gbill-74877 Review of Bergman Island

Bergman Island (2004 TV Movie)

A touching look at the old master

[8/10 · 29 July 2023]

"You could say I'm a profoundly scared person."

It's far from a complete accounting of Ingmar Bergman's life or his films, but just seeing him interviewed out on Faro Island at age 85, just four years before he passed away, is incredibly special. It should be pointed out that this originally aired on Swedish TV in 2004 in three one-hour segments, and was then edited down to a 85 minute film for the 2006 release which I saw; Bergman then passed away in 2007.

Over the course of Marie Nyrerod's interviews, Bergman shows home movies taken behind the scenes of his films, takes her to where they were filmed, and is quite open about his personal life, trauma and shortcomings included. She effectively mixes in scenes from the films he talks about, and behind her smiles, isn't afraid of putting him on the spot. I don't think there were any grand revelations here, but I was mesmerized, and for a Bergman fan, it's probably a must-watch. I would also say that a great book for anyone who likes the film and wants still more commentary and anecdotes from Bergman is Images - My Life in Film.

Highlights/notes:

• Hearing about his childhood trauma. As a boy he was pushed away from cuddling his mother too much, so that he could "grow up to be a man," and beaten by a father who was prone to violent rage. He was acutely aware that his mother, normally bossy, didn't intervene, and he felt that discipline, reflected also in Fanny and Alexander, was meant to make him "humiliated to the uttermost depths." He was also traumatized by being locked in a morgue as a prank, one which had the corpse of a young woman, and still occasionally had dreams about the experience as an old man.

• Seeing the elderly Bergman walk around what remains of Filmstaden (as I was lucky enough to do in 2019), and speak of the day his new boss Victor Sjostrom gave him a talking to on the grounds. He says: "When I directed my first film here (Crisis, 1946), all I did was shout and quarrel," he says. "I didn't know anything. I was so lacking in self-confidence. At the same time, Victor Sjostrom came to work here. He had been in Britain for a long time. Victor Sjostrom was put on the staff as the artistic director at Filmstaden. He was told everyone was complaining about bloody Bergman. ... He gave me my first real lesson in how to make films, and above all, in how to behave towards the people you're working with, and towards the actors."

• The success of Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) at Cannes, sent there without his knowledge, giving him free reign from then on, including to make the film that had already been rejected, The Seventh Seal (1957).

• The idea of Death playing chess coming from a mural he had seen as a boy by Albertus Pictor from 1480 in the Taby Church just outside Stockholm. (Other images, like "Death sawing down the Tree of Life, a terrified wretch wringing his hands at the top of it, and Death leading the dance to the Land of Shadows, wielding his scythe like a flag, the congregation capering in a long line, and the jester bringing up the rear" as he described elsewhere, were from the murals in the churches he would visit with his father.)

• On The Seventh Seal (1957): "The core of that film is an insane fear of death. I was in a state of ... it was the most appalling suffering. ... Anything to do with death was horrifying. Out of that horror, and the business of the atom bomb and that sort of thing, this story arose about the plague and the journey back. And then of course there was the whole question posed by religion of 'Is there a God? Is there no God at all?' The Seventh Seal has no answer to that question."

• First arriving on Faro in 1960 to film Through a Glass Darkly, and deciding not only the location for the film, but the location for where he would live, after getting input from cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

• Of Cries and Whispers (1972), disavowing his comments in an interview at the time that the four women each represented his mother, who had died a few years earlier, saying that it was something he said spontaneously just to have something to say. It was not the only time the older Bergman would do this, comment on his own past comments about films, taking them back.

• Bergman struggling to answer questions about his numerous failed marriages, his sexual relationships with his leading ladies, and his poor performance as a father. He is honest in the sense of acknowledging it all, but when he rationalizes his cruelty to his wife and children by saying having a conscience over it would be "pure vanity" is deeply uncomfortable to hear. So in this sense, the film reveals a man who is very selfish.

• Little bits around his house, like the inspiration for the design of his fireplace, or his movie room, where he would show Chaplin's Circus (1928).

• Bergman's description of his demons. He opens with the comment that he walks outside because "The demons don't like fresh air. What they like best is if you stay in bed with cold feet." He closes with a list of the demons he has (the Demons of Disaster, Fear, Rage, and Grudges) and one he doesn't have (Nothingness, e.g. He's never run out of creativity).