Listening to Ingmar Bergman's Monsters
Horror Music, Mutes, and Acoustical Beings in Persona and Hour of the Wolf
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.v6i1.5Keywords:
Ingmar Bergman, film, music, horror, muteAbstract
Many of Ingmar Bergman’s films are indebted to the horror genre through topics that explore physical and psychological torture, mutilation, illness, murder, sexual taboos, dream, psychoanalysis, madness, and the supernatural. These emblematic horror tropes are reinforced with close-ups of expressive mouths and eyes and a masterful manipulation of shadow and light, helping to create an aesthetic that is at once intimate and haunting. There is a third plane, an aural one, on which Bergman intertwines music, a rich palette of sound effects, deathly silence, and blood-chilling screams. This paper focuses on the significance of music and the voice (or the lack thereof) in Bergman’s soundtracks and expands ideas put forward by Julia Kristeva about the “abject” and by Michel Chion pertaining to the omniscient and bodiless acousmêtres or “acoustical beings” and mutes of film. This article examines mutes and acousmêtres in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, and how the quality of their voices or, indeed, their silence, aids them in articulating their identities and manipulating and tyrannizing those around them. Bergman’s characters threaten to destabilize the narrative if and when they find their bodies and/or voices, and thus maintain an ominous power as they straddle diegetic and non-diegetic aural space.
References
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———. 1959. Ingmar Bergman intervjuas om filmmusik och närmaste planer. Biodags, Swedish Public Radio.
———. 1960. Möte med Ingmar Bergman. Swedish Public Radio (February 6).
———. 1962. Min Pianist. Vecko Revyn 11: 16-18; 79.
———. 1969. Ingmar Bergman sjunger/Bergman sings. Swedish Public Radio (January 17).
———. 1969. En grammofontimme med Ingmar Bergman. Swedish Public Radio (September 7).
———. 1988. The Magic Lantern: An autobiography [Laterna Magica]. New York and London: Viking Penguin.
———. 2001. The fifth act. Trans. Linda Rugg and Joan Tate. New York: New Press.
———. 2001. Ingmar Bergman och Daniel Börtz. Samtal om music. Swedish Public Radio (January 1).
———. 2004. Sommar. Swedish Public Radio (July 18).
———. 2007. Images: My life in film. Trans. Marianne Ruuth. New York: Arcade.
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Broman, Per. 2012. Silence and sound in Ingmar Bergman’s films. In Music, sound and filmmakers: Sonic style in cinema, ed. James Wierzbicki, 15-21. New York: Routledge.
Carroll, Noel. 1990. The philosophy of horror, or paradoxes of the heart. New York and London: Routledge.
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———. 1999. The voice in cinema. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 2009. Film: A sound art. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.
Clover, Carol. 1992. Men, women and chainsaws: Gender in the modern horror film. London: BFI.
Comuzio, Ermanno. 1964. Musica, suoni e silenzio neil film di Bergman. Cineforum 32 (February): 166-73.
Deaville, James. 2014. Selling abjection: Female vocalities in horror trailers. Unpublished paper delivered at the 2014 Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) conference, Bournemouth, UK, January 8–10.
Duncan, Paul and Bengt Wanselius, ed. 2008. The Ingmar Bergman Archives (Hong Kong and Los Angeles: Taschen.
Fenimore, Ross J. 2010. Voices that lie within: The heard and unheard in Psycho. In Music in the horror film, ed. Neil Lerner, 88-89. New York and London: Routledge.
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———. 2000. Overhearing film dialogue. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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———. 1997. The portable Kristeva. Ed. Kelly Oliver. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lagerroth, Ulla Britta. 2008. Musicalization on the stage: Ingmar Bergman performing Shakespeare. In Ingmar Bergman revisited: Performance, cinema and the arts, ed. Maaret Koskinen. London: Wallflower Press.
Laretei, Käbi. 2004. Såmsom i en översättning: Teman med variationer. Stockholm: Bonniers.
Lee, Michael. 2012. Sound and uncertainty in the horror films of the Lewton Unit. In Music, sound, and filmmakers: Sonic style in cinema, 107-121. New York and London: Routledge.
Lerner, Neil, ed. 2010. Music in the horror film: Listening to fear. New York and London: Routledge.
Livingston, Paisley. 1982. Ingmar Bergman and the rituals of art. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Luko, Alexis. 2012. Ingmar Bergman’s voiceless beings and disembodied phantoms. Presented at the Music and the Moving Image Conference, Steinhardt School of Culture, NYU, NYC, June 1-3.
———. 2015. Sonatas, screams, and silence: Music and sound in the films of Ingmar Bergman. New York: Routledge.
Michaels, Lloyd. 2000. Bergman and the necessary illusion. In Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Ed. Lloyd Michaels, 16-19. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen 16, no. 3: 6-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6
———. 1989. Visual and other pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Murphy, Scott. 2006. The major tritone progression in recent Hollywood science fiction film. Music Theory Online 12 (May). Accessed May 4, 2012. http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.06.12.2/mto.06.12.2.murphy_essay.html
Nyström, Martin. 2003. Musiken spelar störst roll i Ingmar Bergmans filmer/Music plays the major role in Ingmar Bergman’s films. Dag Nyheter (November 30): 4-5.
Schepelern, Peter. 1978. Ingmar Bergman og musikken. Kosmorama 24, no. 137: 44-46.
Silverman, Kaja. 1988. The acoustic mirror: The female voice in psychoanalysis and cinema. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Sontag, Susan. 2000. Bergman’s Persona. In Cambridge handbook to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Ed. Lloyd Michaels. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sullivan, Jack. 2006. Hitchcock’s music. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Théberge, Paul. 2008. Almost silent: The interplay of sound and silence in contemporary cinema and television. In Lowering the boom: Critical studies in film sound, ed. Jay Beck and Tony Grajeda, 51-67. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Umland, Samuel J. 2012. World of blood and fire: Lang, Mabuse, and Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg. In European nightmares: Horror cinema in Europe since 1945, 195-206. London and New York: Wallflower Press.
Worland, Rick. 2007. The horror film: An introduction. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Bergman, Ingmar. 1947. Ej för at roa blott/Not just to entertain. Radiotjänst, Swedish Public Radio (January 2).
———. 1959. Ingmar Bergman intervjuas om filmmusik och närmaste planer. Biodags, Swedish Public Radio.
———. 1960. Möte med Ingmar Bergman. Swedish Public Radio (February 6).
———. 1962. Min Pianist. Vecko Revyn 11: 16-18; 79.
———. 1969. Ingmar Bergman sjunger/Bergman sings. Swedish Public Radio (January 17).
———. 1969. En grammofontimme med Ingmar Bergman. Swedish Public Radio (September 7).
———. 1988. The Magic Lantern: An autobiography [Laterna Magica]. New York and London: Viking Penguin.
———. 2001. The fifth act. Trans. Linda Rugg and Joan Tate. New York: New Press.
———. 2001. Ingmar Bergman och Daniel Börtz. Samtal om music. Swedish Public Radio (January 1).
———. 2004. Sommar. Swedish Public Radio (July 18).
———. 2007. Images: My life in film. Trans. Marianne Ruuth. New York: Arcade.
Bergman, Ingmar, Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, and Johanas Sima. 1973. Bergman on Bergman. Trans. Paul Britten Austin. London: Secker and Warburg.
Brick, Emily. 2012. Baise-Moi and the French rape-revenge films. In European nightmares: Horror cinema in Europe since 1945. London and New York: Wallflower Press.
Broman, Per. 2012. Silence and sound in Ingmar Bergman’s films. In Music, sound and filmmakers: Sonic style in cinema, ed. James Wierzbicki, 15-21. New York: Routledge.
Carroll, Noel. 1990. The philosophy of horror, or paradoxes of the heart. New York and London: Routledge.
Chion, Michel. 1994. Audio vision: Sound on screen. Ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1999. The voice in cinema. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 2009. Film: A sound art. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.
Clover, Carol. 1992. Men, women and chainsaws: Gender in the modern horror film. London: BFI.
Comuzio, Ermanno. 1964. Musica, suoni e silenzio neil film di Bergman. Cineforum 32 (February): 166-73.
Deaville, James. 2014. Selling abjection: Female vocalities in horror trailers. Unpublished paper delivered at the 2014 Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) conference, Bournemouth, UK, January 8–10.
Duncan, Paul and Bengt Wanselius, ed. 2008. The Ingmar Bergman Archives (Hong Kong and Los Angeles: Taschen.
Fenimore, Ross J. 2010. Voices that lie within: The heard and unheard in Psycho. In Music in the horror film, ed. Neil Lerner, 88-89. New York and London: Routledge.
Gantz, Jeffrey. 1980. Mozart, Hoffmann and Ingmar Bergman’s Vargtimmen. Literature/Film Quarterly 8, no. 2: 104-114.
Gengaro, Christine Lee. 2013. Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The music in his films. Lanham and Toronto: Scarecrow Press.
Gill, Brendan. 2000. Masks and aspects: Review of Persona (The New Yorker Magazine, 1967). In Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, ed. Lloyd Michaels. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Goodnow, Katherine J. 2010. Kristeva in focus: From theory to film analysis. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Halfyard, Janet K. 2010. Mischief afoot: Supernatural horror-comedies and the Diabolus in musica. In Music in the horror film: Listening to fear, ed. Neil Lerner, 21-37. New York: Routledge.
Hamdi, Britt. 1960. Ingmar Bergman och Käbi Laretei. Damernas värld (November 17): 27-33, 74.
Hedlund, Oscar. 1963. Ingmar Bergman, lyssnaren/Ingmar Bergman, The Listener. Expressen (July 20): 4-5. Appeared in English as “Ingmar Bergman, the Listener” in Saturday Review (February 29, 1964): 47-49.
Heimerdinger, Julia. 2012. Music and sound in the horror film and why some modern and avant-garde music lends itself to it so well. Seiltanz: Beiträge zur Musik der Gegenwart 4 (April).
Hubner, Laura. 2007. The films of Ingmar Bergman: Illusions of light and darkness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230801387
Hutchings, Peter. 2004. The horror film. London and New York: Pearson.
Jönsson, Sofia Lilly. 2001. Ljudestetik i spelfilm: Om sju minuter i Bergmans Fanny och Alexander. Department of Musicology and Theater, Stockholm University.
Kozloff, Sarah. 1988. Invisible storytellers: Voice-over narration in American fiction film. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2000. Overhearing film dialogue. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kristeva, Julia. 1982. The powers of horror. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1997. The portable Kristeva. Ed. Kelly Oliver. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lagerroth, Ulla Britta. 2008. Musicalization on the stage: Ingmar Bergman performing Shakespeare. In Ingmar Bergman revisited: Performance, cinema and the arts, ed. Maaret Koskinen. London: Wallflower Press.
Laretei, Käbi. 2004. Såmsom i en översättning: Teman med variationer. Stockholm: Bonniers.
Lee, Michael. 2012. Sound and uncertainty in the horror films of the Lewton Unit. In Music, sound, and filmmakers: Sonic style in cinema, 107-121. New York and London: Routledge.
Lerner, Neil, ed. 2010. Music in the horror film: Listening to fear. New York and London: Routledge.
Livingston, Paisley. 1982. Ingmar Bergman and the rituals of art. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Luko, Alexis. 2012. Ingmar Bergman’s voiceless beings and disembodied phantoms. Presented at the Music and the Moving Image Conference, Steinhardt School of Culture, NYU, NYC, June 1-3.
———. 2015. Sonatas, screams, and silence: Music and sound in the films of Ingmar Bergman. New York: Routledge.
Michaels, Lloyd. 2000. Bergman and the necessary illusion. In Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Ed. Lloyd Michaels, 16-19. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen 16, no. 3: 6-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6
———. 1989. Visual and other pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Murphy, Scott. 2006. The major tritone progression in recent Hollywood science fiction film. Music Theory Online 12 (May). Accessed May 4, 2012. http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.06.12.2/mto.06.12.2.murphy_essay.html
Nyström, Martin. 2003. Musiken spelar störst roll i Ingmar Bergmans filmer/Music plays the major role in Ingmar Bergman’s films. Dag Nyheter (November 30): 4-5.
Schepelern, Peter. 1978. Ingmar Bergman og musikken. Kosmorama 24, no. 137: 44-46.
Silverman, Kaja. 1988. The acoustic mirror: The female voice in psychoanalysis and cinema. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Sontag, Susan. 2000. Bergman’s Persona. In Cambridge handbook to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Ed. Lloyd Michaels. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sullivan, Jack. 2006. Hitchcock’s music. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Théberge, Paul. 2008. Almost silent: The interplay of sound and silence in contemporary cinema and television. In Lowering the boom: Critical studies in film sound, ed. Jay Beck and Tony Grajeda, 51-67. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Umland, Samuel J. 2012. World of blood and fire: Lang, Mabuse, and Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg. In European nightmares: Horror cinema in Europe since 1945, 195-206. London and New York: Wallflower Press.
Worland, Rick. 2007. The horror film: An introduction. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Published
2015-01-12
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Luko, A. (2015). Listening to Ingmar Bergman’s Monsters: Horror Music, Mutes, and Acoustical Beings in Persona and Hour of the Wolf. Journal of Film Music, 6(1), 5-30. https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.v6i1.5
