Dream in July
Unrealised film script in a Tivoli setting.
“Namely, I believe that with the aid of the camera, we can get to the very essence of the human spirit. To unlock the innermost control room and meddle about with the impulses of the soul, and expose the mechanisms normally invisible to the naked eye.”
About the text
Bergman’s amusement park is no place for children:
Tivoli. Filled with thousands of lights. Gonorrhoea, syphilis – Lord only knows what else you could catch around here. Do you? There’s the swing carousel, the dance pavilion. Menace behind the cooing. A funhouse with slanted floors and tunnels. Fountains with fat yellow-white carp in the stinking water. The bouquet of detergent and urinals, the carnival mirrors, the blaring of gramophones, the wheel of fortune, merry-go-rounds, buzzing floodlights, roller coasters. No joyful cries, nor much laughter – but hordes of human flesh, and faces, and eyes, souls, genitals. Dragging their tired feet about in shoes a size too small, they wile the hours away, with countenances devoid of mirth.
F:018
[66] sheets ; 18 x 23 cm
Handwritten script. No title page. Undated. Draft for a play. Several characters appear in the film script Dream in July.
F:019
[105] p. ; 18 x 23 cm
Handwritten script. Version I. Dated: January 1946 + Envelope
F:020
[98] bl. ; 36 x 22 cm
Maskinskrivet manus. Version I. Januari 1946. Genomslagskopior
Maaret Koskinen, I begynnelsen var ordet: Ingmar Bergman och hans tidiga författarskap (Stockholm: Wahlström och Widstrand, 2002), pp. 182–184.