Through a Glass Darkly; Winter Light; The Silence
 |
The book was translated into English by
Bergman's brother in law, Paul Britten Austin. |
While reading these scripts, one is involuntarily - and
voluntarily – thinking about, and making comparisons with, the movies
themselves. I saw
Through a Glass Darkly a few years ago, thus before
reading the script;
Winter Light I saw many, many years ago, so I re-watched
it after reading the script; and
The Silence I have never seen before,
so I watched it only after reading the script. I chose to read these scripts
(this book) for several reasons: out of curiosity; because I like Bergman (and
was in the mood for it); because I find reading scripts interesting
and useful; and because I have read a Bergman novel (!) years ago, and I
thoroughly enjoyed it. So, a combination of these – this much for the reasons.
But I kind of forgot all these initial impulses, once I started reading the
book itself.
As said, I have read a Bergman novel many years ago, and I
remember liking his writing style very much, and finding it very cinematic, and
also curt, summary, brisk (bringing to mind Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald –
that interwar style of modern American literature – a style that I am very fond
of). Browsing through the book (while deciding whether to pick it up and read
it) I noticed that these scripts are formatted not quite like the usual scripts,
but in a more easy-to-read, almost novel-like format (or like a play, but more
fluid than that). Not like the usual movie scripts – as regular scripts follow very hard, formal rules, which makes them a bit awkward to read (as texts). For
example, in these Bergman scripts one can find fairly lengthy descriptions of what
characters are thinking or feeling, or of actions, which one would not find in
a usual film script. So, I guess the genre employed in this book is something
in-between a novel and a script (or viceversa) - and all that makes for an even
more pleasurable reading experience. By the way, the script for The Silence has the
most and the longest of such descriptions (or indications) – and rightly so,
because a significant part of that movie’s “message” is conveyed through the presence
of silence (and of related states) - expressed through sounds, through images,
and through actions. Since dialogue can not “depict” those states and perceptions, one needs to add lengthier
descriptions.
This is also why I found the script itself (for The
Silence) the least satisfactory and engaging (as a text) - because
it works much better as a movie, with images and sounds. Conversely, Through
a Glass Darkly worked better for me as a text, not because the movie would
be poor in any way, but because reading the script clarified certain things and in fact made the film more intelligible. And, since I am in the process of
classifying (or so it seems), I should add that the script for, and the actual movie, Winter Light, were equally satisfactory - that "it" works equally well, in
both mediums.
But what does it mean, that "it" - "works well?” Well, I find that
a “characteristic” of Bergman’s movies is that they tend to start slow and somewhat
underwhelming – and then, as soon as you are into them, that they grip you
powerfully; and I found that this characteristic, which I have discovered while
watching his movies, is also present and “palpable” and “working” in the texts,
as well. Take Through a Glass Darkly, for example; it starts with a
fairly inconspicuous scene of four people (two men, a woman, and a teenager)
coming out of the sea, somewhere along the gray coasts of Sweden. (The color
palette does not help in these three Bergman movies, as they are all variations
of an overcast or closed - or wintry – sky, and of a fairly desolate land; or
so one perceives them – remember, the movies are black and white; and Through
a Glass Darkly actually takes place in the summer!). So, they might start a
bit un-engaging - because what would one have in common with a mid-twentieth
century middle-class Swedish family, spending time in these fairly desolate seaside
environs? But, very soon, you enter into the meat and guts of the dissection of
the human soul – and you are gripped; because Bergman’s movies are about that,
about relationships and about our tempestuous and passion-filled inner lives.
And this is the thing at which Bergman is indeed best, masterful
even – depicting relationships and inner happenings – the truth of existence in
that sense – something one can not help but find gripping, and be gripped by. I
have never encountered - not yet – any other director who does this as well as
Bergman does (although I also have movies within his oeuvre that I do not like
- like Fanny and Alexander, or like Saraband; the latter being especially
disappointing, since it is supposed to be a sort of a sequel to Scenes from
a Marriage, which is a perfect exemplar of Bergman at his best, and which might well be my
favorite Bergman film). So it was surprising to see how this characteristics
of Bergman’s films – and this foremost Bergmanian skill – of dissecting and presenting human relationships, and the inner happenings of the human soul, are also present and “working”
in the scripts, as texts – just as much as on the screen, in the images-cum-audio
medium.
But why is this? Why is the same thing effective both in the
movie (the image-and-sound medium) and in the text (a different medium) - in Bergman's films? To
understand why we should even ask this question, let’s take another example –
say, Tarkovsky’s
Andrei Rublev; now, I have not read the script
for that movie, nor am I interested in reading it – or, rather, I would be interested,
but only on a technical level, of
how does one write a script for
such
a movie (that is, if he actually did use a traditional script). In other words,
how could a text, a script, “describe” the poetic sweep of what is presented in
Tarkovsky’s movies only through
images, movement, camera, sound? The
specificity of
the medium of cinema is that its main tool of expression is
the moving images – to which one ads sound, color etc.;
that is
what sets it apart, that is what gives it its specificity, that is its
language
(with its specific powers and limitations).
So what is the specific position (or status) of the word, and
of dialogue, in a movie? It is but
one component of it - sometimes necessary,
but not always; a film is a film because of the moving pictures (with sound);
and there have been some exquisite movies that have only used that, the moving
images with sound (for example,
Into Great Silence). Yes, words
are necessary in a specific kind of movies - well, in most types, nowadays; but
not in all. So what is then the status of “the word” in Bergman’s
movies? Well, if Tarkovsky’s principal mean of expression is the poetic image (images, movement,
faces and actions, sounds), in Bergman dialogue (expressing relationships and
inner states) is essential (even if as a monologue). And this is not
because Bergman would be wordy, or because his films would be “filmed theater
plays” (although he also wrote plays), but because his films’ essence is the
dissection and unveiling of the deeper realms of the human interiors (heart,
soul, mind) - and of the human relationships. And while this can be done – and is
done,
The Silence comes to mind – through wordless acting, through faces - words, especially by expressing and revealing relationships, are central to
what these movies are and do. But, of course, this does not mean, ever,
verbosity or cheap loquaciousness; his style is restrained, like his characters
(very often) are. (Bergman is no Woody Allen.) But because of the
role that dialogue and words play in his movies, both the scripts and the movies
work similarly, and in parallel, and we perceive things around similar points in the narrative -
both while watching the movie, and while reading the texts (the exception, as said, is
The
Silence, which works much better as “moving images with sound,” than as
text - because we need to
perceive “the silence,” whether it is manifested
as a street’s cacophonous noise, or as the alien and slightly threatening
presence of an unknown building; but all these, we need to see and to hear, and a
script can not do justice to these forms of perception).
I mentioned that I really like Bergman’s writing, qua
writing (his style). Although these are scripts (or a variety of that genre),
the same briskness that I saw used in his novels – get to the point! do not
explain too extensively! let actions speak for themselves! let the reader fill out
the rest (emotions and images) within himself! – is also a trait of these
scripts. But I am repeating myself.
What I did not like, or what I liked less, in these scripts
(and movies) were those moments or dialogues (not many, though) which came
across as slightly artificial – words that were probably meant to underline
something that Bergman wanted us to know, and that were forced in incongruously with the previously built characters and actions. I am referring to
moments or words that did not seem to be rooted in, and to follow naturally
from, where the given persons were and what they were, and what had gone on before.
I include here the concluding words spoken by the boy in Through a Glass
Darkly, or the lengthy self-exhibiting diatribe directed by Tomas, the pastor, to Jonas, the farmer, in Winter Light. The latter, for example, would be
uncharacteristic for the reserved Pastor Tomas, especially versus a fairly
anonymous (in terms of the existing relationship between the two) parishioner. And,
in Through a Glass Darkly, those concluding words from Minus... - who
talks like that? I guess that my concern is with the groundedness of these
episodes in the actual reality of the people, contexts, and actions, as we have
come to know them from the film itself - and from our own general understanding
of human behavior and of everyday existence (and this groundedness is what I refer
to as “realism”).
My answer to this problem is that I think that we should trust
the reader (spectator), and his understanding – we do not have to tell him
what to understand, but the skill is to shape the action and the characters so
that what is to be understood will emerge and will be felt “naturally,” through (and along) the unraveling of the events.
Another technical detail – and related half-question that I
would have – regards the fact that the movies themselves (as filmed) follow
these scripts very closely (except for very few, very minor deviations); so, I
am wondering whether these scripts were (re)written, for publication, after
making the movies - or whether Bergman’s movies, as a rule, had to follow their
scripts with utmost faithfulness, even strictness. (In other words, this is a
question about his directorial style and approach, and about his relationship
with the actors.) In any case, I found that the actors followed the attitudes
and feelings depicted on paper very faithfully; or, of course, vice versa.
Reading, then, these scripts – or these stories, or these “novelettes”
– one finds them gripping and fascinating, mostly for the same reasons that
Ingmar Bergman’s movies are thus. A very rewarding reading, therefore.
***
Finally, let me add here a formal or ‘quasi-official’
clarification, namely that these three movies are part of Bergman’s “faith” or
“God” trilogy – which one might describe more accurately as stories about the
search for, or the lack of, God – or, about spiritual life as experienced in (a
fairly desolate) mid-twentieth century Scandinavian country.
