Bergman's women: Seventh Seal and Winter Light.
You'll hate yourself to death. Studying art films.
Some more thoughts on Bergman films.
Both these films felt really different from the two other Bergman films I’ve watched. After watching Summer with Monika and Smiles of a Summer Night, I was a little confused by the critiques Bergman often gets about his female characters that lack dimension. The women in those two films felt a lot far more developed and had very female centered narratives that weren’t as present in the films I’m discussing today.
In the Seventh Seal, the characters all felt more like types rather than individuals, but we definitely get more information and personality of the men. The actress seemed more closely aligned with the other actor’s vision of the virgin Mary he saw at the very beginning of the film. There are many scenes shot of her with her son that seemed to imply a parallel.
The other women also felt very flat, the blacksmith’s wife that was described as troublesome, the knight’s wife who just seemed to be there for comfort, the young woman who was burned as a witch, and the woman who just quietly followed them around for the rest of their journey. A lot of them just served as aids or plot devices for the men. That issue didn’t seem relevant to the other Bergman films, but is showing itself now in the films here. Having so many characters in a story definitely allows for less in depth focus on each, but it also just seemed like the men were speaking more, or the women were being used for the men to discover things or to grow as characters.
The knight seems to grow and learn as a person through his interactions with strangers. He is seen stalling and distracting death as he watches the actors get away, and although the chess game is to prevent himself from dying, it seemed like his motivation changed and it became a way to protect the family.
Winter Light seemed like a very similar idea. Although the plot was different, it involved a man’s questioning faith and spiraling because of the idea of death. In this one, however, it was more about the death of his wife and the man who shot himself.
The woman in this film seemed a lot more complex than the characters in The Seventh Seal, and had a monologue that was just as interesting as the one that the main character gave, but her character still seemed to revolve around her relationship to the priest. The story of this film was really simple and not much happened, to the point where it seemed like it could have been adapted from a short story because the dialogue felt like prose.
Märta: “I love you. And I live for you. Take me and use me. Beneath all my false pride and independent airs, I have only one wish: to be allowed to live for someone else. It's so terribly difficult.”
The film was more interested in focusing on the personal relationships of these characters and how they interact, rather than the actual events of the story. The moment the man died was not focused on as much as everyone’s reaction to it. Each character also had more complex reactions and personalities because of how unique the dialogue seemed in comparison to Seventh Seal, where a lot of the conversations seemed a little more expected.
I especially liked the scene where the priest tells the mother that her husband had died, because she reacts by sitting down for a moment to process and then saying how she has to explain it to the children. There was no melodrama to the scene, and although a lot of the long monologues felt really literary, they still somehow felt genuine.
Märta: “You won't survive, Tomas dear. Nothing can save you. You'll hate yourself to death.”
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