Jane Mag­nus­son on explod­ing the myth of Ing­mar Bergman

In 2012, Jane Mag­nus­son made the 262-minute doc­u­men­tary minis­eries Bergmans Video (lat­er edit­ed into a 107-minute fea­ture called Tres­pass­ing Bergman) in which a num­ber of renowned film­mak­ers trekked in pil­grim­age to Ing­mar Bergman’s for­mer home­stead on the remote Swedish island of Fårö to dis­cuss his oeu­vre and paw through his VHS library. The out­come was engag­ing, but served more as a kind of pro­fes­sion­al eulo­gy than a crit­i­cal assess­ment of the man.

Now return­ing with Bergman: A Year in a Life, Mag­nus­son digs deep­er than she did pre­vi­ous­ly, thumb­ing through the archives to present a hith­er­to unseen – or at the very least less­er-known – ver­sion of the enig­mat­ic auteur. Ugly truths and chas­ten­ing rev­e­la­tions about his jeal­ousies, vio­lence and predilec­tions are brought sober­ly to light thanks to a cor­nu­copia of inter­view tes­ti­mo­ni­als and rare mate­ri­als. No stone is left unturned.

Her jump-off point is Bergman’s ​“most pro­duc­tive year”, 1957, dur­ing which time he wrote and direct­ed Wild Straw­ber­ries and The Sev­enth Seal, shot Brink of Life, made anoth­er film for tele­vi­sion film and direct­ed four the­atre pro­duc­tions, includ­ing an epic, five-hour adap­ta­tion of Hen­rik Ibsen’s ​‘Peer Gynt’. On top of this stag­ger­ing work­load, by his own admis­sion, Bergman’s love life was ​“a mess”. Here, Mag­nus­son speaks with clar­i­ty and insight about the virtues and short­com­ings of a man she describes as ​“the most inter­est­ing Swede who ever lived.”

“I nev­er say any­thing bad about Bergman in my film. It’s him. He’s the one who is con­stant­ly bad­mouthing him­self. He’s the one say­ing, ​‘I was a hor­ri­ble father’, ​‘I was unfaith­ful’, ​‘I was a Nazi’, ​‘I neglect­ed my friends’. He was always say­ing that. I just counter him and say, ​‘Look at this great film’. He did all of these amaz­ing things. I think he was very hard on him­self and I think he want­ed to talk about his short­com­ings and make films about them, because if you’re hon­est in your film­mak­ing or in your art, I think it becomes great art, and I think that was the case with Bergman. I thought, ​‘If he wants to talk about these things, let’s talk about these things in my film.’ I also want­ed to show what a mas­ter he was”.

“Even though Bergman had all these dark sides, he was so hon­est about them. That’s very unusu­al. For exam­ple, the fact that he had sym­pa­thies with Hitler… he want­ed to talk about them. And nobody else did. He was pret­ty much alone in Swe­den when he came out in the ​’80s and said, ​‘I went to Ger­many, I was in Weimar dur­ing the parade and I yelled ​“Heil Hitler!” And I loved it.’ It’s hor­ri­ble that he didn’t reject Hitler before 1946. It is very late. That’s a prob­lem. But I don’t think Bergman thought Hitler was a good idea because he hat­ed Jews. Swe­den was very afraid of Rus­sia at that time and I think he just thought that it was bet­ter than what’s going on with them.”

“It’s hard to ver­i­fy any­thing that Ing­mar or his broth­er, Dag, says. Even though he was a diplo­mat, Dag seems like a hor­ri­ble sadist: even when they were young. I think the inter­view we show with Dag is him tak­ing one last stab at his famous younger sib­ling. Maybe there’s some truth in what he says. I don’t think Alexan­der in Fan­ny and Alexan­der is based on Ing­mar, I think it’s based on his broth­er. They had a hor­ri­ble father, but I think he bul­lied Dag and not Ing­mar. I also think Ing­mar was a good stu­dent; Dag wasn’t. But that’s the way it goes with good fic­tion, you embell­ish and steal things. Lat­er in life, Ing­mar seems regret­ful that he’s stolen bits of his brother’s life and made it appear to be his own though.”

“When Bar­bra Streisand was at the top of her career and Bergman was at the top of his, he want­ed to make a film in Hol­ly­wood [The Mer­ry Wid­ow was moot­ed, but didn’t ulti­mate­ly come to pass]. The head of the Swedish film indus­try called up her agent and said, ​‘Bergman wants to make a film with Bar­bara Streisand’. She said ​‘yes’ imme­di­ate­ly and they start­ed cor­re­spond­ing. Bar­bara Streisand brought her let­ters from Bergman to our inter­view and read from them. (In the let­ters) he’s real­ly putting on all of his charm to get her on board. He doesn’t real­ly have to though because she’s already on board. He sends her the script. She loves the first act, but calls and says, ​‘The sec­ond act needs some work.’ Bergman just freaks out and hangs up.”

“Now that we’ve just had the cen­te­nary [of Bergman’s birth], and every­thing last year in Swe­den was about him, every­one is so fed up of him again. This is kin­da what it was like in the ​’90s when he sucked all the funds out of the Swedish film insti­tute and made these giant projects all about his par­ents [The Best Inten­tions, Sunday’s Chil­dren and Pri­vate Con­fes­sions]. All the young film­mak­ers in Swe­den were like, ​‘What the hell is going on? Is he mak­ing anoth­er sev­en-hour film about his par­ents? Who cares?!’ For me though, I think he’s the most inter­est­ing Swede who ever lived. I don’t think we’ll ever have any­one like him again: for good and bad.”

Bergman: A Year in a Life is released 25 Jan­u­ary. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.