Film Series: Scenes from a Life: Ingmar Bergman
***All film programs are held in the East Building Auditorium except where noted***
Saraband
October 6 at 2:00 p.m.
Dedicating his final film to his late wife and naming it after a seductive dance, Bergman
made Saraband as a television sequel to his Scenes from a Marriage, a 1973 theatrical tour de force that exposed the instability and breakup of married couple Johan and Marianne. Erland Josephson and Liv Ullman reprise their original roles, meeting after decades of separation. Using a succession of potent images to focus on their power struggles, Bergman noted without nostalgia that this was his "parting gift to the medium that made him famous"—Phillip Lopate. (Ingmar Bergman, 2003, digital beta, Swedish with subtitles, 115 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Scenes from a Life: Ingmar Bergman
Bergman Island
October 6 at 4:30 p.m.
The contemplative Bergman Island, directed by the director's friend and confidante Marie Nyreröd, is a fascinating and highly personal portrait of a man whose introspective nature distinctively inspired his filmmaking. Shot on the small Swedish Island of Fårö, where
he spent the last years of his life, the film finds the artist musing about his work and failed relationships with considerable wit and a sense of mournfulness. (Marie Nyreröd, 2006, digital beta, Swedish with subtitles,
85 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Scenes from a Life: Ingmar Bergman
Sunday's Children
October 7 at 4:00 p.m.
The director's youngest son Daniel surveys his father's childhood in Sunday's Children. (Ingmar himself provided the film's powerful script.) Set in the Swedish countryside of the 1920s, the film's memoir-like narrative
explores complex feelings directed at Bergman's own parents, as images flash forward to 1968 when an older, embittered Ingmar revisits his elderly father. The bond between parent and child is "so profoundly dark," writes one critic, "that Sunday's Children inevitably prompts speculation about the relations between Ingmar Bergman and his son Daniel." (Daniel Bergman, 1992, 35mm, Swedish with subtitles, 118 mins.) The film is introduced by Ira Konigsberg, professor emeritus of film studies, University of Michigan.
Calendar of Events | Scenes from a Life: Ingmar Bergman
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