Klein, Sartre and Imagination in the Films of Ingmar Bergman

In Fanny and Alexander (1982–1983), Helena Ekdahl reacts with dismay to her daughter-in-law’s suggestion that they should both act in August Strindberg’s A Dream Play:

Emilie Ekdahl : I’d like you to read a new play by August Strindberg. Helena Ekdahl : That nasty misogynist!

Melanie Klein’s significance rests partly on her application of psycho analysis to children, evident in her earliest work, but throughou her career we find consistency and evolution in the development o her ideas relating to an internal object world for children and adult alike. Most of Klein’s writing refers to examples from her practice an involves formulation of her key concepts, often in relation to Sigmun Freud. Klein rarely applied her ideas to a wider context, but ther are some writings on culture, including notes for a review of Citize Kane (1941). ¹ The relevance of Kleinian thinking for culture rests o its conception of art as a practice that is capable of articulating grea negativity for both the artist and the viewer through an understandin of the imagination that is, ultimately, constructive and benign. Thi vision of an imaginary world operating from birth will be explore further by considering the application of Klein’s ideas to film and, i particular, Wild Strawberries, one of Ingmar Bergman’s most psycho analytic films. The latter offers comparisons to Klein’s preoccupatio with the death drive, and the representation of a cathartic process, in which the lead character models a process of psychic transformatio and integration.

Sartrean and Kleinian theories provide an account of human nature which foregrounds internal division and negation. It is helpful here to recall how Jean-Paul Sartre’s best-known work of philosophy, Being and Nothingness, employs the concepts of the ‘for-itself’ and the ‘in-itself’ to distinguish two modes of being. As a starting point we can see that the ‘for-itself’ refers to consciousness, and the ‘in-itself’ refers to matter. However, Sartre’s theory is more complex than this. For example, consciousness may assume an idea of itself as being thing-like, of a fixed and determinate nature. Sartre challenges this as a form of false consciousness, an evasion of freedom and a denial of the truth contained in the very concept of the ‘for-itself’. However, this does not mean that consciousness can deny its inherent relationship with the ‘in-itself’. We cannot deny material factors, including the self’s relation to the body. For Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, we must understand the internal relationship between the ‘for-itself’ and the ‘in-itself’. Thus, negation is placed at the heart of being, and the Sartrean model, like Kleinian theory, believes that knowledge requires engagement with an ineradicable division within human nature. ¹

The last two chapters have argued that Melanie Klein and Jean-Paul Sartre work with concepts specific to their respective disciplines. Nevertheless, points of convergence are apparent in the application of these ideas to Ingmar Bergman’s films. Both theories focus on the imagination as an aspect of human nature that must be understood in its own right. At the same time, both theories observe and emphasise a relational process in which the imagination is related to other aspects of human experience. We have seen how emotional elements are given a primary role by Klein but also in Sartre’s thinking.

The Virgin Spring, released in 1960, depicts the rape and murder of Karin, daughter of Töre and Märeta, by wild goatherds, as she seeks to take the Virgin’s candles to Mass on the day of Christ’s sacrifice. The film was based on a Swedish thirteenth-century ballad, ‘The Daughter of Töre in Vange’, of which there were many previous versions in countries that spoke Romance languages. ¹ Birgitta Steene points out that the version used in this film had a particularly Swedish identity because only in Sweden was the theme of Christian redemption added to the story. ² Ingmar Bergman had been interested in the story since studying at university, and had even considered writing a ballet based on it, but finally worked with Ulla Isaksson’s film script. ³

Hour of the Wolf (1967) started as a project for Ingmar Bergman three years before its eventual completion. It is unusual for a Bergman film to take so long, but the director’s health problems, and then the inspiration to make Persona, were responsible for the delay. ¹ Bergman also made clear that the personal nature of the story led to complications in the production, including the decision to edit out much of the opening prologue. ² The original title, The Cannibals, is instructive of Bergman’s intent in representing an artist surrounded by an aristocratic entourage who effectively devour him, and the way damage is enacted by malign elements that possess the artist’s imagination and eat away at his sense of identity. The story, in the finished film, begins in digressive fashion with a figure that we may suppose is the director, recalling how he received the diary of Johan Borg, an artist who disappeared, from his wife Alma. This information is fictitious, ³ although it obliquely refers to autobiographical elements in the film, including the pregnancy of Liv Ullmann (with Bergman’s child), who plays Alma. The story goes on to tell through a range of flashbacks how the artist Johan (played by Max von Sydow) disappeared on the island of Baltrum. I will provide a detailed analysis of the film, but before this I will look at reasons why this work in particular justifies psychoanalytical and philosophical analysis.

The combination of Kleinian and Sartrean theories expands upon the established idea that Ingmar Bergman’s cinema involves a mixture of realism and more symbolic, expressionistic techniques. For both theorists, the imagination plays a central role in consciousness and is a key to understanding the relationship between the individual and society. The application of Kleinian and Sartrean ideas has pointed to issues for further debate. For instance, we have seen how a Sartrean response to the character of Monika may involve condemnation based on her selfish abandonment of Harry and the baby, or a degree of empathy for her rebellion based on its negation of an oppressive social context. In The Virgin Spring, ambiguity was a key element in the film’s design, notably in the symbolic representation of divine intervention. The argument that this is an image which can be subjected to humanist appropriation, as an aesthetic investment in the ambiguity of the image itself, is clearly open to further discussion given Bergman’s changing attitude towards religion. Another point for debate arises because the Kleinian focus on integration is wedded, in my analysis, to an appreciation of the empathic qualities of Alma in Hour of the Wolf, a reading which tempers the apparent turn to a more experimental mode signalled by this film and, also, Persona.