As a boy, Bergman had been impressed by Drottningholm Palace, the restored eighteenth century baroque court theater in Stockholm. "In my imagination I have always seen The Magic Flute living inside that old theater, in that keenly acoustical wooden box, with its slanted stage floor, its backdrops and wings," he writes in his book, Images: My Life in Film.. "Here lies the noble, magical illusion of theater." The theater itself was too fragile to use as a film set, but Bergman built an exact replica on a soundstage of the Swedish Film Institute. The film is presented as a theatrical production, and during the opera's overture, Bergman focuses on the faces in the audience. They are multiracial, but Bergman's camera keeps returning one pretty, strawberry blond young girl, not just during the overture, but also throughout the opera, as reaction, punctuation, and during scene changes. The girl is Bergman's daughter Linn, whose mother is actress Liv Ullmann. Also spotted briefly in the audience are Ullman, cinematographer Sven Nykvist, actor Erland Josephson, two of Bergman's wives, current and former, his son Daniel, and Bergman himself.
The director cast the film with real opera singers, and pre-recorded them and the orchestra performing the entire opera (in Swedish, although Mozart's librettist Emanuel Schikaneder had written it in German). "We did not need large voices," Bergman later wrote. "What we needed were warm, sensuous voices that had personality. To me it was also absolutely essential that the play be performed by young actors, naturally close to the dizzy, emotional shifts between joy and sorrow, between thinking and feeling." He succeeded superbly. Once the cameras started rolling, having previously perfected their vocal performances, the artists were able to lip synch the score and concentrate on acting their roles.
The plot of The Magic Flute is an odd mix of romantic fantasy and promotion of Freemasonry, of which Mozart was a member. But there's no need to support Masonic ideals to enjoy both the sprightly story and the lilting melodies. The Queen of the Night asks the knight Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina from the priest Sarastro. In exchange, she offers Tamino Pamina's hand in marriage. To help Tamino in his quest, she gives him a magic flute. The bird hunter Papageno, who is looking for a wife, goes with Tamino, and the Queen gives him magic bells. But once they arrive at Sarastro's temple, they find that the situation is not what the Queen has described.
In spite of the deliberately stagebound production, with obviously fake animals, props, and scenery, Bergman finds ways to make his Flute cinematic and kinetic. He emphasizes images and characters with framing and close-ups. Unlike in opera productions, where the singers just stand still and sing, the camera gives an illusion of movement, searching faces and reactions. Thanks to the pre-recorded vocals, the performers don't exert visible effort to sing, and are free instead to concentrate on emotions. During intermission, the camera wanders backstage, giving the film audience glimpses of the artists at rest. The singer playing Sarastro studies the score for what could be his next job, Wagner's Parsifal. A young boy reads a Donald Duck comic book. The Queen of the Night sits smoking under a "No Smoking" sign as her makeup is touched up. The lovers play chess. A couple of the performers peek out at the audience. It's obvious Bergman is hugely enjoying himself. In an interview during production, he confirms that assumption. "Of course, every movement, every angle of the camera must be exactly prepared. But to be in studio, and every day hear this music -- I tell you, it's the best time of my life...We had the music, Mozart's music, the whole time, vitalizing us and carrying us."
The critics shared Bergman's enthusiasm. "An absolutely dazzling film entertainment, so full of beauty, intelligence, wit and fun," raved Vincent Canby of the New York Times.The New Yorker's Pauline Kael called it "A blissful present, a model of how opera can be filmed...It's a wholly unfussy production, with the bloom still on it." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times also heaped praise on the film: "Ingmar Bergman has never before made a movie so warm, happy and innocent...It's as if all this joy has been building up inside him during the great decade of metaphysical films." Judith Crist of the Saturday Review called it "A tour de force."
Even musicians who objected to Bergman taking liberties with Mozart's work admired his approach to opera on film. Legendary Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan wrote in a partly critical letter to Bergman, "You direct as if you were a musician. You have a feeling for the rhythm, the musicality, pitch. That was in your Magic Flute."
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Producer: Mans Reutersward
Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman; libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder; Swedish Translation by Alf Henrikson
Cinematography: Sven Nykvist
Editor: Siv Lundgren
Costume Design: Karin Erskine, Henny Noremark
Production Design: Henny Noremark
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Conductor: Eric Ericson
Principal Cast: Josef Kostlinger (Tamino), Irma Urrila (Pamina), Hakan Hagegard (Papageno), Elisabeth Erikson (Papagena), Britt-Marie Aruhn (First Lady), Kirsten Vaupel (Second Lady), Birgitta Smiding (Third Lady), Ulric Cold (Sarastro), Birgit Nording (Queen of the Night), Ragnar Ulfung (Monostatos)
135 minutes
by Margarita Landazuri
