Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Chapter I Life and Work
- Chapter II The Writer
- Chapter III The Filmmaker
- Chapter IV Filmography
- Chapter V Ingmar Bergman and the Media: Radio and Television Work
- Chapter VI Ingmar Bergman in the Theatre
- Chapter VII Theatre and Media Bibliography, 1940-2004
- Chapter VIII Interviews with Ingmar Bergman
- Chapter IX Works on Ingmar Bergman
- Chapter X Varia
- Indexes
Chapter III - The Filmmaker
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Chapter I Life and Work
- Chapter II The Writer
- Chapter III The Filmmaker
- Chapter IV Filmography
- Chapter V Ingmar Bergman and the Media: Radio and Television Work
- Chapter VI Ingmar Bergman in the Theatre
- Chapter VII Theatre and Media Bibliography, 1940-2004
- Chapter VIII Interviews with Ingmar Bergman
- Chapter IX Works on Ingmar Bergman
- Chapter X Varia
- Indexes
Summary
To follow a highly visible and prolific artist's production is to partake in the making of a creative persona, which may undergo different metamorphoses over the years, depending upon the kind and degree of mythmaking that particular cultural contexts help formulate. The public image of a young Ingmar Bergman in the emerging Swedish folkhem of the 1940s differs from the critical view of him in the politicized 1960s or the portrait of him as an aging artistic giant in the early 21st century. For just as personalities change and develop over the years, so do the esthetic and cultural interpretations of such personalities. Yet, in the case of Ingmar Bergman, the object himself has helped solidify his image through his own ability to shape his life into a legend.
One expressive aspect of his self-created persona lies in the way Bergman has used, again and again, his own childhood games as an entryway into an imaginary landscape. To the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, a toy projector in the nursery closet harbored features that would become important to him as a screen artist. In his essay from 1954 ‘Det att göra film’, he writes about the lifelong spell of his ‘little rickety projector’and about his sensuous recollection of his first encounter with it:
It was my first magic box. […] I have often wondered what fascinated me and still fascinates me in the same way. Something can occur to me in the film studio, or in the darkness of the editing room, when I have the small frame in front of me and the film strip running through my fingers, or during the fantastic birth process of mixing and the finished film slowly unveils its face.
[Det blev min första trollerilåda. […] Jag har ofta undrat över vad som fängslade mig så restlöst. Och vad det är som fortfarande fängslar mig på exakt samma sätt. Det kan komma över mig i ateljén eller i klipprummets skymning, då jag har den lilla bilden framför mig och filmbandet löpande mellan mina fingrar, eller under mixningens fantastiska födelseprocess, då den färdiga filmen långsamt avtäcker sitt ansikte.]
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- Information
- Ingmar BergmanA Reference Guide, pp. 131 - 154Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2005