INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘A SHIP TO INDIA’: “You long for something new, too…”

by James Clark

Those of us who love serious filmmaking, know filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman, to be not only brilliant but unique. How unique? In our film today, A Ship to India (1947), the two protagonists embark in 1940-neutral Sweden, without a word about World War II! Not only that, but everyone in the large cast also seems to regard the War as nothing but a bore. What’s going on here? You can be sure that serious business is on the table. Serious and pertaining to the artful vision of the German Expressionist movement, having derived by the strangeness of the battlefields of World War I. Much of Bergman’s aesthetic zeal had been fired up by such conundrum. Where, though, could such strange creatures become a work for a film writer/ director, for a Swedish studio? (Along with his theatre work, giving scope for the sensate, the sensational.) His first film after the war would have to be below his lofty thoughts (money speaking in this game), and hard to swallow for a young fireball. But he comes across amazingly, here.

Bergman’s solution was to encrust serious work, while the supposed Hollywood endeavor could thrill the armies. Perhaps not a thing of beauty; but a unique undertaking in those dodgy precincts. As we see it in its “sexy,” “violent,” “madcap,” “charming,”way, there is, of course, the real McCoy. Here cinematography takes us to another world.

In the darkness, three men stand on a dock. One is black, the others white. Their stance bestows them an intensity, as if danger. Lightning dears the sky. They are alert, to a point. In that same darkness, one of the protagonists, Johannes, a young officer in a sailor suit, just arrived, has a cigarette whose smoke bestows a white ripple. Another craft proceeding. The waters churning. Before that, a gangway. A forest of shadows along the craft. Along a murky sidewalk, a beautiful woman rushes out of a bar. His shadows on the facades.    (Now for the wide-open saga.) The other protagonist, Sally. Her room, being a play of a modern palace. Uncanny! His shadow on the door. Johannes sleeping on the rocky beach. A place to dream. Forest around. Birds singing.

  

Two mirrors in his mother’s houseboat. (Making four.) The montage in his father’s room. Still life. Rippling light on the ceiling. Ceiling ablaze. The lovers on the sea. Ignoring the magic, as usual. Never nearly enough: planet earth. Johannes, just came back from a seven-year stint as a sailor, almost immediately encounters an old friend, a rather unusual friend. Or is it? She is a happy-go-lucky, middle-aged prostitute. As a stranger, one might not imagine her career. Here she addresses Johannes in the shadowy night, being ignored by him. (A moment before, along an open window, he heard, “It’s clearing up. Shall we bike to the sea for a swim? Just you and me? We’ll give the others the slip.” [Black monsters-imagery. Ignored, of course.] “Let’s hurry!” “Let’s hurry” being a trademark here, for all the world. Swedes at that era were a cliché of, “let’s hurry!”) Back to the coincidence, on the sidewalk. That active woman comes behind him, saying, “What’s on a sailor’s mind?” The protagonist tells her, “Nothing tonight, thanks.” She shifting gears, as she comes closer. “Don’t you recognize old Sofi?” The sailor lifts Sofi in a warm embrace! (Bergman forever!) “Of course! It’s old Sofi!”

Rather than stay the night where Sofi’s work had sustained two invalids, he wanders the town, and, as morning dawns he finds himself at the seashore. There he falls into deep reverie. The subject being the story of how he needed to get away from his family. (He was here for only a day, and then taking off again.) But, even more urgent, he had on his back unfinished business of his own. Johannes has a hump-back. He seems to be a bore about it. But he has some grit. He’s from a family of salvaging broken material in the sea. His family could be called trash. (Lots of  Hollywood 30’s “drama”. His uncle being the boss of the firm and his father the go-for. We see the former and his friends beating up folks at a carnival. Then we see the dad with his friends attacking the uncle’s gang at a strip bar. For sentimental reasons, the dad is going blind from hits on the head. [Blind, what a word!] Then there is Sally, girlfriend of both of them. The mother of Johannes tries to be pleasant.) In his teens the boy was, as it were, smitten by Sally. So much for box office!

    Let’s see some life! At a glance, the go-for seems to be entirely thick (as two short planks). He had installed for Sally a flat where Sofi seemed to be in charge. But in fact, there had been a touch of magic, transforming a hell-hole to a savvy home. (Later on, the go-for will be exposed to humiliation, allowing us, in his weakness, to appreciate his inner sanction of high design. And be careful of seeing this film as a beginner’s work.) Here’s the heart of this surprise. At Sally’s digs, he opens another inner sanction, another moment of the meaning of his life. The meaning of his life is to run away with her to the tropics. There is, in a special area, displays to convey what he means. There are photos of Tahiti. See the palm trees. This is from Ceylon, an island off India. Sailing at night into a harbor gleaming with lights… the waters dark and calm. And the air has a strange scent, very different from here. A kind of wild smell that makes you wild too… There are palm trees there, too. And this is dried shark skin. (How far can the exotic go?) There are corals, seashells from the Pacific. Pink and white corals, seashells of every color and size. This one’s light blue. This one changes color as you turn it in the light…” Sally calls out, “Look at that!  Listen… [the shell]…” She continues, “It’s murmuring. That’s the sea murmuring inside.” He adds, “I can listen to that seashell for hours at a time…” (Other Bergman films; and films instrumental by film writer, Tonino Guerra, as with,  Amarcord [1973], come to bear along this magical source.) “Every night I put on a shell up to my ear…” But now an abrupt turn. Grotesque figures in stone, to suggest that the idyll is faulty, chockablock with failing… “And it’s as if a voice whispers to me not to stay here, to set out to sea… With every passing night, the voices around me grow clearer and clearer.”/ He tells her, “Keep it! (The shell.) It will speak to you just as clearly. I know it will. You long for something else, too.”/ “Yes, I long for something else!”

    Grand thoughts, evaporating. Evaporating in dispirit ways. It turns out that the go-for would be a strong enthusiast. It also turns out that Sally would not be a strong enthusiast. However, his passion could be reckless, a stance lacking that precision needed to cover the complications. On the other hand, Sally’s remoteness may involve tackling the full toil of the matter. Here comes the big wild.

It begins badly. Mister Tahiti bullies his son and his wife. He tells her, “I’ve tried, Alice.” (Tried to do what?) Johannes tells Sally all about Africa. “Sailing at night into a harbor, glimmering  with lights, the water dark and calm.” She asks, “How do you know all that?”/ “I’ve read about in books…” This emboldens him to invite her to his inner sanction, a wrecked windmill, far from what is called civilization. “I’ll show you  something fun.” Into the rowboat. Glistening waters, how far can they go?  She  asks, “You sit up here all alone?”/ “No.” / “Who do you bring?”/ “I imagine someone I can talk to, about my thoughts and my dreams…” / “What do you want most of all?” / “To be rid of my hump.” / “You’re just a bit round-shouldered.” (Has she posed a test? “Most of all…”) She quickly opens another matter. “I’ve been wondering about something.”/ “What.”/ “Your eyes. They look so sad.”/ “Do they?”/ “It makes me wonder why you’re sad.”/ “I don’t know. Maybe  I was born to be unhappy and make others unhappy.”/ “You mustn’t ever give up…”/ “I never will.”/ “I know you won’t.” (Out of the blue, we’ve reached a bend in this scenario where theatre overtakes film. Sally (silently) abandons her study of the boy and becomes candid about her shortcomings.) “But I’m lazy and apathetic…You’re not like that at all.”/ “I’m going to get free of everything that’s holding me back. You just have to be determined as hell.” (As if that’s enough.)/ Sally’s retort: “I’m never determined as hell about anything.”/ “Are you in love with my Dad?”/ (She becomes distraught.) / “Why do you ask?”/ “I’m thinking of my Mom. It can’t be much fun for her.”/ “You wish I wasn’t here.”/ “I like  having you here, but Mom’s getting sadder and sadder.”/ “You needn’t worry. I don’t love your father.”/ “Is there someone else?”/ “No, no, no.” / “What did you do before the variety show?”/ “I was poor… What do you think? You stop caring about others.” [Sofi didn’t.]/ “I still believe there’s something good and true…”/ (She laughs.) “Do you, do you… I guess we’ll see.” (I guess Sally is a wild card. Better than nothing. Think of the shell.) After the spate of cynicism, she blurts out, “If I could fall in love with someone, I’d fall in love with you…” (She also insists, “I’m completely crazy!” There you are, Hollywood!)

    Many changes now occur. Few of them really matter. On the basis of that ambiguity, Johannes cruises back to port being another man. His father slaps him. The boy slaps, for the first time, back. Such a setback puts him in his modernist studio for two days. He then devises an underwater escapade for his son, which would, hopefully, become a murder. The plan fails (as screwballs would), the go-for rushes to the Tahiti bedroom, smashes all his largesse, becomes a prisoner, breaks away from the police, hurls himself through a high window, and lives to be the cripple he always was. Or can intent failing have a productive role? (As a coda, the boy’s mom, Alice, settles in to do what can be done with her husband. Sally was to say, “I don’t want to end up like you.” But Alice may transfigure the artist in both of them.

The long reverie begins to end with Johannes finally leaving his problematic family. There was, also, the thought that after his stint in the invisible navy, he would return to Sally and sweep her off her feet, along a brilliant location. Before that, however, there is the long good-bye, not without problems, not without box-office sentimentality. They are in her dressing-room. She tells him, “I know what you’re thinking… but don’t say anything. Don’t think anything…” She rushes to him. “Don’t let all the seediness get to you. What you and I have isn’t like that that at all.”/ “I promise to take you away from all this, as soon as I can.”/ “That’s very sweet… But don’t make promises you can’t keep.”/ “I really promise. I give you my word…” (Cut to him getting dressed from her bed.) She  tells him, “I’ll be waiting each and every day. I’ll think about you every moment. It will be terribly hard. I won’t be able to think seriously about anything else.”/ “It’s strange. Tomorrow I’ll get what I’ve wanted all these years., but I don’t feel happy.”/ “You will.”/ “Think so?”/ “I know you will…” (Childish. Fine for television.)/ She goes on with, “You’ve gotten so much and put it all behind you.” (The rain and a bird—far more interesting than this babbling.) He  needs to tell her, “You helped me.” (Shutting up and reflecting; enjoying the moment—where was it?) He tells her, “When you showed up, I was one big knot.” (Was this a moment of love? Or a contract?) She goes on, “It’s nice to hear you say that, even though I know it’s not true…”/ “Why are you crying? We promised to be faithful always and to love each other. We hold each other tight and feel both happiness and unhappiness”/ “If only it could last!”/ “Of course  it will last.”/ “Yes, for you. You’re upright and clear. But I’m afraid of tomorrow and the day after.” She goes back to sleep. The shell in sight; and his shadow over her body. He leaves. Cut to the docks. He carries something in a paper container. He approaches his mother. Whatever was in the paper, he decided not to give to his mother. (A gasping sound covers the docks. The sea, large waves, whitecaps.) He hears, “Jeez, I thought it was a dead body! He’s probably just drunk…” He wakes up painfully… “I’m perfectly all right…”

    He’s now intent on that action of sweeping her off her feet. Still in bed, she opens her eyes. He explains, somewhat, “Did I frighten you?”/ “What?… No…” (She’s troubled.)/ “Did you think it was someone else?” (A bad entrance.) She turns her back on the bed. She tells him, “Don’t look at me.”/ “I’ve been sitting here a while…”/ “You have your nerve!” (Her nerve pertains to that nagging sophistication.) / “I want to talk to you about something. Listen, Sally. This is important” (to hold a tone, while having the right wit; perhaps over the seven years, she had been making progress). Not a walk in the park. She looks up, alarmed. “We have nothing to say to each other. Go away! Leave me alone.” (His and her perspective involves the bars of the bed.) He plows along. “I have something important to say that’s been on mind.”/ She rudely, arrogantly, tells him, “Then say it quickly and leave.” He tells her, “You know why I came back at all?”/ “How would I know?”/ “You remember what we said that night before I left seven years ago?”/ “No.”/ “I promised to come and take you away as soon as I could. I gave you, my word.”/ “What of it?/ “Here I am… Put this on and come along. Hurry.” (American screwballs did this sort of thing in those days, with many kudos. But this is Bergman’s Sweden and nobody’s laughing. Recall Johannes is of a family deep with violence, not necessarily physical.)/ “I don’t want to.”/ “Why not. You said you’d been waiting for me. So, you realize it’s impossible. I don’t understand.” (Bergman playing with freaks for Hollywood. But Sally’s ontology is not for laughs.) She tells him, “You’re dumber than I thought.”/ “Perhaps, but you’re coming…” What really comes to light is wild screaming and great faces.  She tells him , “Don’t argue! Just go to hell! I don’t want to, dammit!”/ “Yes, you do! You’re just afraid!”/ “My life was fine. Why can’t you just leave me alone.” (A critical error on her part. Of course, her life was not “fine.” No doubt, her reflections could yield some enjoyment. But there would be many unfinished snags. Tell the stiff about that, and maybe he’d reconsider. But as a bimbo it’ll by forever.) / The collector tells her, “You remember when we first met. How you took my side and helped me?”/ “Why won’t you just go when I ask you to?/ “It’s my turn to take care of you, and I can do that… I’ve  missed you all these years. I care for you as much as ever.”/ “She yells, “I want nothing to do with you! Just leave!” Sofi comes in with, “What’s all this?” He tells her, “We’re talking.”/ “I thought you were slaughtering the girl…  He demands, “Shut the door.”/ Sofi tells him, “You’ll get us evicted.” (He’s holding her upside down.) He calls for shutting the door. He also tells Sally, “Listen to me, we both saw what happened to my Dad. That mustn’t happen to you. You have to get out when things start closing in, not just shut yourself in and grow more and more afraid.” (All his indistinct threats.) “You have to get through it, even if things seem hopeless. Or else it all grows up around you, with no way through… and you end up leaping out a window… Listen to me, Sally…” She fiercely cuts in. Then she runs to Sofi’s part of the sprawling flat. She locks herself in the bathroom. He yells, “Open up, for Christ’s sake! Don’t be stupid! Open up!” Sofi tells him, “Let her stay in there!”/ “Get away or I’ll punch you!… Open this door!” (He hammers on the door.) Sofi  says, “He’s gone mad!” Sofi’s friend says, “What is all this about?”/ Sally tells him, “I’m not coming out! I’m staying in here until your boat sails with you on it!”/ “I’ll break the door down.”/ “I’ll jump out the window!”/ Sofi tells her, “There’s no window in there.” He smashes down the door./ “You see now that you can’t get away.” He caresses her head. “Suit yourself. I’m not worth having….”/ “You can’t be the judge of that.”/ “I don’t even know why I’m arguing. If you want me, you can have me. I’ll leave when you tire of me.”/ “I promise… Would you pack up your things… I must say, there’s never a dull moment with you.” (Their embrace involves exertion.) They board a snowy ocean liner. Their gangway resembles the 1983 film, And the Ship Sails On, by Fellini and Guerra (especially Guerra). The latter being a great admirer of Bergman. Three consecutive soaring seagulls present an ironic denouement.

    Along with the film, Crisis (1946 [coming next]), our film today involves the situating of Bergman’s entire career. The woes of Sally are the woes of tangling with a planet of perverse sheep. His war against his father’s church was only part of the misfortune. Murderous religion was bad enough. Murderous science (as a religion) would be even more calamitous. There are of course many virtues in the marches mentioned.  The slight about World War II and fascism would be a lack  of self-control. But Bergman was on solid (but rarely attended) bases, nonetheless. His work would be to open currents being grossly underrated.

    Grossly underrated is the arts. The arts have always lifted hearts. But the arts have never been seen to be supreme. Bergman would be an exception, yes. But I’d like to cite someone perhaps unknown to this forum.

A couple of weeks ago we were at a Symphony evening where Finnish conductor, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, was spotlighting the Fifth Symphony of Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). This was no regular presentation. It took five demanding years to complete. As if the composer had become overtaken by daring, he had never experienced, the completed work was a spinning edifice of dialectic, by the normal, and also the uncanny, with a climax of six stark chords, torn apart by long pauses. This was Bergman in another world, shattering the mincing range and engaging the uncanny.