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So Close to Life (Nära livet, also released as Brink of Life)
went before the cameras at the end of 1957, and was based on a
short story, entitled The Aunt of Death, from a new collection
by Ulla Isaksson. Bergman had been friends with Ulla Isaksson
for some time and had been intrigued by her novel about
witchcraft trials.
There s no doubt that, for all its refined craftsmanship and
consummate acting, So Close to Life lies in the margin of
Bergman s work. In form it resembles a play. One main set: the
maternity ward in a Stockholm hospital. An opening crisis:
Cecilia arriving after a miscarriage. A dramatic conflict with links
to an unseen, outside world: Hjördis s relationship with her lover.
And the peripeteia: Stina s unexpected loss of her baby during
labour.
Bergman, who at this period was intent on probing,
interrogating the mysteries of life, was drawn to the apparent lack
of discrimination between survival and extinction. When Stina
(Eva Dahlbeck), the healthiest and most radiant of the three
women, wakes up after losing her baby, she listens to the doctor
who stands before her both in judgement and ignorance, an
impersonal figure with affinities to Death in The Seventh Seal.
On the threshold, life failed him, he says without a trace of
sentiment.
Cecilia (Ingrid Thulin) and Stina mark the poles of domestic
experience. Cecilia s marriage is deteriorating rapidly. Her
husband is a remote, disdainful individual, and Cecilia s
miscarriage symbolises the rupture in her relationship with her
husband.
Hjördis was a role created by Bergman for Bibi Andersson.
She does not figure in Ulla Isaksson s original story. With her
rebellious spirit in the wake of a stern upbringing, her fragility and
femininity at odds with her shield of resolution and carelessness,
Hjördis embodies many of Bergman s and Bibi s own traits. She
fights against childbirth because she does not wish her own
unhappy background on another living being; she craves security
because she has never enjoyed it herself.
So Close to Life looks the sort of film that Bergman would
have made for television a decade later. It relies on few of the
traditional advantages of the cinema. No special effects, no exotic
characterisations, so masks, no flashbacks. For the purposes of
documentary realism, Bergman shot much of the movie in
Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm. Upstairs his sister Margareta
was having a daughter, Rose; when Bergman heard about his new
niece, he sent up a huge bouquet of roses.
The film itself earned excellent reviews at the Cannes
Festival the following May, and news of the special acting award
given to all three women in So Close to Life cheered Bergman as
he lay in bed in Sofia-hemmet and wrote the screenplay of The
Magician.
Max von Sydow believes that subtle links existed between
Bergman s films and stage productions during the fifties. In
Molière s The Misanthrope and not just in Max s performance
one can discern the seeds of The Magician, where Vogler like
Alceste is mocked, exposed and then in a flourish of dramatic
licence vindicated.
An annual ritual had by now become established. Bergman
would write his screenplay in the spring, send copies of it to his
principal performers and technicians, and often travel up to
Dalarna. Several of those involved in the production would gather
alongside Bergman at the Hotel Siljansborg, where the details of
the script were discussed. Max von Sydow recalls how he was
approached to play the part of Vogler. Bergman remarked: I m
thinking about a film on a magician who no longer believes in his
powers. Would you be interested in that role? Once Max had
accepted, he was sent the complete screenplay.
The Magician (Ansiktet, also released as The Face) derives
most directly from Bergman s role at Malmö, where each new
production had to be more daring, more revolutionary, more
spectacular, than the last, where people sat in judgement on his art
each evening. So underlying the gothic intrigue of The Magician
is Bergman s abiding fear of humiliation.
Albert Emanuel Vogler, the magician, makes his living
from beguiling and diverting his audience and yet he stands at the
mercy of their ridicule and disdain. Arriving one night in 1846 at
the gates of Stockholm, he is interrogated and held under house
arrest with his troupe by a Consul (Erland Josephson), a Doctor
Vergérus (Gunnar Björnstrand), and the local police chief (Toivo
Pawlo). Vogler travels with his wife, Manda (Ingrid Thulin), who
is dressed like a young man and pretends to be merely the
magician s acolyte. His manager is Tubal (Åke Fridell), a
disreputable and libidinous entrepreneur, and his grandmother
(Naima Wifstrand) utters spells and frightens the birds. Their laden
cart trundles through the wood towards the city, cans and other
impedimenta dangling like the baggage one accumulates on life s
journey.
From the first instant they set eyes on each other, Vogler and
Vergérus are locked in battle. Where Vogler sports wig and
Christ-like beard, Vergérus wears pince-nez. Reduced to its
simplest state, their duel is that of religion versus rationalism.
Bergman is not unsympathetic towards Vergérus, who amounts to
an analytical realist as dubious of scientific facts as Vogler is
aware of the flimsiness of the illusions he creates. In a climactic
sequence, among the most effective ever filmed by Bergman,
Vogler traps his opponent in an attic, using the corpse of a dead
actor whom he has encountered in the forest on the way to the city.
Vergérus expresses disappointment when he realises that Vogler
has tricked him with a series of deceptions and mere legerdemain.
Vogler, wig and beard laid aside, begs Vergérus for a safe conduct
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