Word: sarastro
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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...
...film, the plot seems straightforward. Tamino (Josef Kostlinger), a knight pure of heart but uncertain of course, is enticed by the Queen of the Night (Birgit Nordin) and her handmaidens into 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...
When Tamino and Pamina embrace at the end, Bergman has the magic flute fly from Tamino's hand into Sarastro's, a lovely metaphor of universal regeneration, both of life...
...quite as effective as 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...
...stage," he says. "A work like The Magic Flute should lead everyone to the depth of his own temperament, and so I prefer to have the public imagine the river." There is no river to imagine in Ustinov's Magic Flute, but there is much else. Sarastro's temple of wisdom is suggested by four golden columns and a clear egg-yolk backdrop rather than the usual bombastic temple architecture. The other sets consist primarily of a variety of shrublike trees positioned differently for each scene...