Francine Stock
Enduring collaborations: Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann in Persona
© GETTY IMAGES
“Today, as I lean over photographs of my childhood to study my mother’s face through a magnifying glass, I try to penetrate long vanished emotions.” Ingmar Bergman never hid the clues to understanding his art. The opening pages of the Swedish filmmaker’s 1987 memoir, The Magic Lantern, remind you of his close-up portrayals of women—the detail intimate, his gaze forensic. In his “doglike” devotion to his mother you can also see the seeds of his later—not uncomplicated—relationships with women. Bergman’s early work displays his teenage crushes—those strong nymphs in shorts manoeuvring rowboats through the Swedish archipelago—before he moved on to the wry mistresses and sad, wise wives. Finally, there are the magnified agonies of Persona (1966) or Autumn Sonata (1978), and the marital conflict in Scenes from a Marriage (1973) and Face to Face (1976).