Random Thoughts

Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten). Ingmar Bergman. 1978. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.

Huh! I may not have seen this one before… It seems rather unfamiliar.

In any case: Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann. In a house. Drama.

It’s wonderful.

Bergman (the director) about Bergman (the actor):

I discovered early into our rehearsals that to be understanding and offer a sympathetic ear did not work. In her case I was forced to use tactics that I normally rejected, the first and foremost being aggression. Once she told me: ‘If you don’t tell me how I should do this scene, I’ll slap you!’ I rather liked that.”

Oh, wow. There’s a three-and-a-half hour documentary about the making of this film on the Criterion Blu-Ray version of this film. Darn. I ordered that one now and I’ll slot the docu in later in this blog series, but I wish I had seen the Blu-Ray version of this instead of this letterboxed DVD.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

The Serpent’s Egg. Ingmar Bergman. 1977. ⭐⭐⭐★★★.

Hey! I watched this in 2014! And I’m not really looking forward to watching it again… but apparently I bought a new copy of the DVD for this blog series.

Oh, well. Perhaps it’ll be better this time!

This is Bergman’s first film after he fled (sort of) Sweden after being accused of tax evasion. He got an enormous budget from Dino de Laurentiis again, and built a huge set in Berlin.

Bergman first tried to get Dustin Hoffman, then Robert Redford, then Peter Falk, then Richard Harris (!), and finally ended up with David Carradine as the male lead.

I think the Peter Falk version might have been kinda cool.

Anyway, since I’ve seen this one before not so long ago, I chose to watch it with David Carradine’s commentary audio track this time. He has amusing anecdotes to tell. “Well! What faces are we going to make today!” Bergman apparently told him one day, which I can totally understand. “The only piece of direction he ever game me was ‘Perhaps you’re doing too much.'” Which, I guess, means that he never read Bergman’s Images:

The minute the lights in the theater went out, Carradine fell asleep, snoring loudly. When he woke up I had no chance to discuss his role with him. Carradine’s behavior repeated itself during the filming. He was right owl and kept falling asleep on the set. He was found slumped just about everywhere, sound asleep. At the same time he was hard-working, punctual, and well prepared.

Carradine corroborates this in the commentary track without knowing: He says that he was out every night partying, and living his own life with his family that had come over, with a son that got up at six in the evening, so they stayed up all night.

But Carradine says that Bergman kept him isolated on purpose, to get him to fit his role better as a foreigner in Germany (which is shades of Gunnar Björnstrand accusing Bergman of deliberately making him believe that he (Björnstrand, that is) was deathly ill during the production of Winter Light so that he’d play the part of the sick priest more, er, sickly).

Carradine goes one further and claims that Bergman made the German authorities not approve his (Carradine’s, that is) marriage until the last day of production. To keep Carradine alienated.

Bergman: Criminal Mastermind, or Actors: The Things They’ll Believe, Eh? You be the judge.

Carradine says many an amusing thing, like: “So many people have called me an instinctive actor.” I’m sure! But that’s apparently not true, because he analyses his every single pose. I wouldn’t have thunk!

“God I was pretty there.”

At one point Carradine says the he asked Bergman “aren’t you worried about your soul?” and Bergman didn’t understand the concept and said “I’m an old whore”, which wasn’t what Carradine meant. (I guess Carradine is Christian or something?) Bergman also gave Carradine a hard time for being a vegetarian and made him start smoking, allegedly.

“One of the things about Ingmar is that there’s a great cynicism. I think he feels above most human problems and most human beings. And I think there’s a very great possibility for him to be a very cruel person as a result of that. And you know, he’s actually very kind.” “He just decided to be kind instead to avoid his nature.”

“I have a feeling that the only reason he made this movie […] was because he wanted to get together with Liv. And the only way he could do that was to make a movie and put her in it. And of all the ladies he had worked with, he was the fondest of her. And he was more fond of her performances than he was of Harriet’s or Bibi’s.”

“Ingmar is the kind of person who always wanted to be an old man.”

Somebody should make a complete transcript: “Carradine on Bergman”.

It’s really fun getting an American perspective on Bergman. Like in “tee hee”.

Anyway, Liv Ullmann is pretty good here, but she really has nothing to work with here. It’s a mess. And Carradine is miscast.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

The Dance of the Damned Women (De fördömda kvinnornas dans). Ingmar Bergman. 1976. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐★.

Well, this is a strange one. It’s a wordless short, but it’s not a ballet per se. Before it starts, there’s a woman that explains that this is what we’re going to see, and that afterwards there will be a discussion, and then we’ll see the short again, and that we’ll perhaps experience it differently the second time over.

Which is quite post-modern, and ten years ahead of its time.

But I don’t know whether the commentaries are part of Bergman’s film or not? It’s very confusing.

When broadcasted in Sweden it was shown twice in the same program spot with a commentary by Swedish art critic Ingela Lind.

But the “film facts” says that it’s 24 minutes long, and that includes the commentaries and showing the 10-minute choreographed bit twice.

So confuse!

It is interesting to watch it twice, though, so I think perhaps Bergman wanted it that way.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte). Ingmar Bergman. 1976. ⭐⭐⭐⭐★★.

Originally a three hour TV series, “[i]t was edited down for theatrical releases for running times from 114 to 135 minutes.” And it stars Liv Ullmann and Erlend Josephson, so it’s very much similar to Scenes from a Marriage in that way.

This one’s produced by Dino de Laurentiis, who was apparently quite satisfied with the results. Bergman… not so much.

Now when I see Face to Face, I remember an old farce with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorithy Lamour. It’s called The Road to Morocco (David Butler, 1942). They have been shipwrecked and come floating on a raft in front of a projected New York in the background. In the final scene, Bob Hope throws himself to the ground and begins to scream and foam at the mouth. The others stare at him in astonishment and ask what in the world he is doing. He immediately calms down and says, ‘This is how you have to do it if you want to win an Oscar.’

When I see Face to Face and Liv Ullmann’s incredibly loyal effort on my behalf, I still can’t help thinking on The Road to Morocco.

Exactly. I feel that Bergman dumbed it down for an international (i.e., American) audience. That Fraudian psychodrama in the hospital (which I guess is what Bergman’s referring to) is so kitchy. And most of the dream scenes are… well… clichés. But Ullmann is wonderful here, and there are some really strong scenes.

The first thing I was struck by when this film started was how awful the sound was: A loud buzzing sound. And Bergman is really particular about the sound quality. But then it turned out that the DVD defaulted to the Italian dubbed version, and when I switched to the Swedish one, everything was er, better. But the film transfer is really weird. I suspect that it’s an interlaced transfer that’s been upscaled to DVD and then interlaced again. It’s sort of ugly.

To conclude: Don’t buy DVDs from Italy.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.