One of Bergman's most familiar themes is the question of where the artist stands in society. And this tried and true tradition of his can be traced from the brokenhearted ballerina in Summer Interlude to the out of work tight-rope walker in Das Schlangenei (The Serpent's Egg, 1977) with some particularly emphatic outbursts represented by 1964's potboiler All These Women, Bergman's first feature to be shot in color and the televisual film Riten in 1969. In films such as his celebrated Persona (1966) which deals with a dejected stage actress; Shame (1968) which focuses on a husband and wife violin duo who desperately try to defect their war-torn country (mainstays Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow) and 1978's Autumn Sonata that depicts the relationship of a concert pianist and her estranged daughter, the art-in-society debate can however be seen as part of a more general discourse that regards the predicament of the average human being in collapsing environs.
The sense of helplessness is referenced back to films which are Bergman's most universally appreciated, as in The Seventh Seal and forward to perhaps his most woefully disregarded film, Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna 1962), and once again is associated with his childhood. The search for G-d - or some equivalent higher being - haunted the Bergman career up to the point at which with the trilogy of Through A Glass Darkly (1963, Winter Light and The Silence in 1963, he appeared to exorcise it. If G-d insisted on keeping schtum, to pursue Him was in the worst case scenario, to risk insanity (the Harriet Andersson character in Through a Glass Darkly purports to have seen G-d in the form of a giant spider) and at best, it is futile (the pastor in Winter Light being unable to deflect one of his parishioners from the act of suicide). Although hints of both can be found in the later films, particularly Cries and Whispers (1972), with its central character on the cusp of death and in the despondent priest in The Serpent's Egg from The Silence onward, Bergman starts to favor a different kind of comfort found, despite all the hardships in relationships, in mutual human compassion. Little hope is evident in The Silence, with its despairing illumination of the obstacle confronting any kind of communication between generations, between sexes or even between nations. The political climate of the Sixties and Seventies increasingly broached upon in his work, even when it was centered on his island home of Faro, have seemed to support his argument - culminating in his own flight from Swedish tax authorities into a euphoric exile. But in Cries and Whispers, Scenes From a Marriage (1973), Face to Face and even if less convincingly, Autumn Sonata, he seemed to find the same small crust of comfort. However there was precious little to cheer the viewer, sans Bergman's singular filmmaking skills - in 1980's From the Life of the Marionettes, a hypnotic and volatile study of sex, obsession and impending madness. As if to confound deliberately critical accusations of terminal nihilism. Bergman would finally achieve his most optimistic work with the beloved Fanny and Alexander (1982) which was made in two separate versions one for television that featured a megalithic 300 minute running time and the cinematic release which clocked in at just three hours in its duration.
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| A Winter Light has been kept much in the dark. |
And wow that Casablanca, eh?