Word: bergmans
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Like most operas, The Magic Flute has its cultists, opera purists have harrumphed at Bergman's "popularization" of the original libretto. But he's done the rest of us a service--to the uninitiated The Magic Flute's message can be hard to fathom, seeming alternately simpleminded and ponderously abstract. The opera is an allegorical celebration of the ideals of the Masonic brotherhood, a secret, illegal society to which Mozart belonged, and the elaborate rituals that take up over half the opera are closely modeled on the initiation rites of the Order. Eighteenth century audiences would have instantly recognized...
...Bergman took up the challenge here, too. He has cooked up a few plot devices in an effort to give the tale some grit and human motivation, and comes dangerously close to melodrama. About halfway through the film we learn that Sarastro, High Priest of the Temple, was once the Queen of the Night's consort, is actually Pamina's father, and has snatched her from her mother's clutches out of paternal concern for her own good. According to the original text this is all wrong. The High Priest is traditionally a somewhat remote cult figure; here...
...Bergman's wandering camera makes any stage-audience formality vanish. He roves freely onstage with close-ups of the singers and pans of the set, follows them backstage and finds Papageno asleep, late for his cue, and darts into the audience to record the listeners' rapt faces. Sven Nykvist's extraordinary lighting and framing pours new layers of fantasy onto the story--hands appear out of nowhere, portraits come alive, and airy scenes like Renaissance paintings dissolve into somber, feverish settings lit by stark, bluish fires. The film keeps the quality of a live performance because...
PAPAGENO the bird-catcher was clearly Bergman's favorite character, and his comic part has been so embellished that he could almost be taken for the drama's protagonist. His innocent lust for talk, food, sex, and a wife get him into all kinds of trouble; all he really wants is a woman, and he often gazes warmly into the audience, begging someone out there to be his mate and threatening suicide when no one complies. As Taminos's companion he is given a chance to endure the Trials, but he has neither the courage nor the reticence to keep...
...Mozart was not a nobleman, and his comedies often satirize aristocratic pretension. It is more likely that Mozart meant to celebrate the common man's virtues as well as the prince's, to suggest that a certain kind of lofty nobleness of character is not for everyone. Bergman took this view so much to heart that he ended the film with his own vision: Papageno and Papagena embracing in a circle of lively, tow-headed kids...