetry and more than 30 scripts for stage, radio and television. He succeeded Bergman as artistic director the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1966 and was director of the Swedish Film Institute in the 1990s.

Married and divorced several times, Josephson is survived by his wife, Ulla Aberg, and five children.

"Erland Josephson, Actor With Bergman, Dies at 88"

by

Dennis Lim

February 27th, 2012

The New York Times

Erland Josephson, a Swedish actor who worked frequently with Ingmar Bergman on stage and screen, most notably as the star of the acclaimed 1973 film “Scenes From a Marriage,” died on Saturday in Stockholm. He was 88.

His death was announced by a spokeswoman for Sweden’s Royal Dramatic Theater, where Mr. Josephson had been director from 1966 to 1975. The spokeswoman said he had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Mr. Josephson combined physical stature and emotional depth in his best-known roles. Among the most prominent members of Bergman’s repertory company, alongside Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann — his co-star in “Scenes From a Marriage” and many other films — he was also the director’s longest-running collaborator. He succeeded Mr. von Sydow as Bergman’s male lead of choice in the 1970s, but the two men’s partnership and friendship had begun long before that, in the 1930s, when they were both theater-besotted young men, and continued until Bergman’s final film, “Saraband,” in 2003.

Mr. Josephson was born on June 15, 1923, in Stockholm, into a family with a strong cultural tradition. His ancestors and relatives included a composer, a painter and a theater director who had worked with August Strindberg, and his father owned a bookstore, where the teenage Ingmar Bergman got his first break when a sales clerk invited him to direct an amateur theater troupe.

Mr. Josephson is survived by his wife, Ulla Aberg, and five children.

His stage and screen career is inextricably entwined with Bergman’s. In the 1940s Bergman directed Mr. Josephson in municipal stage productions in Helsingborg and Gothenburg; his first screen appearance was in Bergman’s second film, “It Rains on Our Love” (1946). He was a co-writer of two screenplays with Bergman in the 1960s, and succeeded Bergman as the director of the Royal Dramatic Theater in 1966.

After secondary roles in films like “The Magician” (1958) and “Hour of the Wolf” (1968), Mr. Josephson, already about 50, graduated to leading man in “Scenes From a Marriage,” Bergman’s harrowing study of a marital battleground. With his capacity for conveying both inner turmoil and a searching intelligence, he often played frustrated intellectuals and men of reason in Bergman films: a prickly scientist in “Scenes”; a psychiatrist coping with his wife’s mental illness in “Face to Face” (1976, again with Ms. Ullmann); and a controlling theater director in “After the Rehearsal” (1984).

Unlike Mr. von Sydow, Mr. Josephson never attempted a Hollywood career. But he became a familiar face in art films with a European twist, which often called for him to serve as a bearded, grizzled emblem of Bergmanesque gravitas. He played Friedrich Nietzsche in Liliana Cavani’s “Beyond Good and Evil” (1977) and also appeared in Dusan Makavejev’s “Montenegro” (1981), Philip Kaufman’s “Unbearable Lightness of Being” (1988), Peter Greenaway’s “Prospero’s Books” (1991) and Theo Angelopoulos’s “Ulysses’ Gaze” (1996).

Apart from Bergman, the director with whom Mr. Josephson had the most fruitful collaboration was the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Mr. Josephson starred in Mr. Tarkovsky’s last two films, “Nostalgia” (1983) and “The Sacrifice” (1986). In “The Sacrifice,” he delivered a performance distinguished by several stark, anguished monologues as an atheist professor who strikes a panicked deal with God to ensure the survival of the human race as a nuclear war breaks out.

Mr. Josephson also wrote several plays, novels and memoirs and directed the film “Marmalade Revolution” (1980). As a fellow writer and director, and a lifelong friend, he often spoke perceptively about Bergman’s work. “A man obsessed with failure has succeeded better than others in portraying it,” Mr. Josephson once wrote. “This could be referred to as the Bergman vaccination method.”
If anything, his association with Bergman grew closer over time. He appeared in Bergman’s final theatrical productions, including “The Ghost Sonata” and “Mary Stuart,” and in old age seemed to embrace the role of alter ego even more fully. In “Saraband,” Mr. Josephson and Ms. Ullmann reprised their roles from “Scenes From a Marriage.” And in “Faithless” (2000), directed by Ms. Ullmann from a Bergman script, Mr. Josephson played a writer named Bergman.

Erland Josephson [Wikipedia]


Deceased--Gunnar Fischer

Ingmar Bergman and the "three o'clock" movie

Film maker on film maker...Martin Scorsese on Ingmar Bergman

A Bergman satirical short..."De Düva"

The end comes for all, but there are questions

"Det sjunde inseglet"--"Spirit In The Sky"

"Det sjunde inseglet"--"Spirit In The Sky"

Ingmar Bergman's Det sjunde inseglet [The Seventh Seal] [1957]

Look familiar?

"Spirit In The Sky"

by

Norman Greenbaum

1969



When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
When I lay me down to die
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best

Prepare yourself you know it's a must
Gotta have a friend in Jesus
So you know that when you die
He's gonna recommend you
To the spirit in the sky
Gonna recommend you
To the spirit in the sky
That's where you're gonna go when you die
When you die and they lay you to rest
You're gonna go to the place that's the best

Never been a sinner I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He's gonna set me up with
The spirit in the sky
Oh set me up with the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
I'm gonna go to the place that's the best
Go to the place that's the best

A Bergman satirical short..."De Düva"

Summary from IMDb...

This short film is a parody of some of Ingmar Bergman's best known films, including Wild Strawberries (Smultronstaellet) and The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet). The dialog, seemingly in Swedish, is actually a Swedish-accented fictional language based on English, German, Latin, and Swedish, with most nouns ending in "ska". The principal character, Professor Viktor Sundqvist, 76, is being driven to a lecture at the university, when dove droppings splatter the car's windshield. Detouring at his uncle's old house, his mind wanders back to his youth, when Death came to a family picnic to claim his sister, Inga. Knowing that Death is a gambler, Viktor has Inga challenge Death to a single-point game of badminton for her life. While they are playing, a dove flies above, soiling Death's cape, and distracting him enough to miss the birdie. Having won the game, Inga is free, and she and Viktor run off for a swim in the lake.

An IMDb reviewer...

sailsteve...

This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in the movies. To reinforce how wonderful The Dove is I just have to say that I saw the film only twice back in 1968 and I still vividly remember scenes and dialogue. This is a brilliant parody of all of Bergman?s films up to that date. It is a perfect parody in both style and photography but the best part is the writing. This is the starkly shot black and white story of Nobel Laureate nuclear physicist Viktor Sundkvist, whom we meet as an old man traveling through the Swedish countryside on a crisp autumn day in his limousine. There are long shadows from the trees and a chill in the air. Answering nature's call he stops his driver near a bucolic out house and sitting down inside discovers a ceramic dove on the floor. The dove reminds him of his lost youth. During the course of the film the young Sundkvist ends up trying to prolong his time on earth by playing a badminton game with the black robed figure of Death. During the game an errant dove interferes with Death's play of the shuttlecock causing Death to curse at the bird. Dialogue in an anglicized pseudo-Swedish is augmented by hilarious subtitles. Examples: Viktor begins his story in voice-over. "They callen me Viktor Sundkvist." The subtitle reads, "My name is Viktor Sundkvist." Later on, a youthful Sundkvist's cigar smoking lesbian sister (Madeline Kahn) offers her brother a stogie, "Phallika symbol," she asks? The subtitle reads, "Would you like a cigar?"

De Düva

[The Dove]

1968

by

George Coe and Anthony Lover

[NOTE: One thinks of many of Benny Hill's routines...the butchering of a foreign language.]

Ingmar Bergman [Wikipedia]

Ingmar Bergman and the "three o'clock" movie

Lena Bergman remembers the viewing habits of her father Ingmar Bergman in his unique private cinema, a converted barn on Fårö, the Baltic island where he lived until his death in 2007

"The three o’clock rite: Ingmar Bergman’s home cinema"

by

Lena Bergman

Translated by Anders Lindahl

June 30, 2011

Sight and Sound

The movies enjoyed by my father, Ingmar Bergman, every day at three o’clock in his private cinema on the island of Fårö were often old black-and-white classics, well-remembered ones as well as forgotten ones. Stepping through the rust-coloured door of the barn – leaving the blinding Fårö light for the embracing gloom of the cinema – is a special experience. At first, the darkness seems compact. You grope your way to your seat, sit down and let your eyes adjust to the sparse light. Now the huge tapestry depicting The Magic Flute on Fårö slowly emerges. One August evening in 1974, beneath a full moon, Ingmar’s opera film The Magic Flute had its very first screening in the old barn, whose transformation into a cinema had just been completed.

In his essay collection Ballaciner, J.M.G. Le Clézio describes the moon, lit by the sun, as being the prototypical film projector – and the darkness of night might be a first camera obscura lit by other worlds. Light and darkness are the prerequisites for film, and guess what – on the tapestry a moon is floating in a pale, mysterious light. We also behold the Queen of the Night, white-breasted and dressed in black, brandishing her knife. Here in this cinema, the Queen of the Night reigns – but over there is the wise Sarastro, who has made a pact with the sun and the light. So we find ourselves in the presence of both these opposite forces.

I have tried to calculate the number of hours that Ingmar must have spent in his cinema watching movies – sitting, or rather lying, in the armchair in the front row, his feet on the footstool.

Imagine: every day after his noon nap, Ingmar would get into his red jeep and arrive at his cinema just before three o’clock. He would spend two hours there. (The exception was Saturday, when the screening started at two o’clock.)

A movie six days a week, from May to October, for roughly 30 years; in addition, for three days a week throughout July he would invite his large family, who would be staying on Fårö, to evening screenings. He may have spent around 8,000 hours in his cinema. Little wonder, then, that Ingmar’s presence can be felt there.

On 14 May 1944, Ingmar set up a rented film projector at home in the Stockholm suburb of Abrahamsberg, where he occupied a tiny two-room flat with my mother, dancer Else Fisher. (She thoroughly documented this event in her diary.) He was 25 and on the rise. They watched Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919), Murnau’s Faust (1926) and Chaplin’s Easy Street (1917). “Fun!” my mother noted in her diary (though renting a projector and film wasn’t cheap). Having your own cinema – is that as enjoyable as having your own puppet theatre? As being able to open up your magic box whenever you like?

Ingmar welcomed people to share a movie experience with him in the way that others (normal people) invite their friends over for a meal. Dinners with Ingmar were rare, but sharing a film with him meant an invitation to get together. And often to talk – there were light-hearted and often lengthy post-cinema conversations in the sheltering gloom of the barn. Ingmar often joked about the cinema being a therapist’s couch.

The screening always adhered to a special ritual. If there were many of us attending, we would gather at the blue bench by the wall of the barn. Ingmar was almost always the first to arrive, sitting there waiting for us. Hugs. “Well then, shall we go in?” There would be light-hearted talk (about who’d got tick bites) as your eyes readjusted into cinema mode, and a short presentation of the film at hand. Sometimes we were issued with a neatly handwritten note listing the week’s films.

“I take no responsibility whatsoever for this film – you are here at your own risk,” Ingmar would say, sinking down in his armchair beneath his spread-out leather jacket, raising an arm to let Ingalill – his right-hand woman and projectionist – see his rotating finger. The gesture so admired by his grandchildren – the gesture that means that the lights can go down, the projector can start up and the film can begin.

Rules of engagement

The three o’clock cinema was thus an institution. There were rules, of course (both explicit and implicit):

1. Punctuality

Everyone is familiar with Ingmar’s penchant for punctuality.

2. Continuity

Going to the movies on rainy days alone, or just watching especially interesting films, was out of the question. So was spending sunny days on the beach, or choosing to skip the more challenging films. What you needed, in short, was obsessive cinematic dedication. (Perhaps this dedication also included getting close to a father who had previously been absent from our lives, but that’s another matter.)

3. Willingness

Ingmar often told us it pained him to see how Liv Ullmann’s dachshund expressly revealed its boredom with a film. In other words, you weren’t allowed to get bored or fall asleep. I particularly recall a documentary about a sawmill. The film just went on and on – footage of logs being split in perpetuity.

Some films returned every summer. These were the most loved ones: Ariane Mnouchkine’s fabulous Molière (1978). Alain Corneau’s Tous les matins du monde (1991), presenting moving questions about what artistry and music entail. Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950). Jacques Becker’s Casque d’or (1952), starring Simone Signoret, a staple when it came to thoroughly romantic films.

On each birthday, 14 July, there was a Chaplin film – The Circus (1928) was probably the one most dear to Ingmar. Often there was a short opening film. Victor Bergdahl’s animated Kapten Grogg cartoons, made at home on his kitchen table, were dearly loved by Ingmar. (There were also Kapten Grogg festivals for the grandchildren.) For me Ingmar often screened his short Karin’s Face (Karins ansikte, 1983) about his mother, my beloved grandmother.

And finally, the high point of every summer: Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage (Körkarlen, 1921). I think its closing line served as a memento to Ingmar: “Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped.”

Another Sjöström film – his first Hollywood production – was the last film I watched in the cinema with Ingmar, at Easter in 2006. He Who Gets Slapped (1924), starring the wonderful Lon Chaney, is set in the world of the circus. This was MGM’s first production, and the roaring, ravenous circus lion doesn’t just appear in the film, but also makes its debut in MGM’s famous production logo. It’s a film with connections to [Bergman’s own] Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton, 1953). Shame and humiliation, the pain of the white clown, the tension between bourgeois life and the life of the artist, the clown and the rage – it’s all there in this masterful silent film, made by the director most dear to Ingmar.

Silent laughter

I will never forget how we all laughed at Buster Keaton’s The General (1926). A train ride with open carriages – Keaton exits a tunnel, unshakeably serious, his face black with soot.

The room explodes with laughter. Finally Ingmar gets to his feet, laughing until he’s out of breath, exhaustedly wiping his eyes.

As a moviegoer, Ingmar was practically childish. And a professional. And excited. He didn’t indulge in intellectual analysis or the reflections of a cineaste. The greatest praise that could be bestowed on a film was: “The best flick of the summer – a real Fårö film.”

He saw the films made by most of his younger colleagues. I was struck by the generosity of his comments. He was often genuinely sad and hurt if you didn’t like the film on offer.

I have often pondered what went on at the three o’clock cinema – what was the fascination for Ingmar, sheer film interest aside? What was it that captivated him in this way?

Back to Le Clézio: “Film is always now.” Though, in fact, everything is over – the actors are somewhere else. Or, as Ingmar often exclaimed while watching an old film, “To think that everyone we see is dead!”

It felt as though, in the company of his old black-and-white films, he allowed himself to be cradled in a special room between the present and the past – a kind of in-between. Psychoanalysts talk about the ‘transitional area’ that has to be reached in order for growth and healing to occur; in an artistic context this is a place for playfulness and creativity. Ingmar’s cinema on Fårö is like one of those magical transitional areas: a room between light and darkness, between then and now – and between the living and the dead.

Purpose in the universe

In 14th Century Europe a fictional Scandinavian knight with his squire after the last Crusade return to their homeland. The civilized world is being ravaged by the Black Plague: More horrific than any battle and just as wasteful. With altruism in mind for companion and acquaintances and an opportunity to probe the mysteries of life the brave knight challenges and arrests his call by Death through a game of chess--alleviate the emanate peril temporally and allowing time seeking the ultimate answer to life. Granted, the tone is more theological than scientific but it nevertheless attests to the timeless question of the purpose of the universe and man's relationship to the universe.

The KNIGHT is kneeling before a small altar. It is dark and quiet around him. The air is cool and musty. Pictures of saints look down on him with stony eyes. Christ's face is turned upwards, His mouth open as if in a cry of anguish. On the ceiling beam there is a representation of a hideous devil spying on a miserable human being. The KNIGHT hears a sound from the confession booth and approaches it. The face of DEATH appears behind the grille for an instant, but the KNIGHT doesn't see him.

KNIGHT: I want to talk to you as openly as I can, but my heart is empty.

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT: The emptiness is a mirror turned towards my own face. I see myself in it, and I am filled with fear and disgust.

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT: Through my indifference to my fellow men, I have isolated myself from their company. Now I live in a world of phantoms. I am imprisoned in my dreams and fantasies.

DEATH: And yet you don't want to die.

KNIGHT: Yes, I do.

DEATH: What are you waiting for?

KNIGHT: I want knowledge.

DEATH: You want guarantees?

KNIGHT: Call it whatever you like. Is it so cruelly inconceivable to grasp God with the senses? Why should He hide himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles?

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT: How can we have faith in those who believe when we can't have faith in ourselves? What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to? And what is to become of those who neither want to nor are capable of believing?

The KNIGHT stops and waits for a reply, but no one speaks or answers him. There is complete silence.

KNIGHT: Why can't I kill God within me? Why does He live on in this painful and humiliating way even though I curse Him and want to tear Him out of my heart? Why, in spite of everything, is He a baffling reality that I can't shake is He a baffling reality that I can't shake off? Do you hear me?

DEATH: Yes, I hear you.

KNIGHT: I want knowledge, not faith, not suppositions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand towards me, reveal Himself and speak to me.

DEATH: But He remains silent.

KNIGHT: I call out to Him in the dark but no one seems to be there.

DEATH: Perhaps no one is there.

KNIGHT: Then life is an outrageous horror. No one can live in the face of death, knowing that all is nothingness.

DEATH: Most people never reflect about either death or the futility of life.

KNIGHT: But one day they will have to stand at that last moment of life and look towards the darkness.

DEATH: When that day comes ....

KNIGHT: In our fear, we make an image, and that image we call God.

Excerpt from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal screenplay.

Existential angst for Antonius Block [the knight]? Answers may not be found, but no harm in asking. Meaning, purpose, relevancy. Science/technology have yielded tremendous data and extended our probe into the universe. The raw data is refined and analyzed and we know little more about the meaning of the universe and ourselves than when we started. Relevant conclusions provide no further reason and in some case just cloud and frustrate. We certainly are overwhelmed with events and the immensity of the universe--we still can't find our niche. I suppose we try to find solace in our wish to find other beings and wish that we may be unique but may well have to accept utter loneliness and a species's futile existence. The juxtaposition between man and the universe for a purposeful relationship may be non-existent and irrelevant in the long run, but we wish to make it meaningful--individually and as a species. We question the universe; we question ourselves--our mortality is on the line.

As the late Richard Feynman said: "But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me". Steven Weinberg also said: "The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." Neither is that a pointless endeavor nor an invocation of mandatory religion/theology. If it is significant for an individual to introduce a custom made deity or a deity of popularism and mainstream religious/theological movements to enhance the meaning of the universe, that is fine, but one must understand it is best to be fair and tolerate realms of epistemology, cosmology, metaphysics, the sciences for those that adopt and believe in an alternate or modified perspective when one ponders the meaning/purpose of the universe.

The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe by, Steven Weinberg

ISBN: 0465024378