Synonymous with Cinema: An Investigation into Ingmar Bergman’s Critical Reception in Italy

The present essay intends to investigate the critical fortune of the Swedish world-famous theater and film director Ingmar Bergman in Italy. In particular, attention will be devoted to the reception of Bergman’s theatrical productions that were shown on Italian stages between the early 1970s, when some of Bergman’s theater productions were first seen in Italy, and the early 1990s, when Bergman’s production of Ibsen‘s A Doll’s House was one of his last theatrical productions to be shown in Italy. On the whole, only minor consideration has been accorded by Italian scholars in their studies on Bergman to his work in the theater. This is well illustrated by the various books on Bergman that have appeared in Italy over the years, which scarcely deal with his theatrical work. One reason for this may lay, as shall be shown in this essay, in the lateness and scarcity with which Bergman’s productions reached Italy. By drawing on a selection of reviews of Bergman’s theater productions published in major Italian newspapers from the 1970s to the 1990s, the following investigation intends to give an account of the Italian reception of Bergman’s work in the theater, from the specific qualities acknowledged to the Swedish director to the formulas, as will be seen, increasingly characterizing the critics’ judgments on him over the years, with the aim to shed light on the critical understanding of Bergman’s oeuvre in Italy.