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 I - Life and Work
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
The Family Setting
Some dates of birth seem auspicious from the start. Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born on Sunday, July 14, 1918. According to Swedish folklore, a child born on Sunday is gifted with second sight, whereas July 14 – Bastille Day – is one of those historical dates that have forever taken on symbolic meaning, signifying rebellion and protest. No astrological prediction could have been more appropriate in Bergman's case. When he burst onto the Swedish theatre and film scene in the early 1940s, two things became immediately clear: He was a remarkably intense and gifted young man drawn both to the stage and the screen, and he also had a vision aimed at penetrating beneath surface reality to reveal a world of metaphysical and depth-psychological dimensions. Above all, he was a rebel spirit who challenged established social and professional conventions. In youthful defiance he once declared:
It entails a great risk […] to stare yourself blind at the limits set up by the public and the critics, limits I do not recognize and that are not mine. […] I am glad I am not born with equal part reason and guts. […] Who says you can't make noise, tear down barriers, fight with windmills, send rockets to the moon, be shaken by visions, play with dynamite and cut morsels of flesh out of yourself and others? (‘Det att göra film/What is Filmmaking,’ 1954)
[Det medför en stor risk […] att stirra sig blind på de gränser som sätts upp av publiken och kritikerna, gränser jag inte erkänner och som inte är mina. […] Jag är glad att jag inte är född med lika delar förnuft och inälvor. […] Vem säger att man inte kan föra oväsen, riva ner barriärer, slåss mot väderkvarnar, skicka raketer till månen, skakas av visioner, leka med dynamit och skära bitar ur en själv och andra?]
Such a self-confident outburst belies, however, the fact that Ingmar Bergman's start in life was rather problematic. The middle child in a bourgeois clerical family, he was a sickly boy whose arrival in the world was overshadowed by a crisis in his parents’ marriage. His mother Karin had fallen out of love with her husband, Lutheran pastor Erik Bergman, who showed signs of a nervous condition, which affected family life.
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- Information
- Ingmar BergmanA Reference Guide, pp. 23 - 48Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2005