The Magic Flute

Probably the best and most enjoyable movie ever made of a classical opera is Ingmar Bergman's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute (1975).  The film was shown last night as the seventh in the Seattle Art Museum's current Bergman series.

The film is delightful.  To review it would require me to review Mozart, which I'm not inclined to do.  A few observations -- not about the Mozart opera, but about Bergman's filming of it.

Bergman first saw the opera in Stockholm as a boy of 12, and it obviously haunted his imagination for the rest of his life.  Reviewers have seen echoes of the opera in a couple of his earlier films.  When he decided to make a film of the opera in the mid-1970s, he attempted, so far as possible, to reconstruct his experience as a boy, seeing the opera in the old Stockholm opera house.

So the film is not a film only of the opera, but also of the experience of watching the opera.  During the playing of the overture, the camera ignores the orchestra and focuses on the individual faces, one by one, of members of the audience, many of them young people.  Also, at times, he shows us a bit of what was going on behind stage while the singers were out before the audience.

The arias were pre-recorded in a studio, and were lip-synched by the singers.  This fact was not at all obvious, and I was unaware of it until I researched the movie afterwards.  The film is sung (and spoken -- the opera contains spoken portions) in Swedish, with English subtitles.

Because the camera shows us close-ups of the singers as they sing their arias, the actors were chosen for their appearance, as well as their singing ability.  There are no "fat ladies" singing the part of teenage girls!   Thus the hero (Tamino) is strikingly handsome, and the heroine (Pamina) is beautiful.  Tamino's humorous sidekick, Papageno, is as humorous in his facial expressions as in his lines.  Mozart's "three spirits," who guide the hero on his quest -- generally, cast as three young women -- have been recast as three young boys aloft in a peculiar balloon, boys who enforce their guidance at one point by leaping from their balloon and pelting Papageno with snowballs. 

The dragon and the various beasts of the forest look more like creatures in a children's TV story than an attempt to be realistic.  The scenery changes make no attempt at subtlety, and are modeled after those Bergman had watched at the old Baroque Stockholm theater when he was young.

The entire effect is beautiful, funny, awe-inspiring, and at times -- as when Tamino and Pamina prove their worthiness by  passing through a Hell filled with writhing souls -- frightening. 

A film totally unlike all the other Bergman films we have seen in our series to date, and a film that reveals his great versatility as a director.