Dr Munch's death was a hard blow to the family.
We had just moved to Hauketo
and Dr Munch liked it very much out here.
The Sunday before he became ill
we took a walk home from the church
and the rest of us could not keep pace with him.
There is a city in the city, the city of the dead.
There the graves lie side by side.
There you'll find hovels and palaces.
There quiet people live, the dead.
It's a popular city.
The bones make way for new.
What does it matter if one dies?
"Naught but sorrow and torment, misery and strife.
"There is not much more to be had from life.
"You pay a price too high for joys too brief.
"Our pleasures are bought by torment and grief.
"If to love's pleasure your body surrenders
"The source of all pains a new life is engendered."
When I light the lamp
I suddenly see my own enormous shadow
over the entire wall
up to the ceiling.
In the mirror above the fireplace I see myself
the face of my own ghost
and I live with the dead.
All it said was, "Dearest, come at 8 o'clock tomorrow."
I stared at each letter, each stain, for the marks of her fingers.
Did she love me or was she pretending?
Did she love me or the other or both at the same time?
"You are the vampire
"which sucks my sparkling blood,
"from the channels of my heart
"with icy draining looks.
"My body glows like desert sand burned and charred
"and the dry Sirocco of madness rages
"and my blood flows."
We didn't even know each other and yet was it because
she took my first kiss that she took the fragrance of life from me?
Was it because she lied and deceived
that she suddenly
took the scales from my eyes?
There was to be no more painting interiors, people reading and knitting
but living people who breathe, feel, suffer and love.
She closes her eyes and listens
to the words he whispers into her long hair.
I'd depict it as I saw it now, but in the blue haze.
I remember something Munch once said a couple of years ago.
He had discovered that the Greeks regarded death as blue.
It says somewhere in The Iliad, "Blue death closes his eyes."
"Here in the grey gloomy North," Munch said, "we see death as black.
"But in sunny Hellas they regard it as blue.
"Why shouldn't it be blue?"
Those at home, my aunt, my brother and sisters
think that death is just sleep,
that my father sees and hears.
On Monday he suffered a stroke and within a few days
he lost the power of speech and then consciousness.
Now and then we think he recognised us for he smiled and pressed our hands.
I can do nothing but let my sorrow run out
into the dawn and into the dusk.
The use of the first person in literature is introversive art
which breaks with naturalism in a psychological, mysterious way.
Things can be said in the first person which were unsaid before.
This form
is born of a desire to get right to the bottom
of the human being, or the mood one is faced with.
It becomes like a vision or hallucination
and it would be strange
if this form of intensity did not make people shudder and tremble
and listen to what the poet wants to say.
There is a rupture between the comprehensive view of realism
and the new personal form. Art for the sake of art
and for the satisfaction of the artist.
At last someone is willing to listen to the heart.
This painting which is called Night
makes such demands on one's ability to guess
that few people go to the trouble of studying it more closely.
The atmosphere around the painting is so faintly designated
that it seems to disappear before one can grasp it.
The painter himself follows his own path in a misty
and shapeless world of dreams.
Munch is primarily
a lyric poet in colour.
He feels colours, feels in colours but he does not see them.
He sees sorrow
and crying and brooding
and withering.
"The river flows so slowly Flows and flows and flows.
"And daylight goes, goes.
"Night will soon be here.
"The light shines out of my room.
"Turns to regard me in silence and in anxiety.
"It knows he is coming."
Was it that she was so much more beautiful than others?
No, I don't even know if she was beautiful.
Her mouth was big. She could be ugly.
In my article in the Mercure de France
I refer to this work by Gauguin.
I explain that it is the duty of the new artist to choose between
the numerous elements which make up objectivity.
He is also entitled to distort, to emphasise,
to exaggerate line, form and colour
in accordance with his personal vision
and individual subjectivity.
She was affected, a liar and a whore!
There seem to be rules demanding that women sacrifice themselves.
The best thing one can say about a woman
is that she is self-sacrificing.
I can't put up with it anymore.
I am so fond of her but why is she so angry with me?
It's so difficult at times.
I know that I lose control.
I wonder if something
is going on between her and Jæger. What shall I do then?
At any rate, I believe that the idea must be
to live according to
one's particular possibilities,
that one has a duty to develop
these possibilities,
that one has a duty to expand oneself,
to acquire more knowledge, a greater breadth.
I think that leads to greater freedom in the long run.
Look how she's on top of it all.
Cheerful and smiling, while the men all lie and perish.
Not everyone can have feelings for each other all their lives.
When a relationship no longer works, one should be able to break it off
before it changes to bitterness and gnawing hate.
I walked along the road with two friends.
The sun went down.
I felt it like a melancholy sigh.
Suddenly the sky became blood red.
I stopped.
I leaned against the fence, tired to death.
I saw the flaming sky
like blood, like a sword over the fjord and the town.
My friends continued on. I stood there shaking in anguish.
I felt it like
a great endless scream through nature.
The entire exhibition is a mockery.
Every painting!
The man must be mad.
The colours are so unnatural.
We haven't had a revolution!
Just think of people's reaction! To invite someone who...
This rubbish doesn't belong here.
We must be united on objective grounds.
That's nonsense! No!
We'll withdraw from the Society
if the exhibition is closed down.
I went to the Rotunda for a laugh.
But, by God, I didn't laugh.
I found a great deal that was strange, even disgusting
but I also found tones that were delicate, almost too sensitive.
A dark room washed through with moonlight.
Lonely roads.
The secretive Norwegian summer night.
I felt as though I heard the breathing of melancholy people
struggling with their problems.
No sound came from their breasts.
They sat alone by the shore.
By God, I did not laugh.
There are paintings everywhere in Munch's hotel room,
on the sofa, on the cupboard and on all the chairs,
even on the stove and on the washbasin.
I have little faith in your struggle
for emancipation.
The equality which you strive for means that I cut off my penis
and you put it into yourself and then we're all equal.
Right now all women hate Buddhas,
hate and humiliate them,
well knowing that they will never become Buddhas.
On the other hand, she feels a sort of instinctive sympathy
for beggars, braggarts, liars and dogs,
especially mangy ones.
Being married is the only way women have to survive.
You simply can't exist without a man.
If we leave you, you fall like ninepins.
You want the women
submitted to you.
I can manage with or without them.
- Are you sure? - Absolutely.
Why is there a woman beside you then?
I do as I please.
Not the slightest artistic tradition
or affinity with accepted artistic ideals
can be found in Blunch or his colleagues.
"I run on. I am filled with increasing anguish.
"No one speaks to one another. No one smiles at one another.
"They rush off as though whipped."
So it is difficult to distinguish a human form
or even to determine the nature of an object at all.
But he was so frightened.
He felt the blood run through his chest.
When he breathed it felt as though his chest had come loose
and all his blood poured through his mouth.
Jesus Christ!
I feel better now.
May I look out the window?
God bless you, my child.
- Something to drink? - Yes, please.
Do you have a nice hotel room?
What do you think of the girls?
Perhaps you'd like a chubby girl?
In her will
Mother asked us
to be good
and to love Jesus.
We all had to promise her
that we would go on believing in Jesus.
I am so fond of the dark.
Is it the whole night or only half an hour?
The night.
30 marks, please.
Good you have time.
It's much better.
Thank you.
"A kiss, a kiss is not a sin."
I need you.
Well, Strindberg?
What do you think of love and marriage?
Have you known love in marriage?
- I can't see my children. - Do you miss your children?
- Yes, very much. - Is that love?
All women are bloody whores.
It's so calm.
May I kiss you?
Do you sleep better now?
The last Sunday Pappa and I went up Liabrubakken to church
I remember that I said, "You're very like Edvard today."
"Am I?" he replied happily and straightened himself up.
Look what I bought from Helgelandsmoen, Edvard.
Is it wine? It doesn't look very good.
When he comes home at night, he often starts to paint
and if you visit him in the morning, you may trip over a palette
and a new painting in some crazy position.
Did you know how I suffered? Did you understand why I was hard?
I wasn't myself. She was in me, in my blood.
Inger promised for all of us
that we'd be true to God.
A man can't live
more than three or four years with the same woman.
One must make new discoveries.
By loving one, can't we love many at the same time?
You want to be men,
not human beings.
One should strive to be a human being.
Both men and women derive strength
from being united in front of everyone.
Women have become more and more manly.
They strive for humanity but in that they see only manliness.
Has anyone tried to love a woman who walks like a man,
talks like a man, moves like a man?
It's like loving a man who acts like a woman.
Disgusting!
He was very happy that Edvard had received the scholarship.
But he was sorry he had forgotten to send Edvard's Bible.
I've written to Edvard to say he must buy one.
It's far too dangerous to share a woman with another man.
If a man mounts a woman who has just been with another man,
the preceding man's sperm will enter the organ of the man now mounting her.
You're disfiguring yourself! You'll die. Ugly and stinking.
And I, I shall drink wine with exultant women.
I shall laugh
even more!
This can't go on. I can't put up with any more.
Emotions. I can't have emotions.
I wait and then she comes and simply walks past with a smile.
"I look. I look at the white sky.
"I look at the grey-blue clouds. I look at the bloody sun.
"So this is the world. This is the home of the planets.
"A drop of rain.
"I look at the high buildings.
"I look at the thousand windows, at the distant church spire.
"So this is the world. So this is the home of mankind.
"The grey-blue clouds gather. The sun disappears.
"I look at well-dressed gentlemen. I look at smiling ladies.
"I look at leaning horses and the grey-blue clouds grow heavy.
"I look. I look.
"I must have come to the wrong globe. Everything is so strange."
I placed the paintings together and it was as though
each was connected to the others.
Then came a tone, a musical tone, linking the pictures together.
So, if a relationship between two people is to be sound
and I think it can be so
even if not for ever,
it must be based on mutual regard,
on tolerance.
I have a friend who got married.
After two months he was a mess!
As if his wife
had drawn his teeth.
And his wife, then?
She was a dreadful bitch!
That's what she was!
Wasn't she disappointed?
She took everything from him. She treated him like a dog.
She said come and he came. She said go
and he wanted to go.
We had to pull him out of her embrace
from between her breasts.
His eyes were quite ashen. They were empty!
She was a dreadful bitch!
You talk about your friend.
How do you think his wife felt after an unsuccessful relationship?
Has she emerged from it proudly, undamaged? Is she not marked?
She is thriving.
English doctors have proved that, if two children lie together,
the weaker will absorb strength from the stronger.
Which of them loses by it? In bed, I mean.
The stronger.
And the male is
the one who is stronger?
Yes.
Who did he get those ideas from?
Why does he see things like that?
I don't understand.
If you love a woman and she loves you
it's a reciprocal relationship.
The tension which passes from one to the other
also goes in the opposite direction.
I can't understand him.
But the future...
Must there be a struggle between the sexes?
Must it be man against woman, woman against man?
Since our souls were saved together for Jesus' sake,
God be with you, Sophie,
little pale Edvard, Andreas
and Inger
and you, my kind, dear, unforgettable self-sacrificing husband.
I have also written something to Edvard, my eldest son.
"Do not covet that which is on earth,
"but rather that which is in heaven.
"Keep watch and pray.
"Your mother."
I can't go on.
Colours, brushwork and lines express so much.
They're fantastic. No artist can compete with him.
To be honest, I don't like these paintings at all.
I'm no art expert but they don't say anything to me.
I don't like his art at all.
So unnatural, the colours are not natural. Blue trees...
I don't like it.
His figures are no more than suggested.
Munch makes a powerful impression on me.
He reflects a great deal of humanity in his paintings
and shows brutal reality,
as life is.
I'm a compatriot of Munch and I've heard it said of him
that he's an awful, dreadful man. But I like it.
He says something about human beings
and he speaks to me.
I know a little about the situation. I feel that he speaks the truth.
This is how I really believe it is.
I met a young woman
on the street one evening.
Her eyes attracted me.
They were large childish eyes.
I looked at her. She turned and we walked together.
"Do you want to come up?" I said.
In my room she seemed a little shabbily dressed.
Her face was a little harrowed but her eyes
were beautiful.
"Why did you come with me?" I said.
"That's why I walk the streets."
"Then you'll come tomorrow?"
"Yes."
She hid the flowers.
Neither her sister or father had noticed.
They would have laughed.
He thought of her all day.
She looked tired.
But she was kind.
Was it true?
Sorrow... Sunset...
What would I not give if only I could once
put my arms about him and tell him how fond of him I am.
Shyness always came between us.
He had a stroke on Monday evening and died three days later.
The book written by Meier-Graefe,
Przybyszewski and the two other critics
becomes a milestone
in understanding Edvard Munch's work.
A paraphrase of a line by Goethe
provides the best formula
for the impression which it radiates:
"Here and now
"a new phase begins in the history of art
"and you can say that you witnessed it."
"How dark it grew at once.
"How vast and black the sky grew.
"Endless, listening, the stillness of death.
"Close, close and far, far away.
"How dark it grew. Stay with me tonight.
"My soul is frightened and anxious.
"The dark holds
"such strange shadows
"and the stillness such strange tones.
"My friends leave and I sit alone, deep into the night.
"What grows bright over the mountains?
"What glows over the sea? What glints in the dark?
"What burns in the wind?
"Not clouds against the red sky.
"Not the reflected light of a dead day.
"It is fire which licks and blood which runs.
"A fiery sword and a fire-red river.
"It is the anguish of doomsday and the torments of death.
"A scripture which blazes through the halls of night.
"With the mysterious anguish of life.
"Deep in the night I sat alone.
"I felt how a pain-filled scream
"passed over the Godforsaken world."
All the others, some with faces red from tears and others white,
rang in Christmas, while outside the bells tolled.
In the other room stood the Christmas tree,
so gay and so sad.
Jesus, help me.
Will I go to heaven if I die?
I think so, my boy, if you have faith.
Can't you stay? It's so lovely here.
- No, I can't. - Don't you want to?
No.
How strange you are. Not like others.
He slept little that night. His lips burned.
He pressed his hand against them. He was back amongst the trees.
He felt again
how she gave way,
how everything disappeared
and the tickling softness against his mouth.
How often have you sat at home
and waited for your wife, listened for every step?
She said she was going to meet a woman friend...
a woman friend she seldom met.
This is amongst
the worst I've seen. I don't understand any of it.
The colours are so ugly.
Besides, it's highly immoral.
One almost has to sneak in by the backdoor.
How can a young man who looks so nice create things like this?
One can't take one's family along and enjoy the art.
I don't advocate censorship but why should this be exhibited?
Children might see them.
Abroad people will wonder what sort of morals we have.
It's not just ugly.
He paints such unpleasant things
that one doesn't speak of, at least my husband and me.
I regard this as something which must come to an end.
Munch seeks peculiarity, mystery in everything he sees.
He sees the world in wave-lines, trees, shorelines,
female hair, trembling bodies.
Like no other Norwegian painter,
Munch aims at making our innermost tremble.
Your paper has mentioned Munch's paintings as
"confused and inarticulate, dreadful
or nauseating distortions."
Yes.
Isn't that rather strong language?
Yes, it is. What we feel for Munch's painting is expressed
in a footnote I added personally to our review:
"It is true the public is annoyed by these disgusting works.
"How regrettable then that such exhibitions draw full houses.
"An empty gallery would best control these extravagances."
I agree with Aftonposten. This is not art, it is dirt.
Look at these streets.
Human creatures set upon one another.
Buses run with countless human souls.
They look indifferently on the happy man, alone outside.
Did you notice me much before?
Yes, I often looked at you.
I thought you looked like Christ.
Sit here.
We wish to thank the men, women and children
of Oslo and Åsgårdstrand who appear in this film.
Director of Photography
Lighting Supervisors Sound Supervisors
Production Designer Properties Supervisor
Costume Design Make-Up
Production Manager
We are very grateful for invaluable help from
Additional thanks
We wish to thank the staff at the Munch Museum in Oslo
without whose help this film could not have been made.
Directed and Edited by PETER WATKINS and written in collaboration
with the cast, many of whom express their own opinions.