Image My Life in Film

by Marianne Ruuth

  Early in the 1950s, I wrote a radio play that I called The City. There the mood is of a war that is imminent or just over, but the atmosphere is quite different from that of The Silence. The city is built on land that has been mined and is crisscrossed with underground galleries. Houses cave in; abysses open up; streets rupture. The play is about a man who comes to this foreign but strangely familiar city. The play has a lot to do with my life situation at the time. I had just left my wife and children, and, both on the personal and the artistic level, my life was marked by one failure after the other.

  If I probe further to seek the origins of the foreign city, I reach my first experiences in Stockholm. At the age of ten I began my life as a vagabond. Often the goal of my wandering was Birger Jarl’s arcade, which to me was a magical place with its peep shows and its little movie theater, the Maxim. For seventy-five öre [about 15 cents], one could sneak into that time’s R-rated movies or, better yet, climb up into the projection room manned by the aging homosexual. In the store windows there were corsets and douches, prostheses and mildly pornographic printed material.

  When you see The Silence today, you have to admit that it suffers from a severe literary list (as a ship with an unbalanced load) in two or three sequences.

  First and foremost, that is true in the confrontations between the two sisters. The tentative dialogue between Anna and Ester with which the film ends is also unnecessary.

  Other than that, I have no objections. I can see details we could have improved upon if we had had more time and more money; a few street scenes, the scene in the variety theater, and so on. But we did what we could to make the scenes comprehensible. Sometimes it’s actually an advantage not to have too much money.

  Gunnel Lindblom and Birger Malms ten.

  The pictorial style of Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light had been restrained, even chaste. An American distributor asked, despair in his voice: “Ingmar, why don’t you move your camera anymore?”

  In The Silence, Sven and I had decided to be uninhibitedly unchaste. It contains a cinematic sensuality that I still experience with delight. To put it simply: we had an enormous amount of fun making The Silence. Furthermore, the actresses were talented, disciplined, and almost always in a good mood.

  That The Silence in some ways became their undoing is another story. The film made them all internationally known. And other countries chose, as usual, to misunderstand the uniqueness of their respective talents.

  The sisters in The Silence: Gunnel Lindblom and Ingrid Thulin.

  Notes

  *The Swedish novelist Hjalmar Bergman lived from 1863 to 1931. Hjalmar Bergman, Ingrid Bergman, and Ingmar Bergman were not related.

  *Archivist Lindhorst (George Rydeberg) is one of the characters Johan encounters at the castle of Baron von Merken.

  *In January 1976, while Bergman was in the midst of a rehearsal, the Swedish police took him into custody for questioning about alleged tax irregularities. Charges were brought and subsequently dropped, but the incident had a shattering effect upon him. Three months later, he left Sweden for West Germany. “I can no longer live in a land where my honor is impugned,” he declared. After nearly six years of self-imposed exile in West Germany, where he made three films, Bergman returned home to Sweden to make Fanny and Alexander.

  First Movies

  THE SUMMER OF 1941 I TURNED twenty-three and fled to Grandma’s house in Dalecarlia. My private life was chaotic. What’s more, I had also been drafted into the military at different times and as a result developed an ulcer and an exemption.

  My mother lived alone at Varoms. I had earlier written sporadically about this period, but only for the bottom drawer. Yet that stay in Dalecarlia, far from all my complications, meant relative relaxation. And for the first time in my life I began to write uninterruptedly. The result was twelve stage plays and one opera libretto.

  I brought one of the plays to Stockholm and gave it to Claes Hoogland, who was the head of the Student Theater. The title of the play was Kasper’s Death. I was given the chance to direct it in the fall of 1941. It turned out to be a modest success.

  As a result I was summoned to Stina Bergman at Svensk Filmindustri. She had happened to see one of the play’s performances and thought she detected a dramatic talent that ought to be developed. She offered me a paying contract with Svensk Filmindustri’s script department.

  Stina Bergman was the widow of the novelist and playwright Hjalmar Bergman, and head of the studio’s script department. When Victor Sjöström had moved to Hollywood in 1923, the Bergmans had followed. For Hjalmar Bergman the American adventure was a catastrophe, but Stina studied the mechanics of Hollywood and learned things quickly. In her, Svensk Filmindustri acquired a screenplay executive with extensive knowledge of American film drama technique.

  This technique was extremely obvious, almost rigid; the audience must never have the slightest doubt where they were in a story. Nor could there be any doubt about who was who, and the transitions between various points of the story were to be treated with care. High points should be allotted and placed at specific places in the script, and the culmination had to be saved for the end. Dialogue had to be kept short. Literary terms were forbidden.

  My first task was to head for the Sigtuna Foundation to rework a well-known author’s disastrous screenplay. Svensk Filmindustri footed the bill. After three weeks I returned with a version that created a certain amount of enthusiasm. The film was never shot, but I became a regular employee as scriptwriter with a monthly salary, a desk, a telephone, and my own office high up under the eaves of Number 30 Kungsgatan.

  It turned out that I had landed on a slaveship where Stina Bergman was in full charge. Already working there was Rune Lindström, whose Himlaspelet (Heaven’s Game) had been a considerable success. There was also Gardar Sahlberg, who had a doctor’s degree in philosophy. Ensconced in a somewhat more elegant office was director Gustaf Molander’s constant co-worker Gösta Stevens. At full strength, the galley contained half a dozen slaves. From nine in the morning to five in the afternoon we sat at our desks, trying to make screenplays out of the novels, short stories, or synopses that we were given. Stina Bergman’s regime was friendly but firm.

  I was newly married and lived with my wife Else Fisher in a two-room apartment in Abrahamsberg. She was a choreographer, which in those days wasn’t a particularly profitable occupation either. We never had enough money. To remedy this situation, I tried to write my own stories alongside those forced upon me on the slaveship.

  I recalled that I had written a short story in a blue notebook the summer after my baccalaureate exam, and that it dealt with my last year as a student.

  I brought the short story with me to the Sigtuna Foundation, where Svensk Filmindustri had sent me to doctor another script. I did the slave job during the first part of the day and during the afternoons I worked on

  Torment (Frenzy). When I returned to Number 30 Kungsgatan, I was able to deliver two screenplays.

  My dual submission was followed by a long and resounding silence. Nothing happened until Gustaf Molander happened to read Torment. He wrote to Carl Anders Dymling (who had become head of Svensk Filmindustri in 1942) that this story contained much that was objectionable and unpleasant but also a considerable amount of joy and truth. According to Molander, Torment ought to be filmed.

  Stina Bergman showed me his comments, at the same time rebuking me mildly for my penchant for darkness and terrible things. "Sometimes you are just like Hjalmar!" I received these words as a message from a Higher Power, though trembling inwardly with modest pride. Hjalmar Bergman was my idol.

  It so happened that Svensk Filmindustri had decided upon a special anniversary celebration — the studio was twenty-five years old. The anniversary fell during the 1944–45 season, and to mark the occasion the studio was going to make six films of quality. Among the directors who had been hired was Alf Sjöberg. Only they did not have a suitable script for him. It was then that Stina Bergman rem
embered Torment.

  Before I knew what was happening, I was sitting with Alf Sjöberg in his little house, a cultural monument, on Djurgården, quickly seduced by his blunt charm, his knowledge, and his enthusiasm. He was amiable and generous, and I was suddenly brought into a world that I ardently desired. For too long I had been forced to make my nest on the periphery.

  Alf Sjöberg allowed me, albeit with considerable hesitation, to be present during the filming, as “scriptgirl.” In that capacity I was a near catastrophe. In spite of that, Alf Sjöberg manifested an unbelievable professional patience with me, and I adored him.

  To me, Torment was an obsessive, anger-filled story about the torments of school and youth. Alf Sjöberg saw other things in it. Through various artistic devices he transformed it into a nightmare. Moreover, he made Caligula, the Latin master, into a crypto-Nazi and brought home the point that the actor Stig Järel should be blond and insignificant. Not black and diabolic with expansive gestures and expressions. Alf Sjöberg and Järrel gave the character an inner pressure, which in the end became decisive for the whole movie.

  When the filming was nearly finished, the then drama critic Herbert Grevenius called me and asked if I wanted to head the municipal theater in Helsingborg. I had to go to Alf Sjöberg and negotiate a day’s leave in order to travel down to Helsingborg and sign a contract with the theater’s board of directors. Sjöberg laughed, hugged me, and said: “You’re crazy.”

  When the film was virtually done, I made my debut as a movie director. Originally, Torment ends after all the students have passed their final exam, except for one, played by Alf Kjellin, who walks out through a backdoor into the rain. Caligula stands in the window, waving good-bye. Everybody felt that this ending was too dark. I had to write an additional scene in the dead girl’s apartment where the principal of the school has a heart-to-heart talk with Kjellin while Caligula, the scared loser, is screaming on the stairs below. The new final scene shows Kjellin in the light of dawn. Walking toward the awakening city.

  With Alf Sjöberg during a take for Torment. In front of Martin Bodin’s camera: Alf Kjellin and Mai Zetterling. Stig Järrel’s Caligula is unmasked.

  I was told to shoot these last exteriors, since Sjöberg was otherwise engaged. They were my first professionally filmed images. I was more excited than I can describe. The small film crew threatened to walk off the set and go home. I screamed and swore so loudly that people woke up and looked out their windows. It was four o’clock in the morning.

  Of the six anniversary productions, Torment ended up being the only success. In addition, my first season in Helsingborg also turned out to be remarkably successful. I directed six plays, and the audience figures rose rapidly. The drama critics began to come down from Stockholm. In short, we were doing very well.

  Even before the filming of Torment, I had bombarded Carl Anders Dymling with pleas asking to be allowed to make my own film but had been turned down. Then one day he sent me a Danish play. Its title was Moderdyret (The Maternal Instinct), its author Leek Fischer. Dymling promised me that I would be allowed to direct the film if I could manage to wring a good script from this grandiose drivel.

  Final shots from Torment. “I made my debut as a movie director.”

  Wildly happy, I spent my nights writing the scenario, at breakneck speed. After presenting it, I was forced to do two or three rewrites before it was decided that I could make the film during the summer of 1945. Inspired by the success of Torment, I christened it Crisis.

  It turned out to be an apt title.

  I still recall the first day of shooting as a complete and unadulterated horror.

  The first day of shooting any film is always especially tense. That is how it has been for me, up to and including Fanny and Alexander. But this first shooting day was the first one in my cinematic life. I had made meticulous preparations. Every scene was carefully thought out, every camera angle prepared. In theory I knew exactly what I wanted to do. In reality, everything went straight to hell.

  There is a classic Spanish play about a couple of lovers who are kept apart by every means possible. When finally they are allowed to spend their first night together as lovers, they enter the bedroom through separate doors and drop dead.

  That is exactly what happened to me.

  The day was hotter than hell, and we were working in a studio with a glass roof. Gösta Roosling, the cinematographer, was not used to the complicated lighting and heavy cameras of the time. He had earned his considerable professional reputation by working with a light camera for the exteriors and in royal solitude. His assistant was inexperienced, and the sound technician a walking catastrophe. The female lead, Dagny Lind, had hardly ever appeared in front of a movie camera before, and she was paralyzed with fright.

  Generally speaking, back then one was supposed to do eight camera angle shots per day, which corresponded to one every hour. This first day we managed to do two. Later, when we viewed that day’s rushes, everything was out of focus. What’s more, the microphone was visible at the edge of the picture. Dagny Lind spoke as one does on stage. The scenes were the kind you see in the theater. In short, a veritable catastrophe.

  In The Magic Lantern I relate the difficulties of shooting this film:

  I realized at once that I had landed myself in an apparatus I had by no means mastered, and I also realized that Dagny Lind, whom I had insisted had to play the title role, was not a film actress and was sorely lacking in experience. I saw with icy clarity that everyone realized I was incompetent. To confront their mistrust, all I could come up with were insults and outbursts of rage.

  At an early stage, when the studio executives wanted to abort the filming, Dymling intervened, having seen three weeks of dailies. He suggested that we start all over again from the beginning. I was deeply grateful to him.

  My next guardian angel was Victor Sjöström, who occupied an ill-defined role as artistic adviser to the studio:

  As if by chance, Victor Sjöström, began to turn up wherever I was. He grasped me firmly by the nape of my neck and walked me like that back and forth across the asphalted area outside the studio, mostly in silence, but suddenly he would say things that were simple and comprehensible: “You make your scenes too complicated. Neither you nor Roosling can cope with those complications. Film the actors from the front; they like that and it’s the best way. Don’t keep arguing with everyone. They simply get angry and do a less good job. Don’t turn everything into major issues; it’ll suffocate the audience. A minor detail should be treated like a minor detail without necessarily having to look like one.” We walked round and round, back and forth across the asphalt, he holding onto the back of my neck and being down-to-earth, factual, and not angry with me, although I was being so unpleasant.

  But the catastrophic events accelerated. Nothing did what I wanted it to do. We went on location to Hedemora and stayed at the city hotel. It was the rainiest summer in recorded history, and during three weeks we managed to shoot four scenes out of the twenty we had anticipated. We played cards and drank and suffered from melancholy. Finally we were called back.

  The rest of the exteriors were shot at Djurgården. The expensive safari to Hedemora had been perfectly meaningless.

  Crisis: with Gösta Roosling on the roof and Inga Landgré in the bus. Marianne Löfgren in the beauty salon.

  Another catastrophe followed shortly thereafter. There is a scene in Crisis where the gigolo, Jack (Stig Olin), shoots himself on the street outside the beauty parlor where his lover and her daughter both work. Next to the beauty parlor is a music hall.

  In vain I had looked all over Stockholm for a suitable location. Suddenly the architect came to me and announced that the construction crew was going to build my street at the studio. “It’ll be exactly the way you want it.” All of a sudden I imagined that the management liked my film despite everything that had happened and believed it would be a success. The street was my reward.

  What I had not grasped was that I was
being used as a pawn in the ongoing dirty dealings between the studio in Råsunda and the head office in Stockholm. About twenty movies were produced annually at the studio. There were several hundred employees. It was a large, independent operation under the guidance of Harald Molander, an outstanding intriguer who hated Carl Anders Dymling and his staff at the head office.

  Those in the studio reasoned as follows: Ingmar Bergman is Dymling’s protégé. We are going to see to it that the film is a total fiasco. From the start we have maintained that Bergman’s Crisis is a mad undertaking. Now we can add the costs for the complicated building of a street for a film that is already way over budget. That will guarantee that Crisis will become an economic disaster, Bergman will be out, and Dymling’s position weakened. Their logic was not without merit.

  So the street was built and also a summer studio beyond the façades of the houses. Even this latter construction was charged to my film. The street was paved with cobblestones, and everybody was happy.

  Finally we were ready to shoot the scene outside the beauty parlor where Jack was going to shoot himself underneath a flickering theater sign. The high brick wall was in place; it was raining; and the ambulance was in position. The asphalt glistened. I was drunk with the happiness only arrogance and false power can bring.

  As is often the case during night filming, the electricians and grips were slightly drunk. I had positioned the camera high up on a scaffolding to get a full shot. When they were about to lower the camera, one of the grips fell headlong to the ground, and the heavy camera came crashing down on top of him. The ambulance, which, as I said, was on the spot, carted him off to the hospital. The crew insisted on quitting work and going home, but I refused to interrupt the filming. Then the sullen Swedish silence entered the picture. They did what they were told — but unwillingly. When I went home later that night, I was ready to give up.