Random Thoughts

The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten). Ingmar Bergman. 1975. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐★.

This was the most expensive TV production ever made in Sweden at the time, so there were the usual mutterings of “scandal”, but they sold the finished TV show to so many countries that it ended up earning the Swedish TV company a lot of money.

This is Mozart, of course, so the music sucks and the story is pure distilled twaddle, but it’s pretty amusing. I mean, it’s meant to be funny (I think?), and this staging hams it up.

Bergman has chosen some very young and pretty performers, and they seem to be miming here? So they recorded the music first and then edited together the acting from a bunch of different shots? I’m just guessing… But the next Bergman Thing is a documentary about this Thing, so all will be revealed.

I’m no Opera connoisseur, but I think the voices are mostly not very impressive. I like Pamina’s voice… really beautiful.

Bergman goes all out in trying to make a pleasant, amusing and commercially acceptable version of the opera for TV. I think it looks like he had a lot of fun, and the results are very likeable. Corny? Yes.

I read P. Craig Russell’s version the other week, which probably made me more susceptible to the doubtful charms of the piece.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

The Misanthrope (Misantropen). Ingmar Bergman. 1974. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐★.

This is a TV recording of a Danish theatre production of Moliere’s The Misanthrope directed by Bergman. It’s quite fun, and Ghita Nørby as Célimène is a blast to watch. I don’t think anyone would quite have guessed that it was a Bergman production if they hadn’t known, though.

Great fun.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap). Ingmar Bergman. 1973. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐★.

I’ve seen the TV series before, so I thought it might be fun to see the cinema version, too. I vaguely remember the TV series as being a very involving soap opera. The cinema version is apparently just an edited-down version (they lopped off about two hours?).

To begin with, Nykvist refused: ‘We’d shot the series in the 16 mm format 1: 1.33. Now it was to be blown up to 1: 1.66. I looked at some samples. The cropping was extremely ugly, and the images were grainy. I called Ingmar and told him that we couldn’t agree to this.’ Nykvist cited the fact that the subtitles would obscure the actors’ mouths, and that his contract stipulated that it would only be screened in 16 mm.

Bergman, always more pragmatic than his reputation might suggest, replied: ‘Have you forgotten that you’re a co-producer? We’re not talking small change here. You’ve got ten per cent of the rights.’

Heh heh. Yes, Bergman and his crew self-financed the film, and it became a worldwide phenomenon, raking in the dosh. I haven’t seen anybody say it directly, but I would guess that this was the immediate cause for the Swedish tax authority’s vendetta against Bergman: That he suddenly had a lot of money stashed in foreign bank accounts, which must have seemed odd.

Anyway, this cut-down theatrical version is quite thrilling. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it over the TV series, but it’s just so… intense. It makes it seem more like a very long Ibsen play than a soap opera.

It does make me want to watch the TV series, though, because I have no idea what were in those two hours they edited out.

It also seem very effortless; untortured. Like the scenes just happen naturally without any embellishment between these brilliant actors. And apparently they were very disciplined: While on a normal Bergman shoot, you get three minutes of film per shooting day, on this one they did up to twenty minutes per day.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

The Lie. Alan Bridges. 1970. ⭐⭐⭐★★★.

This is the British version of The Lie, which I saw the Swedish version of last weekend. So we’re skipping back from 1973, way back to the misty days of 1970, when a bunch of European countries all recorded their own versions of the same Bergman script.

I’m not going to watch them all, but I thought it might be fun to watch the British version, at least. It’s directed by Alan Bridges, the chap that did The Shooting Party… Isn’t that a quite good movie? I’m not sure.

Anyway!

This version is also from the Bergman bootlegger, and it’s OK. Not much colour to speak of (but perhaps everything was an orangey beige in England in 1970), and with a title permanently placed at the top, but otherwise OK.

This is a better production than the Swedish version, even if the actors have extremely plummy voices. The main problem remains: The script still isn’t very thrilling. It so vague. Even after seeing a second version of it, I’m still not sure I could say what it’s about other than… you know… people with vague dissatisfactions.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.

The Ghost Sonata (Spöksonaten). Ingmar Bergman. 1973. ⭐⭐⭐★★★.

What a strange artefact. This is from the collection of the Bergman bootlegger, and it’s a video recording from 1973 of Bergman’s production of Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata from a single camera placed on the balcony, apparently.

There’s a lot of video ghosting whenever anybody moves, which is so ironic, don’t you think?

There’s a lot of coughing from the audience, so I guess it’s from a winter performance? Let’s see… yes, teh interwebz seem to say that it’s from January 1973.

It seems like an interesting version of The Ghost Sonata, but it’s a bit hard to tell here. I mean. Really. So the scoring here is on the viewing experience.

This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.