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[...] The film, entitled To Joy, was to be about a couple of young musicians in the symphony orchestra in Helsingborg, the disguise almost a formality. It was about Ellen and me, about the conditions imposed by art, about fidelity and infidelity. Music would stream right through the film.
I was left completely alone, speaking to no one and meeting no one. I got ‘drunk every night and was helped to bed by la patronne, a motherly woman who worried about my alcoholic habits. Every morning, however, at nine o’clock, I was sitting at my worktable, allowing my hangover to help intensify my creativity.
Ellen and I started writing careful but tender-hearted letters. Under the influence of a dawning hope of a possible future for our tormented marriage, the portrayal of the film’s leading female character turned into a miracle of beauty, faithfulness, wisdom and human dignity. The male part, on the other hand, became a conceited mediocrity; faithless, bombastic and a liar.
I was being courted, shyly but intensively, by a Russian-American painter. She was athletic but well-proportioned, dark as night with bright eyes and a generous mouth, a statuesque Amazon radiating uninhibited sensuality. My fidelity to my marriage stimulated us both. She painted and I wrote, two loners in unexpected creative fellowship.
The end of the film became terribly tragic. The female character was blown up by a paraffin stove (possibly secret wishful thinking), the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was shamelessly exploited and the main character realized that there was ‘a joy greater than joy’. (A truth I did not understand until thirty years later.)
[...] Life was matter of fact and magnificent. She was irresistible.
Our love tore our hearts apart and from the very beginning carried its own seeds of destruction.
We left on I September 1949, early in the morning, and were in Paris by midday. We booked in at a reputable family hotel on rue Ste-Anne, a narrow turning off Avenue de I’Opera. The room was rectangular like a coffin, the beds not alongside each other but in single file, the window facing out on to a cramped courtyard. If one leant out, one could see a patch of the white-hot summer sky six floors up. The air in the courtyard was musty, cold and damp; there were some windows in the asphalt to let light into the hotel kitchen, where one could see numerous white-clad people moving about like maggots; out of this chasm rose the stench of refuse and cooking smells. For further details, please refer to the lovers’ room in The Silence.
I had my thirty-first birthday during that summer of 1949. Hitherto I had worked hard and relentlessly in my profession. So coming to this autumn warm Paris was an experience which had the effect of knocking down barriers. Love had both time and opportunity to grow freely, opening closed rooms and knocking down walls. I could breathe. My treachery to Ellen and the children existed somewhere in a mist, ever-present but strangely stimulating. For a few months, there lived and breathed a bold production that was incorruptibly true, so therefore priceless, although it turned out to be horribly expensive when the bill came.
Greatest of all was discovering Moliere. I had plodded through some of his plays in history of literature seminars, but had understood nothing and considered him musty and unexciting.
So now the village genius from Sweden was sitting at the Comedie Franchise watching The Misanthrope in a youthful, beautiful and emotional performance. The experience was indescribable. The dry alexandrines blossomed and thrived. The people on the stage stepped through my senses into my heart. That was what it was like. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what it was like. Moliere stepped into my heart to remain there for the rest of my life. The spiritual circulation of my blood, previously linked to Strindberg, now opened an artery to Moliere.
I didn’t know what was happening. Gun was four months’ pregnant. I behaved like a jealous child. She was alone, deserted. There are moving pictures with sound and light which never leave the projector of the soul but run in loops throughout life with unchanging sharpness, unchanging objective clarity. Only one’s own insight inexorably and relentlessly moves inwards towards the truth.
ahhhhh
In my desperation, I decide to make a short speech to the assembled personnel. I want to say that I have worked in films for forty years that I have made forty-five films and I am seeking new ways and want to renew my imagery. One must constantly question one’s results. I want to state that I have the capacity, am a man of great experience, that the present problem is a mere bagatelle. If I wanted to, I could move backwards and take a long shot from diagonally above. That would be an excellent solution. I don’t believe in God, I know, but it isn’t that simple. We all carry a god within us. Everything is a pattern of which we occasionally catch a glimpse, especially at the moment of death. That is what I want to say, but it’s not worth it. The people have retreated, assembled deep inside the murky studio, and are standing close together, arguing. I can’t hear what they’re saying and can see nothing but their backs.
oh my god
I am being transported in a large aeroplane and am the only passenger. The plane takes off from the runway but can’t gain height, so is roaring along wide streets, keeping at the height of the top floors of the buildings. I can see through the windows, people moving, gesticulating, the day heavy and thundery. I trust the pilot’s skill, but realize the end is approaching.
Now I’m floating with no aeroplane, moving my arms in a special way and rising easily from the ground. I am surprised that I have never tried to fly before, when it is so simple. At the same time, I realize this is a special gift, and not everyone can fly. Some who can fly a bit have to strain to thepoint of exhaustion, their arms bent and the sinews in their necks tense. I float unhindered like a bird.
I find myself above a plain, a steppe presumably. It’s bound to be Russia. I float over a huge river and a high bridge. Below the bridge, a brick building protrudes out into the river and clouds of smoke are billowing out of the chimneys. I can hear the roar of machinery. It’s a factory.
The river now curves around in a great bend, the banks wooded, the panorama infinite. The sun has gone behind the clouds, but the shadow less light is strong. The water flows along green and transparent in a wide furrow. Sometimes I see shadows moving over stones in the depths and there are huge shimmering fish. I am calm and full of confidence.
I arrived every morning at the theatre on the dot of nine, had breakfast consisting of six biscuits and a cup of tea in the canteen, rehearsed from half-past ten until one, had ham and eggs and drank a cup of strong coffee, went on until four, meetings, teaching in the theatre school, writing scripts, taking a nap in my anatomical folding chair, ate dinner in the canteen, always a piece of red meat and a potato, preparing for the next day, doing my homework and checking on the performance.
i am always a sucker for quotidian details like this
I persuaded the veteran director and actor, Victor Sjostrom, to take on the main role in Wild Strawberries. We had worked together before in To Joy without feeling any irresistible need to do so again. Victor was tired and ill, and his work had to be fenced round with various considerations. Among other things, I had to promise he would be back home with his habitual whisky punctually every day at half-past four.
Our collaboration began appallingly. Victor was nervous and I was tense. He overacted and I drew his attention to the fact that he was playing to the gallery. He at once shrouded himself in surly withdrawal, then said there was sure to be someone else who could play the part according to my wishes, and that his doctor would give him a sick note any day.
When the girls put in an appearance, the situation brightened. The old charmer delighted in the affectionate bantering attentions of the ladies, flirted with them and bought them flowers and small presents. Unnoticed and privately, I had filmed Bibi Andersson in a slightly decollete turn-of-thecentury dress sitting on a meadow bank feeding Victor with wild strawberries. He snapped at her ringers and both of them laughed, the young woman clearly flattered, the old lion obviously delighted.
lol
He was by no means in a better mood, but he did his duty. As he walked through the sunlit grass with Bibi in a long shot, he was grumbling and rejecting all friendly approaches. The close-up was rigged up and he went to one side and sat with his head sunk between his shoulders, dismissing scornfully the offer of a whisky on the spot. When everything was ready, he came staggering over, supported by a production assistant, exhausted by his bad temper. The camera ran and the clapper clacked. Suddenly his face opened, the features softening, and he became quiet and gentle, a moment of grace. And the camera was there. And it was running. And the laboratory didn’t muck it up.