>> [NOISE]

>> A good entry point to Bergman's films

is Smiles of a Summer Night.

The film which won him a Cannes special prize and

in turn allowed him to move to more daring subject matter in

Through a Glass Darkly and the uncharted land of Persona.

Smiles of a Summer Night is a comedy about couples, marriages, infidelities,

full of sardonic wit.

Ingmar Bergman started writing original scripts on a consistent basis in the early

1950s and he gives the witty lines to women in Smiles of a Summer Night.

Whereas all the females characters are made to look,

all the male characters look silly.

One of the couples are Charlotte and Carl-Magnus, an officer and Count.

And in the presentation of them, she appears reasonable and

knowing, he is temperamental and self-indulgent.

When she tells him that someone is courting his mistress in town,

he announces that, I can tolerate my wife's infidelities, but

if anyone touches my mistress, I turn into a tiger.

Good day fair lady.

>> [FOREIGN] >> [FOREIGN]

[NOISE]

>> [FOREIGN]

[NOISE]

>> Swift delivery and

witty lines is something that we have come to associate with American comedies of

the period.

Think of directors such as Ernst Lubitsch or Howard Hawks.

But Bergman proves himself up to par as a writer director

in Smiles of a Summer Night.

And at the center of the narrative is the affair between

actress Desiree Armfeldt and the lawyer Egerman played by Eva Dahlbek and

Gunna Bjornstrand, two Bergman regulars.

According to Bergman's autobiographical film, My Life in Images, Dahlbek and

Bjorstrand gave Bergman the key to make a successful comedy

due to an elevator scene three years earlier, in his Waiting Women.

This is good example of what I mentioned in my first part, Bergman as imaginative

and interpretive, giving a twist to something which is already out there.

I think that it's clear that both Lessons in Love and Smiles of a Summer Night were

inspired by the Hollywood genre sometimes called comedy of re-marriage.

A narrative which allowed for showing both true and

eternal love, as well as depicting marriage as a battleground.

Bergman makes the most of the genre and

by using the same group of actors, Bergman had an idea

of what they were capable of doing successfully when writing his next script.

His use of certain names for different characters, names such as Egerman,

Vergerus, Vogler, Blom, might have served a similar role.

Naturally, this way of working is instrumental to any stage director and

Bergman took this one step further when he returned to place which he had already

directed several times.

This was the case with Stringberg's The Pelican,

directed three times and The Ghost Sonata directed four times.

In Smiles of a Summer Night, we also find the complicated love hate between

married couples, a prominent theme of Bergman's.

There's a telling scene when Charlotte confides to her friend Anne that men

are vain and conceited and about her husband, I hate him.

Hate him.

Hate.

>> [FOREIGN]

>> It's likely terrifying, and

it's clear that we are far from mainstream comedy.

Both directors are glancing toward the camera, ready to be close up, allowing us

to see the full intensity of Charlotte's anger, disillusioned embitterment.

Marriage as a love hate is given a sense of stage also in his long

Scenes from a Marriage and the sequel Saraband.

Even though he was 84 at the time

of Saraband's opening,

it is remarkably powerful

in its portrayal of hate and

love in family life and in married life.

>> [NOISE]

>> Another Bergmanesque feature of Smiles

of a Summer Night is that of jealousy.

For instance when Egerman's young wife asks him if he were to be jealous if

she flirted with his son.

He has a very young son, from a previous marriage.

Jealousy appears to have been a strong force in Bergman's private life.

According to his third wife, the concert pianist Kabi Laretei, Bergman

will constantly call her when she went on tour, afraid that she would be unfaithful.

In his work,

jealousy do act as a green eyed monster which expresses itself in ugly forms.

Take, for instance, Thulin's character in The Silence.

She is lovesick because her character enjoys sex with men.

Or take the deep humiliations that follow from a jealous attempt

to punish the man who lost step with his partner in Sawdust and Tinsel.

Here the circus artist Albert goes to beat up the handsome actor Franz and

we expect the larger and morally-wronged Albert to come out the winner,

but instead he loses and is humiliated.

Similar scenes played out between Erland Josefson and Max Von Sudow,

in the much later Passion of Anna, where Josefson

insists on taking photographs of the man who is having an affair with his wife.

These are all ugly manifestations of jealousy,

which are also an important theme in one of his first films in 1947,

A Ship Bound for India, with a strong father, Alexander,

and insecure son, Johannes, and the father's attractive mistress, Sally.

The weighted dialogue and swift delivery contrast with how much is at

stake in characters' lives in Smiles of a Summer Night.

Bergman uses his technique of contrasting wit with grave matters with

great success also again in The Seventh Seal and

The Devil's Eye, letting the male protagonist exchange lines with Death and

the Devil on issues such as God's existence, or women's faithfulness.

Even lets Death and the Devil play tricks on our insecure male characters and

of these two, the medieval, plague-ridden setting and

Max von Sydow in the lead render Seventh Seal exceptionally rich.

Bergman's Virgin Spring also deals with God's existence and revenge,

but in a much more sinister tone and short of the elegance of Seven Seal.

Take for instance with Max von Sydow as the knight Antonius Block who claims,

I want knowledge!

Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge.

I want God to stretch out His hand, uncover His face and speak to me.

And Death replies, but He remains silent.

Von Sydow, I call out to him in the darkness.

But it is as if no one is there.

Death, perhaps there isn't anyone.

Imaginative and witty, well-delivered lines and

with a modern feel to it due to the exchange.

>> [FOREIGN]

>> Of Bergman's 1950s work,

I much prefer Smiles of a Summer Night.

It feels less deliberate and

redundant in conveying story information compared to some of his earlier films.

A case in point is the opening of Summer Interlude, 1951.

We hear about the unhappiness of the protagonist from

other characters before we see her unhappy.

In going from the diary to a young man, on the picture side, leaves

no doubt that she's nostalgic and that this is the man and the love of her life.

Clarity and the redundancy put some of his 1950s works slightly out of sync with

contemporary norms.

For this reason, I'm not a fan either of his Summer with Monika,

even though it is often rightfully praised for its use of natural lyricism and

its sexual frankness with Harriet Anderson at the center.

Bergman's two years in the script department of Svensk Filmindustri in

the early 1940s has instilled storytelling norms of clarity and

comprehensibility that were appropriate to reaching a mainstream audience.

But today these storytelling norms easily feels too elaborate.

Bergman was able to move beyond these classic storytelling principles

as he gained an international reputation with his Smiles of Summer Night.

And this audience, in turn, allowed him to move beyond these films and

into uncharted territories in his 1960s films.

[MUSIC]

3.2: Bergman's film: Themes and style, by Associate Professor Johannes Riis

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