Image My Life in Film

by Marianne Ruuth

  I am fully aware that what I have just written does not bear any connection to my contemplation of Brink of Life. Yet perhaps it does. Most of the time, I write my own screenplays. I write, and then I rewrite. My workbooks bear witness to the lengthy process (often to my surprise later). The dialogue is put through a strict regimen, is put on a diet, made denser, fleshed out, and erased; words are tried and replaced. In the final round, big chunks disappear (“kill your darlings”). By the time the actors finally take over, transforming my words through their own expression, I have, in general, lost contact with the original meaning of the lines. These artists give new life to the scenes that I have nagged to death. I feel happy but reserved and yet satisfied; oh, did I write that? Oh yes, of course, that’s exactly what I meant to say, though I had forgotten it during the long and extremely solitary process of revision.

  With Gertrud Fridh: “The fire, the welding flame that burns her.” Pernilla Östergren: “A cheery nursemaid who walks with a limp in Fanny and Alexander.”

  In the case of Brink of Life, the situation was totally different. I felt a responsibility toward the words that Ulla Isaksson had written. I had to master a reality that was both familiar and alien: women and childbirth. I found myself literally “on the brink of life.” Many of the side effects of childbirth were unexpected: one hospital room contained six new mothers and newborn children only hours old. Swelling breasts, sour milk stains everywhere, innumerous physical conditions, the content and attentive animal side of the vocation. I felt nauseous and could only relate all this to my own inadequate experiences as a daddy, eternally awkward, eternally fleeing.

  Ingrid Thulin plays Cecilia, who is only in her third month and close to losing her baby. She throws off the covers and sees, in terror and with cold sweat pouring, that the bed and sheets are covered with blood, all the way up to her breasts. Our technical consultant, a midwife who was present on the set every day, created the blood (from an ox, slightly diluted with some chemical dye to give the right tint). I remember my sudden nausea at the sight and the personal memory that resurfaced from my past of a terrified girl crouching over the toilet with blood gushing out between her legs.

  Although I handled the words and actions of Ulla Isaksson’s characters with relentless professionalism and with teeth clenched, I sometimes thought in desperate moments that had I known, really known, what I was getting into, I would not have done it. I swam like a person drowning, searching for a bottom to stand on but finding none there. To top it all off, I had an attack of that devilish Asiatic flu. And, of course, I was totally knocked out.

  The four actresses were kind and remained untroubled by my impediments. They could see that I was not feeling well. In spite of the demands of acting, they treated me with indulgent kindness. I was grateful; I am nearly always grateful for the tolerance of my actors. When we part after a period of collaboration, I find myself in the grips of severe separation anxiety and an ensuing depression. People sometimes seem surprised that I abstain from attending opening nights and wrap parties. There is nothing strange about it. I have already cut the emotional ties of our relationship. It hurts me, and I cry inside. In such a state, who wants to go to a party?

  After the Rehearsal is actually a dialogue between a young actress and an old director:

  Anna: How can you know for sure that you say the right thing to an actor?

  Vogler: I don’t know it. I feel it.

  Anna: Aren’t you ever afraid of feeling the wrong thing?

  Vogler: When I was younger and had reason to be afraid, I didn’t understand that I had reason to be afraid.

  Anna: The road for many good directors is lined with humiliated and crippled actors. Have you ever taken the trouble to count your victims?

  Vogler: No.

  Anna: Perhaps you haven’t left any victims behind you?

  Vogler: I don’t think I have.

  Anna: How can you be so sure?

  Vogler: In life, or let us say in the real world, I believe there are human beings who do carry in themselves injuries from my rampaging, just as I carry injuries from their treatment of me.

  Anna: Not in the theater?

  Vogler: No. Not in the theater. Perhaps you wonder how I can be so sure, and now I am going to tell you something that sounds both sentimental and exaggerated but which, nevertheless, is absolutely true. I love actors!

  Anna: Love?

  Vogler: Exactly. I love them. I love them as much as anything in the world; I love their profession; I love their courage or their contempt of the world or whatever they want to call it. I love their deception but also their coldhearted sincerity, which stops at nothing. I love it when they try to manipulate me, and I envy them their gullibility and their keen insight. Yes, I love these actors without reservation; I love them magnificently. Therefore I cannot do them harm.

  After the Rehearsal: “Actually a dialogue between a young actress and an old director” Lena Olin and Erland Josephson.

  THE OUTLINE FOR

  AUTUMN SONATA was written March 26, 1976. Part of the story is the whole tax evasion scandal that fell upon me in the beginning of January: I ended up at the Karolinska Hospital’s pyschiatric clinic, then at the Sophiahemmet, and finally on Fårö. After three months the indictment was repealed. The charge was reduced from that of a serious crime to one of simple tax understatement. My initial reaction was euphoria.

  This is what it says in my workbook:

  The night after the acquittal, when I cannot go to sleep in spite of sleeping pills, it occurs to me that I want to make a film about the mother-daughter, daughter-mother relationship, and I must have Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann in the two roles, and no one else. Eventually, there may be room for a third character.

  It should look something like this: Helena,* who is not a devastating beauty like her ancient namesake, is thirty-five years old and married to a gentle pastor named Viktor. They live in the parsonage near the church and lead a quiet life among their congregation and with the changing seasons ever since their small son died of a unexplained illness. He was six years old when he died and named Erik. Helena’s mother is a concert pianist, now touring around the world. She is expected to arrive soon for her annual visit with her daughter. Actually, she has not come to see them for a few years, so there is a great to-do in the parsonage, elaborate preparations, and happy but anxious expectations. Helena has waited a long time for this meeting with her mother. She also plays the piano, and her mother usually gives her lessons. Therefore, sincere joy pervades this visit that both mother and daughter have looked forward to with both anxiety and fervor. The mother is in a splendid mood. At least she manages to act as if she were in a splendid mood. She finds everything arranged perfectly; even the hard wooden board (for her back) has been placed in her bed in the guest room. She has brought goodies from Switzerland.

  The church bells ring. Helena wants to take her mother to the grave, Erik’s grave. Helena goes there every Saturday. She admits that Erik visits her there sometimes, that she can feel his small, cautious caresses. Her mother finds this fixation on the dead child alarming, and she tries, carefully choosing her words, to make Helena see that she and Viktor should adopt or try to have another child. Then later, Helena plays something for her mother, and her mother pays her a number of compliments. But, to insure the purity of the piece, she plays it again herself, thereby crushing her daughter’s meek interpretation, quietly but effectively.

  The second act begins with the mother fighting insomnia. She takes sleeping pills, she reads her books, she murmurs her prayers, but she still can’t sleep. Finally she gets up and goes into the living room. Helena hears her, and here follows the grand unmasking. The two women talk about their relationship. For the first time Helena dares to tell the truth of how she really feels. Her mother is completely shaken up by all the hatred and contempt that Helena reveals.

  Then it is the mother’s turn to speak about herself, her bitterness, her loathing, her despair, her lonelin
ess. She speaks of the men in her life, about their ultimate indifference, and how they humiliate her by always chasing after other women. But the scene becomes even more profound: The daughter finally gives birth to the mother. Through this reversal they unite for a few brief moments in perfect symbiosis.

  Nevertheless, the mother leaves the next morning. She can’t stand the hush or her raw feelings. She arranges it so that someone sends her a telegram saying she must return to work immediately. Helena overhears the telephone conversation. Her mother has left, it is Sunday, and Helena prepares to go to church to listen to her husband’s sermon.

  Instead of just two characters in the film, they became four. That idea that Helena gives birth to her mother is a difficult one to convey and one which, I’m sad to say, I abandoned. Characters have a way of following their own paths. In the old days I tried to control and force them, but over the years I became wiser and learned to let them behave as they wished. The result: their hate becomes cemented. The daughter can never forgive the mother. The mother can never forgive the daughter. Forgiveness can be found only through connection with the fourth character, a sick girl.

  Autumn Sonata was conceived in one night, in a matter of hours, after a period of total writer’s block. The lingering question is, why this: Why Autumn Sonata? It contained nothing that I had been thinking about before.

  The idea of working with Ingrid Bergman was an old desire, but that did not initiate this story. The last time I had seen her was at the Cannes Film Festival at the screening of Cries and Whispers. She had snuck a letter into my pocket, in which she reminded me of my promise that we would make a film together. Once long ago we had planned to adapt Hjalmar Bergman’s novel The Boss, Mrs. Ingeborg to film.

  A puzzling element remains: Why did I choose this story, and why was it so complete? It was more finished in the outline than in its final execution.

  I wrote the screenplay for Autumn Sonata in a few weeks in order to have something up my sleeve in case The Serpent’s Egg flopped with a somersault. My decision was final: I would never work again in Sweden.

  That is the reason I made the strange arrangement to shoot Autumn Sonata in Norway. As it turned out, I felt perfectly content to work in the primitive studios on the outskirts of Oslo. Built in 1913 or 1914, the buildings have been left just as they were. Of course, when the wind blew in certain directions, the air traffic passed right overhead, but otherwise it was old-fashioned and cozy. Everything we needed was available there, even though the place was dilapidated and had not been kept up. The crew members were friendly but a little amateurish.

  The actual filming was draining. I did not have what one would call difficulties in my working relationship with Ingrid Bergman. Rather, it was a kind of language barrier, but in a profound sense. Starting on the first day when we all read the script together in the rehearsal studio, I discovered that she had rehearsed her entire part in front of the mirror, complete with intonations and self-conscious gestures. It was clear that she had a different approach to her profession than the rest of us. She was still living in the 1940s.

  Autumn Sonata: “I must have Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann in the two roles, and no one else.”

  I believe that she possessed some sort of inspired system of working, albeit a strange one. In spite of her mechanisms for receiving director’s cues not being placed where one expected to find them — and where they ought to be — she still must have been somehow receptive to suggestions from two or three of her former directors. After all, she had done excellent work in several American films.

  In Hitchcock’s films, for instance, she is always magnificent. She detested the man. I believe that with her he never hesitated to be disrespectful and arrogant, which evidently was precisely the best method to make her listen.

  I discovered early into our rehearsals that to be understanding and offer a sympathetic ear did not work. In her case I was forced to use tactics that I normally rejected, the first and foremost being aggression.

  Once she told me: “If you don’t tell me how I should do this scene, I’ll slap you!” I rather liked that. But from a strictly professional point of view, it was difficult to work with these two actresses together. When I look at the film today, I see that I left Liv to shift for herself when I ought to have been more supportive. Liv is one of those generous artists who give everything they have. In a few scenes, she sometimes goes astray. That is because I paid too much attention to Ingrid Bergman. Ingrid also had some trouble remembering her lines. In the mornings she was often crabby and angry, which was understandable. She lived with constant anxiety over her own illness* and at the same time found our way of working unfamiliar and frightening. But she never made any attempt to back out. Her conduct was always extraordinarily professional. Even with her obvious frailties, Ingrid Bergman was a remarkable person: generous, grand, and highly talented.

  Halvar Björk and Liv Ullmann. With Ingrid Bergman.

  A French critic cleverly wrote that “with Autumn Sonata Bergman does Bergman.” It is witty but unfortunate. For me, that is.

  I think it is only too true that Bergman (Ingmar, that is) did a Bergman.

  If I had had the strength to do what I intended to do at the beginning, it would not have turned out that way.

  I love and admire the filmmaker Tarkovsky and believe him to be one of the greatest of all time. My admiration for Fellini is limitless. But I also feel that Tarkovsky began to make Tarkovsky films and that Fellini began to make Fellini films. Yet Kurosawa has never made a Kurosawa film.

  I have never been able to appreciate Buñuel. He discovered at an early stage that it is possible to fabricate ingenious tricks, which he elevated to a special kind of genius, particular to Buñuel, and then he repeated and varied his tricks. He always received applause. Buñuel nearly always made Buñuel films.

  So the time has come for me to look in the mirror and ask: Where are we going? Has Bergman begun to make Bergman films?

  I find that Autumn Sonata is an annoying example.

  What I will never know is this: How did it happen that this film was Autumn Sonata? If you carry around a story inside long enough or keep dwelling on a certain subject as happened with Persona or Cries and Whispers, it is possible to discern how a film evolved and why it ended up as it did. But how did Autumn Sonata suddenly burst forth, looking the way it does, like a dream? … And perhaps that is its weakness: it should have remained a dream. Not a film of a dream but a dream of a film: two characters. Background and everything else ought to have been pushed to the side. Three acts in three kinds of lighting: one evening light, one night light, and one morning light. No cumbersome sets, two faces, and three kinds of lighting. Without a doubt that is how I first imagined Autumn Sonata.

  There is something close to an enigma in the concept of the daughter giving birth to the mother. Therein lies an emotion that I was not able to realize and carry through to its conclusion. On the surface, the finished film resembles the outline, but actually that is not the case.

  I am drilling, and either the drill breaks or else I don’t dare drill deeply enough. Or else it is because I don’t have the strength, or I don’t realize that I should drill deeper. Then I pull up the drill and don’t take that extra dizzying step. I pull up the drill and declare myself satisfied. That is an unerring symptom of creative exhaustion, exceedingly dangerous because it doesn’t hurt.

  Notes

  *Crisis was the first film Bergman directed, in 1945.

  *In the actual film, this character is called Eva, and Helena is the name of Eva’s handicapped sister.

  *At the time she made Autumn Sonata, Ingrid Bergman was fighting cancer. She died in 1982.

  Farces Frolics

  DURING THE STRIKE in the Swedish film industry in 1951,* I made a series of commercials for the soap Bris (Breeze). They rescued me from a severe financial setback. Even today when I look at them, I still feel a touch of my earlier enthusiasm. They do not reflect any lack of ambition or any
laziness. They are unusual and were made in good spirits. One can even overlook the fact that they promoted a soap that practically tore the skin off your body.

  The comedies that I produced were made for the same reasons as the soap commercials. Their purpose was to make money. This doesn’t embarrass me in the least. Most projects in the world of film come into being for that very reason.

  My own relationship to comedy has been complicated, however, and the difficulties go way back in time. As a child I was considered sullen and too sensitive. From an early age onward it was said that “Ingmar has no sense of humor.”

  My brother, on the other hand, was an excellent “entertainer.” Even at a very young age, he was a brilliant conversationalist at dinner, terribly funny, sarcastic, and witty, although over time his jokes became rather bitter.

  Yet I wanted very much for people to laugh at my jokes. I made several attempts to create something funny. In Helsingborg I directed two New Year’s revues for which I wrote a few skits that I thought were hilarious. But nobody cracked even a smile, and I brooded a good deal over how others could so easily make people laugh. Even if my life had depended on it, I couldn’t figure out how they did it.

  At the Gothenburg City Theater I watched all of Torsten Hammarén’s rehearsals for a production of the classic French farce Bichon. He was an exceptional comedy director with a matchless talent for knowing exactly when to push our laugh button. He could effectively choreograph a comedy situation in which the actors began all the way on stage left and then let the gag explode in the middle, twelve seconds later.

  The classic French farces are not for a moment meaningful. They are built entirely around a comical situation. Everything is mathematically constructed to culminate in a precise situation designed to release the laughter.