Faro: A Bergman Pilgrimage
I’ve been aware of the Swedish island Faro for over forty years, ever since it was mentioned in an old copy of Movie magazine. In 1960 Bergman was scouting for locations for his film Through a Glass Darkly. Initially he was attracted to the Orkneys but a friend advised him to stay closer to home so he went to Faro. Faro not only became the perfect backdrop for the film’s heroine Karin (Harriet Anderson) a young schizophrenic (the starkness of the island, that imagined spider in her room and the sound of a Bach cello suite blending so well) but in the sixties the place where Bergman filmed Persona (1966), Shame (1968), The Passion Of Anna (1969) and moved into his house on Faro.
I arrived with my son and daughter in law after dark in central Stockholm. So day one was a few snatched night views of the city by the riverside. Day two proper it’s pouring down with rain. After leaving a windswept boat tour of Stockholm’s islands, we headed for The Royal Dramatic Theatre, an art nouveau building at Nybroplan. Here Ingmar Bergman was managing director from 1963 – 1966, though he’d directed plays since the 1940s and especially those of Strindberg, who was very influential on Bergman’s career.
Whilst drying out my umbrella I asked about a tour of the theatre only to find the next one would be at the weekend when we’d be taking the ferry to Gotland. I took some photographs of the beautiful lobby and tried to recall a Bergman / Stockholm scene where it rained. But there isn’t one. Bergman, no: his cities are dry. A big sensual downpour in Bergman was strictly emotional and not to do with the weather. Except for one great minimal moment – the purification effect of Anna opening a train window and cooling her face with rain at the end of the enigmatic The Silence (1963).
Arriving in Gotland, at the Unesco World Heritage city of the medieval Visby, was to be thrown into my second Bergman location. For it was on these cobbled streets that Bergman shot his first English language film The Touch (1971) starring Liv Ullmann and Eliot Gould. But I’ve mixed feelings about the success of that film. For me it’s really hampered by the miscasting of Eliot Gould. So, for now the real frisson of Visby is its beautiful and intact medievalism and not it being used as a character in Bergman’s world.
On to Faro and my first port of call, to pun an early Bergman film title, is the Bergman centre on Faro. This small museum opened in 2009. Its walls are papered with striking vintage film posters; lovely cinema lobby cards of Swedish film stars; projected video clips; fine colour photographs of Ingmar; images of him filming with his actors and crew; various art works but no noticeable film props. I was delighted by a small canvas, made up of glued tiny model televisions, containing images from the TV series Scenes From a Marriage (some scenes were also shot here); terrific blow ups of Shame; a library of books (ever expanding) about Bergman; and laid out extracts from his, often very amusing, notebooks. In the last room was a temporary exhibition called Hand Made Bergman consisting of embroided cross-stitch pieces depicting scenes from Ingmar Bergman’s films, all done by, Pia Bengtsson Melin.
Christina is the director of the Bergman centre. She told me that on average the centre receives 12000 visitors per year and the question they are most asked is where Bergman lived on the island. When I asked Christina if she ever met Ingmar Bergman (who died in 2017) she said that when she was very young she’d been sitting on a park bench and was suddenly aware that the man sitting at the other end of the bench was Bergman. But she’d been too nervous to speak to him!
As to present day Faro, it still has the problem of a steadily declining population, now down to 500 people living on 113.3 km of land. The youth of Faro, like so many young people all over world, are leaving small islands and villages for bigger places and economic security. Meanwhile mainland Swedes are buying up Faro property for second summer homes, even though the island is suffering from a shortage of water. It’s fascinating to watch Bergman’s own documentaries Faro Document 1970 and Faro Document 1979 that speaks to those generations who stay and those that leave Faro. Ingmar enjoyed his role as a sympathetic interviewer. Christina and I agreed that he would have made an excellent investigative journalist.
Having bought a map of the island, showing the film locations, I was equipped for some serous cinephile exploration.
However my search for the locations for Through a Glass Darkly proved frustrating. The summer house the characters lived in was built for the film and torn down when filming was complete. Also all the interiors of Through a Glass Darkly were filmed in a studio which is the case for many a film production. The real Danish 1953 shipwreck shown in the film couldn’t be found. However I did walk near an overgrown pond in the fishing village of Verkegard as this was used for the scene where Gunnar Bjornstand and Max von Sydow cast fishing nets from their boat. Through a Glass Darkly was the film that put Faro on a cinematic appreciation map. It was made in black and white. And when I was young I was convinced that all Swedish summers were in reality monochrome ones. My early September trip to Sweden didn’t fully dispel that charming delusion.
The farm at Bondans was used for scenes in Shame and The Passion of Anna. The occupying forces set fire to the farmhouse and nearby is a field where a round up of civilians was filmed. Shame has been called the only war film that Bergman ever directed. This was in 1968 and the Vietnam war was raging. Such was the visceral impact of Shame that it all came back to me. Presently we have our wars in the Ukraine and Gaza yet the conflict of Shame still resonates in me as metaphor for a Vietnamese suffering transported to Northern Europe. Bergman’s genius in Shame was to give to Faro the immediate feeling of the time and place of a lived through war “Shame is central to the experience I am living at this moment, and at most moments.” is what Robin Wood said in his eloquent book Ingmar Bergman published in 1969. Standing in that empty Faro field in 2025 that disturbing round up lived unforgettably on.
The archaeological highlight of Faro is the huge stones (sea stacks) at Langhammers situated on the north western tip of the island. They feature prominently in Persona not only as brooding artefacts of nature but forces contributing to the blockage of communication between Bibi Andersson (playing Alma the talkative nurse) and Liv Ullmann (Elizabeth Volger, the actress who refuses to talk).
They are mysterious, poetic and symbolic. Nature’s ready made prop for the psychological conflict between the women.
Driving back to the Bergman centre we stopped at the long abandoned general store used in Shame with its old petrol filling point outside. But trying to find the nearby spot were a main character unearthed potatoes, in an almost barren field, proved impossible (It’s very difficult to figure out precisely the film locations as no signage or labelling is provided).
Near the cliffs of Hammars we discovered the pebble beach where Bibi Anderson chased Liv Ullmann. No chasing action today just myself quietly walking there, recalling and empathising with that very dramatic scene in Persona. Alas the summer house built for the characters was sold and transferred to another part of the island. And as for the nearby ex home of Ingmar Bergman, it’s private and periodically used as a writer retreat by academics and writers on the great man.
Organising a holiday round visiting film locations has become very fashionable and cultish. You could go to South Western Scotland to savour The Wicker Man geography or fly to Spain, particularly the Tabernas Desert in Almería, for the settings for Sergio Leone’s westerns. However exploring Bergman territory I felt a difference in quality and meaning: though there’s nothing the matter with other films and their excitement and interest when it comes to place and atmosphere.
I’ve entitled this article, A Bergman Pilgrimage. And though I’m not religious, Bergman (the son of a Lutheran pastor) made, alongside Carl Dreyer and Robert Bresson, some of the most soulful films ever made. To visit the places were Bergman shot them, walk amongst the film exteriors, touch a windmill, barn, or a great stone is very special: a spiritual re-connection with my own feelings of inwardness and introspection. Bergman asked those big awkward questions about life and its meaning which will always matter and profoundly bother us still.
“…This is your landscape, Bergman. It corresponds to your introvert imaginings of forms, proportions, colours, horizons, sounds, silences, lights and reflections. Security is here. Don’t ask why.”
That’s Ingmar reflecting on his decision to move to Faro. I’m so glad he did. The island turned out to be his spiritual anchor, kept him questioning and creating.
Alan Price©2025
Faro: A Bergman Pilgrimage
I’ve been aware of the Swedish island Faro for over forty years, ever since it was mentioned in an old copy of Movie magazine. In 1960 Bergman was scouting for locations for his film Through a Glass Darkly. Initially he was attracted to the Orkneys but a friend advised him to stay closer to home so he went to Faro. Faro not only became the perfect backdrop for the film’s heroine Karin (Harriet Anderson) a young schizophrenic (the starkness of the island, that imagined spider in her room and the sound of a Bach cello suite blending so well) but in the sixties the place where Bergman filmed Persona (1966), Shame (1968), The Passion Of Anna (1969) and moved into his house on Faro.
I arrived with my son and daughter in law after dark in central Stockholm. So day one was a few snatched night views of the city by the riverside. Day two proper it’s pouring down with rain. After leaving a windswept boat tour of Stockholm’s islands, we headed for The Royal Dramatic Theatre, an art nouveau building at Nybroplan. Here Ingmar Bergman was managing director from 1963 – 1966, though he’d directed plays since the 1940s and especially those of Strindberg, who was very influential on Bergman’s career.
Whilst drying out my umbrella I asked about a tour of the theatre only to find the next one would be at the weekend when we’d be taking the ferry to Gotland. I took some photographs of the beautiful lobby and tried to recall a Bergman / Stockholm scene where it rained. But there isn’t one. Bergman, no: his cities are dry. A big sensual downpour in Bergman was strictly emotional and not to do with the weather. Except for one great minimal moment – the purification effect of Anna opening a train window and cooling her face with rain at the end of the enigmatic The Silence (1963).
Arriving in Gotland, at the Unesco World Heritage city of the medieval Visby, was to be thrown into my second Bergman location. For it was on these cobbled streets that Bergman shot his first English language film The Touch (1971) starring Liv Ullmann and Eliot Gould. But I’ve mixed feelings about the success of that film. For me it’s really hampered by the miscasting of Eliot Gould. So, for now the real frisson of Visby is its beautiful and intact medievalism and not it being used as a character in Bergman’s world.
On to Faro and my first port of call, to pun an early Bergman film title, is the Bergman centre on Faro. This small museum opened in 2009. Its walls are papered with striking vintage film posters; lovely cinema lobby cards of Swedish film stars; projected video clips; fine colour photographs of Ingmar; images of him filming with his actors and crew; various art works but no noticeable film props. I was delighted by a small canvas, made up of glued tiny model televisions, containing images from the TV series Scenes From a Marriage (some scenes were also shot here); terrific blow ups of Shame; a library of books (ever expanding) about Bergman; and laid out extracts from his, often very amusing, notebooks. In the last room was a temporary exhibition called Hand Made Bergman consisting of embroided cross-stitch pieces depicting scenes from Ingmar Bergman’s films, all done by, Pia Bengtsson Melin.
Christina is the director of the Bergman centre. She told me that on average the centre receives 12000 visitors per year and the question they are most asked is where Bergman lived on the island. When I asked Christina if she ever met Ingmar Bergman (who died in 2017) she said that when she was very young she’d been sitting on a park bench and was suddenly aware that the man sitting at the other end of the bench was Bergman. But she’d been too nervous to speak to him!
As to present day Faro, it still has the problem of a steadily declining population, now down to 500 people living on 113.3 km of land. The youth of Faro, like so many young people all over world, are leaving small islands and villages for bigger places and economic security. Meanwhile mainland Swedes are buying up Faro property for second summer homes, even though the island is suffering from a shortage of water. It’s fascinating to watch Bergman’s own documentaries Faro Document 1970 and Faro Document 1979 that speaks to those generations who stay and those that leave Faro. Ingmar enjoyed his role as a sympathetic interviewer. Christina and I agreed that he would have made an excellent investigative journalist.
Having bought a map of the island, showing the film locations, I was equipped for some serous cinephile exploration.
However my search for the locations for Through a Glass Darkly proved frustrating. The summer house the characters lived in was built for the film and torn down when filming was complete. Also all the interiors of Through a Glass Darkly were filmed in a studio which is the case for many a film production. The real Danish 1953 shipwreck shown in the film couldn’t be found. However I did walk near an overgrown pond in the fishing village of Verkegard as this was used for the scene where Gunnar Bjornstand and Max von Sydow cast fishing nets from their boat. Through a Glass Darkly was the film that put Faro on a cinematic appreciation map. It was made in black and white. And when I was young I was convinced that all Swedish summers were in reality monochrome ones. My early September trip to Sweden didn’t fully dispel that charming delusion.
The farm at Bondans was used for scenes in Shame and The Passion of Anna. The occupying forces set fire to the farmhouse and nearby is a field where a round up of civilians was filmed. Shame has been called the only war film that Bergman ever directed. This was in 1968 and the Vietnam war was raging. Such was the visceral impact of Shame that it all came back to me. Presently we have our wars in the Ukraine and Gaza yet the conflict of Shame still resonates in me as metaphor for a Vietnamese suffering transported to Northern Europe. Bergman’s genius in Shame was to give to Faro the immediate feeling of the time and place of a lived through war “Shame is central to the experience I am living at this moment, and at most moments.” is what Robin Wood said in his eloquent book Ingmar Bergman published in 1969. Standing in that empty Faro field in 2025 that disturbing round up lived unforgettably on.
The archaeological highlight of Faro is the huge stones (sea stacks) at Langhammers situated on the north western tip of the island. They feature prominently in Persona not only as brooding artefacts of nature but forces contributing to the blockage of communication between Bibi Andersson (playing Alma the talkative nurse) and Liv Ullmann (Elizabeth Volger, the actress who refuses to talk).
They are mysterious, poetic and symbolic. Nature’s ready made prop for the psychological conflict between the women.
Driving back to the Bergman centre we stopped at the long abandoned general store used in Shame with its old petrol filling point outside. But trying to find the nearby spot were a main character unearthed potatoes, in an almost barren field, proved impossible (It’s very difficult to figure out precisely the film locations as no signage or labelling is provided).
Near the cliffs of Hammars we discovered the pebble beach where Bibi Anderson chased Liv Ullmann. No chasing action today just myself quietly walking there, recalling and empathising with that very dramatic scene in Persona. Alas the summer house built for the characters was sold and transferred to another part of the island. And as for the nearby ex home of Ingmar Bergman, it’s private and periodically used as a writer retreat by academics and writers on the great man.
Organising a holiday round visiting film locations has become very fashionable and cultish. You could go to South Western Scotland to savour The Wicker Man geography or fly to Spain, particularly the Tabernas Desert in Almería, for the settings for Sergio Leone’s westerns. However exploring Bergman territory I felt a difference in quality and meaning: though there’s nothing the matter with other films and their excitement and interest when it comes to place and atmosphere.
I’ve entitled this article, A Bergman Pilgrimage. And though I’m not religious, Bergman (the son of a Lutheran pastor) made, alongside Carl Dreyer and Robert Bresson, some of the most soulful films ever made. To visit the places were Bergman shot them, walk amongst the film exteriors, touch a windmill, barn, or a great stone is very special: a spiritual re-connection with my own feelings of inwardness and introspection. Bergman asked those big awkward questions about life and its meaning which will always matter and profoundly bother us still.
“…This is your landscape, Bergman. It corresponds to your introvert imaginings of forms, proportions, colours, horizons, sounds, silences, lights and reflections. Security is here. Don’t ask why.”
That’s Ingmar reflecting on his decision to move to Faro. I’m so glad he did. The island turned out to be his spiritual anchor, kept him questioning and creating.
Alan Price©2025
By Alan Price • film, travel, year 2025 • Tags: Alan Price, film, travel