Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie

Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light is 80 minutes long.  Vilgot Sjoman's documentary Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie (1963), a chronicle of the production of Winter Light, runs 146 minutes.  Sjoman's documentary, apparently made for Swedish television, is the most detailed picture ever made about the production of another movie:  the film begins on the Baltic seashore with Sjoman earnestly interviewing Bergman about his writing of the script for the film; the movie ends with Winter Light's premiere in Stockholm with various people interviewed on the street and in the cinema lobby, concluding with a final (and lengthy) valedictory interview with the director.  In between the film's opening scenes and its ending, Sjoman shows us location scouting, the construction of sets, exacting rehearsals with the lead performers in the film, and, then, sequences that purport to show Winter Light actually being filmed by the master director of photography Sven Nykwist.  (Bergman wouldn't allow Sjoman's 16 mm camera on the set when the film was actually being shot and, so, the production scenes are staged -- Bergman remarks that he is very effective in playing "director" in this footage.  The part of the film seeming to show the movie being shot is the longest sequence in the documentary, probably lasting about an hour.  There follow sequences about post-production, including editing, also factually detailed including a scene where the texture and lighting of the black-and-white picture is rigorously tested for quality control -- in these scenes, we learn that Svensk film industries has commissioned 100 duplicate copies for distribution in the United States, something that seems to please Bergman who smirks slightly when he learns  this..  After mixed reviews from critics and the public (we learn that Bergman reads all reviews), the director muses about pleasing the audience and the perfidy of critics.  He expresses his feelings of inferiority but says that the bad reviews don't bother him because he has already moved on to producing his next movie, The Silence (1963) and, also, is busy with TV work and directing a play for the stage.  Bergman is very articulate and seems to be a reasonable person -- he is somewhat serpentine, slippery, and, often, contradicts himself in the course of a five or six minute interview.  Sjoman treats him like an acolyte and the interviews, in which Sjoman asks extremely intelligent and penetrating questions, have something of the aspect of a catechism between holy man and monk -- Bergman exudes impenetrable and opaque serenity, Sjoman with an Amish-style beard (his chin is bare and but fringed by his neck beard) wearing round granny glasses is suitably deferential to the Great Man -- who is, in fact, only seven years older than the very boyish-looking Sjoman.  

Winter Light, the second part of a trilogy -- the other pictures are Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and The Silence (1963) -- is about an existential crisis afflicting a Lutheran pastor who has lost his faith.  The pastor's doubt and angst occur in the context of a love affair that has collapsed into bitter and cruel mutual recriminations.  Bergman's script was inspired by his encounter with a clergyman whose parishioner killed himself the day after a meeting with the pastor about his depression -- needless to say, the pastor experienced guilt over the man's death.  Bergman discusses, rather evasively, the preparation of the script, ignoring for the most part that his father was a prominent Lutheran ecclesiastical figure and that, Bergman, in fact, asked his father to read the script not once but three times -- none of this is contained in the interview with the director which seems mostly concerned with concealing actual sources of inspiration for the movie.  There follow scenes about location selection, including a surreal sequence in which Bergman travels a hundred miles on a railway, driving a pickup truck on the rails that were, in fact, laid by his grandfather.  (He is scouting for a location that appears for about 30 seconds in the film when the Pastor with his girlfriend have to wait at a crossing as a sinister-looking train passes.)  We see screen tests including camera tests of costumes used in the film.  A church interior is built since the inside of the two churches shown in the film were too dark and crowded for Nykwist's camera.  Bergman rehearses with Gunnar Bjornstrand (the pastor) and Ingrid Thulin (the pastor's mistress) at length, blocking out a scene between the two in geometric detail, a script girl hovering nearby to feed lines to the actors when they forget them.  Sven Nykwist says that he worked with Bergman to avoid any trace of pictorial beauty in the film -- both and Bergman want the images to be "naked Swedish reality" -- that is, "naked and obvious."  Everything is to be staged in the most rigorously simply manner without camera movements or fancy compositions  .(Bergman insists on very fine distinction; he wants the movie to appear scrupulously mean, but,also doesn't want it to be like an Italian neo-realist film.)  In the scenes re-staged to simulate the actual photography, Bergman with Max von Sydow (playing the suicide) and, Gunnel Lindblom, an attractive actress playing his pregnant wife, shoot, at least, nine takes of a minute-long scene, recording the action from various angles so that the director will have enough footage to construct the scene while editing it.  The film requires 53 days shooting.  (There is no mention of the fact that the pastor, who is ill and feverish in the script, was, in fact, actually very ill as a result of hypertension and other conditions afflicting Gunnar Bjornstrand -- Bergman ruthlessly exploited his leading man's real illness to achieve verisimilitude in the picture.)  Detailed information about six to eight weeks of editing is provided.  Bergman says that, if possible, always cut on movement although "there are ten-thousand exceptions to that rule."  Sjoman obliges his audience by showing four alternative versions of the scene with Max von Sydow, the feverish pastor, and the suicidal man's pregnant wife.  This is quite remarkable in that Sjoman actually preserves in the film different approaches to editing this crucial, indeed, pivotal scene, in which the pastor can't help the suicidally depressed man and, indeed, responds to his anguished words with silence.  Bergman prepares for bad reviews and seems to make excuses for potential failure.  He tells us that Through a Glass Darkly had excellent reviews and that critics tend to punish the movie following a big success with bad notices.  In fact, most of the reviews are pretty good and Bergman seems, more or less, pleased, although he perseverates on the negative reviews and blames those notices on the irreligious era in which he has released his movie.  

This documentary shows you everything that you can imagine about film production, but, in the end, is a bit disheartening.  Bergman is fanatically precise in his demands and, always, seems to know exactly what effect he is trying to achieve.  He controls every aspect of the production down to its tiniest detail -- for instance, the kinds of boots and socks that the characters wear.  Between shots, Bergman shows everyone sitting around drinking coffee and cracking wise -- to do serious work, Bergman insists, you have to be jovial and cheerful on your breaks and tell each other jokes.  Bergman's reduction of his rather elaborate script (it's written like an Ibsen play with detailed set descriptions) to celluloid is tedious and hard work -- Bergman says that once you start filming in the studio all the "joy and fascination" are gone.  "Filming," he says, "is just a job."  (This declaration directly contradicts earlier  interview comments in which Bergman maintains that a good director and cast discover new truths and meanings in the script when they work collaboratively to photograph the script -- but Bergman is constantly correcting, revising, and, even, contradicting his previous statements and, so, ultimately this elaborately detailed chronicle ends up being more enigmatic than informative.  The director Vilgot Sjoman is famous for his films I am Curious (Yellow) and I am Curious (Blue) -- sexually candid pictures that played for years in porno places throughout the United States despite being serious and angst-ridden Swedish art films and not pornographic at all.  Ingmar Bergman, who was apparently cruel and incredibly charismatic, doesn't have the self-promotional chops of Federico Fellini or Werner Herzog -- he looks like a well-groomed and ultra-articulate Swedish High School teacher and there is none of incandescent flare of madness that you see in those two directors.