The A posteriori le cinema series is an opportunity to celebrate the 7e art by revisiting key titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
Of all the feature films associated with the holiday season, Fanny and Alexander is certainly one, if not the most beautiful. Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, the film, which opens with a memorable Christmas Eve sequence, comes in two distinct versions: one 188 minutes long intended for cinemas, and the other 312 minutes, the filmmaker’s favorite, made for television. The montage prepared for the big screen had its premiere in Stockholm in December 1982, 40 years ago, before the one assembled for the small screen followed a few months later. semi-autobiographical film, Fanny and Alexander was intended to be the ultimate cinematic adventure of the Swedish master who, for the purposes of the cause, fell back into childhood – literally.
Indeed, while infusing a part of fiction into the whole, Bergman revisits many of his memories in this family chronicle told from the point of view of a very imaginative kid. In this respect, as Thomas Sotinel remarks in The world : “The title chosen by Bergman is a trompe-l’oeil: it is indeed from Alexandre’s gaze that this work is born, the blonde Fanny, his youngest, is only a silhouette. »
Bergman projects himself into this young boy who is both director (already) and spectator, one foot in the enchanted world of dreams and representation, the other in the world of adults, a worried or disgusted observer of their turpitudes.
Ex-critic at Unbreakable and former general delegate of the Directors’ Fortnight, now director of Arte France Cinéma, Olivier Père subscribes to this reading:
“Bergman projects himself into this young boy who is both director (already) and spectator, one foot in the enchanted world of dreams and representation, the other in the world of adults, a worried or disgusted observer of their turpitudes” , he wrote on his blog.
In fact, there is almost as much “turpitude” as “enchantment” in Fanny and Alexander. Son of acrobats, Alexandre (Bertil Guve) is fascinated, from behind the scenes, by the shows put on by his parents (Allan Edwall and Ewa Fröling), owners of a theater. But here that in full representation ofHamlether father dies, which pushes her mother to marry an authoritarian bishop (Jan Malmsjö).
In the household, gaiety therefore gives way to austerity. In his room, Alexandre takes refuge among the changing shadows he produces thanks to his magic lantern, his most precious possession.
Resilient wonder
Just as Alexander is Ingmar Bergman’s alter ego, Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) was inspired by his younger sister, Margareta. As for the father-in-law bishop, the filmmaker based himself on their father, a rigorous pastor with whom Bergman was cold for most of his adult life.
In his autobiography Laterna magica, the filmmaker relates a revealing anecdote in this regard. Recalling sweet moments spent with a certain Märta during his early youth, he admits to having denied his father to better invent another:
“I told him that my father was not my real father, that I was the son of a famous comedian named Anders de Wahl. That Pastor Bergman hated me and persecuted me…”
Now, it is exactly this fabrication that Ingmar Bergman staged in Fanny and Alexander decades later. Even when resorting to fiction, the author was telling the truth.
In his autobiography, Bergman does not shy away from descriptions of corporal punishment inflicted by his father, which also resonated with the relationship between Alexander and the bishop. However, the cruelty or even the sadism of the adult will not come to the end of the faculty of wonder of the child, for whom ghosts, specters and other spirits are a very real thing.
And the public to taste the visions of Alexandre, such as these drowned young girls or his deceased father who appears to him punctually (in the manner of the father of Hamlet, well).
“Giving Shape to Joy”
At first glance, the film stands out a bit compared to those who came before. Olivier Père also notes:
“Formally, Fanny and Alexander is very different from anything the filmmaker has done before: it’s a family saga set in Sweden at the start of the 20e century, made up of several chapters all confined to a few interiors and a theater […] The classicism of the staging and the choral writing clash with the sometimes experimental purity of previous films by Bergman, who here is close to Visconti or Renoir. »
Olivier Père, however, notes the presence of many themes dear to the author, including matrimonial hazards, all-out neuroses, metaphysical questions…
“Unlike that Fanny and Alexander, touched by grace and serenity, displays an optimism unusual in Bergman. »
This last assertion is particularly correct, especially since Bergman himself wrote about Fanny and Alexander in his shooting diary:
“I finally want to give shape to the joy that I carry in spite of everything in me and to which I give so rarely and so weakly life in my work. To be able to describe the strength to act, the vitality, the kindness. For once, it wouldn’t be so bad. »
This desire not only to give in to joy but to ensure that it permeates what was intended to be its ultimate opus (Saraband was shot for TV in 2003) is perceptible from start to finish. Fanny and Alexander moreover possesses a movement, a visual orchestration of an unequaled scale in the filmography of the author.
On the bill side, the film exhibits unprecedented opulence and splendor. And if we recognize the characteristic reds of Screams and whispers, these are part of a much richer and more diversified palette than usual. In other words: Bergman pays for himself, with the help of loyal collaborators.
“There is a sweet joy. Our creativity dances. And Anna Asp built us a stimulating set and Sven Nykvist arranged the lighting with this intuition so difficult to describe which is his mark of nobility and makes him one of the best, if not the best lighting engineer in the world”, writes Bergman in Laterna magica talking about the filming of Fanny and Alexander.
“There is a sensual satisfaction in working in close communion with strong, independent, creative beings: actors, assistants, production managers, props designers, costume designers, all those personalities who populate a day and make it possible to get through it thanks to them. . Sometimes I passionately regret everything and everyone. I understand what Fellini means when he maintains that for him, making films is a way of life. »
A peaceful Bergman
Speaking of “way of life”, in Fanny and Alexander, apart from his emotional homage to the cinema through the magic lantern, Bergman addresses a love letter to the theater. As with the filmmaker, the two passions merge in Alexandre, who very early on reveals himself to be a director in the making, with his figurines and his puppets: the sequence at the second-hand dealer (Erland Josephson), with this wall of puppets suddenly vaguely frightening and this door which opens slowly, very slowly, is fantastic.
Rarely has a balance between dream and nightmare been so perfectly achieved. Dream and nightmare, yes… Turpitudes and enchantment, terror and wonder: Fanny and Alexander celebrates all of this, in equal measure, with equanimity.
To conclude Olivier Père: “He is a Bergman at last at peace, capable of accepting the joys and misfortunes of life and the approach of death, who bows out in Fanny and Alexander. »
The 188 minute version of Fanny and Alexander is available (with s.-ta) on iTunes and the 312-minute edit is available on the Criterion Channel platform.