Cosy up this weekend with a smattering of Bergman-related musical entertainment! Every Saturday, we offer up a new song that relates to Bergman in some interesting manner. Over time, we plan on building up a pretty-little playlist suitable for any occasion, aptly entitled The Original Ingmar Bergman Spotify Playlist. (For more on Bergman and music, click here.)
Anyone who has seen Autumn Sonata recalls the terrific scene when Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann sit before the piano playing four hands. 'Disregarding the purely technical – which wasn't half bad – considering that you could have very well paid a tiny bit more attention to proper fingering, as this informs your understanding, but in any case. Let us speak instead of your interpretation. Chopin was an emotional character, Eva, but he was not sentimental. There lies an abyss between emotions and sentimentality.' Just what would Charlotte have thought of Roland Pöntinen's fingering?
The archive is not a storage space. Rather, it is defined less by the nature of its holdings than by the nature of its metadata. To save something is one thing; to have it on file is another – and it is the latter which constitutes the primary task of the archive’s keeper.
Why are you redesigning ingmarbergman.se?
We launched the site with a great hullaballo in 2005, when we were awarded website of the year by Culturenet Sweden. On the verge of our launch date, we heard mention of something called YouTube (we still had no idea about the new online community called Facebook). Wikipedia had already been around for awhile, but wasn't worth writing home about just yet. To cut a long story short, at a time that now seems like ages ago, there was still a ways to go to Web 2.0. Now it is time for us to update, so here we are!
I see.
Er, yeah. We still possess the world's largest collection of Ingmar Bergman's work, just that now we are more modern, more fun, more attractive, much larger and... well, overall much better than before.
How so?
We have images of all 200+ Bergman plays which have been staged around the world; a map displaying all locations where Bergman worked, filmed and lived; the world's best-ever timeline; our very own archive blog...
A blog sounds... hip.
Doesn't it?
Yeah.
Well, it's not really a blog.
Uh-huh.
You don't have to read it. It doesn't matter to me. It will find its fans, who will be treated to pictures of exciting happenings which are nearly as difficult to be granted access to as the Swedish Security Service's Stasi archives. They can also check out the latest from our visitors and researchers, subscribe to The Official Ingmar Bergman Spotify Playlist, learn what a 'bone folder' and 'The Principle of Provenance' are, and best of all, find out which paper we use in our pressboard archive folders and how to construct an archive box!
Exciting. I was just wondering how the number of Bergman's writings suddenly increased 300-fold. Have you rummaged through his dirty laundry hunting down shopping lists and infuriated thoughts on scraps of paper?
Now that you mention it, let me just add that the previous list was far from comprehensive. And no, 300 is not even close to the total out there - there are thousands of letters, the infamous notes to his housekeeper, for example, which are not included. All of his film scripts, prose, notebooks, essays... Bergman the author is underestimated, but this will soon be a notion of the past.
Is that so. How, exactly?
You'll have to wait and see.
Do you find it clever to pretend to be Bergman, with this faked self-interview?
Yeah, a bit. But I do it with absolute humility! As we all know, Bergman is the master of the self-interview, having published his first in 1946 and his last in 1994. (Thesetwo are also good examples).
You're getting arrogant. Just who do you think you are?
Who am I? Who are you? Who am I? Who is he?
Correction: arrogant and pretentious. Anyhow, what can we expect to find on the Spotify playlist: the likes of Carmen Carrozza and Slayer?
More or less. Well, maybe a bit more baroque music than accordions and death metal.
You dropped the name. What was wrong with Ingmar Bergman Face to Face?
Wrong and wrong. Naming sites is a little 2005, wouldn't you say? Regardless, we are now ingmarbergman.se, short and sweet.
By the way, I came across a mistake. Donald Karlsson, one of the 18 painters on the set design of Fanny and Alexander, spells his surname with two 's'. How difficult can it be? Are you completely clueless?
Thank you. Error noted and amended. If you or anyone else out there happens upon any mistakes or misquotings, please send us a mail.
Sure thing. Good luck.
Thank you very much. I assume your well wishes are sincere.
Nah, it just seemed the right thing to say. Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
Yes. I would like to kill you. As for the rest of you, please continue to visit and use our site. And spread the word!
The fact that Martin Scorsese has discovered the magnificence of 3D has not gone unnoticed. In his most recent statement, he provided a bit more insight into his enthusiasm. Even though this took place more than a month ago, I am still none the wiser as to what the chap is carrying on about. I mean, I understand that he likes 3D, just as an oil painter who is as taken with marble may start chipping away at sculptures. Let me return to my point of contention in just a moment.
Anyway, the director of Hugo claims to experience a love for the technology and aesthetics that runs so deep (and, one might add, newfound – there is the slightest hint of evangelism in his line of reasoning) that he would just adore to have all his films made in 3D. Of course Travis Bickles’ ‘You talkin’ to me’ scene:
would perhaps have been injected with a bit more pep through this enhancement.
On the other hand, Scorsese has expressed that neither Mean Streets nor New York, New York would work in 3D. Why not? These two films celebrate the director’s hometown, one of the most three-dimensional places on Earth. (Anyone who’s ever visited New York can agree that a wide-eyed walk through Manhattan gives the impression of peering through a stereoscope.) It’d be nice to see Johnny Boy strut his stuff in 3D.
Just for the record, I must clarify that I want none of these films to be any different than they are (I take that back… Scorsese can do whatever he pleases with Kundun). Not to draw comparisons, but should Michelangelo have entertained the notion to recreate his fresco The Last Judgement as a sculpture, however brilliantly he wielded a mallet?
Albeit, I will happily indulge Scorsese’s fantasies. But here’s the thing. He listed a few films apart from his own, which he believed would work in 3D. He named two (2) that he would love to see in stereoscopic glory: Jeff Nichol’s Cannes’ contestant Mud, and Ingmar Bergman’s The Passion of Anna. These two films, out of all the imaginable candidates down through the history of film. I have yet to see Mud and thus have no point of view on this matter. But The Passion of Anna! Perhaps Bergman’s most faded, most conscientiously flat film! And one that contains as many close-ups as Persona, a shot angle which rarely does the actors any justice in 3D (the Avatar lesson).
Where is the 3D potential in The Passion of Anna? Not exactly here?
Cosy up this weekend with a smattering of Bergman-related musical entertainment! Every Saturday, we offer up a new song that relates to Bergman in some interesting manner. Over time, we plan on building up a pretty-little playlist suitable for any occasion, aptly entitled The Original Ingmar Bergman Spotify Playlist. (For more on Bergman and music, click here.)
Bergman referred to The Magic Flute as his life companion, which makes perfect sense. His renowned TV film of the opera was staged at the Drottningholm Court Theatre, but as blazing spotlights, fiery torches and guards donning burning helmets were considerably reckless fare within the walls of an incredibly fragile 18th-century wooden building, Bergman elected to construct a copy of the theatre at Stockholm’s Filmhuset studio.
The duet, which in Alf Henriksson's Swedish translation was renamed ’När kärlek vaknar till en kvinna’ (’When Love for a Woman is Awakened’), with Irma Urilla as Pamina and Håkan Hagegård as Papageno, provides one of the film’s most charming scenes.
The recording from the film is not on Spotify, but we found a suitable replacement. Not only is it performed by the Drottningholm Court Orchestra, soprano Barbara Bonney was also previously married to Håkan Hagegård, who, by the way, appeared in this production as The Speaker.
And somewhere within this digital soundscape, one can detect the unparalleled acoustics offered nowhere other than within the wooden walls of a baroque theatre.
[Update 12 June: upon publication of this post yesterday, a paragraph was missing, rendering the whole business with the rubbish bin below incomprehensible. Sorry about that.]
Now that this blog has been up and running for quite a while, it’s high time to inject a bit of formality into it. After numerous posts on look-a-likes and the outfit of the day, you rightfully deserve something a bit more substantial every now and again. Well then. As this is an archive blog, let us speak of archival matters. The lesson of the day: What is the principle of provenance?
If you’ve ever watched the Antiques Roadshow, then you know all about provenance, as regards previous ownership. For example:
This rubbish bin may not look like all that much, but it did belong to Ingmar Bergman and was therefore sold at auction for 22,000 crowns (2,500 euros), with the starting bid at 300–400 crowns (30–40 euros).
The principle of provenance (Fr. respect des fonds) is a bit more up-market when it comes to the archive branch, stating that an archive shall retain the articles and intentions of the original archivist.
In order to understand why this principle came about, we head back to the year 1194, when Philip II Augustus of France, upon returning from various plundering escapades, was ambushed by Richard I of England. Nowhere in all the schoolbooks of my childhood do I remember Richard the Lionheart as being so nasty, but the fact of the matter is that during this ambush, his soldiers ran off with not only all the loot that the French king had just laboriously stolen, but also the tax register and royal seal as well.
Philip II (probably not him, but more likely our ancient archive servicemen colleagues) had no choice but to rebuild the monarchy’s registers. This is a task one does not wish to undertake very often, and so the king decided to establish a central register containing his public records. This task was assigned to the monk Brother Guérin, who established Le Trésor des Chartes in 1195, the first proper archive system in the French kingdom. The archive maintained its name even when it was moved from Chartres to the Louvre, and on to La Sainte-Chapelle, where Louis IX already housed his prized relics including Christ’s Crown of Thorns. Difficult to imagine better company for any archived item.
The French National Archives fared rather well for a few hundred years, until events at the end of the 18th century shook the shelves at La Sainte-Chapelle, unsettling the dusty back catalogues. As is common knowledge, many things came to pass during the French Revolution, yet for those of us in the industry perhaps the greatest achievement was the establishment of the Archives Nationales in 1790. All private and public archives throughout the country (besides various smaller Le Trésor des Chartes’ document collections held by different political bodies, monasteries and country seats) were merged into one giant national archive.
To unify all these different collections, to sort and catalogue them according to varying guidelines, was presumably no simple task. After half a century of the, albeit, downright turbulent times of the republic–Reign of Terror–empire–monarchy, the poor archivists got fed up with cleaning up after the mess. In 1841, under the so-called July Monarchy, a commission of historians was founded, who established that the unity of the archive took precedence over the material objects.
The principle of provenance was founded. The belief is that even when an archive changes owners, it should in principle appear the same. Say that an authority has an archive, grows tired of it and grants ownership of it to the National Archives. According to the principle of provenance, the National Archives must maintain the archive in the same order as established by the original archivist.
Ingmar Bergman established the Ingmar Bergman Archives. We have sorted, classified, catalogued and digitised the collection, but it is still in its original form. We occasionally acquire new objects, but these are not added to the Ingmar Bergman Archives (except in a few cases, depending on the type and provenance of the article) but rather construct their own small archival territories within our archives. The word ‘archive’ has two meanings: the actual physical place, building, institution in which the collection is stored; and the actual objects from the original archivist’s collection. Ingmar Bergman’s archives (the materials he accumulated and collected) are stored in the Ingmar Bergman Archives (owned by the Ingmar Bergman Foundation).
For example, we have letters from Käbi Laretei and Liv Ullmann, sketches and models made by Göran Wassberg – these are not part of the Ingmar Bergman Archives, even though they are stored in the Ingmar Bergman Archives. This is all in accordance with the principle of provenance. Because of this guiding principle, the archive itself is fairly indifferent regarding its collection. In other words, those of us who work in the archive may have our favourite pieces, but we have no say when it comes to what is perhaps requested by visitors and researchers or considered valuable from a financial or culture-historical perspective, as compared to those items which no one ever requests nor are considered to be of any research or public worth whatsoever. If the original archivist placed an object in the collection, so shall it remain.
How about an invoice from Bergman importing Swedish sour milk to Germany during his Munich years, or his contract with Anticimex for longhorn beetle insurance? In the eyes of the archive, all items possess the same value.
As if the objects in the archive were well-aware of the historical circumstances which led to the founding principles of their organisation, a dull humming emanates from the archive boxes stored within the shelves late at night. Should you happen upon this room, listen carefully and you will hear the sound of an original manuscript whispering to a Post-it note, a laundry list mumbling to a Golden Lion, ‘Liberty, equality, brotherhood!’
Cosy up this weekend with a smattering of Bergman-related musical entertainment! Every Saturday, we offer up a new song that relates to Bergman in some interesting manner. Over time, we plan on building up a pretty-little playlist suitable for any occasion, aptly entitled The Original Ingmar Bergman Spotify Playlist. (For more on Bergman and music, click here.)
This is a no-brainer on our list. Johann Sebastian Bach's six cello suites each contain six movements and appear in six of Bergman's films. (This bodes well with the fact that both Bach and Bergman found mathematical equations quite entertaining). For the most part, the saraband movements are the ones used, some of them more than once, and no fewer than four Bach sarabandes will be featured as Saturday songs. Polar Prize winner Yo-Yo Ma's recording may be the most famous, but not necessarily the best. Bergman's favourite cellist was Torleif Thedéen.
Bach's cello suites are rather commonly used in films on the whole. (When commenting on Jamie Foxx's role in The Soloist, 'Annoyed cellist' complained on social media that Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 was in 'every movie that ever featured a cello piece ever'.)
Through a Glass Darkly was the first Bergman film without any original music whatsoever. The sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor was not a poor musical replacement. The same piece resurfaced a few years later in All These Women.
