The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Private Confessions by Ingmar Bergman
Darryl Hattenhauer

Ingmar Bergman. Private Confessions. Trans. Joan Tate. Arcade, 1997. 161 pp. $19.95.

Ingmar Bergman has retired from film directing but still directs plays and writes. He has written a two-volume autobiography, plus three novels and their screenplay adaptations for directors such as Bille August and Liv Ullmann. His subject in the theater and in his writing is the family. In Private Confessions he writes about how his parents’ marriage began at the turn of the century.
Although not a roman à clef, Private Confessions renames his parents as Anna and Henrik (they were really Karin and Erik). Extroverted, confident, and sensuous, but also willful, stubborn, and self-centered, Anna is much like Bergman’s mother: a child of privilege. Henrik is much like Bergman’s father: a disadvantaged and shame-based youth who becomes a Lutheran minister, introverted, insecure, and repressed, but also self-important and passive-aggressive. Bergman once said that his father often humiliated him. In this novel as before, Henrik tries to cope with his insecurity by trying passively to make Anna feel humiliated. In return she does the same to him, only actively.
As one of the last modernists, Bergman uses many different techniques. His character development is largely realistic; for example, his characters often say “forgive me” because Swedes frequently ask for forgiveness (Americans just ask to be excused). Yet the narrative point of view and plotting have a postmodern instability. And although his epistemology is largely deterministic, his worldview seems nonetheless indeterminate.
For his breadth of technical felicity and yet his restraint in using it and for his ability to surprise even as he makes one say, “Yes, that’s the way things really are,” Bergman dispels any notion that his greatness depends on Sven Nykvist’s cinematography and Sweden’s inexhaustible supply of gifted actors. This writing is very fine. And it tells the truth.[Darryl Hattenhauer]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Private Confessions by Ingmar Bergman Darryl Hattenhauer Ingmar Bergman. Private Confessions. Trans. Joan Tate. Arcade, 1997. 161 pp. $19.95. Ingmar Bergman has retired from film directing but still directs plays and writes. He has written a two-volume autobiography, plus three novels and their screenplay adaptations for directors such as Bille August and Liv Ullmann. His subject in the theater and in his writing is the family. In Private Confessions he writes about how his parents’ marriage began at the turn of the century. Although not a roman à clef, Private Confessions renames his parents as Anna and Henrik (they were really Karin and Erik). Extroverted, confident, and sensuous, but also willful, stubborn, and self-centered, Anna is much like Bergman’s mother: a child of privilege. Henrik is much like Bergman’s father: a disadvantaged and shame-based youth who becomes a Lutheran minister, introverted, insecure, and repressed, but also self-important and passive-aggressive. Bergman once said that his father often humiliated him. In this novel as before, Henrik tries to cope with his insecurity by trying passively to make Anna feel humiliated. In return she does the same to him, only actively. As one of the last modernists, Bergman uses many different techniques. His character development is largely realistic; for example, his characters often say “forgive me” because Swedes frequently ask for forgiveness (Americans just ask to be excused). Yet the narrative point of view and plotting have a postmodern instability. And although his epistemology is largely deterministic, his worldview seems nonetheless indeterminate. For his breadth of technical felicity and yet his restraint in using it and for his ability to surprise even as he makes one say, “Yes, that’s the way things really are,” Bergman dispels any notion that his greatness depends on Sven Nykvist’s cinematography and Sweden’s inexhaustible supply of gifted actors. This writing is very fine. And it tells the truth.[Darryl Hattenhauer]

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