Description
Book SynopsisThe 1976 premiere of
Face to Face came at the height of director-screenwriter Ingmar Bergman's career, yet today
Face to Face is a largely overlooked and dismissed work. This book tells the story of its rise and fall and presents a new portrait of Bergman as a political artist exploring a new medium with huge public impact: television.
Trade ReviewIngmar Bergman's Face to Face seems to be one of those films that dwell in the shadows, as if patiently waiting to be found by a discerning eye. Enter Swedish critic and scholar Michael Tapper, who in throwing his sharp torchlight virtually revives this film, which for so long has remained a blind spot neglected by critics and scholarship alike. Most of all Tapper succeeds in delineating how Face to Face lends itself to a rich contextualization of the sort not generally found in mainstream Bergman studies, be it the sexual revolution of the 1970s, second-wave feminism, the growing importance of television as producer of feature film, or the (in)famous 'primal scream' therapy promoted by Henry Janov. Face to Face superbly mirrors the times in which it was made, yet is saturated with issues that remain relevant today. An added feature of this book is that it includes never before published material, for instance the director's diaries in the Ingmar Bergman Foundation Archive, which would otherwise not have seen the light of day. -- Maaret Koskinen, Stockholm University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Prelude: The 1960sUnder Fire
Crisis
Part II. Bergman Goes TVOut of the Ivory Tower
Mass-Market Bergman
The TV Medium and Bergman’s Style
Part III. Bergman’s ModernismAttack of Second-Wave Feminism
The Strindberg-Ibsen-Bergman Connection
Persona: War on Idealism
The Making of Ingmar Bergman
One Man, Four Women
Part IV. The Djursholm Trilogy Plus OneThe Lie: A Tragi-Comedy of Banality
Scenes from a MarriageLife in the Beige Lane
Cries and Whispers: Into the Belly of the Idealism Beast
Part V. Face to FaceTo the Orgasm and Beyond: Ingmar Bergman and the Sexual Revolution
Arthur Janov Conquers Sweden – and Bergman
Workbook No. 29, Part I: Everything is a Dream
Traum and Trauma
Workbook No. 29, Part II: Jenny the Psychiatrist
Workbook No. 29, Part III: The Primal Scream
The Screenplay
The Production
The TV Series
The Film
Overture to the Release
Reception
A Success and a Failure
Coda: The End of Art?
References
Index
