Word: papageno
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
...abducting her daughter Pamina (Irma Urilla) from the palace of Sarastro (Ulrik Cold). Sarastro, once the Queen's husband, is dabbling in some dark arts that turn out to be nothing more mysterious than the rites of Freemasonry. Tamino is aided in his quest by a forester named Papageno (Hakan Hagegard), whose robust cowardice at times of stress provides comedy relief. The two men, sensing they have been duped by the Queen of the Night, give themselves over to Sarastro's trial of honor. Their reward is true love: Tamino is immediately enamored of Pamina, Papageno swept away...
...Papageno's bells, Tamino's magic flute are talismans against the darkness. For Bergman, they are forces, as certain and necessary as love, to hold back the night...
...Bergman's dramatic conception, which is to stage the opera like an 18th century production. Many scenes take place within the confines of a proscenium arch. Bergman even emphasizes the theatricality of the occasion by providing a few glimpses of the performers off stage: Sarastro studying Parsifal, Papageno asleep in his dressing room and almost missing his en trance cue. Curtains rise and descend, flats rumble away to be replaced by others of equally splendid artificiality...
Blithe Innocence. Far from being just directorial legerdemain - though they are that - such touches reflect Bergman's continual preoccupation with the stuff of illusion. This obsession links such disparate films as The Magician (1959) and Persona (1966). There are soft shadows of many other Bergman scenes and themes: Papageno and Papagena's indomitable exuberance recalls the peasant couple at the end of The Seventh Seal (1956); the air of blithe innocence and sudden mystery evokes the elegant reveries of Smiles of a Summer Night...