For all his earnestness, Bergman had no pretensions about his art; his work is sceptical of its own power, as seen in his 1958 film The Magician, and even more so of the virtue of artists, depicted as parasitical creatures feeding off the turmoil of their subjects. Yet art can provide consolation: Bergman found “human holiness” in the music of Bach, which offers his characters “a flickering light”.

Scenes from a soul

Unrequited love began at an early age for Bergman. “I was an unwanted child in a hellish marriage”, recalls the protagonist in Wild Strawberries (1957), echoing the director’s own feelings. From his first screenplay, Torment (1944), to his last, Saraband (2003), Bergman portrayed adolescent rebellion and often futile attempts at reconciliation. In his autobiography The Magic Lantern, he asks his mother: “Were we given masks instead of faces?” She kept young Ingmar at a distance (“I used to try to find ways to win her love”) and he was prohibited from addressing his parents with the intimate du. In Persona (the title derives from the Latin for ‘mask’), an isolated child reaches out to a fading image of his mother.