Movie Review: The Silence (1963) - Page 3

The Silence was released in 1963, and Bergman must inevitably have been aware of recent developments in European cinema. Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), for example, appears to share certain thematic concerns: the death of God, and the consequent resort to either hedonism or rationalist intellectualism as means to fill the ideological void left behind. And just as Fellini's film operates under the spectre of nuclear annihilation, so too does Bergman's: the presence in key moments of tanks and air-raid sirens imply some significant unseen or impending armed conflict. The Silence operates in the same weary post-war landscape of many a film of the previous decade, if not explicitly than tonally, a landscape later viewed in Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979), which operated its own post-apocalyptic dialectic between its intellectual Professor and artisan Writer.

These central concerns are at the core of the film intellectually, and a certain degree of its beguiling mystery is derived from this, yet more important to the tone of the piece is its oddly jarring visual style. Bergman had resumed his collaboration with cinematographer Sven Nykvist when commencing work on the Faith Trilogy, and it is in The Silence where the partnership became more experimental in terms of composition and framing. As a man equally of the theatre as of celluloid, there are times elsewhere in the trilogy where the director appears to be doing little more than effectively filming a stage.

Though outwardly dismissive of some of his contemporaries like Michelangelo Antonioni, there is a sense from this film onwards that the new dimensions of visual language being explored by other European directors had begun to rub off on him. The range of shots noticeably increases, making extensive use of both close-up and deep-focus. For an example of the former, see how he draws attention to Ester's drinking and smoking as she fiddles with the radio she is listening to: the camera tracks her hand movements, and the scene becomes intensely subjectively hers, penetrating her psychological state. By contrast, other scenes frame the sisters in separate rooms, one glimpsing the other caught in deep-focus through the doorway, physically representing the mental distance between them. If Bergman is conducting a chamber quartet, then Nykvist is using the full orchestra. The use of diegetic music, sparing and always in some way interacting with the characters, also seems to be penetrating their psyches further.

Article Author: Bags

Bags is a writer based in Bristol, UK. He likes the idea of being called a 'cultural historian', though 'boring film and music geek' is probably closer to the mark. Ouch.

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