Prison (1949)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | jail |
| Original title | Fängelse |
| Country of production | Sweden |
| original language | Swedish |
| Publishing year | 1949 |
| length | 78 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ingmar Bergman |
| script | Ingmar Bergman |
| production | Lorens Marmstedt |
| music | Erland by Koch |
| camera | Göran Strindberg |
| cut | Lennart Wallén |
| occupation | |
| |
Prison (Original title: Fängelse ) is in black and white twisted Swedish film drama by Ingmar Bergman from the year 1949 .
action
The mathematics professor Paul, who has been released from the mental hospital, visits one of his former students, the film director Martin, and suggests a subject for a film. The starting point is that God is dead or absent and the devil rules over the earth, which is true hell. Martin later tells a couple of friends, Thomas and Sofi, about the professor's idea. Thomas, an unsuccessful writer, is convinced that he has the protagonist for such a film, and reads Martin from an unfinished article he wrote about the 17-year-old prostitute Birgitta Carolina. She lives with her sister Linnéa and her fiancé Peter, and Peter provides her with customers.
Six months later: Birgitta Carolina collapses on the stairs of her apartment building, she is pregnant by her fiancé. After the secret birth in the apartment, Peter and Linnéa are able to convince the easily impressionable girl that it is best to "get rid of" the child. Meanwhile, Thomas and Sofia visit Martin on the film set. Sofi Martin tells in private that her marriage is in crisis. Later there is an argument in the couple's apartment, in the course of which Sofi knocks Thomas down with a bottle. After waking up, Thomas is convinced that he killed Sofi in the course of the argument and reports himself to the police station. There is also Birgitta Carolina, who is being questioned by the police on suspicion of prostitution. Your fiancé can avert suspicion. On the street, Birgitta meets Carolina Thomas and persuades him to flee from Peter with her. The two are accommodated in a boarding house where Thomas lived when he was young and spend a short time together, alternating between happiness and despair. In a dream, Birgitta Carolina sees Linnéa and Peter killing their child.
The police found the body of a newborn baby. Peter fears that his fiancée, if she is picked up by the officers alone, could betray him. He visits Sofi and demands that she persuade Thomas to end his relationship with the girl. However, Birgitta Carolina returns to Peter and Linnéa of her own accord. After being mistreated by a suitor, she escapes into the basement of the house, where she commits suicide and dies a slow death. Peter finds the dead woman and, shaken, carries her up the steps of the house. Thomas returns to Sofi; whether they will get together again remains open.
Paul looks for Martin on the film set and asks if he would like to film his idea. Martin says no, because the question of his, Birgitta Carolina's and every other human's fate can only be addressed to God; if there is no longer any God, there is also no one to whom this question can be put.
background
Production and film launch
Prison was based on a story by Bergman called Sann berättelse (Eng. True story ), which producer Lorens Marmstedt had changed to prison . The film was shot between November 16, 1948 and March 4, 1949 in the Sandrew studios and at the original locations in Stockholm . The Swedish censorship authority objected to the scene with Birgitta Carolina's suicide and removed 10 meters (approx. 20 seconds) from it. The film opened in Swedish cinemas on March 19, 1949 and in German cinemas on December 8, 1961 .
The film was a financial failure and ended Bergman's collaboration with Marmstedt's production company Terrafilm.
Stylistic devices
The names of the actors and the members of the film staff are not shown on text panels in an opening credits , but read out by a speaker over recordings of Stockholm city center. Orson Welles had used this technique as early as 1942 in the opening credits of his film The Shine of the House of Amberson .
Position in Bergman's work
Prison was Bergman's first film in which he was able to implement a template he had written himself. Bergman later varied the idea of addressing the medium of film visually or in terms of content in a framework plot in Persona (1966) and The Hour of the Wolf (1968). The above-led by Thomas slapstick - silent film , which was shot by Bergman himself is just the prologue of Persona to see.
In one scene of the original script, the pattern of a wallpaper was supposed to transform into human faces, but this was not realized due to technical difficulties and the limited budget. Bergman considered using this idea again in Wie in einer Spiegel (1961), but again it was not implemented.
In a 1969 interview, Bergman described the "romantic whore" played by Birgitta Carolina as a typical figure of the 1940s, and prison as a film "full of peculiarities and digressions, jumps in the air and flirtatiousness". Another ten years later Bergman put his judgment into perspective: “There is a cinematographic cheerfulness here that is reasonably controlled despite my lack of experience.” He was particularly satisfied with the cast of Hasse Ekman , Eva Henning and Doris Svedlund .
reception
Prison received mixed coverage in the Swedish press. The Morgontidningen described the film as pretentious nonsense Aftontidningen called Bergman a highly talented director who try on a banal script. Arbetaren and Stockholms-Tidningen , on the other hand, saw a milestone in Swedish cinema.
The lexicon of the international film judged: “With piercing urgency, often shocking in the stark visualization of psychological suffering, Bergman meditates on the absence of God and demonstrates the omnipotence of evil in various incarnations. A philosophical business game in a highly dramatic concentration. "
Web links
- Prison in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Prison in the Swedish Film Database of the Swedish Film Institute
Individual evidence
- ↑ Birgitta Steene: Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide, Amsterdam University Press 2005, ISBN 9053564063 , p. 180.
- ↑ a b c Hauke Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , pp. 65–71 u. 273.
- ^ A b Prison in the Lexicon of International Films .
- ↑ a b Ingmar Bergman: Pictures, Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-462-02133-8 , pp. 129-137.
- ^ Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, Jonas Sima: Bergman on Bergman, Fischer, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-596-24478-1 , p. 58.
- ↑ Quoted in the entry on prison on the Ingmar Bergman Foundation website , accessed on August 3, 2012.