Smiles of a Summer Night

May Issue of HI Art, 2009

In these years I am rather idle and have not drawn a lot. In the day I go skating and practice calligraphy occasionally, while at night I spent most of my time in seeing films and videos. Some of my friends felt I that want to change my career. I told them that it will take a long time to create excellent ink-and-wash paintings, and I will naturally produce good works after I have found peace and inspiration from my life, so nothing to worry about.

Recently a Retrospective Exhibition for Ingmar Bergman was held during Beijing Student Film Festival. The film festival has a history of 16 years, and in my memory, this is the first time it has included a retrospective show for a foreign movie master. No matter whether it is hosted by students or controlled by teachers or functional departments of the government, we can learn from the exhibition that the hosts have widened their view and, especially, their ambition. They no longer focus on Chinese directors such as Zhang Yimou; rather, they turn to Krzysztof Kieslowski directly. Things have really changed. Richter came to China last year, and no one, the official or the public, noticed him. What a pity! However, then they rounded away just like mice seeing a cat.

In my mind, it is Bergman who has integrated philosophical rational ideas with films, and who is able to shoot his films freely like writers composing their works. He is not only the most important film director in the history of Sweden, but also a world-acknowledged leading master in film history. He has created more than 40 films, and they are different from European neo-realistic ones created then as well as those created by his equivalents and contemporaries such as Fellini, Antonioni and Tarkovsky. His movies are not only related with his own experience, but also associated closely with culture in Sweden which is his homeland and an island country beyond the European Continent. Hence his films extremely differ from those, which are rather lame and without a fixed position, made by many of Chinese directors. On the premiere his early work Smiles of a Summer Night, a black and white film, was shown. It was shot in 1955, featuring Eva Dahlbeck and Ulla Jacobsson. In this standard work of him in his early years, Bergman described the confused love affairs among a successful lawyer, his son, an Earl and their wives in a village. Full of dramatic plots, the film contained little outdoor scene. This was the first time that Bergman, through a film, analyzed the complexity and helplessness of humanity before his audience. It was influenced by The Merry Widow, another film directed by him, and was commonly considered as a masterpiece created with perfect techniques. In this movie, it was women who could dominate the war of gender, while men were put at disadvantage. With it, Bergman has won a special prize on Cannes Film Festival in 1955, and after that he has also produced other representative works such as The Seventh Seal (1957) and the trilogy on faith and mistrust --- Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963) and Silence (1963). He said the trilogy showed a process that he broke away from the faith in the God, “the sacred lie that covered one’s vision”, went from an obtained confirmation to a revealed one and finally saw the God’s silence. These three films have not only demonstrated issues on faith and mistrust, but also presented the “simplification and restoration” in aesthetics: this is a unique feature of Bergman’s movies. He has proved that his films are highly representative and closely related with typical modern topics on art in the 20th Century. This kind of art itself is a signal of modern crisis, and at the same time, it is also describing the crisis: the resistance against authority and the disruption of, mistrust as well as negation towards absolute value. 

Just like painters’ painting brush and rice paper, Bergman’s movie camera and film are his excellent tools for expressing his ideas and feelings; and Sven Fox Film Industry Corporation, like a gallery to artists, has cooperated with him for years and distributed most of his works.

Even now I still remember the proud smile on the Swedish ambassador’s face when he announced that now on each night Bergman’s films can be found in at least one cinema all over the world.

Zhu Wei

Tuesday, April 21th, 2009

夏夜的微笑

《HI艺术》2009年5月刊

最近几年闲来无事，没怎么画画。白天溜冰，偶尔练练书法，晚上大部分时间看电影，看光盘。有几个哥们觉得我要改行，我告诉他们，水墨画就这样，一时半会好不了，等大家日子过的都踏实了觉悟上来了，自然会好起来。不急。

前一阵子北京大学生电影节搞了一个英格玛·伯格曼（Ingmar Bergman）电影回顾展，这是我记忆当中电影节十六年来首次推出国外大师级电影人的回顾展。不管大学生电影节是谁办的，是学生自己办的还是幕后有老师操纵、政府职能部门操纵，总而言之，他们的视线宽阔起来，看得更广了。最要命的，是他们的胸怀宽广了，不是只盯着张艺谋，而是绕过他，直奔基耶斯洛夫斯基。不像去年里希特来中国，从官方到在野，大家视而不见，这么好的机会，听说里希特本人还来了，全都跟老鼠见了猫一样，四散奔逃。

在我脑子里，伯格曼是这么个人：是他把哲学的理性思考带到作品当中，是他可以自由地像作家一样直接拍摄电影。伯格曼不仅是瑞典有史以来最重要的电影导演，同时也是被世界公认的电影史上首屈一指的人物。他有生之年创作的四十多部电影有别于同时代的欧洲新现实主义电影，也有别于和他级别相当的同时期的费里尼、安东尼奥尼、以及塔科夫斯基。他的电影跟他本人有关，更跟他的国家，瑞典，这个欧洲大陆之外的，一个岛屿上的国家的人文息息相关，而且联系得相当紧密。这和我们的艺术家创作出来的作品，东不东，西不西，南不南，北不北，有着天壤之差别。首映礼放映的是他的早期黑白片《夏夜的微笑》，拍摄于一九五五年，主演伊娃·达尔伯克、厄拉·雅克布森，这是一部他标准的早期电影，故事描写的是小镇子上一个成功律师，一个伯爵，再加上律师的儿子，三个人你爱上我老婆我爱上他老婆的故事，跌宕起伏，少有外景。这是伯格曼第一次以电影作为工具在众人面前分析人性的复杂和无奈。这部影片受到伯格曼自己执导的戏剧《风流寡妇》的影响，并且被普遍看作是技巧完善的剧情片杰作。在这部电影中，女性控制着性别的战争，而男人的结局总是处于不利。这部影片使伯格曼获得一九五五年嘎纳电影节特别奖。在此之后，他还拍摄了他的代表作《第七封印》（一九五七），以及阐述信仰与怀疑的三部曲《穿过黑暗的玻璃》（一九六一）、《冬日之光》（一九六三）和《沉默》（一九六三）。这三部电影用伯克曼自己的话说，那是他摆脱了对上帝的信仰，即那个“遮挡了一个人视野的神圣的瞎话”，是一个从获得的确信到被揭露的确信，并最终得到上帝的沉默的运动过程。这三部电影不仅阐述了信仰与怀疑，同时也是美学上的“简化还原”，是伯格曼所特有的电影风格标志。伯格曼证实了他的影片与代表着二十世纪艺术普遍典型的现代派课题的深刻关联度及其高度代表性。这种艺术本身就是现代危机的一个信号，而它同时还在描述着这一危机：对权威的反抗、绝对价值的瓦解、怀疑以及否定。

伯格曼手中的摄影机和胶片就像我们手里的毛笔和宣纸，是他宣泄意志和情感得心应手的工具，斯文克斯电影工业公司就像一个长期和他合作的画廊一样，出品了他绝大多数的作品。

我还记得在首映礼上瑞典大使得意洋洋的样子，他宣布：迄今为止，在全世界的每个角落，每到夜晚都会有一个地方在放映伯格曼的电影。

朱伟

2009年4月21日星期二