Each film is my last
The Ingmar Bergman Archives. Excerpt from the essay by Ingmar Bergman
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I have often sought a kind of notation that would give me a chance of recording the shade and tones of the ideas and the inner structure of the picture. If I could express myself thus clearly, I could work with the absolute certainty that whenever I liked, I could prove the relationship between the rhythm and the continuity of the part and the whole ... Let us state once and for all that the film script is a very imperfect technical basis for a film. Film is not the same thing as literature. As often as not the character and substance of the two art forms are in conflict.What it really depends on is hard to define, but it probably has to do with the self-responsive process. The written word is read and assimilated by a conscious act and in connection with the intellect, and little by little it plays on the imagination or feelings. It is completely different with the motion picture.When we see a film in a cinema we are conscious that an illusion has been prepared for us and we relax and accept it with our will and intellect.We prepare the way into our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings without touching the mind.
Let us state once and for all that the film script is a very imperfect technical basis for a film
There are many reasons why we ought to avoid filming existing literature, but the most important is that the irrational dimension, which is the heart of a literary work, is often untranslatable, and that in its turn kills the special dimension of the film. If despite this we wish to translate something literary into filmic terms, we are obliged to make an infinite number of complicated transformations that most often give limited or nonexistent results in relation to the efforts expended. I know what I am talking about because I have been subjected to so-called literary judgment. This is about as intelligent as letting a music critic judge an exhibition of paintings or a football reporter criticize a new play. The only reason for everyone believing himself capable of pronouncing a valid judgment on motion pictures is the inability of the film to assert itself as an art form, its need of a definite artistic vocabulary, its extreme youth in relation to the other arts, its obvious ties with economic realities, its direct appeal to the feelings. All this causes film to be regarded with disdain. Its directness of expression makes it suspect in certain eyes, and as a result anyone and everyone thinks he’s competent to say anything he likes, in whatever way he likes, about film art. I myself have never had ambitions to be an author. I do not wish to write novels, short stories, essays, biographies, or treatises on special subjects. I certainly do not want to write pieces for the theater. Filmmaking is what interests me. I want to make films about conditions, tensions, pictures, rhythms, and characters within me that in one way or another interest me. The motion picture and its complicated process of birth are my methods of saying what I want to my fellow men. I find it humiliating for work to be judged as a book when it is a film. Consequently the writing of the script is a difficult period, but useful, as it compels me to prove logically the validity of my ideas.While this is taking place I am caught in a difficult conflict between my need to find a way of filming a complicated situation and my desire for complete simplicity. As I do not intend my work to be solely for my own edification or for the few, but for the public in general, the demands of the public are imperative. Sometimes I try an adventurous alternative that shows that the public can appreciate the most advanced and complicated developments.
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
I have often sought a kind of notation that would give me a chance of recording the shade and tones of the ideas and the inner structure of the picture. If I could express myself thus clearly, I could work with the absolute certainty that whenever I liked, I could prove the relationship between the rhythm and the continuity of the part and the whole ... Let us state once and for all that the film script is a very imperfect technical basis for a film. Film is not the same thing as literature. As often as not the character and substance of the two art forms are in conflict.What it really depends on is hard to define, but it probably has to do with the self-responsive process. The written word is read and assimilated by a conscious act and in connection with the intellect, and little by little it plays on the imagination or feelings. It is completely different with the motion picture.When we see a film in a cinema we are conscious that an illusion has been prepared for us and we relax and accept it with our will and intellect.We prepare the way into our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings without touching the mind.
Let us state once and for all that the film script is a very imperfect technical basis for a film
There are many reasons why we ought to avoid filming existing literature, but the most important is that the irrational dimension, which is the heart of a literary work, is often untranslatable, and that in its turn kills the special dimension of the film. If despite this we wish to translate something literary into filmic terms, we are obliged to make an infinite number of complicated transformations that most often give limited or nonexistent results in relation to the efforts expended. I know what I am talking about because I have been subjected to so-called literary judgment. This is about as intelligent as letting a music critic judge an exhibition of paintings or a football reporter criticize a new play. The only reason for everyone believing himself capable of pronouncing a valid judgment on motion pictures is the inability of the film to assert itself as an art form, its need of a definite artistic vocabulary, its extreme youth in relation to the other arts, its obvious ties with economic realities, its direct appeal to the feelings. All this causes film to be regarded with disdain. Its directness of expression makes it suspect in certain eyes, and as a result anyone and everyone thinks he’s competent to say anything he likes, in whatever way he likes, about film art. I myself have never had ambitions to be an author. I do not wish to write novels, short stories, essays, biographies, or treatises on special subjects. I certainly do not want to write pieces for the theater. Filmmaking is what interests me. I want to make films about conditions, tensions, pictures, rhythms, and characters within me that in one way or another interest me. The motion picture and its complicated process of birth are my methods of saying what I want to my fellow men. I find it humiliating for work to be judged as a book when it is a film. Consequently the writing of the script is a difficult period, but useful, as it compels me to prove logically the validity of my ideas.While this is taking place I am caught in a difficult conflict between my need to find a way of filming a complicated situation and my desire for complete simplicity. As I do not intend my work to be solely for my own edification or for the few, but for the public in general, the demands of the public are imperative. Sometimes I try an adventurous alternative that shows that the public can appreciate the most advanced and complicated developments.
Page [1] [2]
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
Summer Interlude, 1951. Photo: Louis Huch, (c) Svensk Filmindustri
Around the mid-1930s, Ingmar Bergman and photographer Rolf Åhgren made the film script Drama in the Deserted House. (c) Svensk Filmindustri