SUNDAY'S CHILDREN

Since retirement in 1986, Bergman (b. 1918) has become as prolific a writer as he was a director. Here, he follows his survey of his film output, Images (p. 1429), with a sequel to his novel The Best Intentions (1993—not reviewed). Both novels have been filmed. Sunday's Children will open in the States in April, while The Best Intentions is already on videocassette. In that book, Bergman told of the romance between his parents, and of the logs thrown in their path by their families. Now we have the script-length story of their eight-year-old son, Pu, who was born with the gift of clairvoyance granted to Sunday's children (and movie directors). Mother rents Pastor Dahlberg's odd set of joined and painted boxes that he calls a summer house. Father, himself a pastor, sets forth to join his summering family, and Pu runs off to the train station to meet him. This is a day out of heaven and hell, a countryside of great natural beauty in which Pu watches two calves slaughtered, has various hints of sex, is worried sick that his parents will split up. There is a big summer- cottage dinner scene like that in Wild Strawberries; Pu helps his grandmother go to the privy past midnight, hears his parents arguing in the small hours. In inspired flash-forwards, the sexy Maj years later drowns herself because she's pregnant, and Ingmar (Pu at 50) visits Father, their roles reversed, Father now a mumbling widower of 82, ridden by hereditary muscular dystrophy, his feet locked into orthopedic boots, his spiritual faith devastated. Young Pu goes on a trip with choleric Father, who must preach at a far village, and Ingmar the Author is reconciled with Father in a magnificent scene out of the climax of De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. A Nobel for Ingmar? He deserves it many times over.