#The Ingmar Bergman Archives

[cultreslut]

persona (1966) dir. ingmar bergman on archive.org

"A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer. Alma eventually confesses her secrets to a seemingly sympathetic Elisabeth and finds that her own personality is being submerged into Elisabeth’s persona." synopsis via tmdb

[caosfelidae]

some tatoo inspo

[chantssecrets]

James Baldwin and Ingmar Bergman met at the Filmstaden in Solna, Stockholm, in 1960. The Ingmar Bergman Archives contain a letter Baldwin wrote to Bergman before their meeting, in which he suggests a date and expresses his admiration of Bergman, even if the film he mentions was not, embarrassingly enough, directed by Bergman…

[covntcovntessa]

tired of pretending i didn't found his outfit strangely neat... theres a very strong "sonya delaunay enthusiast" energy coming out of him idk

he probably takes his job so seriously that the only time he have for himself is the bathroom break - where he can read fragantica reviews and search for rennie mackintosh's books on internet archive...

and he may or may not be one of those Ingmar Bergman fans

but i also think that kuroki meisa might have saved his life when she recorded wired life - thats the type of song you can ACTUALLY feel in a cosmic level so dont @ me

good for him tho

GOOD FOR HIM!!!!!!!!!!

[365days365movies]

Fantasy March: Omnibus

As I prepare for the future of this blog (and there is a future, if anybody's wondering), I find myself looking back at the good times, when I had the time to watch a movie a day and write a blog about it, which...yeah, wasn't even sustainable for me in 2021, so make of that what you will. ANYWAY, I decided that I would bring all of these posts together in an omnibus of sorts, so anybody that wanted to read these posts could find them all easily in one place. This, alongside other archives, are going to be pinned to the top of my page, and will serve as a long index of the films in the appropriate genres. The goal? To extend these archives as I go along, and have this running index for my blog. And again...there will be additions...

SO! With that, feel free to check out these films in the fantasy genre, which is another one of those overlap-prone genres, but with a very distinct vibe to them. The definition of the fantasy genre, for the sake of this blog, is any film where the plot is forwarded or the universe is built upon supernatural phenomena that cannot be explained by scientific means. That includes science fiction means, so no Star Wars, and no superhero films, but possibly some science fantasy. Any films you'd like to see in this list? Comment, reblog, message me, whatever! I'm always open to suggestions to add to my ever-building master list of fantasy films. And check out the other indices to come!

The Hobbit (1977; dir. Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass) (Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Review) The Last Unicorn (1982; dir. Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass) (Part One | Part Two | Review) Kiki's Delivery Service (1989; dir. Hayao Miyazaki) (Part One | Part Two | Review)

Spirited Away (2001; dir. Hayao Miyazaki) (Part One | Part Two | Review) The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013; dir. Isao Takahata ) (Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Review) Wolfwalkers (2020; dir. Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart) (Part One | Part Two | Review)

Onward (2020; dir. Dan Scanlon) (Part One | Part Two | Review) The Thief of Bagdad (1940; dir. Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, and Tim Whelan) (Part One | Part Two | Review) Orpheus (1950; dir. Jean Cocteau ) (Part One | Part Two | Review) Ugetsu Monogatari (1953; dir. Kenji Mizoguchi and Kazuo Miyagawa) (Part One | Part Two | Review)

The Seventh Seal (1957; dir. Ingmar Bergman) (Part One | Part Two | Review) Jason and the Argonauts (1963; dir. Don Chaffey) (Part One | Part Two | Review) Kwaidan (1963; dir. Masaki Kobayashi) (Short One | Short Two | Short Three | Short Four | Review) The Holy Mountain (1973; dir. Alejandro Jodorowski ) (Part One | Part Two | Review)

Clash of the Titans (1981; dir. Desmond Davis) (Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Review) Legend (1985; dir. Ridley Scott ) (Part One | Part Two | Review) Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959; dir. Robert Stevenson) (Part One | Part Two | Review) The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985; dir. Woody Allen) (Part One | Part Two | Review)

Wings of Desire (1987; dir. Wim Wenders) (Part One | Part Two) Death Becomes Her (1992; dir. Robert Zemeckis) (Part One | Part Two) Orlando (1992; dir. Sally Potter) (Recap) The Secret Garden (1993; dir. Agnieszka Holland) (Recap)

Omnibus: Film Reviews

[stuff-for-your-scroll]

I haven't seen anyone dig up the little-known musical adaptation of Goncharov, so thought I'd share my knowledge on the topic.

After Matteo JWHJ 0715 was kicked off of the set of his passion project partway through filming, he decided that he would produce a stage version of Goncharov where he could have more control and wouldn’t be bound by the Hayes Code. He was so eager to do this that he started putting together a creative team while the film was still in production. He was originally going to approach Howard Sackler about writing a straight play based on the story but after seeing a production of the original run of Follies on Broadway, decided that a musical adaptation would allow him to tap into the inner lives of the characters better. Stephen Sondheim agreed to write the songs for the piece and JWHJ 0715 set to work adapting his script for a stage libretto.

Unfortunately, this project never saw the light of day. When word got back to the production company that JWHJ 0715 had gone behind their backs on this project, the studio took legal action and was ultimately successful in securing the stage rights to Goncharov.

According to an interview in The Sondheim Review (Vol. XI No.2) the adaptation was going to focus on the shifting relationships between Goncharov, Andrey, Mario, Katya, and Sofia, putting the politics on the backburner in order to explore their various romantic entanglements. Sondheim mentioned in a letter to a fan who wrote to ask him about the project that a total of five songs were written for his unfinished Goncharov musical. We know that one was called “Mario’s Lament” but as of now no music or lyrics have surfaced. (if that sheet of legal paper is sitting in your archive somewhere, let me know!) Two of them are entirely unknown and nameless, to the best of my knowledge. The other two, however, saw a second life. While Sondheim rarely used “trunk tunes” he couldn’t let go of two of the numbers written for the original Goncharov musical. “Goodbye For Now” was written to be sung by Katya to Sofia, after realizing that Sofia is a double agent, will have to return to her home country soon, and could be gone and completely out of communication for quite some time. It was later used as the title theme for the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds.

The final song didn’t have to wait long at all to get its spotlight. After the project was scrapped, Sondheim was already thinking about romantic entanglements and shifting relationships and used that energy to adapt Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night into a Broadway musical called A Little Night Music. And the song that was written for Goncharov to sing during that fatal moment when Andrey betrays him was added to the show during its out of town previews and later became Sondheim’s biggest hit of all time: “Send in the Clowns.”

While Sondheim spoke little of the scrapped project, he was a lifelong movie buff and often included Goncharov while talking about his favorite films.

As for the Goncharov musical, that’s not the end of the story. Now that the studio had paid their legal fees and gone to the trouble of acquiring the stage rights, they decided to use them. They approached Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse to write the music and the project eventually became the 1974 show Signor Goncharov, a fish-out-of-water story that focused on the culture shock of the Russian characters living in Naples and infused the story with more comedy, though tried to keep a lot of the dramatic tension too, resulting in a major tone problem according to many theatre critics at the time. The show was a flop, closing after only six performances on Broadway. However, the songwriting duo bounced back in 1976 with their hit musical Annie.

A cast album was never produced, but there are rumors that there’s a demo recording out there somewhere. As a Sondheim buff, I’ve always put more effort into trying to track down the lost songs from the original project, but if anyone unearths the music from the show that made it to a Broadway stage, do let me know in the notes! Definitely an interesting moment in theatre history.

[lightdancer1]

New chapter up:

Excerpt:

The eyes of Death opened. Normally, in the ordinary course of events the Reaper was the most humanlike of all her family. Now her eyes were pools of darkness that drank in the shadows, and for a moment he saw her as the Endless did, dark brown skin becoming bone white and a look of cold anger intertwined with a sorrow that reflected the inhuman nature of the Endless and what they really were, whenever their masks slipped. She stood up, painfully, and he only appreciated then partially and later fully when Dream explained to him something with quiet words what it must be to have another pair of limbs anchoring your center of gravity and then to wake up with them gone. He could have been standing in Ingmar Bergman's soon to be released film when the bone-pale hand moved a single finger and pointed straight at Johanna Constantine, who by now had awakened and had sat watching Death not with the hope in his eyes, and that of Dream, but something wary.

You.

Her words were not warm, not the voice he'd heard. A single cold sound like a funeral bell.

You and I, she took a step. We are going to that place you call home. Now.

[kleenexwoman]

Thanks to @greekgeek24k for the poster:

It's the first chapter of the MCU/Ingmar Bergman mash-up I'm doing for @stuckyhistoricalfiction! Knights, the Crusades, the Black Plague, rape, murder, adultery, it's here!

[burlveneer-music]

Jon Iverson meets Prins Emanuel, Golden Ivy & Inre Kretsen Grupp - Iverson’s sketches from the 80s fleshed out by the other musicians listed; results are decidedly Fourth World, apart from one straight-up dub track

Jon Iverson meets Prins Emanuel, Golden Ivy & Inre Kretsen Grupp is an experiment bridging time and space. Recorded across decades and continents, the album merges ‘80s American home studio sensibilities with contemporary European kosmische. After receiving hours of unreleased material from Jon Iverson’s reel-to-reel archive, Séance Centre’s Brandon Hocura conceived of having contemporary musicians ‘finish’ the vibrant sketches and demos that had been languishing since the ‘80s. Immediately, a group of musicians working in and around Malmö sprang to mind as sympathetic and exciting collaborators for this material: Emanuel Sundin (Prins Emanuel), Ivar Lantz (Golden Ivy) and Martin Blomberg (Inre Kretsen Grupp). They were inspired by the proposal and spent several days in the studio, weaving rhythms, textures, and melodies around loops and samples made from the original recordings. The resulting album expands Iverson’s percussive and atmospheric vignettes into wide-open 21st Century group-think cosmic music, adding violin, flute, kalimba, lap steel, percussion, guitar, organ, synthesizers, bass, samples, and effects. A sonic landscape that evoke’s Terence Malick’s Montana Badlands as much as Ingmar Bergman’s windswept Fårö Island.

Original sketches were recorded by Jon Iverson, 1983-1989 in Los Osos, California. Additional contributions were recorded February 10-12th, 2021 at Studio Sickan, Malmö. Jon Iverson: Percussion, Synthesizer, Guitar, Genggong and Trumpet. Ivar Lantz: Violin, Flute, Percussion, Synthesizer. Emanuel Sundin: Drums, Percussion, Electric Bass, Kalimba, Synthesizer, Electric Guitar, Vocals. Martin Blomberg: Piano, Electric Bass, Percussion, Electric Guitar, Drums, Synthesizer, Lap Steel, Pump Organ. Mastered by Brandon Hocura Design by Alan Briand

[ozu-teapot]

Apropos of Bergman: Have you read any books about/by him... The collected interviews? The work diaries etc.? And if so, which ones would you recommend?

This is a little lazy of me but as it's been a while since I've read any of my Bergman books I'm going to self-quote a reply from 6 years ago on the same subject:

Here’s a link to all the Bergman books I own, although a couple are collections of screenplays. The Taschen Ingmar Bergman Archives is a fantastic book but harder to find now for a reasonable price. The Peter Cowie and Jörn Donner books are good IIRC, and Bergman’s autobiography The Magic Lantern is worth reading if you’re interested in him. One I have which isn’t pictured is Ingmar Bergman: The Life and Films of the Last Great European Director by Geoffrey Macnab which is good too. A couple I don’t own but want to pick up at some point (when I can afford them) are Images: My Life in Film which collects what were interviews between Bergman and Lasse Bergstrom edited down to be Ingmar taking about most of his films, and Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide by Birgitta Steene which sounds excellent!

Update - since then I have acquired the Images: My Life in Film and Bergman: A Reference Guide books and they are good but I've never read all of the latter because it's such a big-ass book!

[filmstruck]

A Glimpse Into the Bergman Archives by Pablo Kjolseth

Taschen books are known for their "enormous formats that would crush most coffee tables to splinters," as Rebecca Mead points out in a New Yorker article on another printer (Gerhard Steidl). For film geeks such as myself, Taschen's enormous format is a plus as it mimics the joys of the big screen, albeit in book form. My first Taschen book was The Stanley Kubrick Archives and it's full of revealing interviews, blueprints for set designs, screenplays, essays and interesting ephemera.  Taschen now has a new book out called The Ingmar Bergman Archives, and given how FilmStruck has 45 (!) Bergman titles currently available to view, I thought I'd delve into some Taschen excerpts on five titles that overlap with Max von Sydow.

THE SEVENTH SEAL ('57)

Commenting on the machinations of working with a film studio, Bergman swings around to focus on his aesthetics regarding camerawork with actors. Reading this excerpt brings to mind the iconic way Death (Bengt Ekerot) and The Knight (von Sydow) are framed by the seaside as they play their famous game of chess: "There are many directors who forget that our work in films begins with the human face. We certainly can become completely absorbed in the aesthetics of montage; we can bring together objects and still life into a wonderful rhythm; we can make nature studies of astounding beauty; but the approach to the human face is without doubt the distinguishing quality of the film."

THE MAGICIAN ('58, aka: THE FACE):

This story takes place in the mid-1800s and involves Albert Emanuel Vogler (Max von Sydow), a mesmerist and magician who is traveling to Stockholm with his troupe only to be placed under house arrest. Erland Josephson, who played the Consul Abraham Egerman, had this to say about the film: "In THE FACE, Ingmar (through von Sydow) was the magician and I was the representative of society scrutinizing people." Bergman had this to add: "Unfortunately, it's not so funny as I intended it to be. The actor who was the big comic role was so drunk all the time he couldn't remember his lines or what he had to do. So about a third of his part had to be cut, which meant that the film lost its balance and became too serious."

THE VIRGIN SPRING ('60):

With THE VIRGIN SPRING Bergman won the first of his Academy Awards in 1961 and later provided Wes Craven with inspiration for his gritty thriller LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT ('72). When Bergman was done filming THE VIRGIN SPRING, he felt good about himself. "I thought I'd made one of my best films. I was delighted, shaken. I enjoyed showing it to all sorts of people." But he would later belittle THE VIRGIN SPRING as "an aberration" and "a lousy imitation of (Akira) Kurosawa." His biggest grudge was feeling he'd allowed the film to be too sentimental.

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY ('61):

Karin (Harriet Andersson) is trying to recover from mental illness on a Baltic island. Along for the ride is her husband (von Sydow), young brother (Lars Passgård) and father (Gunnar Björnstrand). In a section titled "Invisible Shadows," cinematographer Sven Nykvist had this to say: "Ingmar's films radically changed in character, starting with THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY. To have been present throughout this process has been one of my most important experiences as a photographer. There is no doubt that working with Ingmar was an eye-opener, but I dare say that he in me found a tool and a twin soul, someone who thought about things the same way as he did. After completing the film, we both felt that we had to continue to work together."

WINTER LIGHT ('63):

The following message by Bergman was read on February 10th, 1963, at "a fundraising show in Falun for the benefit of Skattunge church" and the day before the films official premiere: "I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life."

[jeanne-art]

Le réalisateur Ingmar Bergman sur le tournage du film “Le septième sceau” en 1957

Photo © Rue des Archives/Everett

[lostgoonie1980]

241. Bergman - 100 anos (Bergman: Ett år - ett liv, 2018), dir.ª Jane Magnusson

[artistisdead]

making a bergman index (insane yet lazy enough not to include the details of every film)

[muppet-facts]

Muppet Fact #105

The Swedish Chef's speaking mannerisms can be accredited to Jim Henson listening to a tape called "How to Speak Mock Swedish" while in the car. Brian Henson said "...He would drive to work trying to make a chicken sandwich in Mock Swedish or make a turkey casserole in Mock Swedish. It was the most ridiculous thing you had ever seen...But that was the roots of the character that would eventually become the Swedish Chef."

However, when interviewed by Expressen in 1985, Jim Henson claimed that the inspiration for the Swedish Chef's voice came from a suggestion from one of his writers, "One of my writers came up with the idea that the chef should sound like the Swedish actors in Ingmar Bergman films."

Sources:

"Muppet Central Guides - The Muppet Show: Connie Stevens." June 16, 2012. (Archived.)

"Mupparnas kock i Nöjesmassakern." Bonnier AB. Expressen. November 18, 1985.

[alvadee]

i love getting randomly rewarded like this when i research. ;_; i looked for old hollywood parties/galas/premieres footages and 35th academy awards footage in hopes of finding Vic somewhere and through the tangents you go on by clicking links from footage archive to footage archive i ended up finding the super rare CBS Playhouse Tv movie “The Lie” (1973) by Ingmar Bergman in which Vic had a role as the protagonist’s boss. no collector of rare stuff had it and i was only aware that the Paley Center had a copy it once showed (but otherwise you can only watch it on site (which with me being an ocean away is impossible)). hell yeah!!!