The Magic Lantern - Ingmar Bergman

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Ingmar Bergman's auto-biography plays out like a work of art. In a magnificent career, Bergman was many things, but at the heart of it all he was a great writer. His later films became commands of the written word to delve into character. The Magic Lantern references his life in the production of different films and explains how a few of them were self referential to his own experience, but the bulk of the book is a guided history of memories through out his life. There is no beginning and end to the book. Bergman keeps away from making the book an account of details by allowing the chapters to flow freely through out his life. The structure of each chapter is based on the importance of its given theme or idea. His final feature film, Fanny and Alexander, was also a large take on his personal history and professional history. The film's personal history is self evident with the story, but the professional history is reflected in the themes and symbolism of other great works of art he uses to put into the film. Other artists have have made corresponding works about their life to have one reflect the other. If Fanny and Alexander is the fictional account then the Magic Lantern is the factual. The importance to do both isn't to just show what one lacks and the other provides, but to show that both works require amazing feats of inspiration to ring true in the sense that any work of art must. The good news is that the Magic Lantern is a major success.