The world's a stage: the theatricality in 'After the rehearsal', by Ingmar Bergman

Abstract

When the avant-garde theoreticians claimed the purity of film as opposed to the excesses of theatricality that contaminated the new art, they ignored that film, intermedia art par excellence, only would benefit itself in interaction with theater – though it was necessary to wait for modern cinema to renew the filmic language by interweaving the potencies of each language. Thus, the purpose of this paper is analyze the TV-movie 'After the rehearsal' (1984), by Ingmar Bergman, from the perspective of theatricality in film, aiming to demonstrate how Bergman promotes an amalgamation between film and theater, besides a constant interaction with the work of playwrighter August Strindberg.