The Silence (1963 Film) - Reception and Themes

Reception and Themes

The film has been classified as a "landmark of modernist cinema" with Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (1960), and Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967). Popular film critic Vernon Young reversed his position on Bergman and admitted in 1971 that The Silence was an "extraordinary achievement in its way...The Silence rewards effort..." The film was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 36th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

The Silence was submitted to the film rating/censorship board (Biografbyrån) of Sweden in July 1963 and went through without any cuts. The general instructions for the work of the board had been modified just weeks before the film reached them, and this contributed to its passage, though Bergman claimed that he was not in any real sense trying to test the limits of what could be allowed in mainstream cinema. He actually did not expect this rather inaccessible film, with sparse and uncommunicative dialogue, to be a big box-office success, and commented in an interview in 1970: "I said to Kenne Fant /CEO of the Swedish Film Institute which had produced the film/: "You might as well realize, this isn't a film that will have people storming the theaters". Oh the irony; that's exactly what people did."

The original cut (the only one to be shown in Sweden and certain other countries) includes a number of brief but controversial sex scenes, showing nudity, female masturbation, urination and a couple making out on the seats of a murky cabaret theatre. This plus some strong language led to intense public controversy in Sweden and several other countries at the time. In many countries the film was cut, while in Sweden it has come to be regarded as a beacon in a string of films that broke down the wall of censorship and opened the way for later films, both mainstream and more 'adult' or experimental, to include graphic erotic content as well as strong language without cuts being expected (e.g. Vilgot Sjöman's 491, I Am Curious (Blue) and I Am Curious (Yellow), and Stefan Jarl's They Call Us Misfits). Bergman's and Sjöman's prestige as directors, their high aims and the trend of openness during the decade made it untenable in Sweden to treat their films as tainted or semi-pornographic, and this in turn weakened the general acceptance of casual, intrusive film censorship.

While the film is noted for its sensual impact, enhanced by Sven Nykvist's camera work where long pans and contrasting shots of deep darkness and sweltering light, rapid movement (the train ride at the opening) and long, slow-moving and almost dialogueless shots, pull the viewer into the unfamiliar and unsettling scenery, it was hardly a movie about sex. The story seems to use sex and other factors to set up and explore tensions between the two sisters, tensions that run through the whole film and reach a series of climactic points towards the end. The erotic action is also motivated as a kind of last resort in a world where language has lost its function – the trio in the centre don't know the language of the strange city, and Anna and Ester continuously misread each other when they talk – and where the threat of destruction (war) is hanging over everyone. Bergman has commented in numerous interviews that the film marked a point of final exit from a set of religious problems that had been dominating his films since The Seventh Seal.

According to Jerry Vermilye, The Silence "...achieved a measure of sensationalistic attention by dint of its scenes of sensuality, mild though they were. It raised a great deal of controversy in Sweden, and its notoriety continued to raise hackles elsewhere in Europe. All of which attracted the attention of filmgoers; in Britain and the United States it became a considerable hit, perhaps for reasons of prurience rather than art." Due to its reputation for "pornographic sequences" the film became a financial success.

Vermilye is supported by Daniel Ekeroth, who notes in his 2011 book Swedish Sensationsfilms: A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema that "Tystnaden is the production, and marks the exact moment, when sex and nudity became normal in Swedish film. If an internationally acknowledged director like Ingmar Bergman could portray sex in such an explicit way, the last border had been crossed. Hordes of less serious filmmakers immediately abandoned all remaining inhibition about depicting whatever crazed and depraved ideas they thought would attract and scandalize a paying audience.".