Image My Life in Film

by Marianne Ruuth

  “In a little while the sun will rise and then I’m going to show you something remarkable,” Andreas said gravely. “Something that has never ceased to astonish me and fill me with a fear-tinged reverence for this old room and all other old rooms where people have lived together for a long time. But wait. Right now the sun is rising at the end of the street, and now it sneaks in here. Look, look! Do you see?”

  He pointed excitedly toward the wall.

  Prison: Doris Svedlund on the staircase with Irma Christenson. Curt Masreliez and Stig Olin. Making a film within a film, with Hasse Ekman as the director.

  “Don’t you see it there on the wall? There! And there! And there!”

  “No,” said Birgitta Carolina, “I see nothing.”

  He brought her closer to the wall where the first ray of sun glowed.

  “Do you see it now?” he asked, and his voice trembled a little. “Look here! And here … and here!”

  She had already noticed the unusual pattern of the wallpaper, but now she discovered all of a sudden that it changed when the sun caressed it, and that a myriad of faces became visible in the trembling ray of light.

  “I see,” Birgitta Carolina whispered.

  “Yes, it’s remarkable indeed,” Andreas said.

  Then he didn’t dare say more so as not to disturb the enigmatic play on the wall. After a few minutes, not only were faces revealed where the sun’s rays hit, but the whole wall was full of them; there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of faces.

  And in the silence Birgitta Carolina could hear a chorus of whispering voices. They were faint, distant, but she could discern each of them quite distinctly. Everybody was speaking at the same time; a few were laughing, others crying; some sounded friendly, others hard and indifferent. There were old voices, childish voices, the voices of young women, and the whiny high-pitched sounds made by old men; the thundering baritones of executives mingled with the good-humored neighing laughter of nice uncles. It sounded like abstract music of some kind, and it rose and descended like the swell of an endless sea breaking upon the shore.

  “It’s as if that wall with its covering were a photographic plate,” Andreas said. “And this room a magic camera. Every person who has ever been inside this room has been photographed. Look here!” he said and pulled her along, pointing toward an open-mouthed, half-averted face that was his own.

  Suddenly all the clocks struck five-thirty, and a huge garbage truck clattered by in the street, the sunlight turned off, the faces disappeared, the voices died off, and the room regained its appearance of a middleclass drawing room from a helplessly sunken time.

  Grandmother’s dining room in Uppsala had a wallpaper-covered door. When Grandpa died, she had divided the large apartment in half. The wallpapered door in the dining room was the closed-up passage to the other apartment. Or perhaps it led simply to a closet? I never opened it. I didn’t dare.

  If I keep in mind that the break between several realities has shaped my life from its beginning all the way to the present, I see that my creative results are relatively meager. Only a few times have I managed to force fluid borders. In Prison I definitely did not succeed. The wallpaper vision ended up in the wastebasket.

  For a long time after filming I felt no connection whatsoever to Prison, which is noticeable when I speak about it in Bergman on Bergman.

  But as I am now able to view my work as a whole, the film seems to take on a certain lucidity. It encompasses a cinematic joyousness that, in spite of my lack of experience, is reasonably controlled.

  Prison was well cast. In that area, Lorens Marmstedt was generous and invaluable. He convinced Hasse Ekman, who was important and busy, to participate as well as Ekman’s wife at the time, Eva Henning, who had just enjoyed great success in Ekman’s The Banquet. Hasse Ekman was unswervingly loyal and helpful.

  Eva Henning brought a totally unexpected tone of pure sorrow to the film. She has a brief scene with the director in which she says, “Is it so that we as children collect something that we later, when we are adults, waste: something that’s called — spirit?” Eva Henning does the scene absolutely beautifully with her austerity, her warmth, and her sense of humor.

  Doris Svedlund as Birgitta Carolina was also lovely. It was important to me that she not look like the typical Swedish movie whore. Prison is, after all, a story about a soul, and she is the soul. Doris shone with her own enigmatic light.

  The farce that Thomas and Birgitta Carolina present in the little toy projector in the attic is one that I made up as a child. It is about a man who is locked up in a mystical room where all kinds of atrocities happen to him: A spider descends from the ceiling; a villain appears with a long knife ready to kill him; the devil jumps out of a chest; and Death, a skull, jiggles in front of a window with wide-slatted blinds.

  We filmed the farce quickly and efficiently. The acting trio in it consisted of three Italians, the Brothers Bragazzi. They had performed at the China Variety Theater and had remained in Sweden for the duration of the war.

  “We filmed the farce quickly and efficiently. The acting trio in it consisted of three Italians, the Brothers Bragazzi.”

  They arrived at the studio early in the morning. We picked out some clothing from Sandrew’s costume department. Goran Strindberg set up four open lamps with straight light and installed grease-proof paper so there wouldn’t be any shadows. I told the story, and the Bragazzis began playing like children.

  We filmed all of it before lunch. The material was sent to the lab immediately. The next morning it was developed and copied. Then Lennart Wallen and I put the little farce together in the editing room of Terrafilm, whereupon we summoned Lorens Marmstedt and held our world premiere.

  Lorens laughed till he cried. Then he treated us to champagne.

  THIRSTIS A COLLECTION of short stories by Birgit Tengroth that caused quite a sensation when it was first published. Svensk Filmindustri bought the movie rights, and Herbert Grevenius wrote a good screenplay in which he tied the different stones together into one coherent script with parallel plots and flashbacks.

  My instincts told me correctly that Birgit Tengroth should play Viola. I felt intensely that I needed her cooperation on several levels. In her discreet, tactful way she helped me shape the lesbian episode. This was, at that time, inflammatory stuff, and, of course, the film censors cut a substantial piece of the dramatic scene between Birgit Tengroth and Mimi Nelson, a cut that renders the end of the sequence incomprehensible.

  Birgit Tengroth also made a directorial contribution that I will not forget; it taught me something new and decisive.

  The two women are sitting together in the summer twilight, sharing a bottle of wine. Birgit is rather drunk and gets a cigarette from Mimi, who also lights it for her. Then Mimi slowly brings the burning match toward her own face and holds it for a moment by her right eye before it goes out.

  This was Birgit Tengroth’s idea. I remember it clearly since I had never done anything like that. To build the plot with small, almost imperceptible, suggestive details became a special component in my future filmmaking.

  A large part of the film takes place during a train journey through war-torn Germany.* In Prison I had begun to experiment with longer takes. In order to develop that technique, we had to build a monstrous train car, one that could be taken apart in different sections. The clumsy camera used at the time could then roam around freely in compartments, corridors, and other spaces.

  Birgit Tengroth’s directorial contribution in Thirst (with Mimi Nelson); later put to good use in Hour of the Wolf with Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow.

  The long scenes in Prison had come about for economical reasons. Here I was striving for another simplification: for the complicated camera movements to go undetected.

  The studio train was far from perfect: you can see the seams if you look closely. Furthermore, I had wanted the ruins of buildings, seen through the train window, to be actually filmed in Germany, but that couldn’t be done for reasons o
f economy. The homemade result was a less than convincing compromise.

  Other than that, Thirst (known as

  Three Strange Loves in the United States) does show a respectable cinematographic vitality. I was developing my own way of making movies. I made myself master the ungainly machinery, and it functioned by and large as I wanted it to function. That was always a triumph.

  The train in Thirst: interior with Eva Henning and Birger Malmsten; exterior with extras.

  Notes

  *“People’s Movie Houses,” involved in production as well as distribution and exhibition.

  *That is, Germany after World War II.

  Jests Jesters

  I DIRECTED STAGE PLAYS at the Malmö City Theater from 1952 to the beginning of 1959. Consequently,

  The Magician (The Face), born during the summer of 1958, mirrors the experiences from that period.

  Those were work-saturated and bohemian years. Bibi Andersson and I lived in a small, crowded apartment, two and a half tiny rooms, in a part of town called the Star Houses on Limhamnsvägen. Malmö City Theater had, with exemplary wisdom, acquired a number of apartments when these houses were built. They were on the same side of town as the theater, and one could quickly and easily reach the latter by car or public transportation.

  We lived at the theater except on Tuesday nights, when there were no performances and theatrical plays were replaced by symphony concerts. This was our time to be together. I bought my first 16 mm sound projector and began to collect films seriously. We arranged movie evenings at home.

  The intensive work collaboration made for a closeness, the likes of which I have not experienced before or after. We all still speak of this time as the best in our lives. A furious work pace and good professional collaboration can construct a fine corset against the onset of neuroses, threatening breakdowns, and disintegration.

  There is, in other words, a connection between The Face and our existence then. In comparison, we had remarkably pale relations with the city’s inhabitants and very little contact with outsiders.

  When I was managing director for the theater in Helsingborg, things were completely different. The people in Helsingborg thought it was great fun to have actors in town. Every Saturday we were invited to Fahlman’s pastry shop where we ingested free cakes and hot chocolate with whipped cream. We were frequently invited to the homes of people in the community, where we ate more than our fill. A grocery store across the street had a fine assortment of food as well as its own kitchen; there we could buy a substantial dinner any day of the week for one krona [about 20 cents]. We were also lucky enough to rent a couple of apartments in an old house from the eighteenth century for next to nothing. And though the maitre d’ at the exclusive Grand Hotel didn’t want us in the main dining room, we were welcome to frequent the smaller restaurant in the back where, after evening performances, we were served hash, schnapps, and beer for 1.75 kronor [about 35 cents]. If we didn’t have any money, which happened often, our credit could be extended to dizzying heights. We were invited to castles and mansions if we in turn would sing, read, or act. We felt enmeshed and fully involved in the life of the city. The hospitality and ambiance were great.

  Malmö, however, was a different kind of city. Credit at the restaurants and bars was niggardly, often nonexistent. Yes, we were given a good table at Kramer Restaurant, and people displayed a friendly interest in what we were doing, but we kept mostly to ourselves.

  The audience to whom we played but with whom we spent no time is represented in The Face by the consul Egerman’;s family. The consul is an amiable, dogged enthusiast who wants to keep his distance and formulate rules, and who, for understandable reasons, panics when he discovers that his wife has become involved with the rabble.

  The jesters and the bourgeoisie in The Face.

  In the theater profession we often suffer from the delusion that we are attractive as long as we are masked. The public believes that it loves us when it sees us in light of our work and our public persona. But if we are seen without our masks (or, even worse, if we are asking for money), we are instantly transformed into less than nothing. I am fond of saying that we in the theater fulfill our 100 percent capacity only when we appear on stage. When we step off the stage, we are reduced to less than 35 percent. We try to convince ourselves and most of all each other that we remain at 100 percent. That is a fundamental mistake. We become victims of our own illusion. We subject ourselves to passion and marry each other and forget that our starting point is our profession and not how we appear out in the street after the last curtain.

  As I remember it, the police chief in The Face is a consciously calculated target. He represents my critics. It was a rather good-natured jest with everyone who wanted to keep me in line and master me. The drama critics back then saw it as their duty to keep urging me to do this and not that. They probably enjoyed giving me a spanking publicly.

  The character of the health official also had a real-life counterpart.

  Over the years I have not intentionally created a multitude of malicious portraits of people I know. The quarreling marital couple, Stig Ahlgren and Birgit Tengroth in Wild Strawberries, is a sad exception, one which I regret. The health official Vergerus in The Face is a much more amusing caricature. He was born out of an irresistible desire to take a small revenge on Harry Schein.

  Schein was the movie critic at Bonnier’s Literary Magazine, which at the time was a heavyweight cultural organ. Schein is intelligent and arrogant, and what he wrote was echoed in the inner circles. I felt that he treated me in an exceedingly humiliating manner, which he later insisted that he did not do.

  “The character of the health official also had a real-life counterpart.” With Harry Schein in the studio. Vergerus examines Vogler (Gunnar Bjdrnstrand and Max von Sydow).

  Furthermore, Harry Schein was married to Ingrid Thulin. On several occasions he expressed the opinion that she ought to give up film and theater. He encouraged her to involve herself instead in arts and crafts.

  I figured out a sophisticated way, in my opinion, to thwart Harry Schein’s intent. I knew that Ingrid Thulin did not want anything in the world more passionately than to continue her career as an actress, and therefore I talked her into joining the ensemble at Malmö City Theater. I wanted to prove to Harry Schein that he was wrong. He has never liked to be wrong.

  In the end, in order to see his wife, Harry had to commute regularly between Malmö and Stockholm.

  It was natural that Bibi and I, somewhat cautiously, began to see Ingrid and Harry socially. I did not feel completely comfortable doing this. Deep inside I imagined that there was an insurmountable gap between his kind and mine, that he wanted to get at me, and that, at the bottom of the superficial graciousness we displayed toward each other, there existed a hard-to-define animosity. It must be emphasized that all this is long since gone. Harry is now one of my few close friends.

  But at the time I decided to model the health official Vergérus on Harry Schein.

  Vergérus says to Manda Vogler:

  “I feel I can trust you with a secret. This entire evening I have been fighting a hard battle against an unexplainable sympathy for you and your esteemed husband, the magician.

  “Immediately when you entered the room, I was strongly drawn to your faces, your silence, your natural dignity. It is indeed unfortunate, and I would not tell you this if I wasn’t a bit intoxicated.”

  Manda replies, “If that’s how you feel, you ought to leave us alone.” Vergérus answers, “I can’t do that.” Manda: “Why?”" Vergerus: “Because you represent what I hate most of all: that which cannot be explained.”

  But the actual focal point of the story is, of course, the androgynous Aman/Manda. It is around her and her enigmatic personality that everything rotates.

  Manda represents the belief in the holiness of human beings. Vogler, on the other hand, has given up. He is involved in the cheapest kind of theater, and she knows it.

  Manda is very
open in her talk with Vergérus. The miracle happened once, and she herself carries it. She loves Vogler in spite of being fully aware that he has lost his faith.

  If Vogler is a magician, who, even though he is tired to death, keeps repeating his by now meaningless hocus-pocus, then Tubal is the exploiter, the salesman of art. Tubal is Bergman, the director, trying to convince Dymling, the head of the studio, of the usefulness and quality of his latest film.

  In front of extremely skeptical studio executives, I managed to sell The Face as a hell of an erotic comedy.

  In all fairness, even the studio management could no longer deny that I was successful. They had denied it as long as they possibly could. It had become a standing ritual for the head accountant, Juberg, at the start of every one of my films, to step into the executive office with his accounting ledgers and show what serious losses my latest movies had inflicted upon the company.

  But now there was Smiles of a Summer Night, which everyone had originally greeted with feelings of despair. This film, as well as Wild Strawberries, was an unexpected colossal success both in Sweden and in other countries. The studio had begun to sell Bergman movies to other interested countries, and it was a situation so new that the studio began to behave not unlike an old maid who suddenly finds herself being courted by the most exotic suitors. The studio had no experience when it came to foreign sales. Oh yes, a small export department existed, but I am not even sure that those who worked there spoke any foreign languages. There was total confusion, which often resulted in my films falling into the hands of robbers. In time, the United States became the exception; two young men started a distribution company called Janusfilm. They suffered from a combination of idealism and poverty and worked hard to bring out and popularize my films.