Sardonic smiles of a winter's tale
Lindsay Anderson
THE MAGIC LANTERN by Ingmar Bergman 1-tarnish Hamilton £14.95, pp. 290 When Ingmar Bergman was born, his mother was suffering from Spanish influen- za. Perhaps this affected the baby: it certainly affected his mother's ability to feed him. His grandmother took him out of hospital and found him a wet nurse who saved his life. But he remained a sickly child, who was 'always vomiting and had constant stomach aches'.
Here at the start are two constant, surely related themes in this autobiography. The theme of family and the theme of recurrent (psychosomatic? neurasthenic?) illness. So influential does Bergman feel those early days to be, that he writes as though he was already fully conscious. 'I suffered from several indefinable illnesses and could nev- er really decide whether I wanted to live at all.' Of course he cannot really know his mental state in infancy, but his first con- scious memory ('suddenly I vomit over everything') is characteristic. And the re- currence of such memories is constant in this life-story which is, above all, or cer- tainly seems to be, honest, unflinching.
I have always suffered from what is called a nervous stomach, a calamity as foolish as it is humiliating. . . It is like housing an evil demon in the most sensitive core of your body. . . In all the theatres I have worked in for any length of time, I have been given my own lavatory. These conveniences are prob- ably my most lasting contribution to the history of the theatre.
There are smiles in this book, but they are generally sardonic.
Most readers will be attracted to this autobiography by its author's great reputa- tion and achievement as a film-maker. They will not be disappointed, as long as they do not expect an account of his career that is detailed or comprehensive. Berg- man's relationship with his readers is rather a strange one: sometimes he seems to be writing more for himself than for them. At times he tells his story in a direct, objective way, so that we know where he is and why. But more often we are not told very much about why a particular film was written, or exactly why Bergman feels what he does about it. He describes The Seventh Seal, for instance, as 'an uneven film which lies close to my heart, because it was made under difficult circumstances in a surge of vitality and delight.' That is about all. But we are given a glimpse, worth more perhaps than any critical exposition, of the shooting of the unforgettable Dance of Death which is the climax of the film,
achieved at hectic speed because most of the actors had finished for the day. Assistants, electricians, a make-up man and two summer visitors, who never knew what it was all about, had to dress up in the costumes of those condemned to death. A mute camera was set up and the image captured before the cloud dissolved.
Bergman is highly intelligent; but he
writes as a practising artist, not a critic. His obsession with cinema started early. As a little boy, he was taken to see a film of Black Beauty and was 'overcome by a fever that has never left me.' Next Christmas he swapped a hundred of his tin soldiers for the Magic Lantern which was his brother's present. You turned a handle and the people on the screen moved: from that moment he was a film-maker. Yet it was in the theatre that his career began, first as an assistant at the Stockholm Opera, then in charge of a huge, decrepit provincial theatre, which he took over at the age of 25. These chapters of early theatre work are among the most likeable in Bergman's story. It was a time of learning and discovery, with a sense of busy enjoyment, of comradeship in creativity which con- trasts attractively with the often painful chronicles of his film-making, his mar- riages, his affairs and his guilty self involvement. Bergman's theatrical career climaxed with his three-and-a-half years as director of the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre — a time which exemplifies the extraordinary energy which seems to have characterised his whole life. 'During my 42 months as director, I did seven produc- tions, two films and wrote four scripts.' He writes more about his time in the theatre than in the cinema; but few of his produc- tions are fully described. What, one cannot help wondering, were they like? Probably uneven. Bergman's Hamlet, which our National Theatre presented last year, was dreadfully silly; his Miss Julie was a great deal better. But he is neither pretentious nor defensive about his work. 'From a strictly professional point of view, my years as theatre director were wasted.' One knows how he feels.
Bergman has constructed his book in a subjective, associative way, not necessarilY chronological or always clear. The result is poetic, confessional. There are brief, ex- pressive sketches of artists he has encoun- tered: Garbo, Olivier, Ingrid Bergman. He talks illuminatingly of his professional methods, creative beliefs. Continually, though, and compulsively he returns to the traumatic experiences of childhood and family: his father, the puritanical pastor whom he hated and tried to love; his mother, whom he loved but could never understand or come near to; the elder brother he would like to have murdered; the younger sister 'crushed into a scream • All of them somehow more real, more vividly described than the many wives, children, beautiful mistresses who come and go, often vaguely, through the years. The book ends where it begins, with Mother. Only after her death does Berg- man seem to approach understanding. He searches in her diary for July 1918 — rhe, month of his birth. She writes what woulo be an appropriate epigraph to this uniqu. reticent, revealing portrait of an artist. 'One will probably have to manage alone as best one can.' Like mother, like son.
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