Word: sven
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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...
That is just the trouble. The movie (lovingly shot in autumnal tones by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer) is a clutter of notes and notions. The elaborate panoply of symbolism is never transcended, and the young girl herself remains undiscovered. If Malle had hoped to reveal her by uncovering her fantasies, he has only further obscured her, made her a prisoner of her own dream...
...enough to make small, slippery claims on the audience's emotion; of course, it does much more. Partly, this happens because of the unusual rapport between Bergman and his actors, particularly Liv Ullman. It seems as if her emotions would be moving even if grounded in nothing at all. Sven Nykvist's photography, that normally adds so much to the metaphysical quality of Bergman's moods, is simplified in this film for the small TV screen. The TV close-ups bring the film even closer to the everyday passions of home...
MOST HOPEFUL SIGN: The cinematography prize for Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's great cameraman. Hollywood can occasionally recognize production merit that is not ingrown...
...decrees will be his "love teacher." Finally he grows discontent and makes his way back to the one wise person he has met, a man who poles a raft back and forth across a river. Siddhartha has learned, as it were, to flow with the current. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who has lent visual majesty to all of Ingmar Bergman's recent work, must have realized early the folly of taking all this didactic mysticism seriously. This, at least, would explain why every image is bathed in the dreamy light of a tour ad for Air India...