Word: nykvist
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Bergman had wanted to make his film in black and white. When the producers resisted, he and his habitual partner, Cameraman Sven Nykvist, found a compromise. Says Nykvist: "Ingmar and I agreed to shoot color in black and white." Although most of the film captures the dark, gray quality of drab Berlin, Bergman has punctuated the gloom with bright and often zany scenes. "After years of crying for him," says Liv Ullmann, who plays Manuela, the nightclub entertainer whom Carradine loves, "Ingmar has finally allowed me to sing and dance." Wearing the scantiest of costumes, Ullmann was ordered to perform...
...afternoon, the Bavarian sky finally clouded and the light seemed right. Because it was so late, two scenes were shot simultaneously, Nykvist filming from one end of the street and Bergman from the other. "We don't have to even talk any more on the set," Bergman says of Nykvist, who has worked with him on 18 films. "We instinctively know what we want." Nykvist is hard of hearing in his left ear and Bergman in his right. "When we talk," says the jolly Nykvist, "we look like a pair of geese doing a mating dance...
Finally Bergman's crowd scene got into motion. Using dusk light for dawn, he shot tired Berliners plodding to work at the first light of morning-normality amid pending catastrophe -while buses, trolleys, cars and carts clattered around the curving street. At the other end of the set, Nykvist shot Carradine pushing through the crowds to arrive at Manuela's cabaret at twilight. The realism was enhanced by a cold rain that began to splash on cars and pedestrians. Soon the street lights were turned on and the final take of the parade...
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...
Thanks again to Bergman's usual collaborator, Cinematographer Sven Nykvist, The Magic Flute is ravishing to look at. The acting is exceptional, partly be cause the performers have been allowed to concentrate on nuance rather than volume. The music was recorded separately, so that when the sing ers open their mouths to sing, the action is as natural and spontaneous as if they were speaking. During the overture and between scenes, Bergman cuts to faces in the audience, returning continually to one, the wondering, wise countenance of a girl who seems ageless. Recalling the director's childhood memories...