AUTUMN SONATA
There will be no Study Pictures for this film; instead an essay is below.
Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata (1978) is, in the context of Bergman's other films, interesting for several reasons. From the point of view of the Auteur Theory there are repeated motifs and imagery.There will be no Study Pictures for this film; instead an essay is below.
These include the close-ups, especially on women's faces, that characterize Bergman's later films. There is the use of Bach, specifically the cello suites, used several times in Bergman's films. The use of Chopin's music is also repeated (here the second Prelude; in Cries and Whispers a mazurka).
There is the spare use of music. In fact the only music is source music (Bach and Chopin), itself used sparingly in the film.
In terms of story, two motifs are easily recognized from other Bergman films: the selfish or self-centered artist (Charlotte) and the abdication of motherhood (Charlotte was too busy with her concert performances and not only ignored her elder daughter, Eva, but institutionalized another daughter, Lena [Helena]).
Thematically the most obvious subject is the toxic personal relationship, perhaps the central metaphor in Bergman's later films. In Persona it is the relationship between Alma and Elizabeth. In Cries and Whispers it's the relationship among the three sisters, especially between Karin and Maria. In Hour of the Wolf it's the relationship between the artist and his audience and (peripherally) with the artist and his wife or mistress.
But these relationships are all dramatized in those films through expressionistic images, dream images, or stylized mise-en-scene (the sleep-walking sisters in Cries and Whispers; the horror images in Hour of the Wolf; the hallucinatory lesbianism and vampirism in Persona).
What is interesting about Autumn Sonata is the realistic dramatization of this theme. There's nothing surreal about the relationship between the mother (Charlotte/Ingrid Bergman) and daughter (Eva/Liv Ullmann) in this film. On the other hand, Lina's inarticulate cries evoke characters in previous films, but these are "explained" by a spastic disorder.
Yet the moments are recognizably Bergman's: 1. The mutual accusations. 2. The aggressive/passive relationships based on love-hate. 3. Implicit cannibalism (one party devouring the other, the way that Eva accuses her mother of devouring her, taking even her words away).
The mise-en-scene, though realistic, evokes the dreamlike imagery of earlier Bergman films. For example, there is a moment when Eva hovers behind her mother in a manner similar to the two women in Persona, as if one of them was the shadow or double of the other.
But the difference is clear in Charlotte's brief nightmare where she imagines someone grasping her hand while she's in bed. For a moment we are in the world of the other, dreamlike, films, where (for example) Agnes pulls Maria down to her in Cries and Whispers. But in this film there is no doubt this is a dream sequence, and is spoken as such by the characters. even though Bergman specifically establishes a cut where Eva is seen on the stairs outside Charlotte's bedroom before the nightmare sequence.
Unique to Autumn Sonata is the use of cross-cutting and flashbacks. Bergman used flashbacks previously, but typically in a surreal or dreamlike manner, such as the overexposed flashbacks in Wild Strawberries or Hour of the Wolf, whose status as real or imaginary is unclear.
But the reality of the flashbacks in Autumn Sonata seems to be the main point. The two main sequences are Charlotte telling of her lover, Leonardo's death and Eva's rehearsal of memories with Charlotte.
The cross-cutting has the same function as the flashbacks, linking the two women in a real world. These are no longer two aspects of the same woman, but two women with similar (selfish) lives.
Eva, for example, ignores her husband, Viktor, the same way she claims her mother ignored her. In fact, the film begins and ends with Eva's letters to her mother. The husband's only role is to listen to or read each letter. Similarly, when Viktor tells Eva he longs for her, she can't understand his words.
Though Eva accuses her mother of ignoring Lena, Eva also ignores her. Though Lena is in the house, we never see Eva tending to her (apart from the scene with the mother).
An important edit sequence cuts from Lena pleading for Eva to a shot of Eva calmly writing a letter to her mother. Though Eva accuses her mother of stealing her words, Eva does the same with Lena, explaining that Lena is on a diet because she ate too much in the hospital.
Cross-cutting links the two women twice in the film. The first time Eva predicts her mother will wear black as a false sign of mourning. A cut shows the mother choosing red.
The end sequence similarly links the two women as "trapped" in a domestic situation from which they need to escape. Finally, it's not clear whether Lena is calling "come" to Eva or to the mother, as in an earlier intercut sequence before the mother departs.
The intercut sequence, from Lena to Charlotte and Eva talking, is the weakest part of the film, because it is so obviously contrived as a metaphor of failed communication. In fact the spastic daughter seems to exist only as a metaphor of the inherited guilt passed on from mother to children.
Whatever its artistic weaknesses (and one wonders whether Bergman has anything to say apart from the trite observation that relationships are difficult), what is interesting about Autumn Sonata is its progress from previous Bergman films, where heightened moments in the drama force a breakdown in the film apparatus (Persona) or (in a more controlled manner) are formalized as fades on red (Cries and Whispers). Here the characters are allowed to accuse each other, often brutally, and the entire exchange is captured on film rather than disrupting it.
Even Lena's inarticulate "cries" can be explained by her disease. She is psychologically able to express herself, but physically unable to do so; Karin (in Cries and Whispers), on the other hand, is psychologically unable to speak, as is Elizabeth in Persona.
But in Autumn Sonata Bergman seems almost to take a delight in keeping his camera on Lena as she desperately tries to speak but is physically unable to. The realistic framework, without a cut, suggests that Bergman has mastered the demons of his previous films without the film breaking down or suspended in red fades.
This is seen in the title and the "frame" of the film too. For Bergman's form is a "sonata" (presenting themes, developing them, returning to the beginning) with the subject stated in the beginning and then repeated at the end after a long and stormy "development" section (the film's middle).
In fact, the film begins and ends on a letter that Eva writes to her mother, first to invite her to stay with her and then to apologize for berating her. These letters are themselves framed by her husband's explanation of his wife to the viewer as she writes the letters.
Since Eva knew from the beginning that her mother would have to face her abandoned daughter, Lena (she withheld this from her mother), Eva's control over the entire psychodrama of the film is implied. In fact, the film can be viewed as Eva's "staged event": a face-off with her mother that allows a catharsis at the end. This is mirrored in the way she reads (or allows Viktor to read) both letters, giving voice (thus reality) to her life.
But by the end of the film the viewer's sympathies have shifted to the mother. First, we know that Eva is in control of encounters with her mother, the way Eva claims her mother has controlled her. Second, we know she ignores Lena no less than her mother did. Finally, we know she has ignored her husband as well, whose only function in the film seems to be to witness her encounters with her mother.
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