All language subtitles for [English] Munch Love, Ghosts and Lady Vampires [DownSub.com]

(CHIRPING)

(WAVES CRASHING)

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) "The time is out of joint",
Hamlet said,...

.."O cursed spite,
that ever I was born to set it right."

Nature takes its course,
the seasons repeat their cycle.

(CHIRPING)

(Narrator) The particles that form matter
stir in continuous motion.

(WAVES CRASHING)

(Narrator) Order and chaos coexist,
with rules that thoughts struggle to grasp.

Every instant that happens
reflects a past moment.

They are crystals of time.

Now and again, it feels
like you can reach out and seize one.

(CLASSIC MUSIC AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) Here time has stood still.

(CHIRPING)

Edvard Munch
lived in this house for many years.

Here he experienced
the destructive power of love.

And here he worked, in Åsgårdstrand,
surrounded by nature.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

He wrote often
of the ghosts that haunted him.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

"I don’t paint what I see,
but what I saw."

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

Time had a special quality for Munch:...

..it was variable,
expanding towards eternity...

..and, simultaneously, locking down moments
that would become obsessions.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) A personal story
that lasted almost a century.

Always the same images
throughout his long life.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(WAVES CRASHING AND CLASSIC MUSIC)

Perhaps Munch’s art could only ever have emerged
from the coloured light of the north:...

..a magical sun
that never sets in summer,...

..and in winter never seems to rise.

(CLASSIC MUSIC AND WAVES)

(Iver Kleive) When you go in the woods
in the evening...

..and through the woods you see
some trees are bending...

..and suddenly, in your mind,
a figure is forming: "Oh that’s a troll".

So everybody is afraid
to go to the woods through the night.

(WIND WHISTLING AND FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(Narrator) "The polar bear
came to pick up the girl:..."

.."she clambered onto his back
and they set off towards a magnificent palace."

"At night he huddled down beside her."

"At one point, however,
the girl lit a candle..."

.."and saw that the bear
was actually a handsome prince."

"'Ah!' he exclaimed.
'Now you know who I really am,..."

.."we have to leave one another.
That’s the spell.'"

"And he vanished."

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(BELL ABOVE THE DOOR RINGING)

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke)
Norwegian fairy tales are not for children,...

..there are really strong and heavy stuff:
lot of noir, lot of kind of crime noir,...

..people being killed and these
Norwegian trolls coming out of the woods.

It’s scary, really scary stories.

(Narrator) "They came
to where the north wind dwelt:..."

.."'What do you want here?'"

(SUSPENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) "'Don't be so wild!',
replied the south wind, 'It's me'."

Now, children, the prince
had been transformed into a bear...

..by the old troll woman,...

..and he was still under her power:...

..he had to marry her horrible daughter.

But the girl, who was
completely in love with the prince,...

..managed to break the spell and free him.

"The old troll woman
collapsed in a fit of fury."

"The prince and the girl made off with as much
gold and silver as they could handle,..."

.."and went to live in a place
far from the castle,..."

.."to the east of the sun
and west of the moon."

(LAUGH)

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(PIANO PLAYING)

Edvard Munch’s childhood
was far from magical.

When he was just five years old,
his mother Laura Cathrine...

..died of tuberculosis
during Christmastime in 1868.

(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC)

Already in financial difficulties,
his father, Christian,...

..was left alone with five children to bring up,
and fell into depression.

(WATER FLOWING)

(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC)

(Sue Prideaux) They lived in a terrible flat,
in a bad slum area, full of diseases.

And at that time Kristiania,
the city we know as Oslo,...

..was moving in a way straight...

..from a mediaeval social context
to the Industrial Revolution.

(Sue Prideaux) In the place where the Munchs
lived there were big apartment blocks...

..and some people were like peasants
and they still had the house cow in the house,...

..and other people were the poor workers
who are working in the new factories.

There was no running water,
there was no lavatory.

(WATER FLOWING AND CLASSIC MUSIC)

(BUZZ FROM PROJECTOR)

(Narrator) Money was always scarce
in the home.

Christian Munch, an army doctor,
had a low salary...

..and earned even less by treating the poor
in the Grünerløkka district.

For him, these private visits
were an act of contrition for his sins.

(Narrator) Christian was a fervent Lutheran.

Mourning, however,
turned his faith into an obsession.

He became maniacal, he educated his children
with corporal punishment...

..and threats of eternal damnation.

(Stein Olav Henrichsen) Edvard Munch
came from a very religious background.

His father was very religious,
probably his mother as well,...

..and his grandfather was a priest,
his great-grandfather was a priest.

(CHURCH MUSIC)

(BELLS RINGING)

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke) You have to realise
Munch came from a very intellectual family.

I mean, two uncles, very famous,
the one an author,...

..the other one, at that time,
the most the foremost Norwegian historian,...

..Peter Andreas Munch.

(CHATTERING)

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke) The Munch family
is a kind of intellectual élite in Norway.

We have to remember that,
because he was a Munch, he was special.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) In the evening, the father
read traditional fairy tales to his children...

..along with the horror stories
of Edgar Allan Poe...

..and the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky,
his favourite writer.

All of them stories of guilt and crimes
that deserve terrible punishments.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) During the day the five children
were looked after by their maternal aunt Karen,...

..who now took care of the house.

It was she who pushed her nieces and nephews
to draw and kept their works,...

..like the old peasants
painted by Sofie, the eldest,...

..and the exotic landscapes by Andreas,
who dreamt of becoming an explorer.

Edvard instead filled pages
with gnomes, angels, and knights.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Since 1877,
he'd been depicting Polly,...

..the bullfinch that Sofie had found:...

..a small friend to care for
who fits in the palm of a hand.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) But their playtime
would soon be over:...

..Sofie fell ill with tuberculosis,
like her mother, and died.

She was 15 years old.

(Narrator) Thus began a long period
of misfortune for the Munch family:...

..another sister, Laura, would begin to suffer
from psychological crises...

..while his brother Andreas
would die young, of pneumonia.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

"When I have ignited the light,
the lamp,..."

.."I suddenly catch sight
of my enormous shadow..."

.."across half the wall
all the way up to the ceiling."

"And in the large mirror
over the fireplace..."

.."I see myself..."

.."and my own ghostly countenance."

"And I live with the dead,..."

.."my mother, my sister, my grandfather..."

.."and my father, most of all with him."

"All of the memories,
the smallest things, return."

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

The demons of his childhood
come back to visit him.

That’s the way he describes them
in his notebooks,

so they can always be with him.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch dedicated
his first masterpiece to Sofie.

A little girl rests,
leaning against a pillow.

Her head is turned to the side,
likely towards a window.

Beside her sits a woman
whose head is bowed.

In the centre, their hands are clasped,
almost merging into each other.

It is titled, "The Sick Child".

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) The painting was displayed in 1886
at the Kristiania Autumn Exhibition.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) Created by young
Norwegian artists...

..who painted landscapes and scenes
of everyday life en plein air.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) "The Sick Child"
marked a change of course.

The work was misunderstood by everyone.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) Later Munch would say: "Most of what
I have done since was born in this painting".

He would produce several graphic variations
and five more oil versions.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Linn Solheim) It's a work
heavy with paint.

It's painted, painted again,
scratched down.

It's not yet a deliberate process.

This is him kind of failing to find...

..that typical scene or that exact moment
he wants to and kind of goes back again.

Doesn't quite get it,
scraps it away, paints again.

I think he called it himself
his "farewell to realism",...

..this is kind of the break,
this is where he wants to go.

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) Munch's painting
is not figurative.

That is to say, the child's disease
is Munch's disease:...

..it is the disease of painting,
it is the disease of art.

(CHIRPING)

(Sue Prideaux) What he's trying to paint
is in fact an emotion,...

..the emotion of grief.

And so he wants a completely
new vocabulary to paint this in,...

..because his deepest thinking
came from inside him,...

..it came from the angels of sickness,...

..anxiety and death
that he said stood around his cradle.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Funeral vigils, bodies abandoned
in beds that already look like coffins,...

..skulls with sardonic smiles,...

..skeletons that, according to the iconography
of the Danse Macabre,...

..drag young women into the final waltz.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) When his turn would come, Munch died
surrounded by his paintings, his only children.

He did not part with them willingly:...

..whenever he sold one, he would reproduce it
to keep it for himself.

(Narrator) To create something new
he needed what he had already painted;...

..he needed the past
to live in his present.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Even during his twilight years
he continued to live in the time of his youth.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) The Kristiania of young Munch
was a rapidly growing capital,...

..but part of a State
that was not entirely independent.

At the end of the nineteenth century,
Norway was still united with Sweden...

..and ruled by one King.

Karl Johan
was the central street in Oslo...

..leading from the Parliament
to the castle of the King.

And this was the street
where the bourgeoisie paraded everyday.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) This was
the high-class face of the city.

It was secretly immortalized
by a shy nineteen-year-old kid:...

..his name was Carl Størmer,...

..he studied mathematics at university,
and he was in love.

(CHEERFUL MUSIC FROM VIOLINS)

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(CAMERA CLICKING)

(Narrator) To take a photo of the girl
he pined after unseen,...

..he got a spy camera.

It sat in his waistcoat pocket,
the lens popping out of the buttonhole.

(UPBEAT MUSIC AND CAMERA CLICKING)

(Narrator) With it, he took nearly
500 snapshots of unwitting passers-by,...

..before he’d become a scientist.

He would investigate not only numbers,
but also cosmic rays and the northern lights;...

..vibrations of the ether
that would also interest Munch.

(UPBEAT MUSIC AND BARKS)

(Narrator) Around those years, Edvard too strolled
on Karl Johan street with a sketchbook,...

..where he drew that same bourgeoisie
in coats and stovepipe hats,...

..until the figures began
to turn pale and deform,...

..illuminated by the first electric lights.

(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC)

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) There is a crowd
coming towards us...

..and a smaller figure on the right
who turns his back on us.

Are they living dead
or are they dead living?

Is it a vision of society...

..which critiques conformist,
bourgeois behaviour?

Or is it life?

Life is somewhere else, it's after.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC AND WIND BLOWING)

The bourgeoisie were the walking dead
for Munch and his friends,...

..they were so young, so alive!

They called themselves
"Kristiania Bohêmen".

Novelists and painters,
often a mix of both.

They sought new paths for their art.

Neither tradition nor morality
could hold them back.

Recalling this time in his life,
Munch would say:...

.."We mouthed defiant words,
heedless of restraint or consequence;..."

.."we were overbearing and brutal,
as only Norwegians can be".

(LYRIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) As in Norway, the bohemian life
was lived all over Europe.

From Paris to London, artists, writers
and musicians lead a drifter’s existence.

(LYRIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) They were poor
by choice or necessity, always nonconformist.

They broke rules: their audacity
was intolerable...

..for the defenders of the social order.

(LYRIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Meanwhile, their parties,
adventures and miseries...

..inspired stories and operas.

Giacomo Puccini's "La Bohème"
would debut on the 1st of February, 1896

at the Teatro Regio in Turin.

(LYRIC MUSIC)

(Stein Olav Henrichsen) Artists are always
in opposition to their own time,...

..they're always trying to develop
and criticise or being critical,...

..and develop new ways of thinking,
new ways of looking,...

..new ways of formulating
and communicating.

So, they are always in conflict,
I would say, with their own time,...

..but the interesting thing is
that when we look back...

..they're always considered
being representative of their own time.

But they were in fact
not representative of their own time,...

..they are representative
of the way we look back at that time.

(LYRIC MUSIC AND TRAMCAR PASSING BY)

(Narrator) In Kristiania,
their ringleader was Hans Jaeger:...

..by day, Parliamentary stenographer
and by night, anarchist writer.

His autobiographical novel
about Norwegian bohemians...

..came out in December 1885
and was immediately seized.

(Narrator) Its content was incendiary, teaching
a new kind of sexuality to young women,...

..one open to pleasure,
outside of the bonds of marriage.

(LYRIC MUSIC AND CHATTERING)

(Narrator) It was an attack,
in the words of Jaeger himself,...

..on "three gigantic granite columns:..."

.."morality, Christianity,
and the bourgeois concept of justice".

(LYRIC MUSIC AND CHATTERING)

(Narrator) Jaeger was tried
for pornography...

..and sentenced to a fine
and 60 days in prison.

He was the most radical of them all,...

..baptising them
"the premature children of the future".

Jaeger was a nihilist.

God was dead for him too, but not love.

No, love had to be free.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) The Bohemian Princess was Oda Lasson,
a young woman who was the talk of the town.

Already a mother of two,
she left her husband to shape her own destiny.

Jaeger was her lover,
but not the only one.

Another leading member of the group
also ended up in Oda's arms:...

..the painter Christian Krohg.

(Narrator) He portrays her like this:
lying on a chaise longue,...

..a come-hither smile on her face.

Edvard Munch also appears,
lighting his cigarette.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

What happens is an emancipation of women
in general...

..and then the bohème is taking this
to a radical point of view,...

..where you have free love
and where woman is really more emancipated...

..than the society
actually accepts at that time.

(CLASSIC MUSIC CHOIR)

(Narrator) The bohemians met
at the Grand Café, on Karl Johan street.

Jaeger drinks
one whiskey after the other,...

..while the painters try
to exchange a work for a hot meal.

Munch comes to offer "The Sick Child"
for 100 steaks, to no avail.

At the tables sat politicians, journalists,
actors from the nearby National Theater,...

..and the mythical hero
to Krohg and companions,...

..the one who had long revealed the hypocrisies
of the bourgeoisie on the stage: Henrik Ibsen.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) The playwright came here every day,
at 1:20 in the afternoon...

..and at 6:30 in the evening.

He was so punctual that his fellow citizens
set their watches when they passed him.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) At the Grand Café,
nights passed amid jokes and liaisons,...

..debates and solemn manifestos.

Jaeger wrote nine Commandments,
rather than the ten Commandments,...

..and the first was:
"thou shalt write thy life..."

..and the last was:
"thou shalt take thy life", kill thyself.

(Sue Prideaux) Munch took
the first commandment very seriously...

..and he decided
that he would use his own life...

..as, what he calls, his anatomical
testing ground, he says:...

.."Leonardo dissected cadavers,..."

.."but I will dissect my soul..."

.."to discover what is universal
in the human soul".

And so now, under the Jaeger influence,
he starts writing...

..and understanding himself
through writing.

(SUSPENSE MUSIC)

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch kept everything,
as he told a friend in 1943:...

.."Paintings etchings and countless letters
and notes throughout 60 years".

"For I never used a waste basket".

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) In his notebooks,
sketchbooks and diaries...

..Munch reflects, creates,
recounts his own life.

Years later, he rewrites
and reinvents it all, reliving it.

He draws and illustrates.

(Narrator) Some of his most famous paintings
are born on these pages.

Through writing, Munch begins to develop
his figures, as in "Melancholy".

(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) In "The Voice" he depicts
the encounter with his first mermaid,...

..the moment before the kiss.

There is a mermaid over there,
in the reflected column of the moon.

She gazes at the moon, large and round,...

..suspended over the horizon.

She rocks herself
in the column of the moon...

..and has golden tresses.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

Weak and tired she lies back
and the golden tresses float on the water.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) "Your eyes are large,..."

.."as large as half the sky
when you stand so close to me."

"And your hair like gold dust."

"Your mouth I do not see."

"See only that you are smiling."

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke)
Scary women the sirens.

Munch's relationship to mermaids
is of course related to his fear of women.

Of course, she is very intriguing
and lovable

and very very dangerous.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) The mermaid is Milly Thaulow,
she already bore her husband's surname.

She was 24 years old, three years older
than Edvard, and she was free spirited.

As a girl she stood out as a model,...

..and would become a singer
and pianist on the stage.

And later one of the first fashion
and cooking journalists for the Norwegian press.

(Narrator) For Edvard
she was his first love.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC AND WAVES)

(Narrator) On long summer nights
in Åsgårdstrand, Milly embodies desire.

But the promise of happiness
turns into "Ashes".

(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC AND WIND BLOWING)

(Narrator) In what for him
will always be "the fairy tale forest",...

..Edvard loses his virginity to Milly.

Pleasure turns into suffering.

(CLASSIC MUSIC AND CHIRPING)

He's sitting in a corner with his hands
over his face, crouched up like that,...

..Milly is in the centre of the picture
rising up in all her glory,...

..like a phoenix rising out of the Ashes.

And then at the bottom of the picture
there's a log...

..and from it come the Ashes,
the log is burning.

And Munch said that he felt as though
he had been burnt to Ashes by this act,...

..and what also what was worse
was that he heard his father saying:...

.."Thy shalt not commit adultery",
so, it's a terrible picture of guilt.

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) We may say
that the discovery of sexuality...

..seems to have been traumatic for Munch.

It is one thing to desire...

..and another is
the reality of fulfilment,...

..the realisation of this very desire.

And thus, it becomes a kind
of continuously repeated paradigm...

..in all the relationships with women he had.

"Before all else,
you’re a wife and a mother,..."

..said Torvald Helmer firmly to his wife.

"That I no longer believe," she replied.

"I think that before all else
I am a human being, just as much as you are,..."

.."or at least I will try to become one."

"I must think things out for myself
and try to get clear about them".

(LYRIC MUSIC CHOIR)

Never before had a dialogue of the sort
appeared in a theatre.

When Henrik Ibsen’s
"A Doll’s House" was staged...

..in Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre
on 21st December 1879,...

..the "woman question"
exploded in Scandinavia.

(LYRIC MUSIC CHOIR)

(Narrator) Today, it remains one of the most
frequently performed plays in the world.

Ibsen hit on a social taboo:
a family mother who leaves home and children.

Claiming her right to be an independent person
is Nora, the main character.

She asked for a loan to take care of her husband's
health and is now being blackmailed.

(LYRIC MUSIC CHOIR)

(Narrator) When he finds out,
he is only concerned with saving his reputation.

(LYRIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Nora’s eyes are opened:
she is only a doll in a cocooned world.

She decides to leave.

(LYRIC MUSIC CHOIR)

Ibsen was the voice of women,
at that time,...

..he was quite strong
in his period of speaking...

..and trying to make women,
put women in a better position.

And, I think, he actually fought
a huge fight for women.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) In a society
that was redefining public roles,...

..Ibsen's theater
contributed to these changes.

Munch knew the playwright personally
and was an admirer.

However, Munch chose
another path for himself.

He would paint his private experience
with women and his personal obsessions.

(Narrator) After the relationship
with Milly,...

..the female figures
who’d follow him through his life...

..are at the centre of his art
until the end.

He observes them
with passion, fear, empathy.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) But in those years another writer,
who would soon become Munch’s close friend,...

..confronted Ibsen's arguments,
hurling accusations of "swinery".

It was the Swedish author,
August Strindberg.

(Narrator) His response to Nora,
who he called...

.."the ideal of all corrupted women
of culture",...

..was a short story
in which "A Doll’s House..."

..appears as a work
that destroys the family.

Strindberg was 21 years
younger than Ibsen,...

..but they established themselves...

..as playwrights
about contemporary issues...

..approximately at the same time.

So, they became competitors.

(Narrator) Strindberg would write:
"Every healthy man is a woman hater,..."

.."but he cannot survive
unless he allies himself with his enemy".

Indeed, Strindberg was to have three wives,
and he was insanely jealous.

All three marriages failed miserably.

(PHONE RINGING AND CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) They were successful women:
two actresses and a journalist.

Strindberg loved them because of their talent,
but demanded they sacrifice it for him.

So, they ended up the same way
all the three marriages.

Strindberg was happy
as soon as they get pregnant, I would say,...

..but for them it was the end
of their career.

(CLASSIC MUSIC AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) In Stockholm,
Strindberg's last home is now a museum.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) The domestic environment
was always a problem for him,...

..since he saw the family
as an "inferno" of torments...

..and the bedroom as the battlefield
between the sexes.

His restlessness would drive him
to the brink of psychosis.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(PIANO PLAYING AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) Strindberg was also a painter.

In the halls of Stockholm’s
Nationalmuseum,...

..where visitors can admire
the works of his contemporaries,...

..Strindberg's tumultuous scenes
of sky and sea are also on display.

Seascapes pretty much like the subjects
of the German romantic art,...

..but in a much more contemporary,
symbolistic sense.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) They are soul scapes,
just like Munch’s.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) Strindberg and Munch
met in Berlin at the end of 1892.

Munch had arrived with high hopes:...

..he had been invited
by the Association of Berlin Artists...

..to exhibit his works in a solo show.

(Narrator) He’d already visited
Copenhagen and Paris, Le Havre and Nice,...

..trips financed
thanks to large state grants.

But now he thought he had secured
a passage straight to success:...

..in the German metropolis,
with over a million and a half inhabitants,...

..Scandinavian artists sold well.

(UPBEAT MUSIC AND LAUGHS)

(Narrator) The exhibition opened
on 5th November, 1892.

Scandal and protests broke out.

(Giulia Bartrum) There was a real incident.

The Kaiser Wilhelm ruled a very
conservative traditional society in Berlin,...

..and they were not used
to this very expressionistic form of art.

And the Art Union in Berlin
voted to close it within a week.

(Giulia Bartrum) However,
it did gain a huge reputation,...

..the avant-garde noticed it immediately.

(Stein Olav Henrichsen) I think
that Edvard Munch was a strategist.

He used that opportunity
to promote this exhibition,...

..so he was able to establish
this exhibition in several other places.

So, let’s say,
if you like the modern term,...

..more communication,
more marketing of himself and his art.

(UPBEAT MUSIC AND HORSE TROTTING)

(Narrator) The most innovative artists
in Berlin congregated at the tavern...

..that Strindberg had renamed
"The Black Piglet", Zum Schwarzen Ferkel.

Munch spent wild evenings here with his friend
and some equally bizarre companions.

(Narrator) Such as the surgeon
Carl Ludwig Schleich,...

..who experimented with cocaine and used it
for the newly invented local anaesthesia.

The doctor would be the one to give Munch
original formules to create his colours.

(Sue Prideaux) These were rather different
from the Oslo bohemians.

They're exploring the boundaries
between the conscious and the unconscious,...

..they're looking at the nervous system,
what is voluntary, what is not voluntary,...

..they're looking in terms of chance in creation,
which is a very very modern thing.

(SUSPENSE MUSIC)

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) We have an idea
of bohemian life...

..as one of joy, of pleasure.

On the contrary,
here we see a life of turmoil.

There's a different kind of pursuit.

(In Italian) It's not the pursuit of pleasure,
as much as that of an inner truth,...

..an unreachable truth,...

..which causes distress.

What is the soul?

What is the brain?

While Freud was in the process
of working out his theory of the unconscious,...

..these questions were already beginning
to circulate among scientists and occultists...

..in Berlin at the end of the 19th century.

These included a young poet
by the name of Stanislaw Przybyszewski,...

..also known as Stachu.

He wanted to investigate
the structures of the mind,...

..control it, dominate it.

(SUSPENSE PIANO MUSIC)

(SUSPENSE PIANO MUSIC,
CHATTERING AND GLASSES TOASTING)

(Narrator) Stachu transformed
the Black Piglet into his laboratory.

He played Chopin
as if he was possessed by the devil,

spying from the piano for the reactions
on the psyche of his listeners.

He studied occult sciences and black magic,
and was guided by Satan.

(Narrator) For everyone,
Stachu became the "Sad Satan":...

..pain is the very essence of life.

Munch shared with him thoughts and women.

(LAUGHS AND PIANO MUSIC)

(Frode Sandvik) For Munch
and many of his contemporaries...

..women represented something mystical
and something connected to faith,...

..and almost something dangerous.

Because love was connected to death.

(PIANO MUSIC)

(Giulia Bartrum) For him
the moment of creation,...

..a woman captured
in the throes of love making,...

..for him that was a spiritual moment.

This was part of his creative modernity.

(UPBEAT PIANO MUSIC)

(Narrator) Modern goddess and witch:
behold the femme fatale of the fin de siècle.

Bewitching not with potions
but with innate charisma.

Men give in to her charms,
suffer, fall into ruin;...

..they are willing to do anything,
just to be close to her.

(Narrator) Many magnetic and tempting women
appear in paintings, literature,

..and cinema of the period:
they are vampires.

(UPBEAT PIANO MUSIC)

(PIANO MUSIC AND LAUGHS)

(MUSIC, CHATTERING)

(MUSIC)

(UPBEAT PIANO MUSIC)

(UPBEAT PIANO MUSIC)

(Jon-Ove Steihaug) "Vampire" was actually
a title not given by Munch himself originally.

He actually called it "Schmerz und Liebe",
"Pain and Love".

It's a really great way
to explain the ambivalence

of all love relations, I think.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) The femme fatale of the Black Piglet
was a beguiling Norwegian named Dagny Juel.

She made a triumphal entry
into the bar accompanied by Munch.

The two knew each other
since their days in Kristiania.

He introduced her to the group, although
he would prefer to have her all to himself.

(Narrator) Dagny immediately became
his muse, his model, and not only that.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Dagny is both sensual and ascetic
at one and the same time.

She’s called "ducha"
which is "soul" in Polish.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) She’s described
as being tall,...

..with reddish-chestnut brown hair.

Women see her as embodying sin.

Men see her as desire incarnated.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch was a close friend of Dagny,
and they likely had an affair.

He competed on one hand
with the incurable Strindberg,...

..on the other with Przybyszewski,
who also courted her persistently.

It was a ménage à quatre,...

..an unstable geometry of passions
between a woman, a Satanist, and two artists.

"Jealousy" has the picture of the head
of Przybyszewski in the foreground...

..and in the background Munch is standing
and Dagny is standing beside him...

..and she is wearing a red dress,
that is open, so you can see her body...

..and you can see how Przybyszewski
is tortured with jealousy.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch makes Stachu
a character of the soul.

His friend's face, with wide eyes
and pale or greenish complexion,...

..stares at us intently from many pieces.

It is the picture of torment.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) In the end, Dagny chose Stachu.

When she married him, almost by chance,
she’d known him for less than six months.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

Przybyszewski tires quickly.

He has lovers...

..and casts a spell on his wife.

And death duly makes its appearance
in the shape of Wladyslaw Emeryk,...

..a young mutual friend of the couple.

He was besotted with Dagny,...

..and she followed him to Tbilisi
for a short holiday.

On 5th June 1901,...

..three days before her 34th birthday,
while she was dozing in an armchair,...

..Emeryk shot her
and then committed suicide.

He left a letter for Stachu
in which he wrote:...

.."I did what you should have done".

(PIANO MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch was shocked
by Dagny's death.

He would always keep
the portrait of his lover with him,...

..and would continue to paint her.

(PIANO MUSIC)

(Narrator) Among the various works
in which she appears is "The Day After,..."

..a picture built around hidden allusions.

(Narrator) A girl is lying on a bed,
she appears to be sleeping.

Her open blouse reveals her breast.

In the foreground
there are glasses and bottles.

(Narrator) Everything suggests
the after-effects of a party.

But is this really the "after" of the story?

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) Musing on an "After"
rather than on an instant is a strong concept,...

..because it's a reflection on time.

This "After" deals with death.

(In Italian) This is not a woman adrift
in slumber or in dreams, she truly looks dead.

And therefore this "After" is a musing,
a reflection on what comes after death.

(PIANO MUSIC)

(Narrator) Dagny had been and would continue
to be the model for "Madonna".

(Frode Sandvik) So, what we see
in this picture, basically, it's a woman,...

..which has a kind
of this ethereal quality,...

..is almost like a religious painting,
like an altarpiece.

She also has this red hairband,
that resembles a halo.

But then, of course,
it also has this sexual side.

(Frode Sandvik) This is a woman shown
in the moment of conception, making love,...

..which is an alternative title
for the work "Woman making love".

(LYRIC MUSIC CHOIR)

(Narrator) In a sketchbook,
Munch drew the figure of Madonna,...

..but using words.

It is one of his literary sketches.

"A Madonna’s pallid beauty..."

.."the moment has arrived
when life courses through her,..."

.."when the chain is linked
from millennium to millennium."

"The Act of Creation."

"Life is born only to be born
and die again."

"Her mouth breathes in agony."

"In one corner of her Mouth
is a ghost,..."

.."in the other life’s joy."

(LYRIC MUSIC CHOIR)

(Linn Solheim) He has done
quite a specific thing with this.

He's used this kind of spray method
with dilute paint,...

..probably with turpentine,
so it's really thin.

So if you look at the “Madonna”
up close you have...

..all these kind of small dots of paint
all over the surface.

(LYRIC MUSIC CHOIR)

(Narrator) The artist’s techniques have made
his paintings particularly fragile today.

I think everything that Munch does
with his experimental paint techniques...

..is part of what he does
to get his subject matter of there.

I think it's because he paints
these intense human emotions of grief...

..and regret and love and the despair,...

..he finds a way of using paint
to kind build up and do that.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch also experimented
with different artistic mediums, such as printing.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) He adds a frame
to his lithograph of "Madonna".

(Giulia Bartrum) Really interestingly
the painted version does not show...

..the sperm around the border
and little foetus looking angry in the corner.

And this is something which very much links
to the printmaking tradition,...

..there were often elaborated borders
and subjects put around the side.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch is a master printmaker:...

..from metal plate etching,
to stone lithography, to woodcut.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

It is in those woodcuts which portray that sort
of elemental force of expressionistic art,...

..simple lines and clear-cut designs.

You're not going for gradual tones
of atmosphere or anything like that,...

..it's just the rawness of the line itself.

(WIND BLOWING)

(WIND BLOWING)

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC AND WATER FLOWING)

(Narrator) In July 1895,
Edvard Munch went to find his roots,...

..deep in the heart of Norway.

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) It was a journey through time,
almost like walking through childhood stories.

Moss and roots guard
the caves of the gnomes.

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) A rustle of leaves
in the thickest part of the forest...

..announces the passage of the wind,
or spirits.

(WATER FLOWING AND FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(Narrator) Impervious rocks
defend the palaces of the trolls.

The landscape is inhabited
by the hidden folk of fairy tales,...

..at once magical and mysterious.

(WATER FLOWING AND FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(WIND BLOWING AND FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch bounded through valleys
and crossed mountains,...

..passing by medieval churches.

In their wood carvings, ancient traditions
that date back to the Viking era live again.

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(WIND BLOWING AND FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(Narrator) His destination was Vågå, the village
from which his father's family came from.

His ancestors had officiated
for generations in the small church,...

..decorated with the stories
of Adam and Eve,...

..painted in the late seventeenth century
by a pastor named Henning Munch...

..whom Edvard believed
was part of his family tree.

(FAIRY-TALE MUSIC)

(WIND BLOWING)

(CLASSIC MUSIC AND WIND BLOWING)

(Narrator) The journey ended.

Munch's eyes were now full of the scenes
depicted by romantic painters...

..only a few decades earlier.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

So, what was typical
of Norwegian landscapes?

Well, it was the mountains, the fjords,
the valleys, the sky, the clouds.

So, Johan Christian Dahl used these elements
to compose his big grandeur images...

..of Norwegian nature, his Nordic landscapes
which was incredibly popular.

(Frode Sandvik) And this was of course the start
of the national romantic period in Norwegian art.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Leif Ove Andsnes) I think
in a lot of Nordic art...

..there is a feeling that describes
the person, man in nature,...

..rather than always with people.

And this is of course clear
from Munch’s world as well,...

..though he is more famous
for his inner landscapes.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC AND WIND BLOWING)

(Narrator) Since 1924,
the Kode 3 Museum in Bergen...

..has housed one of Norway's
most important art collections.

The man who brought it together
was Rasmus Meyer,...

..one of the first Munch collectors.

(Narrator) An industrialist
and mill owner by trade,...

..Meyer was a true son of Bergen,...

..a centuries-old trading crossroad
on the North Sea.

(Narrator) Those who arrived in the city
in the late nineteenth century...

..were greeted by a pungent smell.

(BUS PASSING BY AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) The merchants of the Hanseatic League
used to lived in the harbour,...

..in the creaking and shaky wooden houses...

..where they had set up
their offices and warehouses.

(CHIRPING)

(Gunnhild Øyehaug) When I was 20 years old
and I was trying to find my place in the world...

..as a young woman
and as a young writer,...

..going into the Munch room at Kode,
here in Bergen, was very decisive,...

..particularly one of the paintings,
"Woman in three stages".

Well, I think,
that these three women represent...

..a development in the female consciousness,
the way I interpret it,...

..in relationship to a man.

I think it's the man running away
because the woman is too much for him.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) In addition to
"Woman in Three Stages", at Kode 3,...

..there are also other paintings
belonging to Munch's "Frieze of Life".

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) As a matter of fact,
for his 1902-1903 exhibitions,...

..the artist personally arranged
a sequence of 22 works;...

..framing them within
a continuous band, a true "frieze",...

..letting them interact with each other
and with the exhibition space.

Thus the cycle of human existence
unfolded on the walls of a room.

(Stein Olav Henrichsen) I think it’s interesting
that Edvard Munch is calling...

..his "Frieze of Life" a "symphony".

There is, let’s say, resonance
in all these works, that resonance together...

..and there is also a connection,...

..in the sense that symphony,
in the traditional sense,...

..which might have, let’s say,
four movements or five moments.

(Stein Olav Henrichsen) He thinks
that he has also movement in his production.

There is certainly a mix
of different kinds of speeds,...

..adagio means slow
and then you have allegro,...

..you have presto and you have
other kinds of musical expressions...

..that could be used in terms
of interpretation of Edvard Munch’s works.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(WIND BLOWING ANS CHIRPING)

(Narrator) "All art, like music,
must be created with one’s lifeblood."

This was an aphorism of Munch's:...

..colours resonate
with the vibrations of the soul,...

..in a land of great composers.

(CHIRPING AND WIND BLOWING)

(Leif Ove Andsnes) Grieg’s music,
I'm born into this music,...

..my parents were music teachers.

I heard this music from very early age,
I played it from I was 6 or 7 years old...

..and then, of course,
you get a homely feeling to this music,...

..it became my vocabulary.

But I think this music also has
some very universal qualities of feeling at home.

Because he was very good
at writing intimate music,...

..that speaks from heart to heart.

And I feel that very much when I play
this music in China or Venezuela or in Norway,...

..it speaks to people's hearts.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Edvard Grieg also had
a safe haven to which he could return.

As a pianist and conductor, his winters
were a single long tour across Europe.

But from the summer of 1885
he took refuge in his fairy-tale house,...

..on Troldhaugen hill,
just outside Bergen.

(WIND BLOWING, FAIRY-TALE MUSIC
AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) Next to him was Nina,
that "girl with a wonderful voice..."

..whom he had married years before,
his other half in life and in art.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

The Adagio is so wonderful,...

..because it comes like a dream.

It's very soft, the strings
play with mutes on the strings...

..and is so beautiful
and it has a simplicity to it...

..and richness at the same time.

And the orchestra starts
with this wonderful introduction...

..and then when the piano comes in,
it's like it's like pure water,...

..it's like a brook or a small waterfall...

..with these passages,
these descending passages, from the treble.

(WATER FLOWING AND PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) This is where
Edvard Grieg and Nina still rest.

Perhaps in the woods, when no one looks,
trolls and nymphs appear to sing for them.

(CHIRPING AND WIND BLOWING)

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) It was during Munch's youth
that the foundations of not only our society,...

..but also of contemporary science,
were laid.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) Röntgen discovered X-rays,
scientists studied electromagnetic phenomena,...

..new devices like the telephone
and the radio were invented.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch was fascinated by it.

He related this research to his own images;
his female figures have long, wavy hair.

Undulating bonds that enfold and ensnare.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Giulia Bartrum) He himself had a fear
of entrapment,...

..he was definitely frightened
of women in the long run...

..and this very much signified
and symbolised by that long red hair...

..and hair in general.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

Munch compares it to telephone wire:...

..it creates connections and transmits
fluxes of energy through the atmosphere.

The woman in her diversity
is a mystery to man:...

..she is a Sphinx, complete with enigma.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch wrote that woman
is "simultaneously saint,..."

.."whore and unhappily devoted".

But the pain she inflicts is devastating.

She is a harmful creature.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) In 1898, Tulla Larsen
entered Munch’s life.

29 years old and from a wealthy family,...

..she was a bourgeois
who amused herself by playing bohemian.

Tulla got closer and closer to Edvard:...

..she was the closest thing to a girlfriend
he would ever have.

Still, they never really danced together.

(SUSPENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) The painting "The Dance of Life"
represents their relationship.

(Sue Prideaux) On the left-hand side
you see the woman in the white dress,...

..the Virgin, she's picking a flower
and she has the face of Tulla Larsen.

(Sue Prideaux) In the middle,
you see Munch dancing on the grass...

..with his first love, with Milly Thaulow.

Milly Thaulow is wearing
the red dress of the woman of Sin.

On the right-hand side you have the woman
in the black dress, the old woman,...

..the nun, the woman
who is a symbol of Death.

And that again
has Tulla Larsen's features.

So, the picture shows really
how Munch felt about Tulla,...

..how divided he felt about her.

He liked her because she had inspired
this wonderful picture,...

..but he really didn't like her
as a person.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) After a few years,
they are on the verge of splitting up.

But Tulla doesn't want to let him go.

(SUSPENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) She plays her last card.

She sends friends to call him,
to warn him that she’s going to kill herself.

(SUSPENSE MUSIC)

(THUNDERS)

"I knew you would come."

(UPBEAT MUSIC AND THUNDERS)

It’s a put on.

Tulla’s smile is one of victory:...

..Edvard rushed to her side to save her,...

..but in reality she didn’t want to die.

She wanted to convince him to marry her.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) He puts up resistance.

He doesn’t want to be distracted
from his work.

And what is more, he adds,
her children would be at risk...

..of inheriting the defects of his own family,
poor health and madness.

Lame excuses.

It is a violent quarrel.

(UPBEAT MUSIC AND THUNDERS)

(THUNDERS AND CLICK OF GUN TRIGGER)

(Narrator) Edvard was shot in the hand.

She was more concerned with cleaning the blood
off the floor than calling a doctor.

Munch lost a bone
in his left middle finger.

(Narrator) The most important relationship
of his entire life ended on that night...

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) ..between the 11th and 12th
of September 1902.

The pain and the wound were permanent.

No glove could ever hide the fact.

(PIANO PLAYING)

It wasn’t a question of Tulla
being incompatible with Edvard,...

..it was more a case of his art
being incompatible with love.

To be a part of his life, women
had to become the images of his paintings,...

..the protagonists of his writings,
spirits that lived in his mind.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) It happened this time too:...

..from that moment on,
Tulla would always remain with him.

(CHIRPING AND PIANO PLAYING)

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) Warnemünde is a fishing village
on the Baltic Sea near Rostock,...

(PIANO PLAYING AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) ..and since the nineteenth century
it has been a popular seaside resort.

(CALM MUSIC)

(CALM MUSIC)

(CALM MUSIC AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) Edvard spent
the summers of 1907 and 1908 here,...

..living at Am Strom, 53,
in a small house with a housekeeper.

(CHIRPING)

(Narrator) Munch had just passed
the age of 40, a handsome man in his prime.

However, he was constantly nervous and was
no longer able to function without alcohol.

His days were spent at the nudist beach,...

..photographing his own body,
triumphantly exposed to the sun,...

..and painting the athletic figures
of the "Bathing Men".

(Jon-Ove Steihaug) The “Bathing Men”
motive from Warnemünde...

..has often been connected to certain ideas
at the starting of the 20th century,...

..which you can call vitalism.

Which was both
a kind of philosophy of life,...

..of life as something
filled with energy and life force,...

..but also dealing
with bathing in the sun...

..and all kinds of new reformist movement,
especially in Germany.

(Narrator) More than anything,
it was among the sand dunes...

..that the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche
were put into effect.

Munch had read his books years earlier,
on the advice of Strindberg and Przybyszewski.

(Narrator) Nietzsche, the assertor
of the death of God,...

..the poet who throws the world
into human hands.

Man is just a little person on the planet.

If there's no god, and he has to find
his own reason for living,...

..he has to become the Übermensch,
he has to make his own values,...

..that's the man who is delighted
that there are no metaphysical goals,...

..your goals are on this earth
and it's how you deal with life on this earth...

..that makes you an Übermensch or not.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch depicted him
as a monumental Zarathustra,...

..overlooking the landscape
from his mountains.

(CLASSIC MUSIC AND CHIRPING)

(CHIRPING AND WAVES)

(Narrator) For Edvard, however,...

..existence is not all power and light,
far from it.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) The stay in Warnemünde
hides a dark side.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) With him are
Olga and Rosa Meissner,...

..two sisters with a striking
physical resemblance.

Double figures take possession
of Munch's works.

(Narrator) He stands next to Rosa
for a snapshot on the beach.

During the exposure, the camera moves...

..their ghosts appear,
floating in the background.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) He also immortalizes her,
naked with her head bowed,

..in the series of paintings titled,
"Weeping Woman".

(CALM MUSIC)

(WIND BLOWING)

(Narrator) These are uncanny images
that arise from gloomy feelings,...

..adding to the precarious
mental state of the artist.

(CALM MUSIC)

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) He had experimented with altering
his consciousness through alcohol,...

..extending the realm of his visions.

(Narrator) Now, however, alcohol has taken over
and the inner split has reached its extreme.

Attacks of paralysis, hallucinations,
and collapse followed.

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) In the autumn of 1908
he was hospitalized...

..in the psychiatric clinic
of Dr. Daniel Jacobson, in Copenhagen.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(OWL HOOTING AND TENSE MUSIC)

(TENSE MUSIC AND CRICKETS CHIRPING)

(OWL HOOTING AND CRICKETS CHIRPING)

(Narrator) He looks straight
into the camera, semi-naked,...

..lying down in a pose
which he defines "à la Marat".

That was how Munch
photographed himself, in the clinic.

(TENSE MUSIC)

It’s one of his selfies.

He poses in the role of Jean-Paul Marat,...

..the revolutionary Jacobin
killed by Charlotte Corday.

Now the assassin is someone else: Tulla.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch had already painted
"The Death of Marat".

In the series Tulla appears
in the centre of the canvas,...

..standing in disarming nakedness,
ruthless.

(Narrator) It’s like an electric shock.

(PIANO PLAYING)

She has killed him.

Unsurprisingly, doctor Jacobson’s cure
consists of electro-shock.

Munch had to detoxify,
not only from alcohol,...

..but from thinking about Tulla.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) He had always been afraid
of becoming obsessive like his father,...

..or insane like Nietzsche.

(Narrator) In his notebooks he wrote,...

"The Soul’s Inferno
is extremely taxing on the Nervous system".

"For example Van Gogh , in part myself".

(DISTRESSING MUSIC)

(Narrator) In 1893, "The Scream"
was born from this anguish.

(Sue Prideaux) His sister Laura
had become insane...

..and she was shut up
in the in the women's madhouse.

Today I think we would say
she had schizophrenia.

So, Munch goes to visit her in the madhouse
and it's up on the Ekeberg,...

..on a mountain, well a hill,
overlooking the port of Oslo.

(CLASSIC MUSIC)

(Sue Prideaux) Up there you can hear
the screams of the mad people in the asylum,...

..the city abattoir was up there too,...

..so you heard the screams
of the animals being slaughtered.

(Sue Prideaux) He has this vision,
you know:...

.."I walked along the road
with two friends".

(Narrator) "I was walking along the road
with two friends, when the sun went down."

"The sky suddenly turned blood red."

"I paused, leaned against the fence
tired to death."

"Above the blue-black fjord and city..."

.."blood in flaming tongues hovered."

(PIANO PLAYING)

"My friends walked on..."

.."and I stayed behind..."

.."quaking with angst."

"And I felt as though
a vast endless scream..."

.."passed through nature."

(PIANO PLAYING)

(CHEERFUL MUSIC FROM VIOLINS)

(Narrator) The figure of the "Scream"
has become an icon of existential dread.

However, Munch's personal turmoil,
heightened by alcoholism,...

..found relief in Jacobson’s clinic.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) His treatment
was essentially rest...

..and abstinence, but not from art.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(Narrator) Munch turned the room
into his own studio.

He involved shy nurses in his works.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

And portrayed the doctor
with benevolent irony.

(Sue Prideaux) After about eight months,...

..he left Jacobson’s clinic,
and he was resolved.

He said, "I will now stick
to poison free women,..."

.."tobacco free cigars,
and alcohol-free drinks".

And he pretty, well,
he pretty much managed.

But he always had to have a glass
of champagne before he went to the dentist.

(PIANO PLAYING AND WIND BLOWING)

(PIANO PLAYING AND WATER FLOWING)

(PIANO PLAYING AND WATER FLOWING)

(WATER FLOWING)

(Narrator) He decided
to move back to Norway,...

..buying Ekely estate
in the countryside just outside Oslo.

(CALM MUSIC AND CHIRPING)

(Narrator) He lived here
from 1916 until the end of his life.

In those 28 years, the days slow down.

Memories and images return,
and he continues to replicate them.

(Narrator) Keeping him company
were Rousseau, a white horse, and his dogs.

Munch said about the rumpled
fox terrier named Fips:

"An old wise man’s soul
has taken up residence in him".

They too featured in his paintings.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) He often left his works outside,
under makeshift canopies in the garden,...

..exposed to the air and weather.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Young women
came and went from the villa.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Just like in bohemian times:
they were his models and lovers.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) But more and more,
he sought solitude.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) During his voluntary retreat,...

..time passes and repeats itself,
always the same.

The years have left their mark,
as Munch’s many self portraits confirm.

(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC)

(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC)

Munch is sleepless and a sleepwalker
that never wants to be awoken.

He wrote: "Don’t do that to me".

"I walk calmly in my dreams
which are my life,..."

.."only like that can I live".

(BUZZ FROM THE PROJECTOR)

(Narrator) In 1927, Munch purchased
a 9.5 mm Pathé-Baby camera.

(BUZZ FROM THE PROJECTOR AND TENSE MUSIC)

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke) Munch was interested
in looking at films of course, at cinema.

As a pastime probably,
to get away from, you know,...

..dreaming away with looking at cowboy films
or what it was, I think probably cowboy.

But when he made his own films,
it’s very few, very short.

(REEL OF FILM SPINNING)

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke)
They don't look like films.

They are experiments
and this is a visual quality...

..that he is looking for
when he made these films.

And of course he is very interested
in the movement.

(BUZZ FROM THE PROJECTOR)

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian)
These short films are actual montages...

..of moments, of spaces and places...

..separated from one another.

And so this roaming camera,...

..for the most part,
is the movement inside the city,...

..it's the willingness to expand
and compress time at once,...

..and so, in this sense,
crystallized into reality.

(DISTRESSING MUSIC)

(FILM IN OLD PROJECTOR)

(FILM STOPPING SPINNING)

(WIND BLOWING)

(Narrator) On the 23rd of January 1944,...

..at 80 years old,
Edvard Munch died in his sleep.

(WIND BLOWING)

(Narrator) "I dreamt in the Night."

"A coffin stood on top of a Hill."

"And in the Coffin lay a young Man."

"Next to the Coffin stood
a Mother in black ringing a Bell."

"And the Mother sang:..."

.."'Go now into the Land of Crystals'."

(WIND BLOWING)

(CHIRPING)

(WIND BLOWING AND TENSE MUSIC)

(Narrator) Throughout his life, Munch witnessed
the expansion of the invisible around man.

(CALM MUSIC)

(Narrator) His friend August Strindberg exposed
his photographic plates under the night sky:...

..he called them "Accelerographs",
believing that he had captured starlight.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke) Ghost photography,
at the turn of the century, you have...

..this immense interest
in speaking to the dead, you know,...

..and mediums
and also mysticism, occultism.

That’s the ghost photography.

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) During the seances,
mediums awoke the dead...

..and then fixed their floating presence
in their photographs.

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) Were they
optical illusions or spirits?

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Narrator) Either way,
Munch was drawn to it.

He used his camera to investigate
the shadows and translucence.

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke) I think Munch
was interested in the opposite...

..of what you can call
the reality effect of photography.

He was not interested in that.

Not in the representation of facts,...

..representation of particular persons,
or things, and so on.

(Øivind Lorentz Storm Bjerke)
But more photography used...

..as a kind of telling something
about what can be here at another time...

..and the difference
between reality and unreality.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) Photography became a tool
to cross borders,...

..to grasp what was otherwise unseen,...

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(Narrator) ..to hold one of those
crystals of time...

..poised between memory and the present,
between life and death.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(ROMANTIC MUSIC)

(FEMALE VOICE HUMMING
AND STEPS OF A WOOD FLOOR)

(FEMALE VOICE HUMMING)

(TENSE MUSIC)

(FEMALE VOICE HUMMING)

(TENSE MUSIC AND FEMALE VOICE HUMMING)

(STEPS)

(TENSE MUSIC AND FEMALE VOICE HUMMING)

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) In one of his plays
Strindberg has one of his male characters say...

..a sentence that to me is striking,
which goes:...

.."Perhaps what we're living through now
is death,..."

.."while what we call life,
comes after death".

(CALM MUSIC)

(CALM MUSIC AND FIRE CRACKLING)

(CALM MUSIC)

(CALM MUSIC AND FIRE CRACKLING)

(CALM MUSIC AND FIRE CRACKLING)

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) The idea
that we're living within death...

..changes our perspective
on life itself,...

..it turns time upside down
in a way that is not a pure reversal:...

..it's an entanglement, a hitch...

..that alters the perception of life,
death and the here after.

(CALM MUSIC AND FIRE CRACKLING)

(CALM MUSIC)

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) The concept of spirits
is no longer the presence of the dead among us,...

..but it's the idea of another dimension,
of something more.

(PIANO PLAYING)

(Elio Grazioli, in Italian) The spirits
are the fourth dimension.

It's a coexistence.
It means: they are here.

(PIANO PLAYING AND FIRE CRACKLING)

(CALM MUSIC AND FIRE CRACKLING)

(CALM MUSIC)

(Narrator) "Do Spirits exist?"

"We see what we see,..."

.."because our eyes
are constituted as they are."

"What are we, but an amalgamation
of energy in motion,..."

.."a candle that burns with a wick."

"Inner, heat,..."

.."outer Flames."

"And yet another invisible
ring of flames,..."

.."which feels."

(CALM MUSIC)

(Narrator) "Had we had different eyes, we would
be able to see our exterior casing of flames..."

.."and we would have other forms."

"In other words,
why should other beings..."

.."with lighter,
insubstantial molecules,..."

.."not exist among us?"

(CALM MUSIC AND FIRE CRACKLING)

(Narrator) "The souls of our dear ones,
for example?"

(CALM MUSIC AND FIRE CRACKLING)

(Narrator) "Spirits."

(CALM MUSIC AND FIRE CRACKLING)