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DVD Review: BERGMAN ISLAND
The Criterion Collection

Studio: The Criterion Collection
Year: 2006
Cast: Ingmar Bergman, Marie Nyreröd
Director: Marie Nyreröd
Release Date: June 16, 2009
Rating: Not Rated for (brief nudity)
Run Time: 01h:23m:00s
Genre(s): documentary

"The demons don't like the fresh air. What they like best is if you stay in bed with cold feet." - Bergman

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Of the great directors of film’s first century, Bergman is perhaps the least fashionable. Interest comes and goes, but he never seems to inspire the widespread passion of a Hitchcock, or a Fellini or Kurosawa.

Movie Grade: A

DVD Grade: A-

Of the great directors of film’s first century, Bergman is perhaps the least fashionable. Interest comes and goes, but he never seems to inspire the widespread passion of a Hitchcock, or a Fellini or Kurosawa. Though Bergman’s resume can stand with those legends in terms of output, at least, and quality (depending on tastes), his name doesn’t tend to evoke the same reverence, nor relevance of those masters. As often as not, Bergman’s name evokes more of a sense of film-school curiosity than a genuine desire to watch. Because of his strong visual sense and use of striking imagery, particularly in his flashier, earlier years, his films lend themselves rather too easily to parody when shown in clips. To some, he’s nothing more than the poster-child for artsy pretense. I’ve seen The Seventh Seal enough times that it shouldn’t factor in, but it’s hard not to see The Simpsons whenever Max von Sydow’s Antonius Block sits down to play chess with death. The Virgin Spring was re-worked as a rather good Wes Craven gorefest, and then re-re-worked recently as a rather cruddy, much gorier film. The intense close-ups of Persona have inspired imitation and mockery in countless films. So, while everyone is familiar with Bergman’s work in a back-handed way, I’m not really sure that anyone is watching the films.

Reporter and director Marie Nyreröd spent several weeks with Bergman in 2003 at his house on the isolated Baltic island of Fårö. Over those weeks, she developed a friendship that would last until his death in 2007. Originally, the interviews were broadcast as a series of three single-hour episodes for Swedish television. Having spent a great deal of time of Bergman's work for the theatre, the series was trimmed-down to its present form for international release. Knowledgeable Bergman fans will recognize the format: some of his most important films, including Scenes From a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander started as television productions and were later edited down to highly successful theatrical running times. The interviews are candid and lively, moving briskly to cover the scope of the director's life and film career. Interspersed with the dialogue are film clips, home movies, and visits to some of the locations important in his life. Though a bit shaky in his mid-80s, Bergman had lost none of his vitality, nor a bit of candidness. Nyreröd comments in the accompanying essay that directing the director wasn't difficult at all. "He said yes or he said no. He said yes to answering any question at all..."

Of those great directors that I mention above, I’ve always found Bergman’s work to be the most personal. His early international success with 1955's Smiles of a Summer Night left him master of his destiny early in his career, and he never faced interference. Even with his obvious, and occasionally distracting technical talents, Bergman’s movies always feel incredibly naked and raw. Sometimes brutal. His best films are paradoxically often the toughest: he picks away at his characters mercilessly. He strips them naked until there’s nothing left but insecurity and fear. It’s hard to hate even his most unpleasant creations, though. It’s clear in the films that Bergman doesn’t. As interviewer and director Marie Nyreröd makes clear in her conversations with Bergman in Bergman Island, there’s a tremendous amount of the man himself in his films. Describing the opening moments of Scenes From a Marriage, during which Erland Josephson’s Johan casually admits to his wife to having fallen in love with another woman, Bergman explains that the scene was not at all unlike a moment in which he broke the heart of one of his five wives:

"I’ve more or less rid myself of everything that has to do with bad conscience. It’s pure vanity. But it still feels terrible to think that I could have been so incredibly cruel. But I was."

The sequel, 2003's Saraband was Bergman's last theatrically released work and also the impetus for the series of interview that Nyreröd conducted to form the basis of Bergman Island. In that film, Johan's son Henrik confronts his father over his abandonment of the family decades prior. Johan's casual aloofness in rebuffing him is not unrelated to Bergman's own ambivalence over his treatment of his five wives, nine children, and many lovers. He describes it as a laziness with regard to family matters, and a protracted puberty lasting well into his fifties. Though he brushes past those earlier relationships, his 25-year marriage to Ingrid von Rosen and her death in 1995 inspire a great deal of reflection. His films are well-known for wrestling with matters of religion and God. At the end of his life, there's no indication that he'd been the recipient of any profound revelation on the matter, but he suggests that he fully expects to see Ingrid again, if only because the idea that he might not is too difficult to bear. One gets the impression of an old man with as many demons as stories who found some peace in his life at the end in the perfect solitude of Fårö.

The disc, available separately or together with Criterion's new edition of The Seventh Seal, includes not only the main feature but also a 35-minute video filmography narrated by film scholar Peter Cowie, whom fans may recognize from other Criterion Bergman editions. It may be a bit dry for casual fans, but it's a pretty good Bergman intro, nonetheless. Cowie goes through the filmography with clips and descriptions of the most important films in the director's career. Director Nyreröd also contributes a new essay. The overall film quality is up to Criterion's normal high standards, and, while I don't speak Swedish, the subtitled dialogue feels very natural—there are none of the confusing exchanges that can crop up when dialogue is translated sloppily or too literally.

Throughout Bergman Island, Marie Nyreröd does an exceptional job at asking the right questions and then getting out of the way. Her conversations with Bergman are genial and friendly, but at no point does she take the spotlight—and that's high praise in our "look at me!" media culture. As with the best of Bergman's movies, I'm left feeling just a bit wiser about human nature, for better and worse.

Posted by: Ross Johnson - October 4, 2009, 2:05 pm - DVD Review
Keywords: ingmar bergman, marie nyreröd, peter cowie, documentary,