The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten) - Breaking Down Bergman - Episode #35
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- čas přidán 18. 05. 2014
- The two-act opera from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gets the Ingmar Bergman treatment in a dramatic, but comedic, take on the storyline. David Friend and Sonia Strimban discuss the differences in Bergman's version and some of the "Bergmanisms" that make his film unique.
Friend and Strimban are watching the career of the Swedish director from his first film to his last, in order, and discussing their observations. Visit the main channel for more details.
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#breakingdownbergman #ingmarbergman #sweden - Zábava
I thought the Bergmanesque close ups worked really well. Usually opera singers seem to be lost on a huge stage. I also appreciated the fact that Bergman used young, attractive people instead of established opera stars who are twenty years too old for the part they are playing. The whole movie is quite charming. I think the use of the young girl is connected to the magical nature of the production. Children appreciate magic best.
I have always loved this version of The Magic Flute !!
Bergman's Magic Flute is not essential Bergman, just ESSENTIAL!!! Some of the best TV ever made.
sophiamcl Agree.
I don't watch films to understand the essence of a director. I watch films (or plays, or operas) for the story, music, mood or ideas.
Aw, Sonia, how could you struggle with such a delightful production? It's true it may not be essential, but I wouldn't want to be without it. You both touch on the important change Bergman makes, that Pamina is Sarastro's daughter, but leave out the real meaning behind it: that Sarastro and the Queen of the Night are therefore married, or at least were married or were lovers. That's how Bergman actually misread the opera when he first saw it when he was 10 or so. And because Tamino is Sarastro's spiritual, if not "real" son, the Oedipal considerations start getting pretty wild.
I love Bergman's Magic Flute. I don't think he was trying to play off the highbrow with the low. I think he was trying to show the universality of the music. He always loved music, and, though he didn't love opera in general, he loved all of Wagner and The Magic Flute of Mozart. The Magic Flute has some of Mozart's greatest music. I'm glad Bergman had a chance to play with it. (But by his last film, "Saraband" he's playing with Bruckner. Oy.)
Thanks Jim. We hadn't considered the Oedipal connection, but it certainly adds a significant layer.
- Sonia
You have to have a much more cultured outlook that encompasses all the arts-similar to most cultured Europeans. Bergman himself defined many of his films with smaller casts as "chamber music". His use of the close up, whispering, fascination with the human face is all part of this. You cannot look at his films in isolation from the other arts. I hate to say it but you guys sound just like Americans who are only into film. Most European directors of Bergman's era have significant influences from many other art forms, history, philosophy etc. Tarrantino's need not apply.
First, for context, I think it's worth noting that Mozart's other German-language opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) has some parallels with The Magic Flute, not only in the story but even in terms of its 'message'. But once we've noticed the parallels, we can't help also noticing that everything in The Abduction is handled with Mozart's famous lightness, grace and perfection while The Magic Flute is, by contrast, heavy-handed, complicated and preachy -- which is to say, The Magic Flute is actually quite UNMozartian, never mind how adored it is by the masses.
So, when Sonia remarked that the Bergman version of it seemed "just kind of busy" (2:37), and that she "struggled with it," I sympathized with her, since her take on the Bergman version is essentially my take on opera itself.
The Mother/Father stuff: I was grateful to Sonia for pointing out, at 7:22, the paternal relation. That remark of hers came across to me as a low-key but well-deserved rebuke to David for having asserted a moment earlier Bergman 'only tinkered' with the original and didn't try putting his stamp on it. To the contrary, in recasting the story as Good Father/Evil Mother, instead of Good vs Evil, Bergman made the original plot, which was already too busy and heavy-handed, into a kind of nonsensical mess. I call "the Emperor has no clothes" on this one; i.e., The Magic Flute is already an overrated opera, and Bergman makes it more so. Still, I'm grateful to Breaking Down Bergman for having suffered through it for us, so to speak. (For real Mozart, find The Abduction from the Seraglio. I'm sure there are some good performances of it on youtube.)
I think Bergman came up with a rather ingenious solution to a problem that we may no longer have today. There were not a lot of "opera on film" productions at this time (This was years before the "Live from the Met' series), and filmed versions of American musicals were on the wane. How to present a most "artificial" art form like opera in the most "realistic" medium (film)?
Bergman's solution, to move from audience to staged performance, eases the transition from realism to artifice. It's much like Shakespeare's prologue to Henry V where he points out the limitations and artifice of his stagecraft as he invites us to suspend our disbelief. I think Bergman succeeds quite well.
Also, I love the way the theatrical aspects are used to frame the story, as it would in the theater. Bergman makes use of the film's magic to draw the audience in, but also of the theater's magic of showing the artifice of the construction, yet still creating a real emotion. The video called it "playful", and in a way it is like a child playing - entirely serious, yet at any moment broken up by the constraints of reality.
And it's important in this case that the theater's "reality" is still a construction - TMF wasn't actually filmed at the theater it's supposed to portray, and all the backstage stuff has been constructed specifically for the film.
Even the characters are still in character when we see them backstage, even though we have left the story! Papageno is asleep before his first performance. The Queen of the Night is callously breaking the rules. The dragon still has his dragon head. Sarastro, Pamina and Tamino are all engaged in intellectual pursuits, but Pamina and Tamino play chess like equals, while Sarastro is literally lording it over the slave at his feet, who is reading a Disney comic (1970s code for "commercialist pap"), while Sarastro is reading Parsifal. It's all part of the fiction, a blurring of the line of "real" and "not real" which creates the illusion that we're all watching a theatrical performance that never happened.
I have to ask: Have you guys read the libretto available with the CD/LP of this production? Because it contains Bergman's commentary, and it seemed to me, watching this, that some of the questions you bring up are more or less answered in there.
I have a special relationship with this film, because I had the LP as a child and used it as a kind of audiobook (although when I was younger I skipped the commentary), so by the time I watched the film as a teen I was already well-versed in both the story and Bergman's thoughts about it. So I never had any difficulty with it at all and just found it a charming production all around, having both my original childish perception of it and a more grown-up approach.
We haven't heard the LP -- but now we want to! - David
I don't think the Flute audience girl is any relation to Bergman. That started with some of the English-language reviews; people assumed she was his daughter Linn with Liv Ullmann, because they did have a daughter of around that age. But the Flute audience girl is Helene Friberg. She's occasionally commented on CZcams videos related to this film. Of course, she subsequently appeared again in Face to Face.
The fact and fiction of Bergman is quite a maze, isn't it? - David
the bergman version is dark too! the chorus for Sarastro aria is much much darker than the other versions, basses are powerful ( it gives me flesh everytime)! the queen of night's voice is very dark. I love that . The only thing I like less s the 3 children. THe alto boy's voice is ... special! Monostatos is good too
At one point, Bergman was the first choice by conductor Pierre Boulez to direct Wagner's Ring Cycle at Bayreuth's centenary, but declined. That production became the Jahrhundertring, a controversial, legendary one that is sort of to Wagner's work what Richard Eyre's Richard III (you know, the one that was adapted into the film with Ian McKellen) is to Shakespeare.
#whatcouldhavebeen #itfeelswrongtohashtagaboutbergman
#SoTrue #WeLaughed
During the first ten minutes, the curtain is down. We are not seeing something the audience isn't seeing.
What's more hilarious than the smoking irony is that the sign is in English, French, and German. Bergman chose that shot because he was presumably fluent enough in English to get the irony. I wonder how the joke ran over on his home turf.
So the struggling between good and evil is no longer relevant today? I suspect that Bergman was attracted to this opera by the music, which is some of the greatest music ever written. As for the text Goethe regarded it as a wonderful piece of work once the symbolism has been grasped. ----> I notice that neither of you mentioned the music! You have no taste.
"Ariatic"? really ?
The magic Flute is not an opera, its a Singspiel.
To me, the opening was always an illustration to the music; through the many aspects and expressions of the human face stressing the universal humanity of Mozarts genius. (I once got the impression that he had chosen just the right faces for every turn of the score - a friend thought he had picked all the WRONG ones - now I don't know.). As for the little girl I somehow thought of her face as Mozarts own but Bergman's might be a better guess? As noted, this opera has great importance in IB's world. It merges all that is important in human existence, the hardest dilemmas with the trivial, (yet so important) flow of everyday life. But this production I think is musically rather mediocre. Staged on the Drottningholm castle theatre - one of the oldest in use worldwide. (Don Giovanni on a summer night in this pastoral setting was an unforgettable pleasure!)
guntax59 Agree. I had to stop watching this because I wanted to scream "Idiots! The audience isn't watching anything except for maybe the top of the head of the conductor!"
It might be a good idea to know something about opera in general, and this work in particular, before commenting on Bergman's Magic Flute. Bergman certainly new a thing or too; iirc his commentary on the sleevenotes for the recording starts something like "When I was 8 I was already a fiery wagnerian, except for Wagner I only accepted The Magic Flute and [can't remember the other one]..."
guntax59 BTW, I know what you mean about this production being musically mediocre. In theory. But this was the first one I heard, when I was 2 years old, and between this one and the Otto Klemperer recording (Gedda, Popp, Frick, Berry) I was a happy child.
Rather than the pejorative "medioker" I'd rather call it "basic" or "good enough".
I think Bergman chose the performers more for how they fit the part than for their singing voices. So the Queen for instances has a rather shrill voice that isn't very pleasant to listen to, but really fits her as a villain.
Oy vey, that's all I can say to this bit of criticism. The little girl whom Bergman lingers on during the overture is his daughter btw.
No
At 3:15 "we're watching an audience respond to a play that we can't even see..." and "their facial expressions reveal their reactions to something they're taking in that we can't see..."
It's called an Overture. They're reacting to what they can hear not what they can see. It's the music. What do you think they're looking at? They're sitting in a theater. The overture is playing. The story hasn't started yet. They're looking at a curtain and listening to the music and reacting to the music. Is it really that hard to figure out? You struggled with this, really? As for the diversity of the audience - race, ethnicity, age, gender - shows that opera is for everybody, and all kinds of people like opera. It's not as difficult as you're making it.
Thanks for the perspective. We enjoy hearing from our viewers. - Sonia
Mozart is an artist as well as Bergman? Mozart is one of the greatest geniuses in human history, venerated by people like Einstein and Karl Barth. Ingmar Bergman, for all of his talent, is not one of the greatest geniuses in human history.
+bayreuth79 Bergman's talent is no less than Mozart's. But how do you get that Christian hack Karl Barth in there?
That is absurd. There is no comparison between Mozart and Bergman in terms of talent. None whatsoever. The mind that could conceive the Requiem and the finale to Symphony 41 is vastly superior to a film director!
Karl Barth was not a "hack". You do not have to be a Christian to acknowledge his tremendous intellect.
+bayreuth79 Let's put it this way. Barth was so stupid he thought Jesus was real.
Too bad you don't understand film.
There are no serious historians (believers or unbelievers) who deny that Jesus existed. Even Bart D. Ehrman agrees that he existed; and he's even written a book about it. That Jesus existed is one of the best attested historical facts in the ancient world.
I understand film; that is why I like Bergman.I just think that Mozart was infinitely greater as an artist. I'm sure Bergman would agree with that, as most people would. Mozart has produced some of the greatest music in human history and is usually ranked alongside such figures as Dante, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Rembrandt, etc, i.e., the pinnacles of Western culture. Bergman is clearly not in that category of greatness.
+bayreuth79 I think eh existed too. I just don't think his execution was attended by an army of Zombies like Matthew says, or that he flew up into the air like superman (its in Acts 1). I also don't think there is anything like magic the supernatural, a soul (that's a good one! a real killer!), or life after death. Its all such silliness. That Jesus isn't real/
I doubt I or anyone else can explain to you about Bergman. too bad.
There are some interesting themes in the production, but the constant focus on the audience is jarring. Also, having some characters in black face is problematic.
I tend to agree, but am willing to give it leeway for being from the 70's. Also, I have since learned that the blackface here it is probably part of the representation of how the opera would have been staged at the time of the classical era.