The Legend
Bergman's second production of The Legend out of three was at the end of his time at Malmö City Theatre, and was even taken abroad.
'However it was not superb, which was not helped by the fact that Ingmar did everything in his power to deliver - and simultaneously balance out - Hjalmar's work.Henrik Sjögren
About the production
In his second staging of The Legend, Ingmar Bergman toned down the lyrical fairy tale elements and focussed on the darker, magical aspects of the play. Especially noteworthy was his use of his mechanical encounter between the older Ehrenstål family and the vulnerable young lovers. Ingmar Bergman's Malmö production was said to improve upon the original text by giving it a new clarity of vision and by stylizing the realistic middle section of the play.
It's clear that the Malmö production of The Legend confirmed Ingmar Bergman's position as one of Sweden's outstanding theatre directors, while suggesting that his impressive stagecraft was related to an increasing ability to subsume his own vision to that of the original dramatic text.
The Legend production was invited to the Theatre of Nations festival in Paris in April 1959. The time of the guest performance coincided with the French opening of Bergman's film Wild Strawberries.
The enthusiastic audience reception on opening night was mostly reserved for Ingmar Bergman who appeared in person after the performance. The audience on opening night also included 400 journalists from 25 countries. Most Swedish press releases about the guest performance paid little attention to the critical response to Bergman's production and focussed instead on the public event itself.
All three performances were sold out. The reputation of Bergman as a gloom-and-doom Nordic filmmaker had preceded his presentation of The Legend in Paris. The reviewers wrote: 'Anyone who's familiar with Mr Ingmar Bergman's passion for the macabre and lugubrious of the human predicament will understand why he was attracted to his drama'.
Sources
- The Ingmar Bergman Archives.
- Birgitta Steene, Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide, (Amsterdam University Press, 2005).
- Birgitta Steene, Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide, (Amsterdam University Press, 2005).
Paris, Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, 23-25 April 1959
The time of the guest performance coincided with the French opening of Bergman's film Wild Strawberries.
All three performances were sold out. The audience included the likes of Albert Camus, Jeanne Moreau and Samuel Beckett, as well as 400 journalists from 25 countries.
Hjalmar Bergman wrote The Legend in 1919. According to his wife, Stina, it was decided that the play should not be performed until after the death of the pair of them, but Per Lindberg (Hjalmar Bergman's brother-in-law), who knew of the piece, was given permission to stage the play at the Dramatist Studio in Stockholm in 1942.
Many critics have found the piece hard to characterise. Consequently, it is also hard to stage a production that does justice to all its nuances and levels. In certain parts the play has a decidedly lyrical character which, in others, is in stark contrast to a considerably more robust realism that bears witness to the author's insights into the brutality of life. The plot has the quality of a dream, a fantasy: it is a fairy tale about the light of love in contrast to the blackness of deceit.
The main character is the young girl, Gudrun, who long ago was drowned by her sweetheart, a knight called Sune. A hundred years later she rises up from the water and tries to intervene in people's lives by promoting love. This time round it is the poor girl Astrid who loves Sune the knight. He in turn intends to marry Rose, a daughter of the grandee family Ehrenståhl. Rose, however, loves her cousin Gerard, a spoilt and selfish cynic. Romance blends with a more calculating crassness which results in haggling over feelings. In other words, things do not turn out as Gudrun had planned. But despite the need for a sacrifice on the altar of love, things nonetheless turn out happily in the end.
Many commentators, Ingmar Bergman included, have pointed out the play's striking similarities to Alfred de Musset's play One Doesn't Trifle with Love.
Collaborators
- Bibi Andersson, The Legend
- Oscar Ljung
- Folke Sundquist, Sune Stark
- Ingrid Thulin, Rose
- Gunnel Lindblom, Astrid
- Max von Sydow, Gerhard
- Dagny Lind, The colonel's wife
- Allan Edwall
- Naima Wifstrand, Flora
- Per Björkman
- Hjalmar Bergman, Author
- Ingrid Tönsager, Choreography
- Ingvar Wieslander, Music
- Ingmar Bergman, Radio adaptation
- Claes Hoogland, Radio adaptation
- Härje Ekman, Designer