The silence

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Movie
German title The silence
Original title Tystnaden
Country of production Sweden
original language Swedish
Publishing year 1963
length 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 16 (formerly 18)
Rod
Director Ingmar Bergman
script Ingmar Bergman
production Allan Ekelund
music Ivan Renliden
camera Sven Nykvist
cut Ulla Ryghe
occupation
synchronization

German synchronous file # 41791

The Silence (Original: Tystnaden , Swedish "the silence, the calm, the silence") is a Swedish drama directed by Ingmar Bergman in 1963, shot in black and white .

This work by Bergman led to one of the biggest film scandals of the 1960s because of the open portrayal of sexual acts at the time it was made and sparked a broad censorship debate .

action

Ester, her sister Anna and their 10-year-old son Johan are on their way home to Sweden. Ester is visibly ill, and she is suffering a breakdown. The group breaks up in the city of Timoka, whose local language they do not understand. Preparations for war are taking place in Timoka, and military vehicles dominate the scene.

The women rent a room in a hotel. Anna runs through the strange city, leaving Ester and Johan alone. Ester tries to win Johan's trust, but he remains reluctant.

In a café, the waiter makes Anna advances. Later, in a vaudeville theater, Anna witnesses a couple copulating in their seats during the performance . In response to Ester's urgent questions on her return, Anna challengingly tells her about her observation in the cinema and a subsequent encounter with the waiter with whom she had sex in an empty church. She announces that she will meet again later.

Johan wanders through the hotel halls alone and carefully befriends the older porter and a group of short artists who also live in the hotel. He later sees his mother and her lover lock themselves in a room. While Anna and the waiter are hugging, they cannot understand each other because neither can speak the other's language. After Johan's return, Ester goes to Anna and her companion's room. The sisters quarrel; Anna accuses Ester of secretly hating her and of venting her feelings of superiority on her, whereas Ester claims to love Anna. After Ester leaves the room, Anna bursts into tears.

The next morning, Ester's health deteriorated further. While the doorman tries to help her, Anna coolly announces her and Johan's onward journey. As a farewell, Ester gives Johan a piece of paper on which she has written down a few words from the foreign language with a translation. On the train Johan begins to read the note, his mother turns away, disinterested.

background

According to Wie in a Spiegel und Licht im Winter, the silence forms the final part of a trilogy (also called "Faith Trilogy"). In 1969, Bergman stated in an interview that he had not originally planned the trilogy as such. Only after finishing the third film did he notice the uniformity of all three parts.

Bergman completed work on the script on April 18, 1962. The shooting took place from July 9th to September 19th 1962 in the Filmstaden - Studios , Solna . The film opened in Sweden on September 23, 1963, in the Federal Republic of Germany on January 24, 1964. Das Schweigen was first shown on German television on May 25, 1971 from 10:50 pm on ZDF .

Germany and Sweden were among the few nations in which Das Schweigen could be performed in full. In the USA the film was released with editing conditions, in France it was initially banned completely. The release of the film by the Film Industry Voluntary Self-Regulation (FSK) caused a storm of indignation and massive protests. The scandal led to the establishment of the Clean Canvas campaign . The widespread censorship debate brought the film a scandalous success: in the Federal Republic of Germany alone, the film had ten and a half million viewers.

Admission in Germany

Even before it was released in Germany, the press reported that the film had caused a scandal in Sweden. Georg Ramseger asked Die Welt (Berlin edition) on November 23, 1963 : “Work of art or pornography?” The love act of a couple, Anna's intercourse with a stranger and the masturbation scene of the older sister were viewed as offensive.

Classification as a work of art

In December 1963 the working committee of the FSK dealt with the film. He unexpectedly released The Silence unanimously without cuts from the age of 18. According to the minutes of December 10, 1963, the committee attested that something artificial or speculative could not be assumed, and that even the three sensitive scenes were "of the highest artistic intensity and aptly symbolic power" and were thus mentally exaggerated. For the first time in its history, the FSK had allowed relatively detailed and direct sex scenes.

The newspaper in the fantasy language of the destination country, which is incomprehensible to the main characters and the audience

At the same time, the Wiesbaden film evaluation agency awarded the film the rating of "particularly valuable". The minutes of December 18, 1963 noted that “the assessors agreed on the exceptional artistic status of this film”. When Das Schweigen started in the Federal Republic of Germany on January 24, 1964, the film critics were almost unanimously convinced of the artistic status of the work.

On February 16, 1964, the Protestant film commissioner Hermann Gerber gave a speech at the opening of the Week of Religious Films and described Das Schweigen as art, although taboos were broken for the first time, the film was in line with August Strindberg , Francisco de Goya or Hieronymus Bosch . The German distribution company accordingly ran a supporting film that interpreted Bergman's film theologically, and the West German feature pages also interpreted it in a similar way. Even the Catholic Film Commission, after lengthy discussions, also classified it as “2 EE” (Major Objections) in the revision body. On March 4, 1964, an article appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that made fun of moviegoers who did not understand the profound message of the film.

Negative votes

Marcel Reich-Ranicki criticized in the March 27, 1964 period the goodwill for this film. He wrote under the title “The saint and his fools”, now philistines and hypocrites could calmly look at “a wet female breast” and “let themselves be excited”, “because they were told that it was about God”.

The responsible public prosecutor in Duisburg received over a hundred complaints of indecency against the film, but they were not followed up. On March 19, 1964, two members of the Union in the Bundestag asked the federal government what it was going to do about immoral films and the apparent relaxation of the FSK's rulings. Federal Interior Minister Hermann Höcherl ( CSU ) replied that the federal government did not want to make use of censorship rights.

Not least because of this reluctance was formed in September 1964 in Schweinfurt the action Clean canvas . In the text of their petition, the initiators expressly rejected immorality "under the guise of art" and required the FSK to strictly adhere to its own principles.

Bergman's direct, unemotional portrayal of sexuality in The Silence has been the subject of heated public debate. In the newspaper editorials and letters to the editor, the recipients described the film as a “vision of hell”, “Bergman's triumph”, “morally damaging agitation”, “inviolable work of art” and “pornography”.

Reviews

“ The Silence is one of Bergman's most formally expressive films. It is poor in events, but rich in visual details. "

- Ulrich Gregor

“Ingmar Bergman stages an inferno of fear, confusion and helplessness, with the lack of loud catastrophes giving the film an aura of icy coldness and suggestive threat. The shock effect of individual images and sequences of scenes is less based on speculative details; rather, the stylistic unity and rigor of the film itself becomes an expression of general existential need and universal alienation. Bergman's work, which is located in a godforsaken, artificial no man's land, is a parable which, with its abundance of symbols, gives space for different interpretations. "

- Lexicon of international film

“For most of the critics, the film was a harrowing vision of a world without God; others saw in it only apparent profundity , an inflation of symbols. The reaction to some scenes of sexual content was particularly strong. "

- Reclam's film guide

"Shocking and extremely disturbing study of loneliness and lack of love in a godless world."

- Heyne Film Lexicon

Awards

In 1964, Das Schweigen won the first ever Swedish film award Guldbagge in the categories of Best Actress ( Ingrid Thulin ), Best Director (Ingmar Bergman) and Best Film . Ingrid Thulin was also honored with the French Étoile de Cristal for Best Foreign Actress .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, Jonas Sima: Bergman on Bergman, Fischer, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-596-24478-1 .
  2. ^ The silence on the website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation , accessed on July 31, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c The silence in the lexicon of international filmTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  4. ^ Filmlexikon and Spiegel.de .
  5. ↑ a b Gert H. Theunissen: Silence and its audience. A documentation, DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1964.
  6. ↑ Stefan Volk: Scandal Films. Cineastische Aufregen yesterday and today, Schüren, Marburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-89472-562-4 , pp. 148–157.
  7. ^ Hauke ​​Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , pp. 169–177 u. 292.
  8. ↑ Jürgen Kniep: No youth approval! Film censorship in West Germany 1949–1990 , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0638-7 , p. 130.
  9. ↑ a b Jürgen Kniep: No youth approval! Film censorship in West Germany 1949–1990 , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0638-7 , p. 131.
  10. ^ Ulrich Gregor: History of the film from 1960, Bertelsmann, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-570-00816-9 , p. 221.
  11. ↑ Dieter Krusche (Ed.): Reclams Filmführer, 5th edition, Reclam, Stuttgart 1982.
  12. ^ Lothar R. Just, Ronald M. Hahn, Georg Seeßlen, Meinolf Zurhorst: Heyne Film Lexikon, Heyne, Munich 1996.