Ingmar Bergman's The silence : pictures in the typewriter, writings on the screen / Maaret Koskinen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koskinen, Maaret.

Series:

Nordic film classics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--History.

Motion pictures.

Tystnaden (Motion picture).

Bergman, Ingmar, 1918-2007--Criticism and interpretation.

Bergman, Ingmar.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (220 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Seattle : University of Washington Press ; Copenhagen : Museum Tusculanum Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Ingmar Bergman's 1963 film The Silence was made at a point in his career when his stature as one of the great art-film directors allowed him to push beyond the boundaries of what was acceptable to censorship boards in Sweden and the United States. The film's depiction of sexuality was, as Judith Crist wrote at the time in the New York Herald-Tribune, "not for the prudish." Yet Bergman's notebooks and screenplays reveal his tendency for self-censorship, both to dampen the literary quality of his screenwriting and to alter portions of the script that Bergman ultimately deemed too provocative.Maaret Koskinen, a professor of cinema studies and film critic for Sweden's largest national daily newspaper, was the first scholar given access to Bergman's private papers during the last years of his life. Bergman's notebooks reveal the difficulties he experienced in writing for the medium of moving images and his meditations on the relationship (or its lack) between moving images and the spoken or written word. Koskinen's attention to this intermedial framework is anchored in a close reading of the film, focusing on the many-faceted relationships between images and dialogue, music, sound, and silence.The Silence offers filmgoers an entryway into the cinematic, cultural, and sociopolitical issues of its time, but remains a classic - rich enough for scrutiny from a variety of perspectives and methodologies. Koskinen draws a picture of Bergman that challenges the traditional view of him as an auteur, revealing his attempts to overcome his own image as a creator of serious art films by making his work relevant to a new generation of filmgoers. Her exploration of the film touches on issues of censorship and the cinema of small nations, while shedding new light on the shifting views of Bergman and auteurist film, high art, and popular culture.

Contents:

Introduction : "Whatever happened to Ingmar Bergman?"

Backdrops and contexts. National cinema, art film, and the auteur

The auteur contextualized

Antonioni : "that perpetual foil to Bergman"

Art versus business

The auteur as star

The art of reinventing authorship

Censorship issues : sex, women, and Hollywood

The silence at home : debate and controversy

The silence abroad : "the Bergman ballyhoo era"

Gender issues : now what about all these women?

Director and actress : nudity and power relations

Works in progress : intermedial variations. In the beginning was (the fear of) the word : notebooks

From word to sound

To music and painting

In between words and images : manuscripts and screenplays

Edits : too many words

Sex and the city : the eroticism of language

The published screenplay : senses and synesthetics

Excursion : flash forward to a writer let loose

The finished film. Framing the senses

Sounds and linguistic voids

Beginnings : windows and sights

Paintings and tableaux vivants

The phenomenology of vision : hotel excursions

The eroticism of vision : mirrors and doorways

The close-up : the Bergman icon

Conclusion.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references, filmography and index.

ISBN:

9780295801957

0295801956

OCLC:

801412265