NESTLED INSIDE THE SEVENTH SEAL lies the one-act play Wood Painting, which I wrote for the graduating class of drama students in Malmö. I was teaching at the drama school, and we needed a play for the end-of-the-year student performance in the spring. It was hard to find a play with several equally important parts, so I wrote Wood Painting purely as an exercise. It was divided into several monologues, and the number of students determined the number of roles.
Inside Wood Painting there are some visual memories from my childhood.
For instance, as I wrote in The Magic Lantern, I sometimes accompanied my father when he went to preach in some country church:
Like all churchgoers have at times, I let my mind wander as I contemplated the altarpieces, triptychs, crucifixes, stained-glass windows, and murals. I would find Jesus and the two robbers in blood and torment, and Mary leaning on St. John: Woman, behold thy son, behold thy mother. Mary Magdalene, the sinner, who had been the last to sleep with her? The Knight playing chess with Death. Death sawing down the Tree of Life, a terrified wretch wringing his hands in the top of it. Death leading the dance to the Land of Shadows, wielding his scythe like a flag, the congregation capering in a long line, and the jester bringing up the rear. The devils keeping the pot boiling, and the sinners hurtling headlong downward into the depths. Adam and Eve discovering their nakedness. Some churches are like aquariums, not deserts. People are everywhere — saints, prophets, angels, devils, and demons — all alive and flourishing. The here-and-beyond billowing over walls and arches. Reality and imagination merged into robust mythmaking. Sinner, behold thy labors, behold what awaits thee around the corner, behold the shadow behind thy back!
I had acquired a huge record player, and I bought Carl Ferenc Fricsay’s recording of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. I used to let Orff thunder forth in the morning before I set off for rehearsal.
Carmina Burana is inspired by medieval songs written by minstrels who, during the years of the plague and the bloody wars, joined the big, wandering crowds of homeless men and women traipsing across the lands of Europe. Among the crowd were scholars, monks, priests, and jesters. A few could write, and they created songs that were sung at church festivals and fairs.
What attracted me was the whole idea of people traveling through the downfall of civilization and culture, giving birth to new songs. One day when I was listening to the final choral in Carmina Burana, it suddenly struck me that I had the theme for my next film!
Then I thought that I would make Wood Painting my point of departure.
In the end, Wood Painting wasn’t of much use. The Seventh Seal took off in another direction; it became a kind of “road movie,” traveling without constraint in time and space. It makes great big sweeps and takes full responsibility for these sweeps.
When I turned in the screenplay to Svensk Filmindustri, I was met with a thumbs-down from every imaginable hand. Then Smiles of a Summer Night happened. It opened the day after Christmas 1955 and became, in spite of all overt and covert misgivings, a genuine success.
Nils Poppe as J of. The vassal and the knight with Albertus Pictor, the church painter (Gunnar Björnstrand, Max von Sydow, and Gunnar Olsson).
In May 1956 it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. When it received the prize, I went straight to Malmö and borrowed money from Bibi Andersson, who at the moment was the richest one of us. Then I flew down to see the head of Svensk Filmindustri, Carl Anders Dymling. I found him sitting in a hotel room in Cannes, overexcited and out of control, selling Smiles of a Summer Night dirt cheap to any horse trader who happened to show up. He had never experienced anything like it. His innocence nearly matched his cockiness.
I placed the refused screenplay for The Seventh Seal in his lap and said, “Now or never, Carl Anders!” He said, “Sure, sure, but I have to read it first.” “You must have already read it since you turned it down.” “That’s true, but maybe I didn’t read it carefully enough.”
For him to agree to let me do the film, I had to promise to make the film quickly, in thirty-six days, not including days spent traveling to and from the exteriors. It had to be an extremely inexpensive production. When the high from Cannes had turned into a hangover, The Seventh Seal was considered narrow, exclusive, and a hard sell. Two months after the deal was made, however, our camera was rolling.
We were given studio space in place of some other film that was supposed to have been made. It is remarkable with what merry lightheartedness I was able to start a shoot as complicated as this one back then.
Everything was filmed at Film City with the exception of three scenes we shot at Hovs hallar: the prologue, the ending, and Jof’s and Mia’s supper in a wild strawberry patch located there. For the outdoor scenes we moved within a very confined space, but we had good luck with the weather and were able to shoot from sunrise to late at night.
All the other sets were constructed within the studio area. The stream in the dark forest where the wanderers meet the witch was created with the help of the fire department and actually caused some violent overflows. If you look carefully, you will see a mysterious light reflecting from behind some trees. That is a window in one of the nearby high-rise apartment buildings.
The final scene when Death dances off with the travelers was, as I said, shot at Hovs hallar. We had packed up for the day because of an approaching storm. Suddenly, I caught sight of a strange cloud. Gunnar Fischer hastily set the camera back into place. Several of the actors had already returned to where we were staying, so a few grips and a couple of tourists danced in their place, having no idea what it was all about. The image that later became famous of the Dance of Death beneath the dark cloud was improvised in only a few minutes.
That’s how things can happen on the set. We made the film in thirty-five days.
The Seventh Seal is one of the few films really close to my heart. Actually, I don’t know why. It’s certainly far from perfect. I had to contend with all sorts of madness, and one can detect here and there the speed with which it was made. But I find it even, strong, and vital. Furthermore, in this film I passionately cultivated my theme to the fullest.
Since at the time I was still very much in a quandary over religious faith, I placed my two opposing beliefs side by side, allowing each to state its case in its own way. In this manner, a virtual cease-fire could exist between my childhood piety and my newfound harsh rationalism. Thus, there are no neurotic complications between the knight and his vassals.
Also, I infused the characters of Jof and Mia with something that was very important to me: the concept of the holiness of the human being. If you peel off the layers of various theologies, the holy always remains.
I also added a playful friendliness to the family picture. The child brings about the miracle, and the juggler’s eighth ball stands still in the air for one breathtaking moment, a microsecond.
The Seventh Seal doesn’t chafe anywhere.
But I had recklessly dared to do what I wouldn’t dare to do today. The knight performs his morning prayer. When he is ready to pack up his chess set, he turns around, and there stands Death. “Who are you?” asks the knight. “I am Death.”
Bengt Ekerot and I agreed that Death should have the features of a white clown. An amalgamation of a clown mask and a skull.
It was a delicate and dangerous artistic move, which could have failed. Suddenly, an actor appears in whiteface, dressed all in black, and announces that he is Death. Everyone accepted the dramatic feat that he was Death, instead of saying, “Come on now, don’t try to put something over on us! You can’t fool us! We can see that you are just a talented actor who is painted white and clad in black! You’re not Death at all!” But nobody protested. That made me feel triumphant and joyous.
I still held on to some of the withered remains of my childish piety. I had until then held a totally naïve idea of what one would call a preternatural salvation.
With Death (Bengt Ekerot) in The Seventh Seal.
My present conviction manifested itself during this time.
I believe a human being carries his or her own holiness, which lies within the realm of the earth; there are no otherworldly explanations. So in the film lives a remnant of my honest, childish piety lying peacefully alongside a harsh and rational perception of reality.
The Seventh Seal is definitely one of my last films to manifest my conceptions of faith, conceptions that I had inherited from my father and carried along with me from childhood.
When I made The Seventh Seal, both prayers and invocations to something or someone were central realities in my life; to offer up a prayer was a completely natural act.
In Through a Glass Darkly, my childhood inheritance is put to rest. I maintained that every conception of a divine god created by human beings must be a monster, a monster with two faces or, as Karin puts it, the spider-god.
In a joyful scene with the painter of churches, Albertus Pictor, I present without any embarrassment my own artistic conviction. Albertus insists that he is in show business. To survive in this business, it’s important to avoid making people too mad.
The character of Jof is a forerunner of the boy in Fanny and Alexander — the one who is so irritated because he is constantly being assaulted by ghosts and demons and must forever associate with them although they frighten him. At the same time he can’t keep from telling wild stories, mostly to make himself seem important. Jof is both a braggart and a seer. Jof and Alexander are in turn related to the child Bergman. I did see a vision or two, but more often I embellished my stories. When my visions ran dry, I made some up.
As far back as I can remember, I carried a grim fear of death, which during puberty and my early twenties accelerated into something unbearable.
With Inga Landgre and Max von Sydow.
The fact that I, through dying, would no longer exist, that I would walk through the dark portal, that there was something that I could not control, arrange, or foresee, was for me a source of constant horror. That I plucked up my courage and depicted Death as a white clown, a figure who conversed, played chess, and had no secrets, was the first step in my struggle against my monumental fear of death.
There is a scene in The Seventh Seal that used to fill me with fear and, at the same time, fascination. It is when Raval dies behind the tree in the dark forest. He burrows his head into the ground and howls with fright.
Originally, I had planned to make this a close-up, but I soon discovered that the sense of the horrible was reinforced by distance. When Raval died, I let the camera keep rolling for some reason, and over the mysterious glen in the forest, there was a sudden pale sunlight. It looked like a stage set. The whole day had been overcast, but at the precise moment when Raval died, the light appeared as if previously arranged.
My fear of death was to a great degree linked to my religious concepts. Later on, I underwent minor surgery. By mistake, I was given too much anesthesia. I felt as if I had disappeared out of reality. Where did the hours go? They flashed by in a microsecond.
Suddenly I realized, that is how it is. That one could be transformed from being to not-being — it was hard to grasp. But for a person with a constant anxiety about death, now liberating. Yet at the same time it seems a bit sad. You say to yourself that it would have been fun to encounter new experiences once your soul had had a little rest and grown accustomed to being separated from your body. But I don’t think that is what happens to you. First you are, then you are not. This I find deeply satisfying.
That which had formerly been so enigmatic and frightening, namely, what might exist beyond this world, does not exist. Everything is of this world. Everything exists and happens inside us, and we flow into and out of one another. It’s perfectly fine like that.
At Svensk Filmindustri, The Seventh Seal suddenly became part of the pomp and splendor of an anniversary celebration focusing on the golden age of Swedish film. This was a catastrophe for the film; it was not made for such activities. The gala premiere held a murderous atmosphere for a serious art film, complete with a society audience, a flourish of trumpets, and a speech by Carl Anders Dymling. It was devastating. I did what I could to stop the onslaught but ultimately was powerless. Their boredom and their malice poured relentlessly over everything.
“The image that later became famous of the Dance of Death beneath the dark cloud was improvised in only a few minutes.”
Later, once it was released, The Seventh Seal swept like a forest fire across the world. I was met with strong responses from people who felt that the movie struck right at their own inner doubts and agony.
But I will never forget that solemn gala premiere.
IF YOU DON’T COUNT the epilogue that I tacked loosely onto Through a Glass Darkly, you could say that the film is above reproach both technically and dramatically. It is my first real small ensemble drama and leads the way for Persona. I had made a decision to compress the drama. This is immediately apparent in the first scene: four human beings come out of a roaring sea, appearing from nowhere.
Even on the surface, Through a Glass Darkly is obviously the beginning of something new, perhaps not yet worked out here. The technical staging can hardly be faulted; it is rhythmically irreproachable. Every shot sits just right. The fact that Sven Nykvist and I have laughed many a time at our not always successful lighting is another story. At that point in our collaboration, we began to have intense discussions about lights and lighting. These discussions led to a totally different concept of cinematography; the results can be seen in the later Winter Light and The Silence. So, from a cinematographic point of view, Through a Glass Darkly marks the end of a stage, of earlier attitudes. For me, it stands as a conclusion.
The epilogue has, with some justification, been criticized for being loosely tacked onto the end. In this scene between David and Minus, the boy’s final line is “Daddy spoke to me!” I suppose that was written out of my need to be didactic. Perhaps I put it there in order to say something that had not yet been said; I don’t know. I feel ill at ease when confronted with the epilogue today. Throughout the film runs a false tone, hardly detectable to others, which may account for the scene.
It must be kept in mind that the preceding year (1959) I had made The Virgin Spring, a movie which improved my status, at that time, especially when it received an Oscar.
Today I take full responsibility for the religious problem I set up in The Seventh Seal. A genuine romantic piety rendered the special luster there.
But with The Virgin Spring my motivation was extremely mixed. The God concept had long ago begun to crack, and it remained more as a decoration than as anything else. What really interested me was the actual, horrible story of the girl and her rapists, and the subsequent revenge. My own conflict with religion was well on its way out.
In Vilgot Sjoman’s book about Winter Light, entitled Diary with Ingmar Bergman, there is a discussion that hints at a connection between The Virgin Spring and Through a Glass Darkly. He wrote that I had planned Winter Light as the last part of a trilogy that began with The Virgin Spring and Through a Glass Darkly.
Today I see this view as a rationalization created after the fact. I tend to look skeptically at the whole trilogy concept. It was born during my conversations with Sjöman and was fortified when the screenplays for Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence were published together in a book. With Vilgot’s help I wrote an introductory note that explained:
Through a Glass Darkly: ’Tour human beings come out of a roaring sea.”
These three films deal with reduction, THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY — conquered certainty, WINTER LIGHT— penetrated certainty, THE SILENCE — God’s silence — the negative imprint. Therefore, they constitute a trilogy.
This note was written in May 1963. Today I feel that the “trilogy” has neither rhyme nor reason. It was a Schnaps-Idee, as the Bavarians say, meaning that it’s an idea found at the bottom of a glass of alcohol, not always holding up when examined in the sober light of day.
Through a Glass Darkly is mainly connected to my marriage to Kabi Laretei and our life together.
Between the two of us, we had, as I wrote in The Magic Lantern, developed a complicated, staged relationship. We were confused and at the same time exceptionally successful. We were also enormously fond of each other. Moreover, we spoke about everything and anything that occurred to us. But in reality we had no common language. We couldn’t communicate.
Our acquaintance began by correspondence. We exchanged letters for almost a year before we even met. For me, it was an exalting experience to have an emotionally and intellectually charged, richly endowed correspondence partner. I have not reread our letters, but I believe that before long I was using a vocabulary that I would not have dared to employ earlier in my life.
The reason was that Käbi was very expressive in a literary sense. She possessed an extraordinary keenness for the Swedish language, which may stem from the fact that she had been forced to learn and conquer it.
I see in my diary from that time that I used words I would not dream of using today. I note a dangerous tendency toward a flowery literary language.
The more Käbi and I watched the erosion of the collaboration into which we put so much effort, the more we tried to improve it superficially with verbal cosmetics.
I used this personal experience later, in Autumn Sonata. Viktor, the minister, tells his wife, Eva: “Furthermore, I have nourished unrealistic hopes and dreams. And some kind of longing, too, for that matter.” Then Eva says:
Those are very beautiful words, aren’t they? I mean they are words that don’t mean anything. I was raised on beautiful words. The word “pain,” for instance. Mother is never mad or disappointed or unhappy, she “feels pain.” You, too, have a lot of words like that. Since you are a preacher, it’s probably a kind of occupational disease. If you say that you long for me when I’m standing right here in front of you, I am suspicious.
Viktor: You know very well what I mean.
Eva: No. If I knew, you would never think of saying that you long for me.
Making Through a Glass Darkly was like taking inventory before a sale. I was anxious about the enormous changes both my wife and I had made when we broke away from our earlier lives and came together in a totally new life-style. I feared it would turn out to be what it was: a perilous gamble. Out of my fear grew the slightly too beautiful words, the slightly too grandiose formulations, and the slightly too pretty shape of Through a Glass Darkly.
The Virgin Spring: “The actual, horrible story of the girl and her rapists, and the subsequent revenge” (Max von Sydow, Birgitta Pettersson, and Birgitta Valberg).
All this is clearly seen in a diary notation Vilgot Sjöman made in the beginning of his book about Winter Light:
Dinner at the home of Ulla Isaksson. Ingmar and Käbi come over for coffee. Differences over artistic interpretation. Käbi speaks about Hindemith; Ingmar about direction and interpretation — then he tells wild and outrageous stories about animals he has filmed: the snakes in Thirst, the squirrel in The Seventh Seal, the cat in The Devil’s Eye. Suddenly the conversation takes a turn and is now about suffering.
When I first read these words in Vilgot’s book, I thought that Vilgot, goddamn him, had seen right through us. He had identified the game between Käbi and me.
Today I know that Vilgot didn’t have the faintest suspicion. But the scene speaks its own uncomfortable language.
Through a Glass Darkly was a desperate attempt to present a simple philosophy: God is love and love is God. A person surrounded by Love is also surrounded by God. That is what I, with the assistance of Vilgot Sjöman, named “conquered certainty.” The terrible thing about the film is that it offers a horrendously revealing portrait of the creator and the condition he was in at the start of the film, both as a man and as an artist. A book would have been much less revealing in this case, since words can be more nebulous than pictures.
So here we started with a falsehood, largely unconscious, but a falsehood nevertheless. In a weird way, the film floats a couple of inches above the ground. But falsehood is one thing, the weaving of illusions another. The illusion maker is conscious of what he is doing, as is Albert Emanuel Vogler in The Face. Therefore The Face is an honest film, whereas Through a Glass Darkly is a conjurer’s trick.
The best thing about Through a Glass Darkly also emanated from Käbi’s and my relationship. Through Käbi I learned much about music. She helped me find the form of the “chamber play.” The borderline between the chamber play and chamber music is nonexistent, as it is between cinematic expression and musical expression.
When the film was in its planning stages, it was called The Wallpaper. I wrote in my workbook: “It’s going to have a story that moves vertically, not horizontally. How the hell do you do that?” The note is from New Year’s Day 1960, and even if it was strangely expressed, I understood exactly what I meant: a film that went into an untested dimension of depth.
My workbook (middle of March):
A god speaks to her. She is humble and submissive toward this god whom she worships. God is both dark and light. Sometimes he gives her incomprehensible instructions, to drink saltwater, kill animals, and so on. But sometimes he is full of love and gives her vital experiences, even on the sexual plane. He descends and disguises himself as Minus, her younger brother. At the same time the god forces her to swear off marriage. She is the bride awaiting her groom; she must not let herself be defiled. She pulls Minus into her world. He follows her willingly and eagerly since he exists on the border of puberty. The god throws suspicion on Martin and David and creates the wrong impression of them in order to warn her. On the other hand he endows Minus with the strangest qualities.
Harriet Andersson as Karin: ’The borderline that she crosses is the bizarre pattern on the wallpaper.”
What I wanted, most deeply, was to depict a case of religious hysteria or, if you will, a schizophrenic individual with heavily religious tendencies.
Martin, the husband, struggles with this god in order to win Karin back to his world. But since he is the type of person who needs that which is tangible, his efforts are in vain.
Then I find this in my workbook:
A god descends into a human being and settles in her. First he is just an inner voice, a certain knowledge, or a commandment. Threatening or pleading. Repulsive yet stimulating. Then he lets himself be more and more known to her, and the human being gets to test the strength of the god, learns to love him, sacrifices for him, and finds herself forced into the utmost devotion and then into complete emptiness. When this emptiness has been accomplished, the god takes possession of this human being and accomplishes his work through her hands. Then he leaves her empty and burned out, without any possibility of continuing to live in this world. That is what happens to Karin. And the borderline that she crosses is the bizarre pattern on the wallpaper.
Parallel with the carefully chosen words exists a contrasting harsh concept of how the god I have created actually looks.
In my workbook at the time there is even a small reckoning with Bergman himself:
The strange experience of Frank Martin’s Petite symphonie concertante. It began extremely pleasantly, and I found it both beautiful and moving. Then it hit me all of a sudden that this music was like my films. At some point I said that I wanted to make films the way [Béla] Bartók writes music. But the truth is that I make films the way Frank Martin has composed his Symphonie concertante, and that is not fun at all. I can’t say that it’s bad music, rather the opposite. It is irreproachable, both fine and moving, and also utterly refined, so far as the musical effects go. But I have a strong suspicion that this music is superficial, that he employs ideas that are not completely thought through, that the music deploys more effect than it can defend. Käbi says that this is not so. But I wonder about it anyhow and am rather sad.
This was written around the end of March 1960 before Through a Glass Darkly had taken on a definite shape. I was still on my way toward a different film:
Karin wants Martin, her husband, to worship the god; otherwise the god might turn dangerous. She tries to force Martin to do so. He finally gets David to help him give her an injection. Then she disappears directly into her world behind the wallpaper.
April 12, I write in my workbook:
Don’t sentimentalize Karin’s illness. Show it in all its ghastly glory. Don’t try to effect a lot of subtle ties from her experience with the god.
Good Friday, 1960:
Feel desire for work and concentration. Possibly also for various deviltry and mischief though it remains to be seen what will come out of it. I have been pondering over the film and think: If we force ourselves to imagine a god, if we try to materialize him, he immediately becomes a rather repulsive figure with many faces.
I was touching on a divine concept that is real, but then I smeared a diffuse veneer of love all over it. I was really defending myself against what was threatening me in my own life.
The character of David, Karin’s father and a successful author, became a problem. In him, two forms of unconscious lying came together: my own and actor Gunnar Björnstrand’s. Our combined efforts created a dreadful stew.
Gunnar had converted to Catholicism, certainly with deep honesty and a passion for truth. Under this circumstance, I handed him a text that is totally impossible because of its superficiality. Today I realize that I didn’t let him say one true word.
He portrays a best-selling author: here I wrote of my own situation — that of being successful yet not being recognized or respected. I let David explore my aborted suicide in Switzerland during the time before Smiles of a Summer Night. The text is hopelessly cynical. I let David draw an extraordinarily dubious conclusion from his suicidal attempt: in seeking his own death he finds renewed love for his children.
Out of my own obviously horrible situation in Switzerland came absolutely nothing. It was a dead end. But Gunnar experienced the monologue’s gospel of conversion as if it were his own. He thought it was splendid.
It was poorly done and poorly played.
For the part of Minus, I chose an actor who had just finished drama school and was not mature enough for the complications of the role: the crossing over of borders, the debauchery, the contempt for his father yet the longing for contact with him, the bond with his sister, the need for productivity. Lars Passgård was a moving, fine human being, and he slaved like a dog. But it should have been a young version of the actor Bengt Ekerot.
The old shipwreck by the seashore. Minus and Karen (Lars Passgdrd and Harriet Andersson).
Over the years I have developed more skill in choosing the right actors for the right parts. Passgård and I did the best we could. He is totally without blame for our failure.
So I had my string quartet. But one instrument, Björnstrand, played false notes all the time, and the other instrument, Passgård, certainly followed the written music but had no interpretation.
The third instrument, Max von Sydow, played with purity and authority, but I had not given him the elbowroom he needed.
The miraculous thing is that Harriet Andersson played Karin’s part with sonorous musicality. She needed no coercion and went without visible steps in and out of her prescribed reality. She portrayed Karin with a clear tone and a touch of genius. Through her presence the product becomes bearable.
She also portrayed fragments of another film that I was going to write but never did.
IT IS SATISFYING to see Winter Light after a quarter of a century. I believe that nothing in it has eroded or broken down.
My first notes on the film are from March 26, 1961. Under the heading “Conversations with God,” it says in my workbook: “Sunday morning. Symphony of psalms. Work with The Rake’s Progress.” I was struggling with Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at the Stockholm Opera, and it was like rock blasting. I had to learn the music by heart, and I don’t have a knack for remembering music easily. “One has to do what is necessary. When nothing is necessary, one can do nothing.”
I go into an abandoned church in order to converse with God; I want to get some answers. To finally give up either my resistance to God or my unceasing conflict. Either to bond to the stronger, to the father, to the need for security or to reveal his being as a jeering voice from centuries gone by.
The drama takes place at the demolished high altar in this deserted church. Individuals appear and disappear. But always there is this Self in the center who threatens, rages, prays, and tries to find some clarity in his perplexity. To make a day scene and a night scene at the high altar, the latter being the climactic ending: “I won’t let go of your hand until you bless me.” The Self enters the church, locks the door, and remains there in a fever. The despairing silence of the night, the graves, the dead, the organ pipes soughing, the rats, the smell of decay, the hourglass, and the pervading panic that particular night. This is Gethsemane, the judgment, the crucifixion. “God, my God, why have you deserted me?”
Hesitatingly, the Self leaves its old skin, that gray nothing, behind.
Christ, he is the good shepherd and he whom the Self cannot love. The Self must hate him. The Self digs up the grave, walks down into it, and awakens the Dead One.
As I began to imagine this drama, it took shape in my mind as a medieval play. All scenes occurred in front of the altar. The only aspect to change was the lighting, showing the dawn, twilight, and so on.
I’d rather carry my heavy inheritance of universal terror than submit to God’s demands for surrender and worship. This marks the end of the first movement. The conversation with the churchwarden’s wife, on the other hand, is totally real. She has come to close up because nobody is expected to come during the week. She busies herself inside. Then the church doors close with a bang, and the Self is left alone.
Christ, most beloved. Suffering is not difficult if you know your mission. True suffering comes from knowing the commandment of love and seeing how human beings betray themselves and each other when it comes to love. How they defile love. Christ’s clear-sightedness must have caused his greatest suffering.
I was at this point alternating between my own self and a fictitious self in an uninhibited yet confusing way:
I must get inside Through a Glass Darkly. I must grab hold of a door that is absolutely not a door to secrets. It’s imperative that I defend myself against all false doors, all tricks. I have had power and am prepared to relinquish it. Now nothing is simple, and neither is anything certain. Nothing happens through the dramatic action. It is always a question of erosion, of moving away. The moment the movement stops, I am dead. An acceleration to greater speed, on the other hand, blurs the vision, and I become uncertain about where I am going.
When the wife enters the church, the scene develops into an obvious story. The drama begin to take shape:
The morning of the second day, the minister is awakened by someone knocking loudly on the church door. It is his wife, trying to get in. She is creating such an uproar that he simply does not dare let her remain standing outside. She enters with her hands and feet wrapped in bandages and wounds on her forehead. Her eczema is acting up. She is restless, afraid, and at the same time resigned. These two people love each other and give each other definite proof of their love and solidarity. But her denial is complete — there is no God. Therefore, to her, his waiting in the church is absurd, something that makes no sense. Her suffering is physically evident, and her decision to stay there with him unshakable.
He then turns his hatred toward her. In the evening she leaves him, in bitterness. The sun turns blood-red. All around, everything lies in a disturbing twilight. Completely still and without a tremor in his voice, he delivers his hatred for God and his hatred for Christ. The day draws to a close; the silence roars. He lies down to sleep at the foot of the altar. This is the darkest night, the night of annihilation. This is the empty and chilling harbinger of death, a spiritual death, a putrefying death.
Time moved on. Toward midsummer I wrote:
An endless row of mindless jobs lie as obstacles to making this film in my way. It weighs heavily on me, leaving me with a bad conscience and feeling rather dejected. My film is collecting dust, turning to sludge. It’s no good.
Now I see this in the film: After the church services, the fisherman and his wife go to see Pastor Ericsson. Mrs. Fisherman speaks to the pastor about her husband’s anxiety. Pastor Ericsson, deeply absorbed in an attack of the flu, answers by speaking about the omnipotency of love. The fisherman says nothing. The wife announces that he must drive her home to assume her duties as wife and mother. She will come back in half an hour or so.
I’ve decided that the woman with the bandaged hands is not his wife but his mistress. His wife has been dead for four years. His mistress, Märta, is a skinny, tormented, and lonely woman who has no faith. She represses great anger inside. She goes to communion out of love, in order to get close to her lover.
I believe that I should not begin to write this drama before I truly love my characters, before I can seriously wish them well in their sorrow. I don’t want to force the drama into lightheartedness.
We went to Torö in the beginning of July, and there I started writing Winter Light. By July 28 I had finished. That was fast for a story so tricky, not because of a complicated plot but because of its simplicity.
My original thought was for the drama to take place in an abandoned church, which had been closed up and was waiting to be restored, with a ruined organ and rats running between the pews. It was a good idea! A man locks himself in an abandoned church and is finally alone with his hallucinations. This required only one set: a closed space depicting the small church with its high altar and its triptych. Only the lighting effects any changes in the room to signify dawn, the bright sun, sunset, the darkness of night. Then there are the strange sounds of the wind and the silence.
But the film became a bigger and wilder idea, perhaps more theatrical than most films. The shifting from religious themes to utterly worldly events demanded another setting. And another kind of lighting. This is where the break from Through a Glass Darkly becomes so radical.
Through a Glass Darkly affected an emotional tone both romantic and coquettish, something that one can hardly accuse Winter Light of doing. The two films belong together only when one sees Through a Glass Darkly as the starting point for Winter Light. Already I had divorced myself rather violently from my approach in Through a Glass Darkly. But I had not yet acknowledged this out loud.
Outside resistance to Winter Light was strong; criticism had already begun at the production level. But Svensk Filmindustri’s head of production, Carl Anders Dymling, was seriously ill, and I found myself in the position of being able to do what I wanted. It was time to risk a death-defying leap. Or, to use the actor Spegel’s words in The Face: “A sharp knife-edge to scrape out all impurity.”
“The role of Tomas Ericsson made harsh demands on him.” With Gunnar Björnstrand in Winter Light.
I have always tried to make my films appealing in some way to my audience. But I was not so stupid as to believe that Winter Light would be a public favorite. Unfortunate, perhaps, but inevitable. Even Gunnar Björnstrand had great difficulties with his part. We had worked together on a long line of comedies, but the role of Tomas Ericsson made harsh demands on him. Gunnar found it painful to portray a person who was unsympathetic to such a degree. His inner turmoil became so acute that he had trouble remembering his lines, a problem that had never happened before. Furthermore, he had health problems, and for his sake we worked relatively short day shifts. We shot exteriors in Dalecarlia [Sweden] — in an area abutting Orsa Finnmark. The November days were short there, yet the light was extremely gratifying even with its peculiar slant.
Not one shot was taken in direct sunlight. We filmed only when it was overcast or foggy.
A Swedish man in the midst of a Swedish reality experiencing a dismal aspect of the Swedish climate. In general, the film lacks highly dramatic moments.
But there is one such moment, and it comes when Tomas and Märta Lundberg are stopped at a railway crossing. He tells her that it was his father who wanted him to become a clergyman. Then a train arrives with freight cars that look like enormous coffins. It is the only moment with strong visual and acoustic effects. Otherwise the film is simple. Beneath the simplicity, however, there lies a complexity, which is hard to define.
It seems like a religious conflict, but it goes farther than that. The pastor is dying emotionally. He exists beyond love, actually beyond all human relations.
His hell, because he truly lives in hell, is that he recognizes his situation.
Together with his wife he has maintained a kind of fiction. The fiction is “God is love and love is God.”
The wife contracts cancer, and her suffering deepens their relationship. Through her pain he experiences feelings of tenderness and human reality, a reality he has hardly ever been in touch with. He becomes real through his sorrow over his powerlessness over his wife’s suffering.
His wife and he have been two of a kind, two damaged children who have found each other. They give each other a bearable existence.
Their idealism is fragile but real. Supported by her, he extols a romanticized ideal and begins a modest revival in the area. People listen to their pastor with renewed interest. He speaks eloquently, and his wife is very beautiful. A mild wind sweeps over the congregation. The couple visit different cottages, speaking with old people and singing psalms. One can imagine that their roles give them a deep satisfaction.
Then his wife dies, and his life dies with her. He becomes a relentless taskmaster. His mildly deceitful wife is dead, and God the Father is fading.
He bleeds to death emotionally, since there never was any real substance to his childish feelings. He lives alone for two years after his wife’s death. Then Märta takes hold of him. She has loved him all the time, even when he was married and unattainable. As a minister and a teacher in a small community, they have been in contact frequently. The winter, the silence, their loneliness, and a mutual hunger drive them into each other’s arms.
In the church: Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand). Märta (Ingrid Thulin).
Märta has her psychosomatic illness — eczema. He begins to pull away since he finds her illness horrifying. She realizes with striking perception the lovelessness of their relationship. But she is stubborn. This man is her mission. There is a mixture of honesty and banter to her credo: I prayed for a mission and I got you! When she kneels to say her prayers, she is not turning to God for guidance. The kneeling is a gesture dictated by the church. She prays for faith and security.
When Tomas stands by the rapids and guards Jonas’s corpse, he sees with a clarity that is etched in his mind the fiasco of his life. An hour later he takes revenge on the one who loves him. Then the cowardly being can no longer keep quiet; to his own surprise, he hears himself say: “The reason, the decisive reason, is that I don’t want you.”
Märta (to herself): I understand that I have made mistakes. All the time.
Tomas (pained): I have to go now. I’ll talk to Mrs. Persson.
Märta: No, I have made mistakes. Every time I felt hatred toward you, I made an effort to transform that hatred into compassion. (Looks at him.) I have felt sorry for you. I am so used to feeling sorry for you that I am unable to hate you even now. (She smiles apologetically — her crooked, ironic smile. He looks quickly at her: her hunched shoulders, her head straining forward, her large immobile hands, the look in her eyes that is suddenly unprotected and burning, her earlobes poking out through unkempt hair.)
Märta: What will you do without me?
Tomas: Ah! (Disdainful. He bites his lip. A heavy distaste works upward from his innards to his mouth.)
“Not one shot was taken in direct sunlight.” With Sven Nykvist.
Märta (lost): Oh no, you won’t be able to get along. You won’t make it, dearest little Tomas. Nothing can save you now. You’ll hate yourself to death.
He stands up and walks toward the door. During these moments he has time to imagine an even more horrible life — life without her. For him it is irrevocably over; death reigns in the schoolroom. He turns around as he reaches the door and hears himself say, “Do you want to come along to Frostnäs? I’ll try to be nice.”
(She looks up. Her severe face has an expression of being turned off, being closed up.)
Märta (stiffly): You really want me to? Or is it only some new fear that’s passing through you?
Tomas: Do what you want, but I am asking you.
Märta: Yes. Of course, I’ll come. I have no choice.
What has happened is a draining. Not only for him but also for her. He throws out words, and she sits there defenseless. She realizes suddenly that she is guilty of wrong-doing, that there has been a brutal egoism in her emotional gale.
At three o’clock the same afternoon, Tomas and Märta arrive in Frostnäs. Church bells are ringing, and peace reigns between them as they walk quietly side by side in the twilight. Algot Frövik’s reflections on forlornness offer welcome relief. Tomas believes for a brief moment that Christ and he have suffered the same pain: “God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Darkness falls over both Frostnäs and Golgotha.
Frövik has already seen this change in Tomas, and for a few seconds even Tomas grasps the bizarre camaraderie felt through suffering.
Everything is burned clear, and personal growth now becomes a possibility. For the first time in his life, Pastor Ericsson makes his own decision. He goes through with his service for no other reason than that Märta Lundberg is present.
If one has religious faith, one would say that God has spoken to him. If one does not believe in God, one might prefer to say that Märta Lundberg and Algot Frövik are two people who help raise a fellow human being who has fallen and is digging his own grave.
At that point it doesn’t matter if God is silent or if he is speaking.
I wrote in The Magic Lantern:
While I was preparing Winter Light, I went around looking at churches in Uppland in the early spring. In most cases, I borrowed the key from the organist and sat for a few hours in the church, watching the light travel across the space inside and thinking of how I would end my film. Everything had been written down and planned, except the ending.
One Sunday, I phoned Father early in the morning and asked him if he would like to come with me on an outing. Mother was in the hospital after her first heart attack, and Father had isolated himself. His hands and feet had grown worse, and now he wore orthopedic boots and walked with a stick. Out of self-discipline and sheer willpower, he continued his duties in the parish of the royal palace. He was seventy-five.
It was an early spring day with mist and bright light reflecting off the surrounding snow. We arrived in plenty of time at the little church north of Uppsala to find four churchgoers ahead of us waiting in the narrow pews. The churchwarden and the sexton were whispering on the porch while a female organist was rummaging in the organ loft. Even after the sum?moning bell had faded away over the plain, the pastor still had not appeared. A long silence ensued in heaven and on earth. Father shifted uneasily in his seat and muttered to himself and me. A few minutes later we heard the sound of a car speeding across the slippery ground outside; a door slammed, and after a minute the pastor came puffing down the aisle.
When he got to the altar rail, he turned around and looked at his congregation with red-rimmed eyes. He was a thin, long-haired man, his trimmed beard scarcely covering his receding chin. He swung his arms like a skier and coughed, the hair on the crown of his head curly, and his forehead turning red. “I am sick,” said the pastor. “I have a high fever and a chill.” He sought sympathy in our eyes. “I have permission to give you a short service; there will be no communion. I’ll preach as best I can, then we’ll sing a hymn and that will have to do. I’ll just go into the sacristy and put on my cassock.” He bowed and for a few moments stood irresolutely as if waiting for applause or at least some sign of approval, but when no one reacted, he disappeared through a heavy door.
Father rose from his seat in the pew. He was upset. “I must speak to that man. Let me pass.” He got out of the pew and limped into the sacristy, leaning heavily on his stick. A short and agitated conversation followed.
“I prayed for a mission and I got you!” Gunnar Björnstrand and Ingrid Thulin.
A few minutes later, the churchwarden appeared. He smiled with embarrassment and explained that there would be a communion service after all, and an older colleague would assist the pastor.
The introductory hymn was sung by the organist and us few churchgoers. At the end of the second verse, Father came in, in white vestments, with his stick. When the hymn was over, he turned to us and spoke in his calm free voice, “Holy, holy, holy Lord of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O Lord most High.”
Thus it was that I discovered the ending to Winter Light and a rule I was to follow from then on: irrespective of anything that happens to you in life, you hold your communion.