Humiliation Abasement of pride An artist whose work explores human existence will sooner or later arrive at the theme of humiliation. For Bergman, i… - Ingmar Bergman

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Humiliation
Abasement of pride

An artist whose work explores human existence will sooner or later arrive at the theme of humiliation. For Bergman, it did not take long for him to approach the leitmotif. Already present in his 1944 Torment screenplay, the theme of humiliation can be found in most of his work. “To humiliate and be humiliated, I think is a crucial element in our whole social structure,” he told Swedish critic Torsten Manns in an 1970 interview published in the book Bergman on Bergman. His way of tackling the subject is often to show characters being denigrated, like the unsparing emasculation of the clown Frost in the opening scenes of Sawdust and Tinsel or the exam to which Isak Borg is subjected in his final dream in Wild Strawberries.This latter scene is a kind of dressing down of Isak as he is unable to to make any sense of what is asked of him.

Martin Thomasson