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.
