FOUR STORIES BY INGMAR BERGMAN

A filmscript as Bergman candidly admits is ""a half-finished product, a pale uncertain reflection"" particularly when proceeding from his own special world of shadowed twilight. Reading these four scripts is a little like reading a libretto, of more interest if you are familiar with the vehicle. Strangely enough, although the ""stories"" are stylelessly written, one is lulled along in a susurrant fashion. Two of the four are novellas in presentation--The Touch and The Passion of Anna. The Hour of the Wolf is a more literal filmscript, dialogue plus stage directions. The most valuable for Bergman devotees is Cries and Whispers, which begins ""We're going to make a film together"" and then goes on to articulate his particular artistic process where the continuity is a ""dark flowing stream. . . nothing fixed""--flexible, elusive, enclosed. It also includes an approximation of a canon: ""What is important is that everything in this situation appears natural--real and yet mysterious, in a tension."" In that tension between the everyday and the empyrean much of the Bergman fascination subsists, however immeasurably stronger in the imagistic medium.