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The combination of Kleinian and Sartrean theories expands upon the established idea that Ingmar Bergman's cinema involves a mixture of realism and more symbolic, expressionistic techniques. For both theorists, the imagination plays a central role in consciousness and is a key to understanding the relationship between the individual and society. The application of Kleinian and Sartrean ideas has pointed to issues for further debate. For instance, we have seen how a Sartrean response to the character of Monika may involve condemnation based on her selfish abandonment of Harry and the baby, or a degree of empathy for her rebellion based on its negation of an oppressive social context. In The Virgin Spring, ambiguity was a key element in the film's design, notably in the symbolic representation of divine intervention. The argument that this is an image which can be subjected to humanist appropriation, as an aesthetic investment in the ambiguity of the image itself, is clearly open to further discussion given Bergman's changing attitude towards religion. Another point for debate arises because the Kleinian focus on integration is wedded, in my analysis, to an appreciation of the empathic qualities of Alma in Hour of the Wolf, a reading which tempers the apparent turn to a more experimental mode signalled by this film and, also, Persona.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137471987_7

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