Autumn sonata 1978 roger ebert12/25/2023 "She was still living in the 1940s," he recalled later, and in his 1989 book The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography he is harsher still: "So many false intonations had not been heard since the 1930s. At the start of rehearsals, he was upset to discover that "she had rehearsed her entire part in front of the mirror, complete with intonations and self-conscious gestures" that contradicted the naturalistic style he cultivated in his usual repertory company. The process of filming Autumn Sonata was "draining" for Ingmar Bergman, partly because of Ingrid Bergman's acting methods. Bergman added the husband and daughter characters as he wrote the screenplay, and he regretfully abandoned the idea that Eva somehow gives psychological birth to Charlotte, replacing it with a more realistic conclusion - a foreclosure of forgiveness so total that "their hate becomes cemented," as he put it in his 1993 memoir Images: My Life in Film. Through this reversal they unite for a few brief moments in perfect symbiosis." Then the mother abruptly ends her visit because her "raw feelings" are too strong for her to bear. "The night after the acquittal," he wrote in his journal, "when I cannot go to sleep in spite of sleeping pills, it occurs to me that I want to make a film about the mother-daughter, daughter-mother relationship, and I must have Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann in the two roles, and no one else." Their confrontation would lead to a "grand unmasking" that becomes "even more profound: The daughter finally gives birth to the mother. This experience led to his idea for a movie that seems gloomy even for the creator of Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and Cries and Whispers (1972), two of the dramas that Autumn Sonata most resembles. At the beginning of 1976 he was arrested by the Swedish government on allegations of tax evasion although the charge was later reduced from a serious crime to a matter of simple underreporting, Bergman suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized for several weeks. Ingmar Bergman conceived Autumn Sonata at an agonizing time in his career. The ending holds out a slender thread of hope for the future, but it's likely that mutual incomprehension will continue to plague them for the rest of their lives. In a series of increasingly painful confrontations Eva and Charlotte pick over the past, dredging up grievances and discontents galore. Adding to the stress is Charlotte's shock at learning that her other daughter, Helena, is living in Eva's house after years of treatment for an incurable degenerative disease that Charlotte prefers not to think about, much less face up to in person. Eva is greatly excited at the prospect of this reunion, but tensions start building immediately after Charlotte's arrival, as chance words and ill-considered remarks push emotional buttons and reopen old wounds, especially with Eva, who has felt neglected and overshadowed by her professionally preoccupied mother as long as she can remember. Ingrid Bergman plays her mother, Charlotte, a world-famous concert pianist who hasn't seen Eva for seven years but comes for a visit while recovering from a loss in her own life. Ullmann plays Eva, a shy and insecure woman who lives in rural Norway with her husband, Viktor, the pastor of a local church. This was the first and only joint venture of Bergman and Bergman, and despite disagreements on the set they proved to be an excellent team. The other is the performance by his near namesake, the great actress Ingrid Bergman, in her last theatrical picture before her death four years later. One is the provenance of the production, which Bergman filmed in forty days at a "primitive" studio facility in Norway during the exile from Sweden that he imposed on himself starting in 1976. Two other elements of the film are unusual, however. In addition, Bergman's wife at the time (named Ingrid Bergman!) was one of the production administrators Linn Ullmann, his daughter with Liv Ullmann, plays Liv's character as a child and his former wife Käbi Laretei, a concert pianist, recorded the Frédéric Chopin prelude that both main characters play during the story. It also reflects the remarkable talents of collaborators who had worked closely with him before: Liv Ullmann plays one of the main characters, Sven Nykvist did the cinematography, and the quintessential Bergman actors Erland Josephson and Gunnar Björnstrand appear briefly in small, wordless roles. Ingmar Bergman had directed almost fifty films by the time he made Autumn Sonata in 1978, and in some ways - its intimate scale, emotional density, and clarity of expression - this somber drama is typical of his work.
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