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Ingmar Bergman. Enskilda samtaL Stockholm. Norstedts. 1996. 167 pages. 292 kr. ISBN 91-1-942392-6. What makes for a good marriage? Ingmar Bergman has won fame and fortune from his parents' unhappy marriage, which clouded his childhood, enraged him in his adolescence, and has continued to haunt him through his adult life. His father was a minister and a much-admired preacher in a fashionable quarter of Stockholm. His mother was a model minister's wife in charge of their hospitable household. After a few years love had died between the two. The front was polished, but behind the screen were rifts and altercations among the family members, poisoning the atmosphere of the home. Bergman has written about all this in his autobiography, The Magic Lantern (1987; seeWLT62:4, p. 676).
The evangelical Lutheran faith that the father embraced has been blamed for the unhappiness of the family. Instead of liberating them, it tightened the noose until they felt strangled by silence and guilt. The pitiful, weak ministers in Bergman's films are memorable. Aho can forget Thomas in Winter Light or the vicious portrait of the loathsome bishop in Fanny and Alexander, Bergman's final movie as a director. Since his "retirement," Bergman has frequently been asked to direct plays at the Royal Theater, where his work has been widely applauded. And he has not given up writing for the movies and for TV. Enskilda samtal (Private...