Bergman 12 & 13: Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and The Seventh Seal (1957)

One of the pleasures of going through the Criterion Bergman set chronologically is, of course, the chance to look backwards and forwards, to take advantage both of hindsight and a kind of "foresight". Smiles of a Summer Night, while in no way "transitional", can't help but feel as if it marks some kind of transition, putting a full stop to a passage of sustained work with Eva Dahlebeck and Harriet Andersson - and hinting at the rejigged ensemble to come via the first, fleeing appearance of Bibi Andersson, who is of course much more prominent in The Seventh Seal (not to mention that the actresses who play Borg's housekeeper and mother in Wild Strawberries also both crop up). Gunnar Björnstrand is the bridge, but while his characters in both films share a certain cynicism, in many ways they are as different as the two films are. It must have been something of a jolt for audiences familiar with Bergman to move from the erotic farce of Smiles of a Summer Night to the austerity of The Seventh Seal (although it does, admittedly, have its share of farce with the love triangle of the smith, his wife, and the actor). But the credits, with the new font that will now become a Bergman trademark, playing in silence, mark that something different is happening now. Max von Sydow explodes into the Bergman world with real impact, and the film looks as terrific as ever (particularly so in this spiffing new restoration). If I had seen this at the time of its first release, but was already familiar with Bergman, I think I would have expected that the opening would be revealed as a dream, perhaps the dream of a priest or other religious figure (the first words we hear are from Revelation). It was clearer to me on this viewing than it has been in the past that the film is very much concerned with the way superstition can masquerade as faith, and how authority, brutality, and misanthropy can exploit ignorance and fear by means of faith (the girl burnt as a witch is of course central to this) - as well, of course, as being preoccupied with death and the fear of faithlessness or, one might equally well say, meaninglessness. The knight's fear is clearly treated sympathetically but is also somewhat pathological, while the squire mistakes his own cynicism for realism; but there are other ways of relating to death for those that can manage them. (Although Bibi Andersson's character seems less to be able cheerfully to look it in the face as to have never really thought about it; I'm not certain that that's the impression the film wanted to give - I can understand why a critic like Robin Wood found her rather irritating, though I think he is a little severe.) And yet all this is rather obscured by the presence of a personified Death. To remove him would of course be to take away some of the most memorable and powerful sequences of the film, but right now I'm not sure whether he enriches or muddles the film.