Dreams and Memory in Three Bergman Movies
As usual, probably not as much research and editing as I should be doing, but hey I'm doing this for free take it or leave it
Alright what’s going on how’s everybody doing I know it’s been a minute but we’re back and I decided I want to write about movies. I just finished reading one of Ingmar Bergman’s autobiographies, Images: My Life in Film, published in 1990 and translated by Marianne Ruuth. I love movies, but I’m better versed in the history and conventions of visual art. I have not seen everything in his extensive catalogue, but Bergman has always been one of my favorite directors for his lighting, his incredible close ups, and his actors’ expressive performances. I like that his movies tend to come from a deeply personal place, but typically make a reach for the universal.
The book was cool. It’s a straightforward premise—Bergman rewatched all of his movies for the first time, and in the book he reflects on his memories of making them. He uses excerpts of old correspondence and workbooks as a starting point and comments on what has changed since the time of making each movie. He dips into self-mythicization at times, but on the whole it comes off clear-headed. It was useful for me to read which efforts he thought were successful and to see how his personal life came into his screenplays and directing. Reading the book prompted me to rewatch some old favorites and to stream two big ones by him that I hadn’t seen before, Wild Strawberries (1957) and Cries and Whispers (1971). After watching them, I thought it made the most sense to talk about these two movies in context with each other and with possibly my favorite movie, Persona (1965). It’s also convenient that these three movies span a decade of immense productivity. Furthermore, they’re all tied together by the theme of the dream.
Starting Point: A Dream Play
I want to use the playwright and artist August Strindberg’s introductory note to his expressionist drama, A Dream Play as a starting point, which is also how Pauline Kael begins her ambivalent review of Cries and Whispers. As Kael notes in her review, Bergman staged a successful production of Strindberg’s play. Bergman was strongly influenced by Strindberg’s work, calling him his “companion through life.” There’s a lot more to unpack about Bergman and Strindberg that I’m not equipped to deal with, but this essay goes into greater detail about it.
Anyway, here is the quotation, a description of Strindberg’s play, which, as Kael suggests, doubles as a description of how Bergman approaches movies:
“The author has sought to reproduce the disconnected but apparently logical form of a dream. Anything can happen; everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist; on a slight groundwork of reality, imagination spins and weaves new patterns made up of memories, experiences, unfettered fancies, absurdities, and improvisations.
The characters are split, double, and multiply; they evaporate, crystallize, scatter, and converge. But a single consciousness holds sway over them all — that of the dreamer. For him there are no secrets, no incongruities, no scruples, and no law.”
I want to highlight a few things here.
1) the narrative is disjointed and nonlinear but held together by the logic of a dreamer, who is the author.
2) There is a flattening of time and space.
3) Characters multiply and converge
In Strindberg’s description, the shifting reality of the narrative universe is held together by a single single subjective consciousness, the dreamer. Bergman was a successful stage director in his on right, but I think he found it easier to approach this idea through film, which allows for the cutting of time through editing and the cropping of space through camera framing, two things which are impossible in plays. Bergman has been criticized in the past for lack of formal invention and for his movies being too stage-like. Here, I would like to argue that across these three movies, Bergman negotiates a dream-like atmosphere precisely through formal innovation. The scripts might read like plays, but the way he achieves this effect can only be done through film.
Dreams in Bergman’s movies are a personal matter. The dreams experienced by Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries of seeing a body fall out of a coffin only to realize it’s his own body and his dream of being unprepared for an exam are both Bergman’s own. He describes the genesis of Cries and Whispers as an “image obstinately resurfacing: Four women dressed in white in a big red room” (83). One of Kael’s problems with Cries and Whispers is that the women are stuck in their roles, unable to escape the stereotypes they’re confined to. It’s true that all four women work as archetypes—he writes this in his workbook. Agnes is “the dying one,” Maria “the most beautiful one,” Karin “the strongest one,” Anna “the serving one” (94). I might be giving him too much credit, but I think the characters are deliberately flat (though brought alive by four incredible performances). These characters don’t act like real people because they’re trapped in their roles. The three movies are all from the perspective of the dreamer, stuck in the disconnected but apparently logical form of the dream.
In these three films, Bergman takes great steps to collapse time and space and to tangle reality and imagination in a way that feels seamless or holds coherently. He writes this much in his recollection of making Wild Strawberries: “In Wild Strawberries I move effortlessly and rather spontaneously between different planes—time-space, dream reality” (22). At the beginning of Wild Strawberries Borg dreams of a coffin falling out of a carriage, a hand reaches from the coffin and grabs his hand, and he sees the person in the coffin is him. Later, he gets lost in childhood memories in the patch of wild strawberries at the house he used to summer at. The hitchhiker he picks up, is played by Bibi Andersson, who also plays Sara, his childhood love. Dreams, memory, and characters merge and blend together. After Borg accepts his award, he recalls his childhood again. Sara leads him through the forest to an opening where he can see his mother and father fishing from across the water. They wave to him. This striking final image is an act of resolution of Isak Borg’s troubled past and a turn to forgiveness. At the same time, it emphasizes a loss. He can never go back. The movie ends in a memory. He is stuck in a dream of the past, begging for forgiveness. In these three movies we see characters going deeper into the dream or into the past to try to find themselves. We also see characters stuck somewhere both in the past and out of time.
Persona takes greater steps towards the suppression/confusion of time to show a loss of self. The movie operates in the logic and tone of a dream but doesn’t include any actual dream sequences aside from the opaque opening sequence of the young boy reaching towards the blank screen, watching the formulation of the self. Vogler doesn’t speak because the truth has disappeared. In his workbook for that movie, Bergman writes, “The time and space factors must be of secondary significance. One second must be able to stretch itself out over a long period of time and contain a handful of lines strewn without any apparent connection” (54). A few sentences later, he comments on achieving this effect in retrospect: “This problem is evident in the completed film. The actors move in and out of rooms without transfer distances. Whenever suitable, an occurrence is prolonged or shorted. The conception of time is suspended” (54).
Truth is absent, Alma and Elisabet Vogler lose their identities in each other, and the interruption of time through deliberately prolonging and shortening sequences achieves this effect. This is also done through the dominant formal image of Persona—floating heads, unanchored in the foreground or background. Without spatial context, it is more difficult for the viewer to tell what experience is subjective to whom—just as Elizabet and Alma lose themselves in each other. Furthermore, the formal motif of floating heads, brilliantly and consistently rendered in half lighting throughout the movie by Sven Nyquist allows for a reconciliation at the end. The two halves of the characters’ faces are montaged together into one face. Like the final dream image of Wild Strawberries, this embodies both a loss and a restitution of self. There is a whole again, but it is not the same and there is no going back. Additionally, in Persona, the confrontation of a living person with a seemingly dead body prompts a revelation. He repeats this conceit in Cries and Whispers.
Cries and Whispers seeks to merge the effortless transition between dream and reality of Wild Strawberries with the temporal loss achieved in Persona, while adapting to the new paradigm of color film. On his blog, David Bordwell notes a formal change during the shift from black and white movies to color. In Bordwell’s rough outline, directors built on the conventions of the 1940s by using wide angle lenses to enhance staging and framing. A figure could be in close focus in the foreground while background action remained in focus. Bergman built on this strategy in persona by keeping two faces in focus, but intentionally rendering the setting indistinguishable Color filmmaking and widescreen formats made the use of a wide angle lens untenable, so directors shifted towards open staging, long lenses, and increased use of zooms. Like other color films of the period, Cries and Whispers has an increased reliance on open staging, long lenses and zooms. Bordwell notes a specific example of Anna’s childhood memory, where the camera zooms in on her walking through curtains.
Despite these changes in medium conditions, Bergman maintains the dream atmosphere in Cries and Whispers with abundant diffusions of red and seamless flashbacks. There is a sense that all of the characters are trapped in this old manor and they’re slowly killing each other. Cries and Whispers ends with Anna reading Agnes’s diary after Agnes’s death, reflecting on a pleasant day when they all went to sit on the swing together. As she reads, Anna both imagines and recalls a beautiful memory that the four women share. In this final scene, dreams, imagination, and memory all operate in the present tense. This recollection renders a loss whole, while emphasizing what is lost. They cannot go back. This functions the same as Borg’s childhood recollection in Wild Strawberries and the same as the merging of Alma and Elisabet’s faces in Persona.
The atmosphere described in Strindberg’s Dream Play, rendered using the tools of a changing movie medium, offered Bergman a way to address the past by blurring distinctions between time/space, dream/reality, and of character’s identities in a tonally seamless way, rendered in an increasingly ambitious scale from when he started Wild Strawberries to when he finished Cries and Whispers.
I know I’m stuck here, but how can I get out?
Plot synopses of the three movies are pasted below for context, taken from the Bergman book.
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) is to receive an honorary degree at Lund University on his fiftieth anniversary as a professor. During the night he dreams that he finds himself in an unknown, empty city. A coffin falls off a wagon. A hand reaches out from the coffin and grabs hold of him. He seems himself lying in the coffin.
Instead of flying from Stockholm to Lund, borg decides to drive there. He is accompanied by his daughter-in-law, Marianne (Ingrid Thulin). During the trip Marianne tells him about her relationship with Evald (Gunnar Bjornstrand) and comments on the icy relationship between her father-in-law and her husband. Isak stops the car by a forest. He tells her that he and his siblings used to stay there every summer, a long, long time ago. Marianne wants to go for a swim and sets out for the lake. Isak gets lost in his memories. He sees his brother Sigfrid kiss Sara (Bibi Andersson), who was Isak’s beloved.
He is awakened by a young girl looking for a ride. Her name is also Sara. She and her companions, Anders and Viktor, are given a ride. They come close to colliding with another car, which veers into a ditch. The driver and his wife are given a ride by Borg. Between the new passengers, Mr. and Mrs. Alman, a marital fight breaks out. It reaches such violence that Marianne asks them to get out of the car. After lunch Isak Borg visits his old mother. Continuing on the drive, he dreams again: he loses Sara to Sigfrid. He is called in for an academic examination by Mr. Alman, who accuses him of emotional frigidity. In a forest he sees his dead wife meet her lover. Marianne tells Isak that she is pregnant and that the reason for her marital crisis is that Evald does not want this new responsibility. Borg is awarded his honorary degree. When he goes to bed, the young people to whom he gave a lift stand outside his window, congratulating him. He speaks with Evald and Marianne. He remembers his childhood again. He and Sara arrive at a place where the wild strawberries grow. On the other side of the bay he sees his father and mother. They wave to him. (pp. 406-407).
Persona (1965)
After a performance, the actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) totally stops communicating with anyone. She is in a hospital. She is not ill but has chosen to enter an existence of complete silence. Together with her nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson), she goes to stay on an island. The two women confront each other in different situations and grow closer and closer. Their interaction becomes a game of identities. They slide toward—and into—each other. (417).
Cries and Whispers (1971)
With the ringing of bells and red colors, with cries and whispers, the day dawns in a residential park. By Agnes’s (Harriet Andersson) sickbed, her sister Maria (Liv Ullmann) has kept vigil all night. Agnes awakens. She writes in her diary. Anna (Kari Sylwan), the servant, serves coffee. The third sister, Karin (Ingrid Thulin), enters the room. The physician, David (Erland Josephson), makes a house call. He tells Karin that the end is near. When David is ready to go, Maria calls for him. They fall into each other’s arms.
Flashback: Anna’s daughter has taken ill, and Maria has called the doctor. After his examination of the child, Maria invites David to stay for a meal. Her husband, Joakim, is staying in town, and Agnes and Karin are in Italy. The guest room is readied for David; Maria comes to him. In the morning she tells her husband that she called the doctor. When she later knocks on the door to his office, she finds him with a knife in his chest. He begs her to help him.
In the present, it is now evening. Agnes calls for Anna, who comes to her bed and crawls in with her. Agnes is in pain. Anna consoles her. During the night Anna awakens the sisters. Agnes has taken a turn for the worse. The sisters wash her and change her nightgown. She falls asleep while Maria reads to her from The Pickwick Papers. Agnes’s death struggle ensues. Anna stays close to her. In the adjacent room her sisters Karin and Maria wait. A priest comes to pray for Agnes’s soul.
Flashback: Karin and her husband, Fredrik, are staying temporarily at the manor (where they are now). They sit at the dinner table, silent. Karin breaks a wine glass. Karin gets ready for bed. Alone, she wounds herself by putting a sliver of glass—to damage and be damaged—inside her vagina. She walks into the bedroom to her husband.
In the present, Maria is caressing her sister Karin’s cheek. Reluctantly Karin lets her do it. Then she accuses Maria of being false. In the dark house Anna hears screams. She goes in to Agnes, who says “I’m dead but I can’t leave you.” In icy terror, her two sisters reject her. Anna stays with the crying Agnes. After the funeral Karin and Maria get ready to leave. Anna remains, now alone in the house. She reads in Agnes’s diary about her gratefulness towards life (pp. 425-26).