On the death of Bibi Andersson: The intrepid

She sits, oh goddess, in a white dress on the forest floor and picks wild fruits. So we see the big, the strong, the incredibly dazzling Bibi Andersson in Ingmar Bergman's drama "Wild Strawberries" from the year 1957. The film tells how memory dominates being: An old professor reviews his life, and Andersson, just turned 21 when she was filming, plays the girl into which the professor fell madly in love as a boy.

Bibi Anderson was the object of desire in "Wild Strawberries". But she was also the agent of desire. For in a second role she is seen as a young, rough, pipe-smoking hitchhiker with a stubble-cut, as early Riot Grrrl, who strips the old professor in his false nostalgia. Projection and resistance, dissolution and rebelliousness - these recurring basic movements in Andersson's oeuvre already appear in this early film.

Even as a teenager Berit Elisabeth Andersson had stood in front of the camera, commercials and comedic material allowed her entry into the film business. In her early years she had - gentle, blonde and always a straightforward smile on her face - the reputation of "professional innocence" in the industry.

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And as such, in 1951 she had already met up-and-coming director Ingmar Bergmang, who was making a commercial for the soap brand Bris due to a strike within the Swedish film industry: a playful dialogue in baroque costumes about the fear of sweat.

Eternal fight with Bergman

It should stay with fear, sweat and miner. Andersson makes 13 films with him, including masterpieces such as "The Seventh Seal" (1957) or "The Devil's Eye" (1960). In the meantime, the two should have been involved, both did not talk much about it. Later, Andersson once said about the joint work: "Ingmar and I fought, but I never really understood those struggles."

Probably Bergman's films could not be shot today, as the older, difficult director-star drove his younger, affable actresses into permanent border crossings that had not previously been discussed. As Andersson once in a nutshell, her job relationship in a nutshell: Bergman put them in a box, but in this box she had seen herself.

This staging principle was driven to extremes near 1966 Selbstzerfleischung with the experimental psychiatrist "Persona": Liv Ullmann, the other great Bergman actress, who was at the time of the shoot with the director, embodied in an actress who falls silent with a stage play Andersson is her nurse, who tries to talk her out of stupidity and torment her. Who is the weak? Who is the strong? Who am I? Who is the other? And is there an intersection of both of us?

Own identity, foreign projection

The most glaring scene is a crossfade of the halves of the two actresses' faces; As Andersson said in an interview, a crossover "from our two less-than-beneficial halves". Neither recognized the image, only the other one in the face on the screen. Andersson was scared of the effect when she first got it introduced to him by Bergman: "It's scary to experience your own identity being projected into someone else's."

Through "Persona" Andersson became an international star. Again and again she returned to difficult psychological and existentialist materials: Immediately after, in 1968, she shot the Swedish director Mai Zetterling "Die Mädchen", a furious, self-reflective emancipation drama by three actresses. In 1977 she took on the role of psychiatrist in the schizophrenia drama "I never promised you a rose garden".

Actually, for the actress, playing was always relentlessly about exploring the world, the soul, exploring oneself. After a long illness Bibi Andersson, the intrepid, died on Monday at the age of 83 years.