Erin Leininger

FORL 3160 Minutes on 3/30

Dr. Reimer began class informing us about the upcoming extra credit opportunities and about a Film studies course this summer:  Violent Film Females, looking at Medea, MacBeth, Dutchman, Psycho, The Exorcist taught by Professor Piazzo

The final is on everything since the midterm (Italian, Bergman, Giannetti, Spanish films, and the oral presentations)

Reports begin the 18^th 20^th, 25^th, 27^th but the 27^th is only for film people, we were given the days to present, the paper is due the day of your oral presentation which should be 10-12 minutes

If you are doing a film, the class would like to know the mechanics, the team work (cooperation), and the artistic side and if you felt as if you were successful or unsuccessful in your attempt, the presentation must be given in equal parts by the students woring on the film (assuming they are in this class.)

Through a Glass Darkly

This is a masterpiece according to Reimer.

Bergman (like Fellini) made films mostly meant for the art house crowd but nonetheless expected audiences at their films. They are not therefore as esoteric as the films of the German New Wave.

What is Bergmanesque?

According to class: Exceptionally literate dialogue to characterize each character thoroughly, Bergman came out of the theater tradition.

Stationary camera and long takes, mise-en-scene takes on the importance and is emphasized and the viewers get to look longer and the symbolism of the set comes out more than the symbolism of the editing, again showing us his origins as a theater director

Open frames:  always something else out there, he doesn’t make us feel like we are on the stage

Dark subject matter:  Emphasis on contrast of dark vs. light, always used the same cinematographer even when he leaves black and white films, part of expressionism is still there (even though he is Scandinavian from a German tradition)

Lack of music:  only very carefully thought out music in the background unlike for example in Breathless, which used a frenetic jazz score to mirror Michel’s restlessness.

Simple sets:  metaphoric and symbolic but it is meaningful, only very carefully chosen items to relay the underlying themes of the film

Mood was set through the dialogue:  exceptions:  the cello at the beginning, can’t expect a comedy, Bergman’s first film was a comedy, brooding, dark, depressing reputation (partly biographical)  grew up with a very strict Lutheran father who disliked his son’s love of theater but had a very artistic mother

Minimalism, insularity, introverted:  even though he came from the theater, despairing, brooding, intimate

Parallel editing for the parallel ideas, again from his theater tradition

Themes?

Loneliness, alienation (The theme of the 60’s coming from the French tradition of existentialism), isolation, art and the role of art (theme in every Bergman film), science and rationality vs. religion (what can we know and how can we know it if we can’t see it and observe it?), all of this is coming out of Scandinavian, northern thinking, how does one know God?  You don’t!  There is no evidence so what does one do?  Despair?  The film begins with a statement from Corinthians, “a glass darkly”= a mirror.

How does Bergman use mise-en-scene to underscore the themes?

 The scenes are empty and show Karin’s state of mind, nothing in the cottage, these things occur to her in the room or the boat but always something that closes her in and the dilapidation, everything seems to be run down maybe to relay the state of her mental health, high point occurs in the shipwreck, always a sense of openness to get out of the house but not off the island, even when one is outside, they are enclosed, when they put on the play, they are the happiest, and when lights are on they are happiest and then darkness represents sadness, theater is ALWAYS the happiest point of the film

What role does physical environment play in this film? 

Everything is closed in, dilapidated (house and boat), they are on an island without access to escape except through the water and air, even on the boat Bergman increased the men”s alienation and through editing and mise-en-scene. They are always shown apart

Describe the tone of the films ending.

Optimistic, thinking that it might work out, the father talks to Minus about love and God, and the last line of the film is “papa talked to me” and maybe there will be a new relationship

What makes this film European? 

Slow moving and uninteresting at the beginning, the film doesn’t give us anything in the film that makes us want to find out what is going on, naturalness, focuses more on the content and themes than entertainment, doesn’t have to end with a resolution or concrete finale, makes it up to the audience to discuss the film afterward instead of telling us what exactly went on, complex characters that are interwoven like from the theater tradition, Reimer feels as though many Serious American independent films cannot be contrasted to this film Woody Allen aren’t religious in the sense that Bergman’s are but ethnic, what is it to be Jewish?  American directors give the audience a break more often than European films but it also depends on the era that we are dealing with

We saw a few other Bergman films.

The Seventh Seal (1957) takes place in the middle ages in the time of the crusades, the knight has returned to Sweden with his squire and didn’t find answers to his questions and didn’t find God, his whole quest was to find God.  The first person he meets is Death, and he plays chess with death to be able to live so that he can find his answer, his answer comes in the form of theater, he meets people from the theater and sits down and has milk and strawberries, as he plays chess again he finds out that death will get a young couple and their child.  The knight purposely loses the game so that the couple can live and he loses his life.  The final scene has them all falling on their knees welcoming death, and then shows the young couple that is still living.  The group will die when the apocalypse passage is being read.  The Swedish names for Mary and Joseph are the couple’s names.