Bergman Was More Than a Filmmaker

When the death of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman at age 89 was reported in yesterday's news outlets, the attention focused on his 50-or-so films, including masterpieces such as "Smiles of a Summer Night" (1955); "Wild Strawberries" (1957); "Scenes from a Marriage" (1973); "The Magic Flute "(1975); "Autumn Sonata" (1978); "Fanny and Alexander" (1982); and "Saraband" (2003).

Yet Bergman, who reportedly died at his home in Fårö, Sweden, prized his theater work first, and directed more than 170 productions for stage, television, and radio between 1938 and 2004.

New York audiences have been granted fleeting glimpses of a few of these productions at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, usually for a handful of performances. Strindberg's "Miss Julie" in 1991 and "Ghost Sonata" in 2001, Schiller's "Maria Stuart" in 2002, and Ibsen's "Ghosts" in 2003 all traveled from Sweden to Brooklyn. An exception to BAM's sequence of Nordic — or German — grief was the brief visit in 1993 of Bergman's production of Mishima's "Madame de Sade."

Yet Bergman's own theatrical trajectory was vastly more varied, in the Malmö City Theatre in the 1950s, Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre in the '60s, and Munich's Residenz-Theater in the '70s and '80s. There, Bergman staged plays as varied as Euripides's "The Bacchae," Gombrowicz's "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy," Molière's "The Misanthrope," O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey intoNight,"Büchner's"Woyzeck," Albee's "Tiny Alice," plus the legendary opera productions of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress," Léhar's "Merry Widow," and Weill's "Threepenny Opera."

Closest to this vast stage legacy is Bergman's endearingly emotional film of Mozart's "Magic Flute," evidence of his affection for the brass tacks of theater. Indeed, Bergman once self-deflatingly told an interviewer that in each theater where he worked for any length of time, he had a toilet installed for his exclusive use: "These WCs are probably my lasting achievement in the history of theater," he said. Bergman's theatrical wit makes us regret that an operetta film project was aborted in 1972 after Svensk Filmindustri, Sweden's renowned film production and distribution company, announced that Bergman would film Léhar's "Merry Widow" with Barbra Streisand in the title role. Earlier, Bergman had told an interviewer: "The Merry Widow" is like a wonderful old kerosene lamp. It has to be treated with care and must not be modernized."

Similar warnings should be given to those who adapt or imitate Bergman's films. Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music," a 1973 musical inspired by "Smiles of a Summer Night" was a hit, but a recent City Opera revival starring the tone-deaf Jeremy Irons showed the Sondheim work to be sadly dated and arthritic, while Bergman's film is as fresh as ever. Woody Allen's rip-offs of Bergman — "Interiors" and "Another Woman" — seem mainly occasions for a gifted gag-writer to be humorless. Allen's name is also often mentioned alongside Bergman's because of his reiterated praise of Bergman as the "greatest film artist since the invention of the motion picture camera." The admiration was not mutual, since Bergman praised in recent interviews American directors like Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, and Soderbergh, without a word about Allen.

Yet praise and enjoyment were priorities in Bergman's work, however difficult he may have found life. Included in the DVD release of "Saraband" from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment are rehearsal excerpts in which, at 84, Bergman crawls around on the ground, improvising to see how a certain pose will look after an actor is thrown to the floor. He bubbles over with line readings for actors, adds new lines on the spot, and, despite frequently telling them to go "slower," remains the very image of vigor, yelling "Action!" and "Cut!" with the verve of a beginner. The young actress Julia Dufvenius is flattered when Bergman announces that an early take moved him: "This business of taking a scene over and over to get it perfect is a waste of emotion." Ms. Dufvenius confides that Bergman's very presence "lightens the mood" for the actors who strive to do their best. Bergman informs his actors and crew, "I demand the same thing of others as I do of myself, the absolute best."

Such merciless demands of artistry are expressed in some of Bergman's best films through musician characters, such as Ingrid Bergman's astonishingly self-revelatory role as a pianist in "Autumn Sonata" or Ms. Dufvenius's role as a cellist in "Saraband." This extremely close emotional identification with music may be Bergman's strongest and most permanent directorial quality of all.