2025 № 4 (55)

UDC 78 

BBC 85.374.3

DOI: 10.51678/2226-0072-2025-4-608-629

For cit.: Kononenko N.G. Bergman and Mozart: Interludes of Lanterna Magica. Hudozhestvennaya kul’tura [Art & Culture Studies], 2025, no. 4, pp. 608-629. https://doi.org/10.51678/2226-0072-2025-4-608-629 (In Russian) 

Kononenko Nataliya G. 

PhD (in Art History), Senior Researcher, Mass Media Arts Department, State Institute for Art Studies, 5 Kozitsky Lane, Moscow, 125375, Russia

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2060-2917 

ResearcherID: AAS-7697-2021

tintinnio@yandex.ru

Bergman and Mozart: Interludes of Lanterna Magica

Abstract. The exceptional importance of the Mozartian component in the films of I. Bergman is determined by the structure of the director’s artistic world. It is characterized by a constant balancing on the border between classical and aclassical art. W.A. Mozart’s profound stylistic concentration, despite the external simplicity of musical forms, acts similarly to the compensatory function of myth, helping to neutralize the existentialist state of uncertainty about the fundamentals of existence in the director’s films. Ambivalence and duality of Mozart’s world are realized in specific color dramaturgy and montage structures of the films, transforming musical meanings in accordance with a romantically tinged Dionysianism. Meanwhile, the musical form of cinematic episodes in which Mozart’s music is heard reveals a tendency to smooth out the conflicting principle and transposing dynamic structures into ‘protective’ static ones. Through a special form of artistic play, inheriting Mozart’s Würfelspiel and manifesting itself in aleatoric montage structures, juggling media and genre discourses, a picture of the world is realized that often does not coincide with the philosophy verbally declared in films. In the director’s worldview, Mozartianism acquires highly ramified and profound overtones, linking the distant realms of children’s game and alienation. The underlying plot of this artistic synthesis in unique Bergmanian proportions connects the mythologemes of agon and the endless repetition of the circle of life.

Keywords: I. Bergman, W.A. Mozart, myth, reception, agon, intermediality, Apollonian, Dionysian, visual strategy 

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Received 02.08.2025

Accepted 22.09.2025