NEWSLETTER

INTERVIEW BY MILÈNE LARSSON
IMAGES COURTESY OF THE INGMAR BERGMAN FOUNDATION

“This is a 12-year-old Ingmar with his legendary first film camera, the Laterna Magica. He used to say, ‘My life as a filmmaker begun when I got the Laterna Magica,’ and he named his autobiography after it. Apparently, it was given to his brother for Christmas and Ingmar had gotten tin soldiers but then they switched gifts.”

When Ingmar Bergman was 20 years old, he faced a fairly ordinary existential predicament: What’s a guy to do with a head full of thoughts he can neither comprehend nor control? His answer: “You open the gas stove at home in the little kitchen and then it’ll all blow up. Boom!” Luckily for two generations of film crazies, he came to his senses and spared his kitchen the embarrassment of a floor coated in burnt brain-goo. Instead he became one of the greatest artists in the history of cinema.

Bergman’s 50 films dealt with beauty and treachery, God and Satan, and nearly every complex thought in between (including a crush on his mom). Over that time, he stuffed a secret room at his house on Fårö with a massive archive of his early notebooks, manuscripts, letters, photos, and miscellany—all of which turned out to have a direct relation to his closely studied oeuvre. To prevent his booty from being looted and sold off at auction to some rich collector after his demise—which is currently happening to the rest of his private belongings— Bergman entrusted this secret archive to film professor Maaret Koskinen, who methodically dissected it for rich new perspective. It can’t be too surprising to Bergman enthusiasts that much of the stuff Koskinen unearthed casts an awkward and indelible shadow over the man and his work. She was kind enough to sit with us for a while, chat, and walk us through a juicy visual Bergman smorgasbord.

Vice: Why did Ingmar Bergman trust you with this most private archive?
Maaret Koskinen: I was one of the few people in Sweden at the time to have written anything about him. It was like everyone was waiting for him to die first, so I wrote my doctoral dissertation on his cinematic aesthetics. He appreciated it so much that he dug out my number, called me up, and we spoke for two hours. I was star struck.

What was this conversation about?
He had read the whole thing and started defending himself. He was impressed by me noticing the voyeur theme in his films and said, “Hell, you know, that’s exactly what my films are about—the other room! You’re in one room looking into another and I do that every night!” And then he told me, “I have this spot on my balcony where I can stand unseen and look in on other people’s daily life in their kitchen or living room. I find it more fascinating than anything.”

He was a peeping tom!
Then I didn’t hear from him for five years until he called me up again and said, “Hey, listen: There’s a room here on Fårö, it’s five times five-square-meters and in it I’ve amassed all kinds of things. In fact it’s a hell of a mess. Would you like to take a look at it?” As you can imagine, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

In an early notebook from ’38 you found a diary entry in which he wanted to blow his brains out. Where do you think that existential angst and self-hatred came from?
He had a dominating mother and his father was a priest who brought him up according to a hierarchic method where the kids were at the bottom. Not ideal for someone unable to control his sudden furious outbursts—he wasn’t given the epithet “demon director” for nothing. He threw hammers around and he also had a strong sex drive, which didn’t go down well with his parents. I tried not to have any preconceived notions, but reading his early writings it’s obvious that he found his thematic sphere early on through his family relations—family, sexuality, religion, and God. His own family was a hot house in that respect.

Why did it take so long for Sweden to acknowledge him?
Before making the intellectual TV soap Scenes from a Marriage in ’73, the general public didn’t understand him at all. That bastard Bergman was questioning whether God exists when God had already been eradicated. It drove people mad because, in their eyes, he was digging into stuff that didn’t matter anymore. But what made him controversial in Sweden, those “irrelevant matters,” were matters that other countries hadn’t gotten rid of.

So you think it was, ironically, Bergman’s religious curiosity in this vastly secular country that made him world-famous?
Definitely. He was one of the few directors to put God on the cinematic world map. During his heyday, The Seventh Seal was played three times a day in the States, making it one of the most played movies on the North American continent. Another thing, appreciated by the French in particular, was how honest and open he was about sexual relations. A lot of what was said and done in his early films were things you just didn’t say, like, “Men are just kids with big genitals.”

You wrote a book about all the skeletons you dug out of his closet. It must have been nerve racking giving him the manuscript.
I was facing the possibility of having spent years on something that might never get published. I remember giving him the manuscript to read over Easter and then I went on a ski vacation without a cell phone. He dug out my husband’s cell phone number and called me up all distraught and you could hear on his voice that he was literally shaking, “I’ve read your script and I’m not even able to talk now. We will have to talk about it tomorrow. Call me on a steady line.” When we spoke the next day he told me, “I’m in shock. This is an autopsy, a close-up of a relative I’d rather not be acquainted with.” Still he let me publish the book without changing a word.


If you’re Swedish you can read more on Maaret Koskinen’s findings in her book I Begynnelsen Var Ordet (In the Beginning Was the Word). Her upcoming book Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence will be out later this fall. For more information about these images, visit Ingmarbergman.se

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Comments

Anonymous, on Oct 16, 2009 wrote: Great article!

Anonymous, on Oct 8, 2009 wrote: Young Ingmar Bergman was kinda hot.

Anonymous, on Oct 7, 2009 wrote: he WOULD be a peeping tom. he is a little bit nuts sounding

Anonymous, on Oct 7, 2009 wrote: she wrote her dissertation on him, so he looked her up and called her? he must have not gotten a lot of press if he cared so much

Anonymous, on Oct 7, 2009 wrote: jeesh! that title is intense