Bergman’s Monologues

Ingmar Bergman – Cries and Whispers
Directed by Andrei Şerban

Some think Ingmar Bergman is just theatrical. His characters would rather soliloquize than address each other, while they would rather prefer to watch the camera or some indistinct object than their companion. Knowing his experience as a dramatic director, one can find some excuses at hand, arguing that Bergman never made such a huge difference between directing a play or a movie. It is this indistinct Bergman that Andrei Şerban chooses to stage at the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj with his adapted version of Cries and Whispers. For those who need things said loud and clear, all the actors would literally bow to Ingmar Bergman’s (empty) director seat once the show is over and Andrei Şerban chooses to project against the background the last sequences of Ingmar Bergman’s film as a conclusion. Furthermore, the main character of Şerban’s adaptation is Bergman himself, as the director of the film, while we witness on the stage an imaginary rehearsal of the scenes shot for the 1972 film. Ingmar Bergman as a character is a distinct collage put together by Şerban himself, from Bergman’s autobiography, The Magic Lantern, from the introductory letter Bergman sent his crew along with the script and from other, less obvious sources, among which we can suspect the diary kept by Lars-Olof Löthwall, the film's press officer at the time. This fictional character is contradictory enough in terms of his construction: histrionic, occasionally frivolous during rehearsals, he is beginning the play with a monologue about the signification of the characters and ends it with another monologue, concerning art, film and Tarkovsky. On one side, you have the humanly Bergman, on the other, the aesthete. You cannot stop assuming that Andrei Şerban is aiming something more abstract, like a eulogy for the artist in general. Obviously, Bergman’s lines can be traced back to his autobiography, but his portrait is vaguely verisimilar, as it doesn’t hold anything artistically (or should we say aesthetically?) irrelevant. These opposite traits make more of a partial portrait, an image of Bergman that’s traceable back to the views of an entire generation.

Foto din film: Bo-Erik Gyberg

Foto din piesa de teatru "Strigăte şi şoapte”, A. Şerban

There was never a critical consensus about Bergman. Even back in 2007, when the film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum attacked Bergman’ established canonical place a few months after his death, the reactions were numerous; the most interesting conclusion, drawn by the film historian David Bordwell, is that the all the misconceptions about Bergman were due to a generation gap in his reception. A first generation, that saw Bergman’s movies mainly in the fifties, was receiving his film as a cinematic, European extravaganza, mainly different from the Italian neorealist movies, immensely popular back then. Then, a second generation, growing mainly in the sixties and the seventies, saw Bergman totally different, as an intellectual filmmaker, making immoderate, pretentious films. Sometimes, the same film was praised and criticized for different reasons by different generations of film critics. The films that were usually praised were made mainly between 1955, the year of his international triumph with Smiles of a Summer Night, and 1966, the year Bergman reinvented himself with Persona. The earlier or later movies were usually more easily dismissed on the basis of the director’s preciosity and their depiction of tortured, human relationships, and Cries and Whispers is among them. As a matter of fact, in the late sixties, Bergman was equally an influential filmmaker and a mocked one: the short film The Dove (De Düva), released in 1968, was already spoofing his main themes from his public favorites The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, as, for example, Death was playing badminton with his victim. The times were changing and a new public (among them, a few film critics) was far more sensitive to parodies of Bergman’s films than to the actual films. The French critics from Cahiers du cinéma were vainly defending him, praising altogether good and bad films, as Truffaut does in 1973, writing not only about his new sensation, Cries and Whispers, but also complimenting one of his minor movies, his 1969 drama The Rite. Bergman was being already labeled an ”aesthete”, and so were his movies, hence his inability to raise funds for his new projects and his desperate attempts to finance Cries and Whispers, made finally mainly from his own money. As a matter of fact, Cries and Whispers would be one of his last major international successes.

Foto din film: Bo-Erik Gyberg

Foto din piesa de teatru "Strigăte şi şoapte”, A. Şerban

If Bergman’s reputation as an aesthete and his so-called self-importance were due to a new public, it’s equally true that his works since Persona were linked with excess in every possible way. The tricks Bergman was using made him contemporaneous with other directors that made self-referential, narcissist films. In his 1969 The Passion of Anna, the actors were being interviewed between the scenes about their relationship with their characters and their opinions about film. Andrei Şerban’s adaptation of Cries and Whispers matches exactly this period in Bergman’s filmography, with its prologue à la Six Characters in Search of an Author and his rehearsal structure. In 1972, it would have been natural for Bergman to shoot his film in that particular manner, but he didn’t; instead, Cries and Whispers is one of his few latter films where unnaturalness is hard to find, mainly because his film feel like a very precise, calculated project, shot with mathematical precision by cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and needing just a few silent shots to acquire a certain personal air. While Bergman’s Cries and Whispers is mostly visual, an exercise in miniature, Andrei Şerban’s inserts amplify and discontinue, in a way in which Bergman becomes excessive again. True, Andrei Şerban follows scrupulously the text, adding very few, mostly allusions to symbolic postures, as Agnes is seen crucified in one scene, but all the references to Bergman’s actual legacy make a text about time and a film about viewing time something more like a play about artistic creativeness. As it is bold to transform a film that way, it is also dangerous, as depicted on stage is a Bergman a lot more artificial than he actually was. All the actors from the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj are convincingly re-acting the film, especially Kató Emőke, who plays a perfectly cold Karin, while Zsolt Bogdán is as chameleonic as he should be, playing not only Ingmar Bergman, but all the male protagonists of the film. On the other hand, the show features an Ingmar Bergman character vulnerable for any accusation of pretentiousness; you have to admit this Bergman is clearly the Artist, in order to enjoy Andrei Şerban’s footnotes, constantly occurring during the show. It’s probably Şerban’s way of telling that this show can be seen only in collusion with those who love more then enough Bergman’s films. Which means that most probably all the others will be excluded.