Ingmar Bergman no Brasil : o espectador, a distribuição e a recepção por meio da crítica cinematográfica (1950-1969)

Abstract

The films of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman achieved wide circulation in Brazil after the screening of Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) at the 1st International Film Festival of Brazil, held in the city of São Paulo in 1954, highlighting the phenomena of cinematic reception and spectatorship. This perspective ultimately guided the present research, whose objective is to analyze the reception of Bergman’s cinematographic work through film criticism publications, seeking to understand cinema beyond the film itself, in order to examine different angles on the same themes and enable the identification of certain tendencies within the symbolic apparatus employed by the filmmaker. To that end, a spatiotemporal delimitation was established, focusing on the criticism produced in the capitals of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais during the 1950s and 1960s, with a set of periodicals serving as the primary source, which enabled the analysis and cross-referencing of information. With the aim of closely examining the main element of the articles published in these periodicals, and taking into account the feasibility of the research, it became necessary to delimit the most widely discussed films as secondary sources, specifically Sawdust and Tinsel, Summer with Monika (1953), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), Wild Strawberries (1957), The Silence (1963), and Persona (1966). This thesis conceives cinematic reception as an extremely complex process, which goes beyond film criticism due to the many different ways in which a film can reach its audience. In this sense, the approach corresponded, in the first place, to the issue of spectatorship and to the way in which the spectator constructs his or her own meanings. Furthermore, this reflection extends to the devices and operations employed by the industry to arouse public interest in a given work, exposing the sectors of film distribution and publicity, and involving the analysis of the exhibition circuit, the title, the synopsis, the printed advertisement, and the age rating of the secondary sources. This composition of the cinematographic apparatus made it possible to develop the idea of the film critic as a mediating intellectual, integrated as a constituent part of a non-passive audience and involved in struggles for recognition, authority, and position. Consequently, the investigation of these critics’ stances in relation to cinema and, therefore, to Bergman’s work, revealed the cinematographic aesthetics and false dichotomies that permeate film discourse. Finally, this entire web led directly to a transdisciplinary methodology, which required theoretical eclecticism, making it possible to examine the trajectory of these films alongside the creation of meaning by critics, who were immersed in their debates and in the construction of institutions related to cinema in Brazil.