John Simon is the film critic for The New Leader and the theatre critic for New York. This essay is part of his book, Ingmar Bergman Directs, which will be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich later this fall.

Ingmar Bergman is, in my most carefully considered opinion, the greatest filmmaker the world has seen so far. I take film to be a totally visual and totally aural medium–in this ambidextrousness lies its glory–and I consider utterly mistaken the nostalgic sentimentality of those exalters of time past who would put the silent film above the sound, or in any other way minimize the importance of the ear in the enjoyment of film. Although I would not slight the functions of the other senses, I do think vision and audition are the ones by which we communicate best and the most. To the extent that film can make untrammeled use of both those avenues of communication, it can absorb us more masterfully and variously (though not, therefore, more importantly) than any other art, including the theatre, whose visual discourse is somewhat more limited.

Now though a filmmaker who masters the visual possibilities of cinema is to be admired, the true lord of the medium is he who controls equally sight and sound, whose word is as good as his image, and, above all, who can manipulate the two in such a way that they reinforce each other and perform in unison or harmony, contrast or counterpoint, at the filmmaker's beck. Bergman seems to me the only absolute master to date in both modes, although Fellini in his first films, and Antonioni in a couple of his best, can stand up to him. (So, too, perhaps, can two or three Japanese directors, although utter unfamiliarity with the language makes me hesitant about sweeping pronouncements.) But Bergman has, I firmly believe, achieved the perfect fusion more often than Antonioni and Fellini combined, and he is the only one of the trio whose work continually grows and develops, for whose high-water marks one does not have to turn wistfully backward, for whose present one need not feel apologetic, and to whose future one can look forward with confidence. I have by no means given up hope for Antonioni, but I can face another film by Fellini only with trepidation. And I can find even in a failure of Bergman's, such as Hour of the Wolf, more interesting details than in, say, Fellini Satyricon or Zabriskie Point.

But as Bergman himself says, he did not spring ready-made from Jove's brow, and he had to work on quite a few films before his genuine directorial talent became manifest. And it was not until 1953, with Gycklarnas afton,* that Bergman achieved his first masterpiece. He was thirty-five years old. I have not seen the first three films Bergman directed, but I did see the following two, Night is My Future and Port of Call, and though the latter has a nice feeling for simple people, neither of them is noteworthy, let alone annunciatory of future greatness.

It may be useful at this point to glance at the misconceptions that have gathered around his name like barnacles and that, to some extent, still crop up among the pseudodoxia of our time. Typical of the muddled thinking about Bergman was an article by Caroline Blackwood in the April 1961 issue of Encounter entitled "The Mystique of Ingmar Bergman," in which we read, among other things, "Cecil B. de Mille gave the public 'Religion and Sex'; Ingmar Bergman has now simply come up with a more esoteric formula, the Supernatural and Sex, decked out with Symbols." The article concluded: "Maybe by now only the Lord God can deliver [Bergman]–as well as us–from his philosophical ghoulies and ghosties and things that go Bump in the dark." This was a remarkably wrongheaded view even for 1961; but as late as 1964 we find Richard Schickel, now film critic for Life, writing in his book Movies, "Bergman is both boring and boorish. He is like some distant kin who has turned up at a holiday feast (which is what the cinema ideally is) and insists upon the revelers' attention while he weightly discusses existential questions without ever quite getting to the point." Schickel has since come around to a better way of thinking than this Ancient-Marinerish view of Bergman, yet his treatment of him still tends to be grudging–but after all that holiday feasting it must be a little hard to eat crow.

Even as late as June 1970, Andrew Sarris, in his column in the Village Voice, complains concerning A Passion (The Passion of Anna) about "so much undigested clinical material [spewed forth] to so little artistic purpose." We encounter again the old saw about "fumbling metaphysics for which [Bergman's] art is inadequate," and the familiar charge of "obscurity and opacity." There is an inveterate hatred in movie fans and certain reviewers for films that force them to sit up, concentrate, and think rather than vegetate, soak up trivia, and concoct addled theories about it at leisure. They will go as far as Parker Tyler, that idiot savant of film garrulity, who considers Bergman "disdainful or simply negligent of stating an uncompromisingly personal version of anything." Which is rather like accusing James Joyce of having no personal vision, or Proust of having no personal style.

The superficial, popular notion of Bergman, sparked perhaps by such irresponsible criticism, is as of a maker of misty, symbolic, pretentious inscrutabilities (examples: The Seventh Seal, The Magician), or tormented sexual battles to the death between bored spouses or neurotic lovers (examples: Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly). There is just enough foundation for this view to make it one of those sinister half-truths that obviate the need for thought. Let me try to set the record straight about Bergman's fundamental concerns.

Like most true artists, Bergman is bent on assessing the quality of life: life, which he finds arduous and often insufficient, and death, which he finds not only terrible but also possessed of a terrible fascination. Yet he is also aware of the deep satisfactions to be derived from nature, work, and, above all, love–at least when the weather is good, the work progresses satisfactorily, and love is not corroded by neurosis. There is, to be sure, nothing particularly original about this basic view, except perhaps a sombre glow it often gives off–the originality is in the way the vision is embodied, applied–but that makes it all the more recognizably that of a fellow human being, rather than that of a derailed fanatic like Godard, a modish shaman like Pasolini, or a brilliant monomaniac like Bresson.

Bergman has pursued his inquiry into human nature and the human condition mainly along three lines: (1) Is there a God and an afterlife? If so, of what kind? (2) If the solution to our problems is love between men and women, what kind of love? And how can it be achieved? (3) If we can find peace in work, artistic creation, closeness to nature, the circle of friends or the family circle, just how do we go about accomplishing this? The only type of inquiry that tends to be marginal and implicit in Bergman's films is the social or political–with the important exception of war, which is considered peripherally in such films as Thirst (Three Strange Loves), The Silence, Persona, A Passion, and centrally and intensively in Shame.

But no filmmaker–or novelist, or painter–should be expected to concern himself with all facets of human experience; nor need he examine more than one at a time. Bergman's concerns have shifted from period to period of his life and even, however slightly, from film to film–although connecting threads run through all his works. Thus, for example, the question of God, which was paramount in the films from The Seventh Seal to Winter Light, is not central to the films before and after, if it arises in them at all; currently, it has ceased to interest Bergman altogether. Another important theme, parents and children, has, conversely, not been bunched together in one period, but crops up intermittently throughout the oeuvre. Even the basic form that Robin Wood (in Ingmar Bergman, Praeger, 1969) perceives in "most of Bergman's best films...the form of a journey," is applicable only very loosely to some of the films, and not at all to others. The best films, in fact, do not deal with journeys in the ordinary sense, but they all, without exception, concern interior journeys: journeys into the soul of a character, or into the souls of two or more related characters.

But, differences aside, the sense of continuity in this oeuvre is unparalleled in the work of any other filmmaker. This continuity is especially apparent in Bergman's more recent films. Though even the early ones were full of his characteristic idiosyncrasies, the later ones truly form fragments of a spiritual autobiography, and could almost, but not quite, be viewed as sections of a roman fleuve. The continuity is manifold. It is a continuity of place, such as the island where Bergman now lives, which has become the locale of several of his most recent films. It is also a continuity of faces, those of the excellent repertory company that keeps reappearing in Bergman's films–some of them almost constantly, others at longer intervals. There is also the consistent dependence on the same technicians, most notably on Sven Nykvist, who has become Bergman's regular cinematographer; and even the persistence of certain devices, such as the minimizing or elimination of the background score to emphasize the dramatic importance of natural sounds and silences.

If we survey briefly the themes of Bergman's principal films, we get a clearer picture of his preoccupations and of the interconnectedness of the films. In Prison (stupidly renamed The Devil's Wanton), we find the doomed prostitute Birgitta-Carolina, a girl who can do nothing but be exploited, suffer, and kill herself–a crude symbol of the helplessness of the simple soul. Counterpointing and sometimes meshing with this theme is that of Tomas, the writer-journalist, who fights with his wife, Sofi, but, after an unsuccessful dalliance with Birgitta-Carolina, goes back to Sofi for better or worse. And there is the frame story of Martin, the film director, who considers making a film suggested to him by a former teacher, Paul, just released from a mental institution, and dealing with the Devil as the lord of the world making human life a continuous hell on earth. In the end of the frame story, Martin declares that such a film cannot be made, because it would end with a question instead of a solution.

But, ironically, the more independent and secure Bergman was to become, the more his films became open-ended, abutting on unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions, and the more, we are free to conclude, they are depictions of a world ruled by the Devil. His first words upon coming to power, according to Paul's projected film in Prison, were: "I command that everything shall continue as before." In Thirst, for which Bergman did not write the screenplay, but which is as Bergmanesque as any of his films, the principal couple, Bertil and Rut, remain together even though they bore and exasperate each other to the point of attempted murder. "I don't want to be alone and independent," says Bertil, finding that to be worse "than the hell we are living in. After all, we have each other." Viola, the other principal character, is alone; a born victim, she is rejected by her lover, widowed, and both her analyst and an old girl friend she meets again want merely to seduce her. She drowns herself. There are two hells on earth, Bergman is saying in this interesting early film: one is called Together; the other is called Alone, and it is the worse of the two.

These films date from 1949; 1950 saw the coming of what is generally thought to be Bergman's first fully achieved film, Summerplay (as it should be called, or Summer Games, but not Illicit Interlude, as it was released here). This film, which Bergman considers his first mature work, is one that I have never been able to accept as a whole. A superficial reason for this might be that Maj-Britt Nilsson lacks the depth and plasticity of some other Bergman leading ladies. A more serious trouble with Summerplay is that it is one of those films in which Bergman tries to come up with an answer rather than merely ask his disturbing, extremely important questions, and, as I already noted, his answer films are weaker than his question films.

The question in Summerplay is, broadly speaking, how to make life prevail in the face of encroaching death; and also, if one is an artist, how to make art enhance rather than enslave one's existence. The heroine, Marie, is a ballerina, withdrawn and embittered by the tragic end of her first love. This was a summer romance in the Archipelago with Henrik, a young student whom she was going to marry, but who died at summer's end in consequence of an ill-judged dive into shallow water. After this, Marie drifts into a strange relationship with a mildly sinister uncle, Erland, formerly her mother's lover, and becomes a successful but unhappy ballerina. She is now involved with David, a journalist, but finds him less poetic than Henrik, which indeed he is. As the film begins, Erland has sent to Marie Henrik's journal, which he had confiscated before Marie could find it. She now reads it for the first time, then goes back on a pilgrimage to the island where she and Henrik were lovers. People and sights there bring back the past: troubled, idealistic, frantic, tragic, and, above all, sweet. Erland appears, too, revealing in himself the ravages of loneliness, and when Marie returns to the Stockholm Opera, the ballet master confronts her with some hard truths. She gets David to read Henrik's diary. As the film ends, Marie has relived and absorbed her past, incorporated a little of Henrik's spirit in the matter-of-fact David, embraced her work with greater acceptance, and is now able to face the future more resolutely and contentedly.

The difficulty with this film, very much as with The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, or Through a Glass Darkly, is that the words and images of lost happiness and of despair at its loss are far too strong for the conciliatory, resigned or optimistic, volte-face to cancel out. At the nadir of her fortunes, Marie becomes her uncle's mistress, and Erland answers her anguished questioning with, "No, my little one, there is nothing that, in the long run, has any meaning." Whereupon Marie, with icy calm, declares, "I do not believe that God exists. And if he does, I hate him. If he stood before me, I'd spit in his face...I shall hate him till the day I die." This scene, in Erland's cloistered apartment, with darkness falling and Erland promising to teach Marie how to immure herself within her skin, is so terrifying, coming as it does after the summer idyll that ends in disaster, that nothing afterward can quite break its sombre spell. Later, the ballet master, dressed as Dr. Coppelius, reinforces the gloom by his insistence on uncompromising dedication to one's work and no further rewards after retirement.

Over against this, however, we are given the final image of hope: David, presumably softened by his reading of the diary, watches from the wings Marie dancing the role of Odette in Swan Lake. She comes off stage and, raising herself en pointes, kisses David, and then, on the same toes that lift her to art as to love, dances out on stage, where, in the ballet, love frees the heroine from the wicked magician's power. It is a fine image, but does it convey the "idea that one must fully confront and embrace one's despair before it is possible to move beyond it," as Robin Wood interprets the sense of the film, or even, as Jörn Donner puts it, that "when she has relived everything, [Marie] can both forget and remember in the right way, that is...go on living"? That, certainly, is what the film is about, that "there is no other answer except to go on living," as Donner puts it, but has the acceptability, let alone the exhilaration, of this stoicism been sufficiently dramatized and visualized in the closing passages of the film? I think not.

From this point in Bergman's development we can look back at his various themes and see them converge on his first masterpiece, which we are now ready to examine, skipping over such interesting but lesser films as Summer with Monika and Women Waiting (Secrets of Women), with its brilliant third episode in the stalled elevator. The year is 1953, and the film is The Clown's Evening.

It is in The Clown's Evening that Bergman for the first time creates one of those films of his in which past and present, the human world and the animal world, the realm of art and that of pseudo- or non-art, male demands and female needs confront one another: run frustratingly parallel, engage in humiliating conflict, or interpenetrate furiously, wistfully, achingly–in brief ecstasy or gradual, ripening resignation. It is a film about couples, or, more properly, The Couple, and the gaudy avenues or tortuous back alleys along which each member of the twosome tries to escape toward The Third, only to find out painfully that the solution is carrying on together.

So far from being "heavy, mawkish expressionism circa 1920...powerfully awful," as Pauline Kael labeled it with crass incomprehension, The Clown's Evening is all subtle suffusion of images and ideas leading cruelly but chasteningly toward a final guarded affirmation. This affirmation is reflected in the very sky so poignantly captured by Hilding Bladh's camera: a luminescence somewhere between night and day, failure and possibility, despair and hope–in heaven as it is on earth.

* The awful, exploitative American title of this film, The Naked Night, is not to be countenanced. The British title, Sawdust and Tinsel, is better, but only the Swedish one, The Clown's Evening, conveys Bergman's intentions.