The Magic Lantern

Ingmar Bergman

New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Pages: 321

Like his films, Bergman's autobiography is a highly idiosyncratic, irreverent, sometimes bizarre, often offensive, but deeply sensitive and always intensely personal exploration into the passions that animate the creative instinct and every interpersonal relationship. It is startling to realize how many of his own experiences, events, struggles, and disappointments have found their way into the scripts that he films or stages. At once naked in sincerity and clothed in scorn with an unhealthy doze of egotism, Bergman's revelations are both profound as a great artist's insight and fairly banal as the philosophy of a human being. Reading this book was a rare treat for the better knowledge of the creator, although it does not really help penetrate some of his work, still sheds some light on his approach and immensely increases the joy of seeing his output. For anyone who has ever liked anything by Bergman, this book is an essential reading.

The narrative is not really structured, but consists of a series of vignettes, very episodic and without a common thread except that they all happened to Bergman or people around him. Starting from early childhood memories, with a dominant figure of his father and his exacting standards, going through his foray into the world of theater and cinema, Bergman seems to be setting up the stage in a precise but seemingly chaotic manner for the main performance of his private life with five marriages, mistresses, and a lot of distress that is never made explicit, and with his triumphs as a director, although he does appear to be dwelling more on what he regards as failures.

I think perhaps that the following long quote is the best summary of both Bergman's approach to art and an apt illustration of the way is autobiography reads and then suddenly impacts.

"Kaj Munk's Love starts with a cocoa party.

The pastor has invited his parishioners back home to discuss how to build embankments against the sea. Twenty-three actors are sitting on the stage drinking hot chocolate, some with a few lines, others just sitting. Hammarén had good actors for all the parts, even those with nothing to say. His instructions were murderously detailed and a trial to one's patience. When Kolbjörn says his line about the winter weather, he takes a cake, then stirs his chocolate. Now please rehearse that. Kolbjörn practises. The director changes it. Wanda serves chocolate from the left-hand jug and smiles kindly at Benkt-Åke as she says: 'You certainly need it.' 'Carry on now!' The actors rehearse it. The director corrects them.

I think impatiently that the director is a gravedigger. This is the decay of the theatre.

Hammarén goes unmoved.

Tore stretches out for a bun and shakes her head at Ebba. They have said something to each other which we haven't caught. Please find some appropriate subject of conversation. Ebba and Tore make suggestions. Hammarén approves. They rehearse.

I think: This gummed-up old dictator has managed to squeeze all enjoyment and spontaneity out of the scene and has killed it stone dead. I might as well leave the churchyard. For some reason I stay on, perhaps from spiteful curiosity. Pauses are marked or eliminated, movements weighted up against tone of voice and tone of voice against movements, breathing is fixed. I yawn like a malicious cat. After endless hours of repeats, interruptions, corrections, pushing and shoving, Hammarén considers the time is ripe to play the scene from start to finish.

Then the miracle occurred.

An easy, relaxed and amusing conversation broke out, with all the social gestures, looks, hidden meanings and consciously unconscious behaviour of a cocoa party. The actors, secure in their thoroughly rehearsed territories, felt a freedom to create the characters. They fantasized unexpectedly and humorously. They were not doing down their fellow-players, but respecting the whole, the rhythm" (pp. 151-2).

This was the first lesson Bergman had in theatre direction, and it must have been influential for Bergman's own style and result seem to have developed along these lines. Everyone can recall that his films are nothing if not natural, characters flow with ease through the most difficult parts of their roles and they never seem contrived, forced, or unnatural. In a similar way, this autobiography is composed of small, meticulous, seemingly superfluous, and often annoying tidbits that may appear like needless pedantry. When the whole is played from start to finish, though, a miracle indeed occurs. One catches a brief, but revealing, glimpse into the mind of an artist.

July 20, 2001. BLS

@BOOK{bergman-88:lantern,
    TITLE     = {The Magic Lantern},
    AUTHOR    = {Ingmar Bergman},
    YEAR      = {1994 [1987]},
    PUBLISHER = {Penguin Books},
    ADDRESS   = {New York},
    ISBN      = {0-14-010469-0},
    NOTE      = {Pp. 321, index, chronology, photographs. Translated by Joan Tate}
}