Existential Space and Architecture. About the Spatial Perception in the Cinema of Ingmar Bergman

Abstract

A critical approach to Ingmar Bergman’s cinematographic work can be made from the idea of «existential space», as developed by the Norwegian architect and theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz. The successive levels of perception of space (landscape-city-home), and the constitutive elements of existential space (center-paths-zones), together with the formal concretion approved by architecture in the definition of the cinematographic image, are present in Bergman’s work even to the point of being part of the origin of his plots. In films like as Cries and Whispers (1971), The Seventh Seal (1956), Wild Strawberries (1957), Fanny and Alexander (1982) and, especially, in Persona (1965), narrative resources based on the idea of existential space and its architectural characterization are explored to the limit. From landscape to interiors in which the stories unfold, these spaces are incorporated into the narrative as protagonists of it.