Strindberg’s Influence on Bergman

Imma Merino

In a passage from his memoirs The Magic Lantern, Ingmar Bergman explains that, for a while, every time he brought one of Strindberg’s plays to the stage disaster ensued, which made him think that, for some reason, the playwright did not want to know anything: "The idea saddened me because I adore him." Having read him voraciously from a young age, Bergman showed that he adored Strindberg, directing numerous plays, some of which in various productions, such as Miss Julia and A Dream, which he mentions at the end of Fanny and Alexander and that gravitates to After the Rehearsal, in which Enland Josephson embodies one of Bergman's alter egos. But, in addition to always returning to theatre and referring to it explicitly in some of his films, Bergman immersed himself in Strindberg to construct his film dramas with an exploration of human pain, the discomfort of love and sexual relations, the dead turned into ghosts that persecute the living and the uncertain limits between reality and dream, among other themes. This is how Strindberg's influence on Bergman's cinema will be approached in this presentation.

Imma Merino Serrat (Castellfollit de la Roca, Girona, 1962). Degree in Philosophy from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and PhD in Communication from Pompeu Fabra University. She is professor of Cinema History at the University of Girona and Documentary Creation on the Master’s Degree in Contemporary Film and Audiovisual Studies at Pompeu Fabra University. Since 1989 she has been film critic and cultural journalist on the newspaper El Punt (now the Punt / Avui). She also writes regularly for the cultural journal L’Avenç. She has published Agnès Varda, espigadora de realidades y de ensueños and the book Carol: bellesa subversiva del desig. She has contributed to several books, including: En torno a la Nouvelle Vague. Rupturas y horizontes de la modernidad, Al otro lado de la ficción: Trece documentalistas españoles and Derivas del cine europeo contemporáneo; and also to monographs on Jacques Demy, François Truffaut, Max Ophuls and Jacques Becker.

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