Each film is my last
The Ingmar Bergman Archives. Excerpt from the essay by Ingmar Bergman
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Experience should be gained before one reaches 40, a wise man said. After 40 it is permissible to comment. The reverse might apply in my case—no one was more certain of his theories and none more willing to elucidate them than I was. No one knew better or could visualize more. Now that I am somewhat older I have become rather more cautious. The experience I have gained and that I am now sorting out is of such a kind that I am unwilling to express myself on the art of the filmmaker... The only real contribution the artist can make is his work. Thus I find it rather unseemly to get involved in discussion, even with explanations or excuses.
In earlier times, the fact that the artist remained unknown was a good thing. His relative anonymity was a guarantee against irrelevant outside influences, material considerations, and the prostitution of his talents. In life today, the artist has become a curious figure, a kind of performer or athlete who chases from job to job. His isolation, his now almost holy individualism, his artistic subjectivity can all too easily cause ulcers and neurosis. Exclusiveness becomes a curse he eulogizes. The unusual is both his pain and his satisfaction ...
The vital thing is the dialogue, but dialogue is a sensitive matter that can offer resistance
The making of the script often begins with something very hazy and indefinite—a chance remark or a quick change of phrase, a dim but pleasant event that is not specifically related to the actual situation. It has happened in my theatrical work that I have visualized performers in fresh makeup but in yet-unplayed roles. All in all, split-second impressions that disappear as quickly as they come, forming a brightly colored thread sticking out of the dark sack of the unconscious. If I wind up this thread carefully a complete film will emerge, brought out with pulsebeats and rhythms characteristic of just that film. Through these rhythms the picture sequences take on patterns according to the way they were born and mastered by the motive.
The feeling of failure occurs mostly before the writing begins. The dreams turn into cobwebs; the visions fade and become gray and insignificant; the pulsebeat is silent; everything shrinks into tired fancies without strength and reality. But I have decided to make a certain film and the hard work must begin: to transfer rhythms, moods, atmosphere, tensions, sequences, tones, and scents into a readable or at least understandable script. This is difficult but not impossible.
The vital thing is the dialogue, but dialogue is a sensitive matter that can offer resistance. The written dialogue of the theater is like a score that is almost incomprehensible to the ordinary person; interpretation demands a technical knack and a certain amount of imagination and feeling. One can write dialogue, but how it should be handled, the rhythms and the tempo, the speed at which it is to be taken, and what is to take place between the lines—all that must be left out, because a script containing so much detail would be unreadable. I can squeeze directions and locations, characterizations and atmosphere, into my film scripts in understandable terms, but then I come to essentials, by which I mean montage, rhythm, and the relation of one picture to the other—the vital "third dimension" without which the film is merely dead, a factory product. Here I cannot use "keys" or show an adequate indication of the tempos of the complexes involved; it is impossible to give a comprehensible idea of what puts life into a work of art.
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
Experience should be gained before one reaches 40, a wise man said. After 40 it is permissible to comment. The reverse might apply in my case—no one was more certain of his theories and none more willing to elucidate them than I was. No one knew better or could visualize more. Now that I am somewhat older I have become rather more cautious. The experience I have gained and that I am now sorting out is of such a kind that I am unwilling to express myself on the art of the filmmaker... The only real contribution the artist can make is his work. Thus I find it rather unseemly to get involved in discussion, even with explanations or excuses.
In earlier times, the fact that the artist remained unknown was a good thing. His relative anonymity was a guarantee against irrelevant outside influences, material considerations, and the prostitution of his talents. In life today, the artist has become a curious figure, a kind of performer or athlete who chases from job to job. His isolation, his now almost holy individualism, his artistic subjectivity can all too easily cause ulcers and neurosis. Exclusiveness becomes a curse he eulogizes. The unusual is both his pain and his satisfaction ...
The vital thing is the dialogue, but dialogue is a sensitive matter that can offer resistance
The making of the script often begins with something very hazy and indefinite—a chance remark or a quick change of phrase, a dim but pleasant event that is not specifically related to the actual situation. It has happened in my theatrical work that I have visualized performers in fresh makeup but in yet-unplayed roles. All in all, split-second impressions that disappear as quickly as they come, forming a brightly colored thread sticking out of the dark sack of the unconscious. If I wind up this thread carefully a complete film will emerge, brought out with pulsebeats and rhythms characteristic of just that film. Through these rhythms the picture sequences take on patterns according to the way they were born and mastered by the motive.
The feeling of failure occurs mostly before the writing begins. The dreams turn into cobwebs; the visions fade and become gray and insignificant; the pulsebeat is silent; everything shrinks into tired fancies without strength and reality. But I have decided to make a certain film and the hard work must begin: to transfer rhythms, moods, atmosphere, tensions, sequences, tones, and scents into a readable or at least understandable script. This is difficult but not impossible.
The vital thing is the dialogue, but dialogue is a sensitive matter that can offer resistance. The written dialogue of the theater is like a score that is almost incomprehensible to the ordinary person; interpretation demands a technical knack and a certain amount of imagination and feeling. One can write dialogue, but how it should be handled, the rhythms and the tempo, the speed at which it is to be taken, and what is to take place between the lines—all that must be left out, because a script containing so much detail would be unreadable. I can squeeze directions and locations, characterizations and atmosphere, into my film scripts in understandable terms, but then I come to essentials, by which I mean montage, rhythm, and the relation of one picture to the other—the vital "third dimension" without which the film is merely dead, a factory product. Here I cannot use "keys" or show an adequate indication of the tempos of the complexes involved; it is impossible to give a comprehensible idea of what puts life into a work of art.
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New!
The Ingmar Bergman Archives
Hardcover + DVD, 41.1 x 30 cm (16.2 x 11.8 in.), 592 pages
$ 200.00
$ 200.00
The complete works of Ingmar Bergman: an homage to one of the most esteemed film and theater artists of all time, began in cooperation with Bergman himself and made with full access to his archives
The Seventh Seal, 1957. Photo: Louis Huch, (c) Svensk Filmindustri
Summer with Monika, 1953. Photo: Louis Huch, (c) Svensk Filmindustri