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Ingmar Bergman's Hamlet: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Nazi
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14953 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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9 / 1988 |
734 Words |
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Cynthia Grenier
Cynthia Grenier is contributing editor to the Arts section of
The World & I. |
In his recent autobiography, internationally celebrated Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, now seventy, tells us that at sixteen, as an exchange student in Germany, he saw Adolf Hitler for the first time at a rally in Weimar. He loved the experience, he remembers, holding out his arm like everyone else, howling like everyone else. "I loved him [Hitler]. For many years, I was on Hitler's side, delighted by his successes and saddened by his defeats." It look Bergman many years to accept the reality of the concentration camps, and when he finally did, he decided, "Politics--never again!"
The idealism, hero worship, and aggressiveness of National Socialism powerfully appealed to him, as did its theatricality, although he confesses he was unable to perceive "the darkness." The director's Hamlet, recently presented in Swedish at the Brookly Academy of Music, has, fittingly, a political spin to its final scene, recalling something of what moved the adolescent Bergman in Weimar so many years ago.
Resolutely Modern Hamlet
Bergman's Hamlet is a resolutely modern Hamlet. This is a Hamlet in dark glasses, with rock music, and sex--a lot of sex. The tone of the production is set with the first appearance of Claudius and Gertrude on all fours, copulating, as the court stands about politely applauding. Hamlet virtually rapes Ophelia in the "get thee to a nunnery" scene. Laertes and Ophelia touch and grasp one another in all their scenes. Hamlet and Horatio constantly clutch, kiss, and embrace one another. It never stops.
The stage is bare except for an
... (1992 of 4465 Characters)
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