When I started a PhD on the films of Ingmar Bergman in 2003, I had to select a methodology. I became interested in the theoretical work of Melanie Klein and her followers, not because this theory did away with the complexity of the films, but because of the shared themes and concerns. In particular, there is the shared focus on a bleak view of human nature, coupled with an exploration of the individual’s inner world, and ultimately the possibility of an affirmative path based on the release and transformation of imagined demons.

From Kleinian theory, the concept of ‘the depressive position’ suggested that individual self-realization depended on concern for the ‘other’, from infancy to adulthood. In Bergman’s films, from the outset, individual problems were played out against a background which suggested, at the very least, conflicts arising from socially constructed power relations. In the hands of different thinkers such as Richard Wollheim and Hanna Segal, Kleinian theory developed ideas about the value of art based significantly on accounts of infantile experience, while the therapy was used for child psychology, for example as part of the welfare state in the UK through the Tavistock Clinic. Although connected to modernism, Kleinian theory valued concepts of restoration and integration in therapy and in aesthetics. Meanwhile, in Bergman’s films there are frequent representations of artists and performers. And through such devices as flashbacks and imaginative interludes characters confront psychic elements that become central to the possibility of resolution.

This chapter explores the parallels between Kleinian theory and two Ingmar Bergman films from the 1950s, Gycklarnas Afton (also known as Sawdust and Tinsel, 1953) and Kvinnodröm (known as Dreams, 1955).¹ Although dialogue is an enormous part of Bergman’s artistic achievement, particular attention is paid to scenes and sequences where dialogue is absent or minimal. In these segments we may detect a variety of reasons for the restriction on words. Ingmar Bergman himself explained that in Sawdust and Tinsel, Åke Grönberg had some difficulty remembering the lines, and that the director felt that the actor’s abbreviated dialogue and moody noises worked more effectively than the original script.²

We know from other Bergman films the psychological intensity he invested in the dramatic impact of silence, and also that his use of silence can be related to his development of an internationally recognizable cinematic style. However, what should also be included is the influence of silent cinema, in which audiences enjoyed aural as well as visual experiences. Furthermore, the ensuing discussions focus on how dialogue is minimized but not completely absent and sound effects and music play a vital role. It is worth noting that when interviewed about the famous sequence of Alma and the troops in Sawdust and Tinsel, Bergman resisted the comparison with the silent classic Battleship Potemkin; but he stated that he was specifically inspired by some films of the thirties which were still using the techniques of pre-sound cinema.³ This suggests an interest in a sort of in-between mode.

The idea of resisting classification is perhaps the most reliable guide to the silent-cinema aesthetic in Sawdust and Tinsel, with individual moments creating different associations. Consequently, this chapter begins by considering the influence of silent cinema and then moves on to key scenes, sequences, and moments from Sawdust and Tinsel and Dreams where dialogue is absent or minimal. Throughout the chapter, I will try to indicate how Kleinian theory is relevant to the way silent-cinema techniques represent psychological depth. I will finish by briefly making a comparison with some of the points raised at a recent conference in London which focused on psychotherapy and another Bergman film, Wild Strawberries, of 1957.

Of course, it is well known that Bergman grew up with silent cinema and paid tribute to its influence. For example, he made it clear that Ewald André Dupont’s Variety, released in 1925, was one of his favourites, and Sawdust and Tinsel was a ‘conscious reply’.⁴ Bergman’s subsequent assertion that his film differed significantly is not contradictory, because Sawdust and Tinsel picks up elements of the earlier work to fashion something completely different.⁵ Other well-known silent films which fascinated the director and are directly relevant to Sawdust and Tinsel include Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage (1921) and He Who Gets Slapped (1924), the latter made in the US. These films are great examples at a general level of how the silent cinema could explore character psychology in depth and were inspirations for Bergman’s creative representation of psychology and subjectivity.

Particular concerns of Kleinian and post-Kleinian theory can be applied here because this body of theory strongly emphasizes the simultaneous engagement with external and internal realities. A feature of this psychoanalytical approach is the emphasis on the ongoing development of the patient or individual alongside an exploration of their past. Klein thus emphasized the ‘epistemophilic instinct’—the desire for knowledge of external reality as a key factor alongside the other instincts identified in classical Freudian psychoanalysis.⁶ Specifically from a Kleinian perspective, we might note in The Phantom Carriage the combination of a style directed towards enhanced realism in the use of depth of field for background detail and the representation of a psychic reality of splitting and internal trauma, expressed through the innovative use of double-exposures. With He Who Gets Slapped we see amazing detail in scenes such as those portraying the spectacular troupe of clowns, as well as notable use of iris shots to select and incorporate key details signifying the characters’ desires and mental states.

Both these films use a wide range of sophisticated techniques to add psychological depth, including the way action is sometimes staged around doorways to signify a threshold with a range of connotations. One also thinks here of Sjöström’s own appearance as Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries at the doorway to the dining room of his old family home. In Sawdust and Tinsel and Dreams, there are also key moments staged around doorways and when characters look on to another’s space. Specific images in both Bergman films evoke Sjöström’s silent masterpieces as well as Dupont’s Variety. The silhouetted carriage on the horizon in The Phantom Carriage is comparable to the way the wagons appear at the start of Sawdust and Tinsel. The use of specific editing patterns in Variety and He Who Gets Slapped for the purpose of intensifying the performance scenes is echoed in the way Sawdust and Tinsel dramatizes the circus performance, and also in the way Dreams brings a monotonous photo shoot to life.

We are able to trace the imprint of specific techniques and the influence of silent films favoured by Ingmar Bergman to some extent; but this is just an introduction to his continuing creative involvement in the aesthetics of the silent era. This curiosity and engagement with film history may seem surprising in a director so often understood as a modernist; but clearly modernism does not mean permanent innovation, and Bergman’s awareness of the power of so-called silent cinema and its aesthetic possibilities—much of it modernistic—invests his work with a very wide range. The synthesis and integration of such an aesthetic brings to mind the emphasis on integration in Kleinian theory where elements of the past are reworked and transformed in the creative process. While Bergman drew on the language of earlier films, he also made a decisive move away from the Manichean schemes found in them.

He Who Gets Slapped may be taken as an example. This is a film in which traumatic emotions are reworked through performance by the central character in his new-found identity as a clown, but ultimately the deep need for violent revenge obliterates everything else. In contrast, the conclusions found in Bergman’s films of the 1950s are more ambiguous and in some ways more mediated. In the later films of the 1950s, we have such infamously bleak conclusions as the ones delivered by The Seventh Seal (1957) and The Virgin Spring (1960). Even here, though, we have references to counterbalancing forces such as the final gaze of Jof the performer from a distance at the spectacle managed by Death, and in The Virgin Spring the sudden appearance of water from the earth at the place where Karin was murdered.

In Sawdust and Tinsel and Dreams, deep-rooted traumatic conflicts reverberate through the final narrative moments; but there is also a sense of temporary stability attained, a realistic acceptance that for the time being life will continue without radical external change. This is not, in my opinion, a conservative retreat, or a compromised position that was later abandoned for more challenging finales; instead, we can see here the development of an aesthetic in which significant weight is placed on internal psychological change within the characters. This development is integrated by means of a wide array of techniques, including the continuing imagination and power in the representation of psychological reality that were found in silent cinema. To understand further how Ingmar Bergman develops this aesthetic, I will now turn in greater detail to key scenes from Sawdust and Tinsel and then Dreams.

Sawdust and Tinsel begins with a serene sequence—an episodic association of images depicting the journey of circus wagons. Silhouetted on a hillside against a towering sky, the first image appears as a forerunner of the famous depiction of figures against the skyline at the end of The Seventh Seal four years later; and as was mentioned above, it echoes the silhouette of the carriage on the horizon in The Phantom Carriage. In Sawdust and Tinsel the absence of dialogue enhances the expressive power of the images themselves and admits the introduction of key motifs for the story that follows—the bear, the weary dedication of the travellers, and the concern of Albert for his young girlfriend still sleeping. The absence of words allows sound effects to be more prominent—the horses’ hooves on a bridge, the sound of birds and sheep, the creaking of the wagons; and the strange sound of the driver’s wail-like song to the elements. Dissolves contribute to the dreamy atmosphere, which conveys the mental state of those circus performers who are still sleeping. Critical writing on the film has recognized the poetic style. John Simon, in his detailed analysis, discusses how a symbolic alternation of light and dark is established in the opening sequences;⁷ and as Robin Wood notes, there is already a symbolization of breakdown in the early image of broken windmill sails.⁸ Dialogue between the driver and Albert represents the intervention of storytelling, a theatrical use of speech, but also the cue for another sequence largely free of dialogue—the famous representation of Frost the clown’s humiliation in a style that seems in places like a parody of silent cinema.

The sequence is largely narrated by the extraordinary music composed by a distinguished Swedish composer, Karl-Birger Blomdahl. Known for musical experimentation, including musical adaptation of Eric Lindegren’s surrealistic sonnets, Blomdahl provides the soundtrack to a series of images, which Bergman says were inspired by his own dream.⁹ This use of experimental sound means that the sequence also compares with more recent experiments where silent films have been combined with unusual and innovative soundtracks.¹⁰ Bergman’s work with Blomdahl in Sawdust and Tinsel is significant for the meaning of the film, because the latter had an interest in negativity and human nature; but at the same time the precisely individualized sounds of the wind instruments express the rampant absurdity of circus performance. A marching brass-band sound, conveying both jolly entertainment and rising suspense, is accompanied by the noise of cannon firing.

The regiment is distracted from the firing practice by the appearance of Frost’s wife, Alma, who puts on a show by bathing naked in the sea and is joined by some of the troops. In this sequence we see a close-up of an officer commanding the gunfire but hear no words, and we are jolted by the modernistic musical composition. From the carnivalesque pact between Alma and the voyeuristic troops we move to Frost’s reception of the news of what is happening. The only dialogue is between Frost and the various members of the troupe, who urge him to restore his masculine pride by intervening in this humiliating situation. The style of the sequence then returns to an expressionistic pre-sound mode as the clown arrives on the scene like a desperate performer. When we see Frost call his wife but hear no sound, his powerlessness is emphasized. Finally he carries Alma, as if he is Christ bearing the cross.¹¹ Extreme close-ups capture the agonized emotions of Frost and Alma, but a rhythmical balance between silence and sound is created as well. One moment the troops are guffawing and the next wrapped in silent anticipation and awed fascination, with just the sound effect of the waves.

The sequence showing Frost’s humiliation certainly stands out in the film as a whole. One factor here is that it has its own cinematographer. As Birgitta Steene notes, the film had three cinematographers for various reasons, with Hilding Bladh only shooting this section.¹² However, there is still a temptation to account for the wildness of this passage as some kind of more overt moment of authorial expression. After all, the sequence conveys the theme of humiliation, a key Bergman preoccupation. The overexposed look anticipates the famous nightmare sequence of Wild Strawberries and the fishing sequence in Hour of the Wolf (1968); and yet, as with those films, we can see the integration of this passage into the wider story. Bergman himself made it clear that this sequence encapsulates the theme of the story which follows concerning Albert’s humiliation. Elements of Frost’s humiliation sequence return most directly in Albert’s humiliation in the circus ring, but there are earlier echoes of the style used in the Frost episode when Albert and Anne’s journey through the village is portrayed in parodic terms.

The emphasis on their physicality, and their exaggerated pomp, is accompanied by the brass sounds of the earlier sequence conveying the assertiveness of their mission, and also the absurdity. A sharp sense of cultural and class differences is played out as the circus performers set out to negotiate with their elitist rivals, the theatre. Consequently, a significant outcome of the film’s expressive power is an engagement with a social reality, in particular a depiction of the conflicts in this social reality alongside the focus on internal conflict as experienced by Albert. The balance between a social message and an expressionistic representation of depth psychology is supported by Bergman’s own account of the film’s genesis, where he refers to his experience of witnessing revue performers in a hotel where he stayed, and by his acknowledgement that the character of Albert is to some extent a self-representation. Bergman puts forward this explanation as a corrective to the idea that Åke Grönberg’s role was a reprise of the character played by Emil Jannings in Variety.¹³

In order to understand the melancholy evoked in Albert’s character, we need to look more closely at the specifics of Sawdust and Tinsel and the range of techniques deployed. For instance, another key passage without dialogue follows the forceful assertion made by Albert’s wife Agda that she will never sacrifice her freedom. These words reverberate as a series of images convey Albert’s melancholic resignation, the street presence of the organ grinder, and Albert’s rising anger as he spies Anne visiting the goldsmith. It is as if, at this point, the absence of dialogue reinforces our involvement in Albert’s oscillating moods.

Melanie Klein’s writing in later years famously focused on envy, which she regarded as an inherent lifelong force to be struggled with. A significant adaption of this theory, explained by Margot Waddell, is the recognition that the confrontation with self-destructive forces is given specific form by the context in which it arises.¹⁴ In Albert’s case the envy is in bad faith, because he had just attempted betrayal. Both he and Anne are driven by an envy which is deluded because it cannot be realized owing to the reality of other characters and their motivations. The visual and musical representation of Albert’s perception of Anne’s betrayal expresses their emotional entanglement, laying this before the audience without linguistic explication. Waddell describes how Klein saw, with great clarity, the presence of so-called infantile emotions in the adult world and relates how Kleinian theory homes in on the movement between different mental states. Bergman is also fascinated by these oscillations.¹⁵

Albert’s rage is wide-ranging, played out first with Anne and then with Frost as interlocutors; he mourns, and he threatens to kill those he mourns. The shift in emotions is emphasized as Frost mirrors the oscillation of sadism and sadness. Later Albert’s rage will be directed into an actual mirror, and then towards the bear. In the circus-performance scene, the minimal dialogue puts the cries and wails of the clowns in the foreground while the excited laughter of the audience is the sound of happiness, recalling the mocking laughter of the soldiers in the scene where Alma bathes. This synthesis works alongside editing, which alternates between performers and audience so that an external point of view is created in which director and viewer observe this interaction. As in Variety and He Who Gets Slapped, the alternation between shots of the performers and of the audience becomes more intense as the circus performances become a direct expression of the desires and emotions of the characters. In the circus scene, rhythmical editing in conjunction with repeated and alternating close-ups anticipates the confrontation that occurs between Albert and Frans, the actor. To be sure, the theatrical speech of Sjuberg, the theatre director, formalizes the duel; but this only lends additional emphasis to the unspoken emotions of the antagonists.

We have a great deal of information from interviews with Bergman, and from his writing about the film, which shows how he drew on personal experience for this story.¹⁶ To my mind, the most far-reaching statements concern his feeling of connection with childhood, as when he said, ‘the creative streak is […] deeply tied up with a sort of infantility, or a left-over of the child’s attitude to the world’.¹⁷ In this interview Bergman expands on the direct relationship between being an artist and being a child, and he makes it clear that while humiliation is a key element of the artist’s experience, this is part of a general pattern of dependencies which the artist experiences.¹⁸ As mentioned before, this includes the inspiration of Variety, as we are plunged into the language of circus and of pre-sound cinema. While Variety stunned audiences with acrobatics, in Bergman’s film circus and life are tenaciously interwoven through specific devices, such as the whip-pan to the clown’s face, and more generally through the interweaving of different character trajectories. However, a context of collective action is ultimately a key factor. While the circus performers struggle for a material position in society, there is considerable empathy with them and fascination with their work. Taking into account the reunion of Anne and Albert, seemingly stoically resigned to their fate at the end, the film’s conclusion parallels the adjustment to reality which Kleinian theory has described using the concepts of reparation and the depressive position; and this finale retains and depends on recognition of a broader social context.

A crucial point about the Kleinian theory of the depressive position, which is founded on guilt, is that it involves an active development in the recognition of emotions ranging from love to hate. It suggests a mature understanding of ambivalence and ambiguity; and Ingmar Bergman’s films of the 1950s provide a parallel, specifically in the mix of comedy and tragedy. Released in 1955, Dreams is an apparently light tale of two women working in the world of fashion photography. In particular, I want to focus on the key scenes in which Bergman returns to the strategy of dispensing with dialogue. This strategy is discussed in the extended interview with the director where Björkman, Manns, and Sima draw attention to two such scenes—the opening, and the scene where the central character Susanne contemplates throwing herself from the train. Here Bergman offers the explanation that ‘in my childhood I used to draw films, and tried to narrate what happened without using dialogue’.¹⁹ He downplays the work as a whole, however, describing it as ‘boring’ and as ‘a dialogue film’.²⁰ He seems to have a hazy memory of the whole thing, and this appears to be affected by memories of his split from the leading actress Harriet Andersson. However, a narrow auteurist reading focused on biographical explanation would once more miss the achievements of the work, including the marked use of silent-cinema techniques. There is only space here to indicate briefly some of the ways in which this approach provides entertainment whilst allowing deeper expression of psychological complexity.

The opening begins with a black screen and the sound of a ticking clock, elements familiar from other Ingmar Bergman films which introduce self-reflexivity or draw attention to time. A bold bar of light continues the elliptical representation of a photograph being anonymously developed. A woman hums a tune as we see the print dipped into the solution. The completed image showing simply a woman’s lips is doubled in the reflective surface beneath the press, alongside an anonymous female hand. The hummed tune adds a gentle caress, beside the ticking clock, to the creative combination of images. Meanwhile, the title immediately introduces an imaginative realm—Kvinnodröm. As Birgitta Steene points out, the American title fails to note that this a film about women’s dreams, while the British name Journey into Autumn seems even further removed from the initial intention.²¹

The credits sequence continues with the hidden hand activating the phonograph to introduce gently romantic music while photographs are looked at. Finally, one depicting a model (played by Harriet Andersson) is turned over and stamped with the name of Susanne Frank, fashion photographer. It is a smooth, beguiling introduction before we see Susanne, played by Eva Dahlbeck, observing the fashion shoot. The focus is on her intensity. Her cigarette is lit by an assistant—another initially hidden hand, as she rejects one of the photographs offered. Without dialogue, the authority of her character is established. The camera tracks to show a large man observing the shoot with fascination, and he simply endorses Susanne’s decision, transfixed as he is by the model. The sequence continues, showing Doris, the young model, posing at the centre. Allied to the absence of dialogue, witty changes in composition and drily observational shots with changes in the editing rhythm develop a sense of amusement as well as an underlying tension. The revelation of a slightly camp assistant’s face behind the face of Doris recalls the transition from Albert’s face to the clown behind him in the circus ring in Sawdust and Tinsel, and both moments mark an evolving fascination with juxtaposition and the overlap of facial close-ups.

Bergman later explained his fascination with such imagery where different faces appear to float in space.²² The use of mirrors adds to this. Doris is looking into a mirror, but we do not see the reflection; moments before, Susanne’s reflection appeared in the background of a shot. The repeated alternation between the tapping fingers of the fashion director and the rising tension that is evident in Susanne’s expression emphasizes her private anxieties. Without explanation, Susanne abruptly removes herself to the darkroom where her gestures, the lighting, and the return of the ticking clock convey her personal crisis. The prolonged absence of dialogue contributes a comic effect, as we observe the participants on the fashion shoot from the outside. The silence is held for just long enough to overstep what we might think of as a realistic period without talk. This allows for greater attention to the humorous juxtaposition of facial expressions, but this first scene also establishes a narrative focus on Susanne’s anxieties. The conjunction of inner and outer worlds so powerfully explored in some of Bergman’s favourite silent films is therefore a strong aesthetic here as well.

The influence of silent cinema emerges at other points, too. The cross-cutting between Susanne and the fashion director involves rapid alternations. A similar pattern occurs again in the scene where Susanne contemplates throwing herself from the train. On this occasion, the quickened cuts are between Susanne and a warning sign on the door, and then the signs for open and close that she sees on the door. The interplay between this drama of her suicidal thoughts inside the carriage and the external sounds of the train conveys the conjunction between internal and external realities, continuing the symbolism represented by her anxiety in the darkroom. Notably, across the whole passage while Susanne is alone there is just one line of dialogue, which is Susanne’s inner voice addressing her lover.

In a later scene with Susanne among suburban trees overlooking her lover’s house, the sound of birds and other selected noises convey her separation from the social world. Coming on to Doris’s adventure, her initial meeting with the Consul is represented through shop window and mirror reflections in a series of shots which suggest that they are like ghosts hovering over the real world, a possible echo of the double exposures used by Sjöström. Doris’s sense of abandon is accentuated in the rollercoaster and ghost-train scenes. Here, Doris’s screams and the sound of the rollercoaster, alongside the spinning movement of the camera, convey her exuberance while the Consul’s silence illustrates his suffering and the delusion of his flirtation. Another example of an impact achieved without dialogue is the ghostly final image of the Consul, looking out through a window in his aristocratic home—a king imprisoned in his castle. Overall, the fluency of film form in these scenes and images contributes to the lightness of tone, while the lack of speech signifies psychological turbulence.

The word ‘turbulence’, derived from the work of Wilfred Bion, was used as a key concept at an event I attended in London in 2018.²³ An organization providing low-cost therapy engaged their audience at this fundraising event with a screening of Wild Strawberries. The film provoked enormous interest in an audience predisposed to psychoanalytic themes. While Kleinian concepts like that of reparation were raised in the discussion, a strong appreciation of courage in the Sjöström character was notable. Facing up to his past was understood as heroic and as an ongoing process of development and transformation. The way the narrative of Wild Strawberries provided a container for disparate and challenging psychic content was fully appreciated. In Sawdust and Tinsel and in Dreams, there is also a sense of inner turbulence. I hope that I have conveyed how turbulence or psychic conflict is skilfully woven into the narratives of these films, as well as the contribution made by silent cinema to this achievement.