Image My Life in Film

by Marianne Ruuth

  I think we should not even try to look for any kind of explanation. The person who has come to pay a visit is there, and that suffices.

  I wonder if Agnes should not be welcomed by one of her sisters who is pale, small, and full of wisdom. A sister who will accompany her and who grows fond of her.

  The only thing is, she will offer weird explanations and will never explain what Agnes wants to know. She will wear glasses and have a harsh little laugh but be endowed with great tenderness and friendliness, and then she’ll have some slight defect — trouble swallowing, I suspect, or something similar.

  It must not be done academically, so that Agnes meets first one sister, then another, and then the third; that will be boring.

  The farther she goes into this house, the more she will get in touch with herself. She will evolve in these dark-red rooms, which I am going to describe in detail, and, naturally, she will have an air of constant astonishment; no, she won’t be astonished at all — everything will seem perfectly natural to her.

  August 15:

  There is going to be a theme and different movements. For instance, the first movement will be about “this tangle of lies.” It will probably turn out that each of these women will represent one movement, and the first movement will be a variation on this theme: “This tangle of lies” will go on for twenty minutes without interruption. The words will ultimately become meaningless, and the behavior will be out of sync; illogical forces that one cannot account for will come into play. It’s possible to take away all the explanatory parts, all unnecessary and supportive lines and positions. “This tangle of lies.”

  First movement.

  August 21:

  Everything is red. As an additional slightly odd bonus, the man in charge of publicity in America for The Touch sent me a big book about a woman painter, Leonor Fini, and in her studies of women one finds both Agnes von Krusenstjerna and some notion of my description of Cries and Whispers. A strange coincidence. But overall, I felt that her painting was mostly a perfumed warning example.

  All my films can be thought in black and white, except for Cries and Whispers. In the screenplay, I say that I have thought of the color red as the interior of the soul. When I was a child, I saw the soul as a shadowy dragon, blue as smoke, hovering like an enormous winged creature, half bird, half fish. But inside the dragon everything was red.

  Six months are to pass before I return to Cries and Whispers.

  March 21, 1971:

  Have read through what I have written about Whispering Cries. On some points things are somewhat clearer, but by and large the concept is unchanged since the last time. Anyway, the theme attracts me as strongly as before.

  The scenes must be wedged into each other in a totally self-evident manner. What is actually happening is probably the following: Afternoon, silence. The picture moves from room to room. Large, red rooms filled with furniture, clocks, things. In the distance somebody is disengaged. That is Sofia who moves around, far away and with great difficulty. Calls out for Anna. The bedroom door. Sofia is put to bed to rest. She is afraid of lying down. Afraid of everything around her.

  Sofia is frightened and puts up a heartbreaking battle against death. She has enormous spiritual strength. Nobody is stronger than she.

  Kristina is a widow whose marriage had not been easy. Was she really? And if so, why? Is that really interesting? I think I’m off on the wrong path. More important things are at stake. Find out instead what makes this film so necessary.

  Brief impressions:

  Maria and Kristina are sitting across from each other; they have both been crying; both are expressing despair and profound affection. They are holding hands, their faces touch.

  Evening. Lena walks into the room of the person who is dying, takes care of her, lies down beside her, and offers her breast.

  Kristina: “Everything is just a tangle of lies.” Before going to the bedroom where her husband is waiting for her, she crushes a glass, which she inserts in her vagina, as much to be hurt as to hurt.

  Maria, in love with herself, completely absorbed by her own beauty and her body’s matchless perfection, spends hours in front of her mirror. Her little cough. Her tentative politeness. Her nearsightedness, and her gentleness.

  (A consoling film, a film offering solace. If only I could achieve something of that sort, it would be a tremendous load off my chest. Otherwise, it’s hardly worth making this film.)

  March 30:

  What if Agnes were the one who is dying, and her sisters come to see her. And the only one who takes care of her is Lena. Agnes’s lucidity, her fear of death — her readiness and her humble spirit — her fragility and strength.

  From the filming of Cries and Whispers. With Ingrid Thulin. Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, and Sven Nykvist. Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ull-mann. The three sisters.

  I wrote Cries and Whispers from the end of March until the beginning of June 1971, during an almost hermetic isolation on Fårö Island. At the same time, the drama surrounding Ingrid von Rosen’s breakup of her eighteen-year marriage was taking place. In September we began shooting the film. In November, when the film was finished, Ingrid and I were married.

  April 20:

  I cannot allow myself to get so upset because Ingrid tells me about some new phase of our personal drama. I have to do my best to keep my screenplay and my thoughts together. Damn it, I have to remind myself that something will always be happening. I have to keep on working in spite of it. The days are long; big clear days. Substantial, like cows, a kind of damn large animal.

  AGNES

  the dying one

  MARIA

  he most beautiful one

  KARIN

  the strongest one

  ANNA

  the serving one

  No emotions regarding Death. Let it appear, reveal it in all its ugliness, give it its voice, its majesty.

  With the mourners and Anders Ek at the deathbed.

  Now comes THE STEP that has to be taken. Agnes dies at the beginning of the drama. Yet she is not dead. She is lying in the room, in her bed; she calls out to the others, the tears streaming down her cheeks. Take me, keep me warm! Stay with me! Don’t abandon me. The only one who pays any attention to her cries and offers her tenderness is Anna, who tries to warm her with her own body.

  The two sisters are standing motionless, turned toward the dawn; they listen, terrified, to the lament of the one who is dead.

  But now it is quiet in the room. They look at each other, but they can hardly see each other’s faces in the pale light of dawn.

  I am going to cry now.

  No, you are not going to cry.

  Maria turns toward the mirror with her hand extended, and it is as if her hand is a stranger. She cries out: My hand has become a stranger to me; I can’t feel it anymore.

  Karin is the abandoned one. She is the one who is deeply wounded but also has trouble between her legs, like paralysis that begins in her womb and rises to her breasts. Sudden disgust.

  Maria is slightly enigmatic. I can see her clearly, but she moves away all the time.

  Agnes has always been alone since she has always been ill. But in her there is no bitterness, no cynicism, no disgust.

  Here, in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity. It oozes out of me like a broken tube of toothpaste; it doesn’t want to stay within the confines of my body. A strange feeling of weight and volume. Soul volume perhaps, which rises like clouds of smoke and envelops my body.

  April 22:

  I believe that the film — or whatever it is — consists of this poem: a human being dies but, as in a nightmare, gets stuck halfway through and pleads for tenderness, mercy, deliverance, something. Two other human beings are there, and their actions, their thoughts are in relation to the dead, not-dead, dead. The third person saves her by gently rocking, so she can find peace, by going with her part of the way.

  I believe this is the poem or the invention, or whatever you want
to call it. It requires both rigor and a keen ear. Which means that I can’t take anything lightly but also that I don’t suddenly tie myself up in knots.

  April 23:

  Today, during my regular daily walk, these women acquired the power of speech and they stated clearly that they also wanted to talk. That they really wanted to have the proper opportunity to make themselves heard and if they didn’t, then we’d never reach the goal we were aiming for.

  One scene I envision is when the sisters, with infinite care, take their sick little sister out to the park to look at the autumn, to revisit the old swing where they used to sit together when they were children.

  One scene I envision is the dinner the two sisters are eating together: they are silent, dignified, dressed in black. Anna is there, too, silently waiting on the table.

  One scene I envision is when the sisters, in a state of despair, touch each other’s faces and hands, unable to speak.

  April 26:

  I ought to dedicate this film to Agnes von Krusenstjerna. I believe that when I reread her novels I received the strangest, most palpable impulses.

  April 28:

  Is it beginning to open up a little now, or is it still standing with its back to me, refusing to speak to me? (Remember, Bergman, you are going to work with four women who know the score! And who will also be capable of portraying everything!)

  April 30:

  Perhaps I should write a line or two, even today, in spite of this headache, this equanimity, and this small measure of disappointment and boredom. But my morning walk was good. Now I don’t think about The Touch anymore. It bores me to death.

  Sometimes I have the vague idea of producing a unity, flowing without interruptions, without “scenes,” if only I could get to that point!

  Everything unnecessary is wrong. The only thing necessary is what is unique, unshakable.

  The prologue with the four women in the red room, dressed in white.

  Agnes dead, with all the necessary sharpness of details.

  Harriet Andersson as Agnes.

  Agnes is not dead.

  What happens when Agnes is not dead but calls for help?

  Anna’s sacrifice.

  The two women outside the door. Agnes’s lament ceases. Her altered limbs, stiffening.

  The epilogue: The four women come and go in the room; now they are dressed in black. Agnes is dead; she stands in the middle of the room, holding her face in her hands.

  (All right now, it’s been decided once and for all; the die is cast. Either that or nothing. I can’t abandon an image that has haunted me so long and so stubbornly. It just can’t be wrong. Even if my common sense, or whatever kind of second-rate mechanism, keeps advising me to drop the whole project…)

  That’s the way it is.

  May 12:

  Writing a screenplay is like a long, affectionate message to the actors and the technicians. I think that’s fine. To comment throughout on what is seen, on what is happening. To toss overboard all verbiage. To keep in close contact always with those who are going to make the film.

  May 23:

  I believe I’m off on the wrong track. From the concrete, fluid dream that was unfolding, I have been derailed into some kind of boring, psychologizing, elaborate description, without any substance or excitement. That must not happen, and that explains to some extent my malaise and my feeling that I’m working in vain.

  In the park of Taxinge castle.

  May 26:

  The doctor pays a call. He is heavy, pale, friendly, frigid. He cures Anna’s little girl. Maria’s daughter sleeps quietly in a nicely decorated nursery. Seduction. The doctor and Maria in front of the mirror; by the way, he calls her “Marie” the whole time. The husband threatens to shoot himself. He is fully aware that she is unfaithful to him, etc., etc.

  On that subject, today I weigh five tons and a few hundred kilos more.

  When the filming began in the fall of 1971, we had found an ideal location, Taxinge castle, outside of Mariefred. Inside it was totally dilapidated, but there was ample space for everything we needed: dining room, storage area, technical spaces, location sites, and administration offices. We stayed at the hotel in Mariefred. We didn’t show the dailies in a movie theater but at the editing table that had been adjusted and arranged for that purpose.

  The color had been carefully tested. When Sven Nykvist and I began to shoot in color, we had tested everything that possibly could be tested; not only the makeup, the hair, the costumes, but every object, wallcovering, the upholstery, every inch of carpeting. Everything had been controlled down to the last detail. Everything we planned to use for exterior shots had also been tested. The same was true for the makeup for the exteriors. There was not one detail that, in the course of our preparations, had not been presented to the camera.

  When four extraordinary actresses are brought together, fatal emotional collisions can easily result. But the women were good, loyal, and helpful. Besides, most important, they were all incredibly talented. I have absolutely no reason to complain. And I’m happy to report that I did not.

  THE SILENCE WAS ORIGINALLY called Timoka. That was pure coincidence. I saw the title of an Estonian book without knowing what the word meant. I thought it was a good name for a foreign city. In fact, the word means “belonging to the executioner.”

  A note in my workbook, dated September 12, 1961:

  On my way to Rättvik and Siljansborg to scout out locations for Winter Light. Evening. Nykvist and I discuss lighting. The whole complex of sensations that occurs when our car meets an oncoming car or passes another car. It brings to my mind the unwilled dream, the dream without beginning or end, which leads nowhere and refuses to let itself be revealed. Four strong young women are pushing a wheelchair. In it an old male skeleton, old as the hills, is sitting, a ghost. The old man has had a stroke, is deaf and almost blind. The young women push him in the sunshine, laughing and talking. In the sunshine beneath the flowering fruit trees. One of the women trips and falls beside the wheelchair. The others laugh uncontrollably.

  In the following notation is hidden the first outline of The Silence:

  The old man walks through Siljansborg Hotel. He is going to take communion; he stands for a moment in the open door between the dark room and the light room with the golden wallpaper. Strong sunlight on his head, and his cheek, blue from the cold. A red flower is resplendent on a rococo dresser. Over it hangs a portrait of Queen Victoria. The old hospital with its treatment rooms and equipment. The flat-footed Frida, the sunlamps, the baths. The dead body topples out of the toy closet in the nursery.

  “On our way home to Sweden after a long trip abroad.” Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom with Jörgen Lindstrom in The Silence.

  My brother and I had a tall closet in our room, painted white. I often dreamed that I opened the doors. Out would fall an incredibly old man, a corpse.

  The pornographic book with the red cover, the funeral chapel with its yellow light through hazy windows. The smell of faded flowers, embalming fluids, and tears on mourning veils, damp handkerchiefs. The one who is dying is speaking about food, of pig’s throat and excrements. He can still move his fingers.

  While the notes progress, a boy makes his way into the story. The old man and a very young boy are traveling:

  I and my friend, the aging poet, are on our way home to Sweden after a long trip abroad. Suddenly he suffers a hemorrhage and loses consciousness. We therefore have to stop in the nearest city. A doctor explains through a translator that my friend needs immediate surgery and therefore has to be admitted to a hospital. That is what happened. I took a room at a nearby hotel and visited him every day. During this time he was forever writing poems. I spent the days sightseeing in this gray, dusty, dreary city. Sirens that scream for no apparent reason from the roofs of the buildings, the bells ringing, the variety theater with its pornographic stage show. The poet has begun to learn the incomprehensible language of the country.

  With Jörgen Lin
dström in the hotel corridor.

  It could also be a husband and wife with a child on a journey, and the husband takes ill. The wife visits the city, and the boy has his experiences in the hotel room all alone or spies on his mother in the corridors.

  The foreign city is a motif that has stalked me for a long time. Before The Silence I wrote the outline for a film that was never made. It dealt with a couple of acrobats who have lost their partner and are caught in some German city, Hanover or Duisburg. The time is toward the end of the Second World War. During the course of repeated bombings, their relationship begins to fall apart.

  Within this outline is concealed not only The Silence but The Serpent’s Egg as well. And the idea of the lost partner also reappears in The Ritual (The Rite).

  If I dig deep enough, I believe that the root of the city theme comes from a short story by Sigfrid Siwertz. The Circle, published in 1907, includes a couple of stories that take place in Berlin. One of them, entitled “The Dark Goddess of Victory,” must have hit me like a bullet straight into my young consciousness.

  This story became the basis for a recurring dream: I am in an enormous, foreign city. I am on my way toward the forbidden part of town. It is not even some dubious area of ill repute with its steaming flesh pots, but something much worse. There the laws of reality and the rules of society cease to exist. Anything can happen and everything does. I dreamed this dream over and over again. The irritating thing was, I was always on my way toward the forbidden part of the city, but I never actually reached it. Either I happened to wake up, or it changed into another dream.