Ingmar Bergman | |
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Bergman in 1966 | |
Born | Ernst Ingmar Bergman 14 July 1918 Uppsala, Sweden |
Died | 30 July 2007 Fårö, Sweden | (aged 89)
Other names | Buntel Eriksson |
Alma mater | Stockholm University |
Occupations |
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Years active | 1944–2005 |
Spouses |
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Children | 9, including: |
Awards | |
Signature | |
Ernst Ingmar Bergman[a] (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish filmmaker and dramatist.[1] Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time,[2][3][4] his films are known as "profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul."[5] Some of his most acclaimed works include The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966), and Fanny and Alexander (1982); these four films were included in the Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time 2012 critics poll.[6]
Bergman directed more than 60 films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television screenings, most of which he also wrote. Most of his films were set in Sweden, and many films from 1961 onward were filmed on the island of Fårö. He also had a theatrical career that ran in parallel with his film career. It included periods as Leading Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm and of the Residenztheater in Munich.[7] He directed more than 170 plays. He forged a creative partnership with his cinematographers Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist. Among his company of actors were Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom and Max von Sydow.
Film critic Philip French referred to Bergman as "one of the greatest artists of the 20th century ... he found in literature and the performing arts a way of both recreating and questioning the human condition."[8] Director Martin Scorsese commented that "it's impossible to overestimate the effect that [his] films had on people."[9] Bergman was ranked 8th in director's poll on Sight & Sound's 2002 list of The Greatest Directors of All Time.[10]
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born on 14 July 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden,[11] the son of Erik Bergman, a Lutheran minister and later chaplain to the King of Sweden, and Karin (née Åkerblom), a nurse who also had Walloon[12] ancestors.[13] The Bergman family was originally from Järvsö in Gävleborg county. Bergman's paternal grandfather worked as a pharmacist in Stockholm, and his paternal great-grandfather Henrik Bergman worked as an assistant vicar and was married to Erika Augusta Agrell, daughter of vicar Erik Agrell and Elsa Margareta Hermanni, a daughter of chief accountant Hieronymus Emanuel Hermanni and Anna Katarina Neostadia. The Hermannis were merchants in Stockholm, Hieronymus' father, Simon Daniel, was wholesaler like his grandfather. Via Elsa Margareta Hermanni, Bergman descended from the noble families Bröms, Stockenström, Ehrenskiöld, clergy families of Swedish, Swedish-Finnish origin and burghers of Swedish and German origin. Via his paternal grandmother Alma Katarina Eneroth, Bergman descended from the German noble families Flach and de Frese introduced at the Swedish Riddarhuset. Alma Katarina Eneroth was a cousin of Bergman's maternal grandfather traffic manager Johan Åkerblom. Thus Bergman's parents were second cousins. Bergman's maternal grandmother, Anna Calwagen, was the daughter of Ernst Gottfrid Calwagen, a lector of German and English, and his wife Charlotta Margareta Carsberg. The progenitor of the Calwagen family, the merchant Paul Calwagen, had emigrated from Holland to Karlshamn, Sweden in the 17th century. Paul's wife, the Dutch-Swedish Maria van der Hagen, was descendant of the Dutch-Swedish court painter Laurens van der Plas. Via Ernst Gottfried, Bergman was descendant of the noble families Tigerschiöld and Weinholz as well as the Bure family.[14][15]
He grew up with his older brother Dag and younger sister Margareta surrounded by religious imagery and discussion. His father was a conservative parish minister with strict ideas of parenting. Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting himself. "While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang, or listened", Ingmar wrote in his autobiography Laterna Magica,
I devoted my interest to the church's mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the coloured sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one's imagination could desire—angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans ...
Although raised in a devout Lutheran household, Bergman later stated that he lost his faith at age eight, and came to terms with this fact while making Winter Light in 1962.[16] His interest in theatre and film began early: "At the age of nine, he traded a set of tin soldiers for a magic lantern, a possession that altered the course of his life. Within a year, he had created, by playing with this toy, a private world in which he felt completely at home, he recalled. He fashioned his own scenery, marionettes, and lighting effects and gave puppet productions of Strindberg plays in which he spoke all the parts."[17][18]
Bergman attended the Palmgren School as a teenager. His school years were unhappy,[19] and he remembered them unfavourably in later years. In a 1944 letter concerning the film Torment (sometimes known as Frenzy), which sparked debate on the condition of Swedish high schools (and which Bergman had written),[20] the school's principal Henning Håkanson wrote, among other things, that Bergman had been a "problem child".[21] Bergman wrote in a response that he had strongly disliked the emphasis on homework and testing in his formal schooling.
In 1934, aged 16, he was sent to Germany to spend the summer holidays with family friends. He attended a Nazi rally in Weimar at which he saw Adolf Hitler.[22] He later wrote in Laterna Magica (The Magic Lantern) about the visit to Germany, describing how the German family had put a portrait of Hitler on the wall by his bed, and that "for many years, I was on Hitler's side, delighted by his success and saddened by his defeats".[23] Bergman commented that "Hitler was unbelievably charismatic. He electrified the crowd. ... The Nazism I had seen seemed fun and youthful."[24] Bergman did two five-month stretches of mandatory military service in Sweden.[25] He later reflected, "When the doors to the concentration camps were thrown open ... I was suddenly ripped of my innocence."[24]
Bergman enrolled at Stockholm University College (later renamed Stockholm University) in 1937, to study art and literature. He spent most of his time involved in student theatre and became a "genuine movie addict".[26] At the same time, a romantic involvement led to a physical confrontation with his father which resulted in a break in their relationship which lasted for many years. Although he did not graduate from the university, he wrote a number of plays and an opera, and became an assistant director at a local theatre. In 1942, he was given the opportunity to direct one of his own scripts, Caspar's Death. The play was seen by members of Svensk Filmindustri, which then offered Bergman a position working on scripts. He married Else Fisher in 1943.
Bergman's film career began in 1941 with his work rewriting scripts, but his first major accomplishment was in 1944 when he wrote the screenplay for Torment (a.k.a. Frenzy) (Hets), a film directed by Alf Sjöberg. Along with writing the screenplay, he was also appointed assistant director of the film. In his second autobiographical book, Images: My Life in Film, Bergman describes the filming of the exteriors as his actual film directorial debut.[27] The film sparked debate on Swedish formal education. When Henning Håkanson (the principal of the high school Bergman had attended) wrote a letter following the film's release, Bergman, according to scholar Frank Gado, disparaged in a response what he viewed as Håkanson's implication that students "who did not fit some arbitrary prescription of worthiness deserved the system's cruel neglect".[20] Bergman also stated in the letter that he "hated school as a principle, as a system and as an institution. And as such I have definitely not wanted to criticize my own school, but all schools."[28][29] The international success of this film led to Bergman's first opportunity to direct a year later. During the next ten years he wrote and directed more than a dozen films, including Prison (Fängelse) in 1949, as well as Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton) and Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika), both released in 1953.
Bergman first achieved worldwide success with Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende, 1955), which won for "Best poetic humour" and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes the following year. This was followed by The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) and Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället), released in Sweden ten months apart in 1957. The Seventh Seal won a special jury prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and Wild Strawberries won numerous awards for Bergman and its star, Victor Sjöström. Bergman continued to be productive for the next two decades. From the early 1960s, he spent much of his life on the island of Fårö, where he made several films.
In the early 1960s he directed three films that explored the theme of faith and doubt in God, Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en Spegel, 1961), Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna, 1962), and The Silence (Tystnaden, 1963). Critics created the notion that the common themes in these three films made them a trilogy or cinematic triptych. Bergman initially responded that he did not plan these three films as a trilogy and that he could not see any common motifs in them, but he later seemed to adopt the notion, with some equivocation.[30][31] His parody of the films of Federico Fellini, All These Women (För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor) was released in 1964.[32]
Largely a two-hander with Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, Persona (1966) is a film that Bergman himself considered one of his most important works. While the highly experimental film won few awards, it has been considered his masterpiece. Other films of the period include The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan, 1960), Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen, 1968), Shame (Skammen, 1968) and The Passion of Anna (En Passion, 1969). With his cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Bergman made use of a crimson color scheme for Cries and Whispers (1972), which received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.[33] He also produced extensively for Swedish television at this time. Two works of note were Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap, 1973) and The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten, 1975).
On 30 January 1976, while rehearsing August Strindberg's The Dance of Death at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, he was arrested by two plainclothes police officers and charged with income tax evasion. The impact of the event on Bergman was devastating. He suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the humiliation, and was hospitalised in a state of deep depression.
The investigation was focused on an alleged 1970 transaction of 500,000 Swedish kronor (SEK) between Bergman's Swedish company Cinematograf and its Swiss subsidiary Persona, an entity that was mainly used for the paying of salaries to foreign actors. Bergman dissolved Persona in 1974 after having been notified by the Swedish Central Bank and subsequently reported the income. On 23 March 1976, the special prosecutor Anders Nordenadler dropped the charges against Bergman, saying that the alleged crime had no legal basis, saying it would be like bringing "charges against a person who has stolen his own car, thinking it was someone else's".[34] Director General Gösta S Ekman, chief of the Swedish Internal Revenue Service, defended the failed investigation, saying that the investigation was dealing with important legal material and that Bergman was treated just like any other suspect. He expressed regret that Bergman had left the country, hoping that Bergman was a "stronger" person now when the investigation had shown that he had not done any wrong.[35]
Although the charges were dropped, Bergman became disconsolate, fearing he would never again return to directing. Despite pleas by the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, high public figures, and leaders of the film industry, he vowed never to work in Sweden again. He closed down his studio on the island of Fårö, suspended two announced film projects, and went into self-imposed exile in Munich, West Germany. Harry Schein, director of the Swedish Film Institute, estimated the immediate damage as ten million SEK (kronor) and hundreds of jobs lost.[36]
Bergman then briefly considered the possibility of working in America; his next film, The Serpent's Egg (1977) was a German-U.S. production and his second English-language film (the first being The Touch, 1971). This was followed by a British-Norwegian co-production, Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, 1978) starring Ingrid Bergman (no relation), and From the Life of the Marionettes (Aus dem Leben der Marionetten, 1980) which was a British-German co-production.
He temporarily returned to his homeland to direct Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander, 1982). Bergman stated that the film would be his last, and that afterwards he would focus on directing theatre. After that he wrote several film scripts and directed a number of television specials. As with previous work for television, some of these productions were later theatrically released. The last such work was Saraband (2003), a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage and directed by Bergman when he was 84 years old.
Although he continued to operate from Munich, by mid-1978 Bergman had overcome some of his bitterness toward the Swedish government. In July of that year he visited Sweden, celebrating his sixtieth birthday on the island of Fårö, and partly resumed his work as a director at Royal Dramatic Theatre. To honour his return, the Swedish Film Institute launched a new Ingmar Bergman Prize to be awarded annually for excellence in filmmaking.[37] Still, he remained in Munich until 1984. In one of the last major interviews with Bergman, conducted in 2005 on the island of Fårö, Bergman said that despite being active during the exile, he had effectively lost eight years of his professional life.[38]
Bergman retired from filmmaking in December 2003. He had hip surgery in October 2006 and was making a difficult recovery. He died in his sleep[39] at age 89; his body was found at his home on the island of Fårö, on 30 July 2007, sixteen days after his 89th birthday.[40] It was the same day another renowned existentialist film director, Michelangelo Antonioni, died. The interment was private, at the Fårö Church on 18 August 2007. A place in the Fårö churchyard was prepared for him under heavy secrecy. Although he was buried on the island of Fårö, his name and date of birth were inscribed under his wife's name on a tomb at Roslagsbro churchyard, Norrtälje Municipality, several years before his death.
Main article: Ingmar Bergman filmography |