Trämålning. Lennart Olsson. 1963. ⭐⭐⭐★★★.
This is a rather weird one. It’s a short-ish TV movie (directed by Lennart Olsson) based on the old one-act play that Bergman earlier had developed into The Seventh Seal. (Yes. Very confusing.)
The actors are variable, but Ulla Akselson (as the witch) is great.
I got a copy of this thing (not generally available) from the Bergman bootlegger.
This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.
A Dream Play (Ett drömspel). Ingmar Bergman. 1963. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐★.
Boo! Uno Herring is back in this TV play. I still can’t really understand what he’s saying: His diction is so … strange. Some sounds are half-swallowed, and there’s the occasional extra syllable that shouldn’t really be in that word.
So it’s subtitle time again, which this edition from the Bergman Bootlegger has. Yay!
This play is apparently also filmed (and edited) in semi-real time with multiple cameras. (Some scene changes had to be edited in, though.) But it looks quite film like. It must have required incredible preparation to hit all those detailed marks (“start *there* and end up right *there* and deliver those three lines allowing that camera to zoom in on you before the lighting change and then turn around and stare into *that* camera”).
The lighting and setting isn’t quite unlike Bergman’s previous film, Winter Light.
This TV production was panned when it was shown, and Bergman eventually decided that it was a failure, too. (He was to do three further TV versions of this play.)
I think it’s rather fascinating.
This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.
Behind Winter Light (Bakomfilm Nattvärdsgästerna). Ingmar Bergman. 1961. ⭐⭐⭐★★★.
I’m really starting to enjoy the commentaries by whoever that is on these “behind the scenes” shorts. They’re terse, but to the point. This is 3x longer than any of the previous films, though, and perhaps it would have been an idea to give her somebody to have a dialogue with. But perhaps they’re all dead.
Bergman did most of his films in the summer, he said, because it gave the actors something to do in the off season for the theatre. This is one of those rare films filmed during the winter, and it looks kinda chilly.
This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.
Winter Light (Nattvardsgästarna). Ingmar Bergman. 1963. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.
1963 was a particularly busy year for Bergman: I’ve got five things from that year scheduled here.
There’s nothing in 1962, though, so perhaps there were just a lot of stuff percolating… Bergman turned down a 24x pay raise from MGM and stayed in Sweden.
Watching this straight after the 1961 The Pleasure Garden is rather a shock, though. Sven Nykvist is really coming into his own here: Very painterly scenes and shots.
The Bergman foundation web page on the film is amusing.
I have like less than zero interest in the main theme of this film (god and stuff), but it’s a stunning film. Ingrid Thulin is marvellous, and Gunnar Björnstrand plays against character as a bad priest.
This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.
The Pleasure Garden (Lustgården). Alf Kjellin. 1961. ⭐⭐⭐★★★.
Bergman thought it was about time that Svensk Filmindustri did a proper colour film, but he didn’t have time to do it himself. So he co-wrote the screenplay (with a pseudonymous credit) and left Alf Kjellin to direct it.
It was pretty much universally panned at the time, but Bergman himself thought that it was kinda cute.
And it is. It’s a romantic (but melancholic) farce of a sort… Unfortunately it’s also kinda boring despite theoretically quite funny lines and likeable actors. It’s just so… pedestrian. Everybody does their best, including the soundtrack, which tries its hardest to convince us we’re looking at a screwball comedy.
The director moved to the US a few years later and did mostly TV shows.
The copy I watched was apparently shown in the afternoon on Swedish television in the 90s, recorded to VHS, transferred to DVD, which I then bought from the infamous Bergman bootlegger.
This post is part of the 87 Bergman Things series.