Cast: Josef Köstlinger, Irma Urrila, Håkan Hagegård, Ulrik Cold, Birgit Nordin, Ragnar Ulfung, Britt-Marie Aruhn, Kirsten Vaupel, Birgitta Smiding, Erik Sædén. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman, based on an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder translated by Alf Henrikson. Cinematography: Sven Nykvist. Production design: Henny Noremark. Film editing: Siv Lundgren. Costume design: Karin Erskine, Henny Noremark.
Ingmar Bergman’s The Magic Flute is a kind of linguistic palimpsest, with the English subtitles* superimposed on the Swedish translation of the German original. I don't know Swedish, but I’ve picked up enough of the sound of the language from watching movies that I can recognize a word or two. But I do know the German libretto fairly well from following along on recordings, so that when a singer begins a familiar aria, I hear the German in my mind’s ear along with the Swedish being sung and then refracted through the English words on screen. You’d think this would be distracting, but it isn’t – in fact, it only helps me appreciate the care Bergman took in making the film. Opera is not designed for the movies: It has moments of tightly choreographed action after which people usually stand still to sing, and you want more out of a movie than starts and stops. But what Bergman does so brilliantly is to supply close-ups and cuts that give the film an energy, often following the rhythms of Mozart’s music. We don’t get close-ups in the opera house – thank god, because singing opera does unfortunate things to the singers’ faces – but Bergman has wisely chosen good-looking singers and had them speak-sing along with a previously recorded version, so there’s little facial distortion. The Magic Flute is a problematic opera: Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto is a mess that never quite resolves the relationship between Sarastro, the Queen of the Night, and Pamina. Bergman solves this by creating one: In his version, Pamina (Irma Urrila) is the daughter of Sarastro (Ulrik Cold) and the Queen (Birgit Nordin), and he has abducted the girl because he doesn’t trust his ex to raise her right. There’s no justification for this in Schikaneder’s text, and even Bergman hasn’t quite resolved the problem of why Sarastro lets Pamina be guarded by Monastatos (Ragnar Ulfung), whose chief aim seems to be to sleep with the young woman. Nor has Bergman solved the misogyny and racism of Schikaneder’s libretto. Women come in for a good deal of disapproval in the opera, and Bergman hasn’t eliminated that. Monastatos is tormented by the fact that he’s black – a Moor – although he is given a kind of Shylockian moment of self-justification, and even Papageno (Håkan Hagegård), who is the pragmatic, commonsense type, reflects that there are black birds, so why not black people. Most productions today gloss over these antique prejudices as best they can, however, turning The Magic Flute into a kind of fairy tale for the kids, with colorful sets and cute forest animals dancing to Tamino’s flute. Bergman is no exception in this regard: The film is set in the theater, and he opens with a close-up of a lovely young girl** with a kind of Mona Lisa smile, and follows her eye line as she gazes at the images painted on the curtain, then scans the other faces in the audience, old and young and of various ethnicities. The film, which like his other childhood-centered classic, Fanny and Alexander (1982), was made originally for television, is certainly one of Bergman’s warmest.
*I don’t know who did the English version, but it’s a very good singing translation, not just a literal prose version of the original.
**She has been identified as Helene Friberg, who had bit parts in other Bergman films.
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