The Persona of Ingmar Bergman: Conquering Demons Through Film

Merging biography, cinema studies, and psychoanalysis, psychiatrist Young traces the life and career of storied Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and examines how his rocky personal life shaped his films in this sometimes insightful yet too often repetitive history. Moving chronologically, from Bergman’s unhappy childhood (after nearly dying of the Spanish flu shortly after birth, he was raised briefly by his grandmother and never formed a strong bond with his mother) to his promiscuous, illness-riddled adulthood, Young highlights each of the director’s films and stage productions. As a photographer herself—and there is often too much of the author here—she has an eye for Bergman’s striking visuals, such as the use of light and shadows in one of his best-known films, The Seventh Seal. Young rather repeatedly reminds the reader that Bergman worked to exorcise his inner demons through his art, and his films were often direct reflections of his personal crises; he was married five times and engaged in multiple affairs on and off the set, the details of which worked their way into the screenplays for Thirst and Sawdust and Tinsel. Despite Young’s uneven narrative, Bergman’s life and work are as rich as ever, and both are as he once described his ideal film: “I want to give [the audience] a blow in the small of the back, to scorch their indifference, to startle them out of their complacency.” (Oct.)