NOW ABOUT THESE MEN AND WOMEN...

One of the distinguishing elements in the work of Ingmar Bergman has been the evolution within it of a stock company of performers able, with apparent effortlessness, to adapt to a wide variety of roles and styles. One explanation for this phenomenon may be the relative isolation of Sweden as a cultural enclave: a more practical one is to be found in Bergman's early career as a stage director in G�teborg, Stockholm and especially at the Malm� City Theatre. There, between 1952 and 1957, he staged works ranging from Peer Gynt to The Merry Widow, forging a close and flexible relationship with the actors and actresses who were to become more famous through his films. It seems a particularly appropriate reflection on the quality of ensemble that informs the acting in Bergman's films that the Cannes Film Festival jury should, in 1958, have triple-split the Best Actress award between the three female leads of N�ra Livet (So Close to Life): Bibi Andersson, Eva Dahlbeck and Ingrid Thulin. The following notes on principal members of the Bergman 'rep' likewise seek to give them roughly equal billing.

Bibi Andersson
Born in Stockholm in 1935, Bibi Andersson made her first film appearance in Dum-Bom (1953, Stupid Bom) and in 1955 was cast by Bergman as a yearning adolescent in Sommarnattens Leende (Smiles of a Summer Night). The touching wistfulness of this performance was elaborated upon in Det Sjunde Inseglet (1957, The Seventh Seal) and in a double role in Smultronst�llet (1957, Wild Strawberries). She shifted strikingly into a heavier register as the incestuous heroine of Vilgot Sj�man's Syskonb�dd (1966, My Sister, My Love), a transposition of the play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and for Bergman showed a faultless grasp of increasingly complex roles in Persona (1966), En Passion (1969, A Passion) and Ber�ringen (1971, The Touch). She also figured in some offbeat American films, bringing a sharp-edged vulnerability to the ostracised heroine of Ralph Nelson's savage Western Duel at Diablo (1966) and a distinctive touch of provocativeness to John Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1970). She appeared in Robert Altman's eccentric Quintet (1979) and popped up among the endangered passengers in Airport '79�Concorde (1979).

Harriet Andersson
Harriet Andersson (born in Stockholm in 1932) began her show-business career as a music-hall dancer, a background perhaps acknowledged in her on-stage role in Bergman's film, Gycklarnas Afton (1953, Sawdust and Tinsel). She made her first film appearances in 1950 but it was her performance as the youthful hoyden, to which she brought a splendidly sulky and ambiguous appeal, in Sommaren med Monika (1953, Summer With Monika) that established her reputation. She was hardly less striking as the haunted heroine of S�som i en Spegel (1961, Through a Glass, Darkly), and Bergman has said of her, 'There's never been a girl in Swedish films who radiated more uninhibited erotic charm than Harriet'. As well as starring in Mai Zetterling's Sternbergian costume movie �lskande Par (1964, Loving Couples), she has played in several films directed by her husband, J�rn Donner, most notably opposite Zbigniew Cybulski (whose coolly supercharged sensual appeal properly matched her own) in the elegant romantic comedy Alt �lska (1964, To Love). Her only English-speaking role has been the somewhat dreary one of a faithless wife, opposite James Mason, in Sidney Lumet's The Deadly Affair (1967). For Bergman she has since appeared in Viskningar och Rop (1972, Cries and Whispers).

Gunnar Bj�rnstrand
The son of an actor, Gunnar Bj�rnstrand was born in Stockholm in 1909 and made his first film appearance in a French film, Pour Mon Coeur et Ses Millions (1931, The False Millionaire). He appeared in Alf Sj�berg's Hets (1944, Frenzy), which was scripted by Bergman, but it was as an accomplished exponent of deadpan irony in two Bergman comedies, Kvinnors V�ntan (1952, Waiting Women) and En Lektion i K�rlek (1954, A Lesson in Love), that he really made his mark. In contrast, the rough-diamond humanity of the knight's squire in The Seventh Seal is all the more impressive. Bj�rnstrand's most memorable performance was probably in Nattvardsg�sterna (1962, Winter Light), in which his playing of the agonizingly compromised country pastor had an economy that fully matched the film's stylistic austerity. Some of his subsequent non-Bergman films�such as the costume epic Den R�de Kappe (1967, The Red Mantle) and a solemn sex movie Tabu (1977, Taboo)�have been rather unrewarding. But his authority was undimmed in Bergman's Skammen (1968, Shame) and a fluent cameo as the pianist's agent in Herbstsonate (1978, Autumn Sonata).

Eva Dahlbeck
Another native of Stockholm, Eva Dahlbeck made her film debut at the age of 22 in Gustaf Molander's Rid i Natt! (1942, Ride Tonight!). Other parts followed and she appeared in Molander's Eva (1948), which Bergman co-scripted, but she did not achieve key roles until the Fifties. An elegant comedienne for Bergman in Waiting Women and A Lesson in Love, she brought the same poise to the romantic melodrama of Kvinnodr�m (1955, Journey Into Autumn), then blossomed among the Mozartian setting-to-partners of Smiles of a Summer Night. Outside Sweden she played a lacquered woman-of-mystery in a superior spy story, George Seaton's The Counterfeit Traitor (1962). But she was rather wasted in Agn�s Varda's pretentious Les Cr�atures (1966) and amid the clanging swordplay of The Red Mantle. She is an experienced stage actress and has also written several plays.

Erland Josephson
Josephson has been an actor, writer and director, and from 1966 to 1975 was creative head of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm (where he was born in 1923), succeeding Bergman, who held the post from 1963 to 1966. He was seen in several films in the late Forties and early Fifties and had a small part in Bergman's Det Regnar p� V�r K�rlek (1946, The Man With an Umbrella). But after a supporting role in Ansiktet (1958, The Face), he did not appear on the screen until Vargtimmen (1968, Hour of the Wolf). He has, however, featured in some of the key films in Bergman's later career, including A Passion and Scener ur ett �ktenskap (Scenes From a Marriage)�a television drama series edited into a film in 1973. He also made a strong impression as the homosexual in Franco Brusati's Dimenticare Venezia (1979, Forget Venice), an Italian film which some critics thought was strongly influenced by Bergman. Josephson has co-directed two movies�En och En (1978, One and One), in collaboration with Sven Nykvist and Ingrid Thulin, and Marmeladupproret (1980, Marmalade Revolution) with Nykvist. He scripted these films and had earlier shared screenplay credit with Bergman�under the joint pseudonym of Buntel Eriksson�on Alf Kjellin's Lustg�rden (1961, The Pleasure Garden) and Bergman's F�r att inte Tala om Alla Dessa Kvinnor (1964, Now About These Women).

Gunnel Lindblom
Gunnel Lindblom was born in G�teborg in 1931. She pursued a theatrical career and made her film debut in K�rlek (1952, Love), subsequently appearing in several Bergman pictures, including The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. She delivered a brooding performance in Jungfruk�llan (1960, The Virgin Spring), a part which foreshadowed her perversely capricious sister in Tystnaden (1963, The Silence). The love-making scenes in that film, to which she brought a peculiar dark intensity, are among the most powerfully erotic in the cinema. Gunnel Lindblom has appeared in two movies for Mai Zetterling, Loving Couples and Flickorna (1968, The Girls), and gave a sombrely weighted performance as the last woman to be executed in Sweden in Arne Mattson's grim historical melodrama, Yngsj�mordet (1966, Woman of Darkness)�which was scripted by Eva Dahlbeck. In 1977, with Bergman as her producer, Lindblom directed, but did not act in Paradistorg (Summer Paradise), a modest and likeable study of family relationships.

Ingrid Thulin
Ingrid Thulin (born in Sollefte� in 1929), who initially trained as a ballerina, worked for Bergman at the Malm� City Theatre, having already made her film debut in 1948. She appeared in Bergman's Wild Strawberries, So Close to Life and The Face. She went into American films�partnering Robert Mitchum in an enjoyable thriller, Foreign Intrigue (1956) and Glenn Ford in Minnelli's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)�and then assumed the Bergman roles for which she is most celebrated. The sleek Hollywood glamour of the American appearances throws into even sharper relief the extraordinary selflessness with which she approached the haggard characters of the eczema-stricken parishioner in Winter Light and the dying writer of The Silence: her death scene in the latter is an unqualified tour de force of graphic physical expressiveness. In addition to several mediocre non-Swedish films, like The Cassandra Crossing (1977), Thulin has acted for two of the truly great European film-makers: in rather low key for Resnais in La Guerre Est Finie (1966, The War Is Over), but at her best for Visconti in La Caduta degli Dei (1969, The Damned).

Liv Ullmann
The daughter of Norwegian parents, she was born in Tokyo in 1939 and had an international upbringing before returning to Tokyo in her teens. She became a leading figure in the Oslo theatre and made a few minor Norwegian films before being cast by Bergman�on the strength of a chance meeting in Stockholm�to play opposite Bibi Andersson in Persona. The depths of feeling she brought to this role were echoed in a run of films, including The Shame and A Passion. She and Bergman lived together for five years (they have a daughter), a fact that lends a lacerating edge of psychodrama to her appearance in Scenes From a Marriage. Liv Ullmann has played several English-language roles, mainly in undistinguished films, including Pope Joan (1972) and the musical remake of Lost Horizon (1973). For Bergman she was, unexpectedly, a Dietrich-style Weimar entertainer in Das Schlangenei (1977, The Serpent's Egg), and the pianist's intimidated daughter in Autumn Sonata.

Max Von Sydow
Born in Lund in 1929, he had a stage background and appeared in several films, including Sj�berg's Fr�ken Julie (1951, Miss Julie), before he played the ascetically doubting knight in The Seventh Seal. He brought the same tortured quality to the role of the avenging father in The Virgin Spring, another film with a medieval setting, while his appearance as the sinister mesmerist of The Face provided a flamboyant variation. Since being the rather pallid Christ of George Stevens' tableauesque The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), von Sydow has pursued an international career. If the priest in The Exorcist (1973) can be seen as a further curious twist to his ascetic image, a succession of spy movie villains�in The Quiller Memorandum (1966), The Kremlin Letter and Three Days of the Condor (1975)�represents a rather fruitless extension of his sinister side. Happily, he has also figured in several later Bergman films, most impressively perhaps as the disoriented musician of The Shame.