Early life

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala on 14 July 1918,^[8] the son of nurse Karin (née Åkerblom) and Lutheran minister (and later chaplain to the King of Sweden) Erik Bergman. His mother was of Walloon descent.^[9][10] The Bergman family was originally from Järvsö. On his father's side, Bergman was a descendant of the noble Bröms, Ehrenskiöld, and Stockenström clergy families of Finnish, German, and Swedish origin. His father also descended from the German noble families Flach and de Frese introduced at the Swedish Riddarhuset. Bergman's paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather were cousins, making his parents second cousins. On his mother's side, he was descended from Dutch merchant Paul Calwagen, who left Holland for Sweden in the 17th century; Paul's Dutch-Swedish wife, Maria van der Hagen, was a descendant of the court painter Laurens van der Plas. Bergman's mother was also a descendant of the noble Tigerschiöld and Weinholz families, as well as the Bure family.^[11][12]

Bergman as a young man

Bergman grew up with his older brother Dag and younger sister Margareta surrounded by religious imagery and discussion. His father was a conservative parish minister with strict ideas of parenting. Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting himself. "While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang, or listened", Ingmar wrote in his autobiography Laterna Magica, "I devoted my interest to the church's mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the coloured sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one's imagination could desire—angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans..." Although raised in a devout Lutheran household, Bergman later stated that he lost his faith at age eight, and came to terms with this fact while making Winter Light in 1962.^[13] His interest in theatre and film began early; at the age of nine, he traded a set of tin soldiers for a magic lantern. Within a year, he had created a private world by playing with this toy in which he felt completely at home. He fashioned his own scenery, marionettes, and lighting effects and gave puppet productions of Strindberg plays in which he spoke all the parts."^[14][15]

Bergman attended the Palmgren School as a teenager. His school years were unhappy,^[16] and he remembered them unfavourably in later years. In a 1944 letter concerning the film Torment (sometimes known as Frenzy), which sparked debate on the condition of Swedish high schools (and which Bergman had written),^[17] the school's principal Henning Håkanson wrote, among other things, that Bergman had been a "problem child".^[18] Bergman wrote in a response that he had strongly disliked the emphasis on homework and testing in his formal schooling.

In 1934, aged 16, he was sent to Germany to spend the summer holidays with family friends. He attended a Nazi rally in Weimar at which he saw Adolf Hitler.^[19] He later wrote in Laterna Magica (The Magic Lantern) about the visit to Germany, describing how the German family had put a portrait of Hitler on the wall by his bed, and that "for many years, I was on Hitler's side, delighted by his success and saddened by his defeats".^[20] Bergman commented that "Hitler was unbelievably charismatic. He electrified the crowd. ... The Nazism I had seen seemed fun and youthful."^[21] Bergman did two five-month stretches of mandatory military service in Sweden.^[22] He later reflected, "When the doors to the concentration camps were thrown open ... I was suddenly ripped of my innocence."^[21]

Bergman enrolled at Stockholm University College (later renamed Stockholm University) in 1937, to study art and literature. He spent most of his time involved in student theatre and became a "genuine movie addict".^[23] At the same time, a romantic involvement led to a physical confrontation with his father which resulted in a break in their relationship which lasted for many years. Although he did not graduate from the university, he wrote a number of plays and an opera, and became an assistant director at a local theatre. In 1942, he was given the opportunity to direct one of his own scripts, Caspar's Death. The play was seen by members of Svensk Filmindustri, which then offered Bergman a position working on scripts. He married Else Fisher in 1943.

Film career until 1975

Bergman in 1957

Bergman's film career began in 1941 with his work rewriting scripts, but his first major accomplishment was in 1944 when he wrote the screenplay for Torment (a.k.a. Frenzy) (Hets), a film directed by Alf Sjöberg. Along with writing the screenplay, he was also appointed assistant director of the film. In his second autobiographical book, Images: My Life in Film, Bergman describes the filming of the exteriors as his actual film directorial debut.^[24] The film sparked debate on Swedish formal education. When Henning Håkanson (the principal of the high school Bergman had attended) wrote a letter following the film's release, Bergman, according to scholar Frank Gado, disparaged in a response what he viewed as Håkanson's implication that students "who did not fit some arbitrary prescription of worthiness deserved the system's cruel neglect".^[17] Bergman also stated in the letter that he "hated school as a principle, as a system and as an institution. And as such I have definitely not wanted to criticize my own school, but all schools."^[25][26] The international success of this film led to Bergman's first opportunity to direct a year later. During the next ten years he wrote and directed more than a dozen films, including Prison (Fängelse) in 1949, as well as Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton) and Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika), both released in 1953.

Bergman and Victor Sjöström on the set of Wild Strawberries (1957)

Bergman first achieved worldwide success with Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende, 1955), which won for "Best poetic humour" and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes the following year. This was followed by The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) and Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället), released in Sweden ten months apart in 1957. The Seventh Seal won a special jury prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and Wild Strawberries won numerous awards for Bergman and its star, Victor Sjöström. Bergman continued to be productive for the next two decades. From the early 1960s, he spent much of his life on the island of Fårö, where he made several films.

In the early 1960s he directed three films that explored the theme of faith and doubt in God, Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en Spegel, 1961), Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna, 1962), and The Silence (Tystnaden, 1963). Critics created the notion that the common themes in these three films made them a trilogy or cinematic triptych. Bergman initially responded that he did not plan these three films as a trilogy and that he could not see any common motifs in them, but he later seemed to adopt the notion, with some equivocation.^[27][28] His parody of the films of Federico Fellini, All These Women (För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor) was released in 1964.^[29]

Persona (1966), starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, is a film Bergman considered one of his most important works. While the highly experimental film won few awards, it has been considered his masterpiece. Other films of the period include The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan, 1960), Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen, 1968), Shame (Skammen, 1968) and The Passion of Anna (En Passion, 1969). With his cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Bergman made use of a crimson color scheme for Cries and Whispers (1972), which received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.^[30] He also produced extensively for Swedish television at this time. Two works of note were Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap, 1973) and The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten, 1975).

Bergman with his long-time cinematographer Sven Nykvist during the production of Through a Glass Darkly (1960)

Tax evasion charges in 1976

On 30 January 1976, while rehearsing August Strindberg's The Dance of Death at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, he was arrested by two plainclothes police officers and charged with income tax evasion. The impact of the event on Bergman was devastating. He suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the humiliation, and was hospitalised in a state of deep depression.

The investigation was focused on an alleged 1970 transaction of 500,000 Swedish kronor (SEK) between Bergman's Swedish company Cinematograf and its Swiss subsidiary Persona, an entity that was mainly used for the paying of salaries to foreign actors. Bergman dissolved Persona in 1974 after having been notified by the Swedish Central Bank and subsequently reported the income. On 23 March 1976, the special prosecutor Anders Nordenadler dropped the charges against Bergman, saying that the alleged crime had no legal basis, saying it would be like bringing "charges against a person who has stolen his own car, thinking it was someone else's".^[31] Director General Gösta S Ekman, chief of the Swedish Internal Revenue Service, defended the failed investigation, saying that the investigation was dealing with important legal material and that Bergman was treated just like any other suspect. He expressed regret that Bergman had left the country, hoping that Bergman was a "stronger" person now when the investigation had shown that he had not done any wrong.^[32]

Although the charges were dropped, Bergman became disconsolate, fearing he would never again return to directing. Despite pleas by the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, high public figures, and leaders of the film industry, he vowed never to work in Sweden again. He closed down his studio on the island of Fårö, suspended two announced film projects, and went into self-imposed exile in Munich, West Germany. Harry Schein, director of the Swedish Film Institute, estimated the immediate damage as ten million SEK (kronor) and hundreds of jobs lost.^[33]

Aftermath following arrest

Bergman then briefly considered the possibility of working in America; his next film, The Serpent's Egg (1977) was a West German-U.S. production and his second English-language film (the first being The Touch, 1971). This was followed by a British-Norwegian co-production, Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, 1978) starring Ingrid Bergman (no relation) and Liv Ullmann, and From the Life of the Marionettes (Aus dem Leben der Marionetten, 1980) which was a British-West German co-production.

He temporarily returned to his homeland to direct Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander, 1982). Bergman stated that the film would be his last, and that afterwards he would focus on directing theatre. After that he wrote several film scripts and directed a number of television specials. As with previous work for television, some of these productions were later theatrically released. The last such work was Saraband (2003), a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage and directed by Bergman when he was 84 years old.

Although he continued to operate from Munich, by mid-1978 Bergman had overcome some of his bitterness toward the Swedish government. In July of that year he visited Sweden, celebrating his sixtieth birthday on the island of Fårö, and partly resumed his work as a director at Royal Dramatic Theatre. To honour his return, the Swedish Film Institute launched a new Ingmar Bergman Prize to be awarded annually for excellence in filmmaking.^[34] Still, he remained in Munich until 1984. In one of the last major interviews with Bergman, conducted in 2005 on the island of Fårö, Bergman said that despite being active during the exile, he had effectively lost eight years of his professional life.^[35]

Retirement and death

Bergman retired from filmmaking in December 2003. He had hip surgery in October 2006 and was making a difficult recovery. He died in his sleep^[36] at age 89; his body was found at his home on the island of Fårö, on 30 July 2007.^[37] It was the same day another renowned existentialist film director, Michelangelo Antonioni, died. The interment was private, at the Fårö Church on 18 August 2007. A place in the Fårö churchyard was prepared for him under heavy secrecy. Although he was buried on the island of Fårö, his name and date of birth were inscribed under his wife's name on a tomb at Roslagsbro churchyard, Norrtälje Municipality, several years before his death.

Repertory company

Bergman and actress Ingrid Thulin during the production of The Silence, 1963

Bergman developed a personal "repertory company" of Swedish actors whom he repeatedly cast in his films, including Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom, and Gunnar Björnstrand, each of whom appeared in at least five Bergman features. Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, who appeared in nine of Bergman's films and one televisual film (Saraband), was the last to join this group (in the film Persona), and ultimately became the most closely associated with Bergman, both artistically and personally. They had a daughter together, Linn Ullmann (born 1966).

In Bergman's working arrangement with Sven Nykvist, his best-known cinematographer, the two men developed sufficient rapport to allow Bergman not to worry about the composition of a shot until the day before it was filmed. On the morning of the shoot, he would briefly speak to Nykvist about the mood and composition he hoped for, and then leave Nykvist to work, lacking interruption or comment until post-production discussion of the next day's work.

Financing

A great number of Bergman's interior scenes were filmed at the Filmstaden studios north of Stockholm.

By Bergman's own account, he never had a problem with funding. He cited two reasons for this: one, that he did not live in the United States, which he viewed as obsessed with box-office earnings; and two, that his films tended to be low-budget affairs. (Cries and Whispers, for instance, was finished for about $450,000, while Scenes from a Marriage, a six-episode television feature, cost only $200,000.)^[38]

Technique

Bergman usually wrote his films' screenplays, thinking about them for months or years before starting the actual process of writing, which he viewed as somewhat tedious. His earlier films are carefully constructed and are either based on his plays or written in collaboration with other authors. Bergman stated that in his later works, when on occasion his actors would want to do things differently from his own intention, he would let them, noting that the results were often "disastrous" when he did not do so. As his career progressed, Bergman increasingly let his actors improvise their dialogue. In his later films, he wrote just the ideas informing the scene and allowed his actors to determine the exact dialogue. When viewing daily rushes, Bergman stressed the importance of being critical but unemotive, claiming that he asked himself not if the work was great or terrible, but rather if it was sufficient or needed to be reshot.^[38]

Subjects

Bergman's films usually deal with existential questions of mortality, loneliness, and religious faith. In addition to these cerebral topics, however, sexual desire features in the foreground of most of his films, whether the central event is medieval plague (The Seventh Seal), upper-class family activity in early twentieth century Uppsala (Fanny and Alexander), or contemporary alienation (The Silence). His female characters are usually more in touch with their sexuality than their male equivalents, and unafraid to proclaim it, sometimes with breathtaking overtness (as in Cries and Whispers) as would define the work of "the conjurer," as Bergman called himself in a 1960 TIME cover story.^[39] In an interview with Playboy in 1964, he said: "The manifestation of sex is very important, and particularly to me, for above all, I don't want to make merely intellectual films. I want audiences to feel, to sense my films. This to me is much more important than their understanding them." Film, Bergman said, was his demanding mistress.^[40] While he was a social democrat as an adult, Bergman stated that "as an artist I'm not politically involved ... I don't make propaganda for either one attitude or the other."^[41]

Bergman's views on his career

When asked in the series of interviews later titled "Ingmar Bergman – 3 dokumentärer om film, teater, Fårö och livet" conducted by Marie Nyreröd for Swedish TV and released in 2004, Bergman said that of his works, he held Winter Light,^[42] Persona, and Cries and Whispers^[43] in the highest regard. There he also states that he managed to push the envelope of film making in the films Persona and Cries and Whispers. Bergman stated on numerous occasions (for example in the interview book Bergman on Bergman) that The Silence meant the end of the era in which religious questions were a major concern of his films. Bergman said that he would get depressed by his own films: "jittery and ready to cry... and miserable."^[44] In the same interview he also stated: "If there is one thing I miss about working with films, it is working with Sven" (Nykvist), the third cinematographer with whom he had collaborated.

Theatrical work

Although Bergman was universally famous for his contribution to cinema, he was also an active and productive stage director throughout his life. During his studies at what was then Stockholm University College, he became active in its student theatre, where he made a name for himself early on. His first work after graduation was as a trainee-director at a Stockholm theatre. At twenty-six years, he became the youngest theatrical manager in Europe at the Helsingborg City Theatre. He stayed at Helsingborg for three years and then became the director at Gothenburg city theatre from 1946 to 1949.

He became director of the Malmö City Theatre in 1953, and remained for seven years. Many of his star actors were people with whom he began working on stage. He was the director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm from 1960 to 1966, and manager from 1963 to 1966, where he began a long-time collaboration with choreographer Donya Feuer.

After Bergman left Sweden because of the tax evasion incident, he became director of the Residenz Theatre of Munich, West Germany (1977–1984). He remained active in theatre throughout the 1990s and made his final production on stage with Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2003.^[45]

Marriages and children

The grave of Bergman and his last wife Ingrid

Bergman was married five times:

• 25 March 1943 – 1945, to Else Fisher (1 March 1918 – 3 March 2006), choreographer and dancer (divorced). Children:
  • Lena Bergman, actress, born 1943.
• 22 July 1945 – 1950, to Ellen Lundström (23 April 1919 – 6 March 2007), choreographer and film director (divorced). Children:
  • Eva Bergman, film director, born 1945
  • Jan Bergman, film director (1946–2000)
  • the twins Mats and Anna Bergman, both actors and film directors, born in 1948.
• 1951 – 1959, to Gun Grut (1916–1971), journalist (divorced). Children:
  • Ingmar Bergman Jr., retired airline captain, born 1951.
• 1959 – 1969, to Käbi Laretei (14 July 1922 – 31 October 2014), concert pianist (divorced). Children:
  • Daniel Bergman, film director, born 1962.
• 11 November 1971 – 20 May 1995, to Ingrid von Rosen (maiden name Karlebo). Children:
  • Maria von Rosen, author, born 1959.

The first four marriages ended in divorce, while the last ended when his wife Ingrid died of stomach cancer in 1995, aged 65. Aside from his marriages, Bergman had romantic relationships with actresses Harriet Andersson (1952–1955), Bibi Andersson (1955–1959), and Liv Ullmann (1965–1970). He was the father of writer Linn Ullmann with Ullmann. In all, Bergman had nine children, one of whom predeceased him. Bergman eventually married all the mothers of his children, with the exception of Liv Ullmann. His daughter with his last wife, Ingrid von Rosen, was born twelve years before their marriage. He had dozens of mistresses throughout his life and would justify the affairs to his various wives by telling them: "I have so many lives."^[46]

Although Bergman once described himself as one who had lost his faith in an afterlife, in 2000 he stated that a conversation he had with Erland Josephson helped him to believe that he would see Ingrid again. He said, "I'm not actually afraid of dying. On the contrary, really. I think it'll be interesting."^[47] In 2012, Max von Sydow stated in an interview that he had had many discussions with Bergman about religion which seemed to indicate that Bergman believed in an afterlife.^[48]

In an early draft of his autobiography, Bergman admitted to raping his then-girlfriend Karin Lannby. The portion was edited out for the final version.^[49]

Health

Bergman suffered from physical ailments such as insomnia and severe stomach problems dating back to childhood.^[50] He called his nervous stomach "a calamity as foolish as it is humiliating" and joked that the private lavatories he secured at the theatres in which he worked represented his "most lasting contribution to the history of theatre."^[51]