Edvard Munch | Norwegian Full Movie | Biography Drama History

In the diaries,
which he is to write later in his life

Edvard Munch often refers
to himself in the third person

using the names "Brandt", "Nanssen"

or "Karlemann".

You can meet me after dinner.

Consumption is widespread
in Kristiania nowadays

especially amongst the poor

and in crowded areas.

How long are your working hours?

From six to six
with an hour's break for lunch.

- How much do you earn?
- Fifteen crowns a week.

The year 1884.

Kristiania, capital city of Norway

with beerhalls, cafés,
several Tivoli music halls

but with no opera, no ballet
and no academy of art.

Bless us, O Lord

and these Thy gifts

which of Thy bounty

we are about to receive. Amen.

Of Kristiania's 135,000 inhabitants

the ruling strata is
the middle-class, the borgerskap

conservative by politics,
Protestant by religion.

The Karl Johan Gate

principle thoroughfare in a city
whose Germanic buildings

reflect the origins
of its main architects.

Here, in the summer,
weather permitting

the Kristiania middle-class
gather for the daily promenade.

I work in a factory too.
I have to be up before five

to make breakfast
for my husband and children.

The promenade upon the Karl Johan
begins around two in the afternoon.

Music is played by a military band.

The social system supported by
the Kristiania middle-class exists

with a national budget
of 41.6 million Kroner

under a criminal code,
which dates from the 1840s.

It has no sickness benefit,
no old age insurance

state-legalised prostitution organised
specifically for the middle-class

and still no reform against
the labour of children in factories.

The promenade upon the Karl Johan
lasts approximately for one hour.

Upon its conclusion the men
retire home or to the beer-halls.

The women retire home.

Many of the poor children
in this city

work in factories,
craft shops and domestic service.

The working hours for these children
in this year 1884

are as long as the maximum
allowed under Norwegian law

for people on penal servitude
and hard labour

and over 1/3rd of the industrial
labour force in this capital city

is made up of boys and girls.

- Do the children work?
- Yes, they're at the factory too.

Eleven hours a day.

- Help yourself.
- I'm too tired.

The death of Laura Cathrine Bjølstad,
mother of Edvard Munch

occurred in 1868,
following a pulmonary haemorrhage.

Sophie has asked me

to write down
my last will for her.

I've called my testament
My Exhortations.

"My dear children.
I am so afraid that in heaven

"I shall miss you who are so dear
to my heart here on earth.

"But, trusting in the Lord,
I shall beg for your souls

"as long as He grants me life."

In 1845, Edvard Munch's grandfather
became insane

from a disease of the spinal cord.

Father walked to and fro
across the floor.

Then he sat down beside Mother
on the sofa.

They whispered to each other
and leaned against each other.

Karlemann looked at them

and wondered why
tears ran down their cheeks.

Mamma's full name

was Laura Cathrine Munch.

Mamma was very weak.

She died a year after I was born.

Isn't it nice to be

together on an evening like this?

"Death and the kingdom of death
were cast in the fiery sea.

"This is another death. If not written
in The Book of Life..."

The Munch family, following
the medical practice of the father

have moved from one crowded house
to another

in the poorer districts of Kristiania.

How long have you had it?

Three weeks.

- Is your throat sore?
- Yes, a little.

Open wide and I'll have a look.

The first symptoms are fatigue
and poor appetite,

an evening temperature
and a hint of a cold.

When the disease develops,
one's temperature rises

and the cold grows worse.

One begins to sweat at night.

Haemorrhage results
in more than 50% of the cases.

Edvard Munch began painting in 1879.

During the past four to five years

he has created
about one dozen canvases,

mostly views of the country
near his home

and portraits of his family.

What happens to those
who believe in God

if they give way to masturbation?

- The unfortunate wretches go mad.
- This applies to everyone.

We all have a sexual instinct.
Everyone masturbates to some degree.

- Women too?
- Women too.

Peter Andreas Munch,
studying to be a doctor

and Inger Munch,
younger sister of Edvard.

What do you do out so late
every night, Edvard?

You weren't home
until the small hours last night.

So you've been spying on me?

I hear when you come home.
I also know by the smell.

At this time in Kristiania

a small core of radical writers,
artists and students

are gathering to protest
the existing order.

Their spokesman, Hans Jæger,
writer and anarchist

who urges his followers to overthrow
bourgeois society with its moral code

and replace it with
a decentralised structure

based entirely upon the
human capacity for love and feeling.

All evil can be traced
to Christianity.

Christianity suppresses
man's vital desires.

What is a "respectable human being"?

One who is not out at night
drinking with people like that.

Be quiet, so that I may
speak with Edvard.

Have you told your parents
you don't believe in God?

I don't want to say I don't.

Why not? Can't you follow
your free will?

When Edvard Munch tells Jæger of
his repeated quarrels with his father

Jæger tells him
to take a pistol, go home

and shoot him dead.

Are you out drinking?

- Drinking? A glass of beer?
- You smell of spirits, too.

That dreadful Jæger you mix with...

he's the Antichrist incarnate.

Jæger's group

referred to by the Kristiania
middle-class as the Boheme

and by Georg Brandes
as "that wild gypsy bunch"

discuss late into the nights
nihilism, anarchy

the works of
Charles Darwin and Karl Marx

the role of Art,
the purpose of existence

and free love.

Nearly all the group are themselves
from the middle-class.

Many, in protest, are women.

If there's no evil
outside Christianity...

Of course there's evil but
it comes from moral concepts.

Today's society would
be happier if people

were allowed to develop
their lusts and desires.

- I understand you.
- Do you? You don't seem to.

You never do what I want.
You follow your own course.

You don't understand me!

Much better than you think.

No, you don't.

We never seem to understand
each other in this house!

In many of Munch's family studies

the faces are turned to the side.

Human contact with the eyes
is avoided.

I'll never be done with you,
since you never do what I want.

- I'm tired of this!
- Now you be quiet!

The children missed school
a lot because of illness

and I tried to study
with them at home.

"Illness, insanity and death

"were the black angels
that kept watch over my cradle

"and accompanied me all my life."

We can sit by the fire
until the water gets hot

before you go to bed.

My sister Sophie

also died from tuberculosis.

She was 15 years of age.

"And I saw the dead
stand before the throne

"and books were opened.
The Book of Life was opened

"and the dead were judged
in accordance with their deeds

"and the sea gave up its dead..."

My sister Laura was very talented.

She learned languages
and mathematics effortlessly.

She got honours in Latin.

But she was born with a difficult
and nervous disposition

so she could never

make use of her education.

It's so dreary at home!
What did you do when you were young?

That doesn't concern you.
At any rate I wasn't out and about.

Munch is to say later of his father:

"When anxiety did not possess him...

"he would joke and play with us
like a child.

"When he punished us, he could be
almost insane in his violence."

You get no inspiration from
those people. And that woman...

It would've turned out better
if I hadn't been scolded at home.

Edvard, I want to talk to you.

Your aunt said that a plate
was broken.

Was it Peter Andreas?

- No, it was Laura.
- No, it was Edvard.

The Bible says that you're punished!
Onan was punished.

It also says that man

must replenish the earth.

One doesn't do that
by masturbating!

That was nice and warm, wasn't it?

Now we'll wash our ears.

Two brothers and three sisters

watching each other
grow into puberty

tended over by their aunt Karen

who, remaining unmarried,
has devoted her life

to raising the children
of her dead sister.

Half of the adults
in this country are women.

They are also citizens but
they are placed under guardianship

and are tyrannised
by men and by society

emotionally, legally and economically.

I must make sure that
there aren't too many bills at once.

In the workplaces where we're
admitted, industries and schools,

we get one-third of the wages
men get for the same work.

Using his reflection in a mirror

4 years ago Edvard Munch painted
the first of his self-portraits.

"These self-trials
from the difficult years."

What sort of work do they do?

They work at putting together
matchboxes.

Their fingers are burned
by the phosphorus.

Many of Norway's older painters
have now returned from Europe.

Some have set up informal academies

such as Christian Krohg, age 32

whose own canvases,
showing a direct concern for life

both in his own middle-class milieu
and in the poorer class

have already pioneered "naturalism"
in Norwegian art.

How much do they earn?

One crown a day.

How old are the children?

The oldest is 14.
The youngest girl is 12.

The most important thing in art

is its own means, like colour.

It doesn't matter what you paint.
You can paint horse dung.

- Then you paint for yourself?
- The colour must be a joy to see.

Fritz Thaulow,
leading Naturalist painter,

whose work reflects
the opposing Norwegian school of art.

Such painters as Thaulow, Gerhard Munthe
and Christian Skredsvig

Hans Heyerdahl, Erik Werenskiold
and Harriet Backer

tend to express a feeling for
the countryside and for people

but often from a less political
and more personal viewpoint.

Who wants to look at horse dung?

The paint can be
an aesthetic pleasure for you.

But the public need not regard it
as an aesthetic pleasure.

He must concentrate on art!

People must undergo
an experience looking at art.

But which people?
The bourgeoisie.

They can afford

to buy works of art.

But what about those
who queue for food?

For Edvard Munch
the artistic problem lies deeper:

somehow to express the tension
growing in himself and in his family.

"To Norway, giants' native land
Let's drink this toast of honour"

In answer to the
10 commandments of Christianity

the Boheme, seen here
singing a patriotic song

has published nine of its own.

Amongst these, the requirements

to never borrow less than 5 krone

to never wear celluloid cuffs

to never fail to make a scandal
in the Kristiania theatre

to never regret

to sever all family bonds

and to take one's own life.

There has been a lot of illness

and death in our family.

Mamma died of tuberculosis
when she was 30 years old

and Granny died of the same disease
when she was 36.

I have a dream of founding
a school for young women

who are morally confined.

Just look at the bourgeoisie

and all the middle-class girls
that suffer from anaemia.

It's a good cause. I mean...
founding a school for them

and teaching them to develop
their feeling for love.

They can become capable of feeling.

The Christian names of the woman
sitting to the right of Edvard Munch

are Andrea Fredrikke Emilie.

She is nicknamed "Millie".

Her age is 24.

For 3 years she has been married
to a Kristiania city doctor

who is 9 years her senior in age.

She has no children.

All the virtuous little misses

will trip down the Karl Johan.

Jæger's vision is to set up
a special school

for the "prim young misses"
of middle-class Kristiania

educate them into proud women

who might walk freely
down the Karl Johan

with all the world knowing
that they love and have lovers.

They would write
Boheme literature, open and frank

about their personal experiences.

Despite the somewhat bleaker reality
of the Karl Johan,

Hans Jæger is also planning to write
a highly personal account

of his own love life

with a frankness hitherto unknown
in Norwegian literature.

He urges Edvard Munch
to express himself in his work

with the same total frankness.

His father walked back and forth.
He kept his hands clasped.

Hans Jæger is himself
currently and publicly

having an affair
with a married woman

Oda Lassen, age 24

a painter, whose husband
is a wood and ice-merchant

8 years her senior.

I consider marriage

to be based on something which
is completely impossible for me.

One is obliged to love
another human being all one's life.

It seems utterly absurd.
No one can order me

to love someone
I have grown to hate.

What do you think of
the Bohemians' conduct?

One might characterise
their conduct as follows:

I consider it to be
extremely unprepossessing

and a distinct danger for
certain easily influenced souls.

I'm not talking about prostitutes
but human beings who can love.

The only thing they seem capable of
is so-called free love.

But rabbits are capable of that too.

"I love you, love you.
Take me, kiss me, hold me and then

"embrace me, hug me
so that I never breathe again.

"Your kiss is so fiery tonight.

"Fever takes you in command.

"Your tears run slowly down
and burn into my hand."

Sigurd Bødtker,
student and poet.

"Do you think that
I've tired of you?

"Oh no! Smile happily
as you did before.

"Stay with me tonight.

"Let my arm
curl close about your waist."

How were sexual matters

dealt with in your home?

They weren't dealt with at all.

Everything was kept secret
around me.

I understood nothing
until it was too late.

Hans Jæger has told Munch
that the human function of sex

is the most important
single process known to man.

It is a source of pleasure,
a wave of sweetness and warmth

through which man is elevated
and made less lonely.

In her testament, Mamma asked
us to be good

and to love Jesus.

I try to obey my lusts.

We have only one life and

we must develop our ability
to feel and to love.

The final passage of Jæger's book
details the burial of its hero:

"Then, they have all vanished
and Jarman lies alone again

"there in the desolate cemetery and
rots under his cover of flowers."

Sophie, shall we sing
a Christmas carol?

"And suddenly something opened

"and we could see far,
far into heaven

"and saw angels float,
quietly smiling."

Four of Granny's eight children
died before they were 16.

The Kristiania Bohemians say,
"Thou shalt

take thine own life."
What are your views on that?

I think it is wrong.

We don't have a right to throw away
the lives God has given us.

They should be used for Him
and our lives do have a meaning.

Tell us about his work.

Edvard Munch is a talented
young painter.

But he's more interested

in painting light and shadow
than social conditions.

In 1884 Edvard Munch paints
this study of a servant girl

partly dressed, seated on the edge
of a rumpled bed.

The sunlight dissolves
the colours and contours.

There is a sense of softness

what Munch is to call later

his "nervous dissolving
treatment of colour."

What sort of a person is he?

Very reticent, almost
aristocratically so

which creates a distance
to the other members of the group.

Amongst the colleagues
of Edvard Munch

are Carl Nordberg

Andreas Singdahlsen

Halfdan Strain

and Thorvald Torgersen.

And Jørgen Sørensen

crippled since the age of seven

who is to die in his early 30's.

We must take part in

what is happening around us

and, what with poverty and need
and children who have to work,

we must join forces with the people

not with the bourgeoisie.

Painters mustn't be led astray
by new ideas...

My Lord!

...but sacrifice themselves
for their painting.

Painting?

Yes, but his painting emerges
from his own person.

He is the one who paints.

So art must express
the subjective view

of the artist on reality.

In 1884, Edvard Munch begins work
on a canvas of his younger sister

a portrait that illuminates
her face and her hands.

The remainder of her body
is shrouded in darkness.

There is no movement
save for the tension

in the slight raising
of the left hand.

Edvard, my brother,

almost died too
from the same disease.

Lord God, I beg you...

The near-death of 13 year-old
Edvard Munch

from a pulmonary haemorrhage

took place on Christmas Day, 1875.

Has all the suffering

in your family affected your faith?

I don't think it's for me
to interfere in God's will.

He loves us and we must be grateful.

"Our Father who art in heaven

"Hallowed be Thy name
Thy kingdom come

"Thy will be done on earth
As it is in heaven."

"A strange man,
dressed all in black

"stood at the foot of the bed
and prayed.

"The air was heavy and black."

Munch's family is puritan.

Everyone who's seen
his father knows that.

When he's with us

he has to go home
for family evening prayer!

"Lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil

"For Thine is the kingdom
The power and the glory

"For ever.

"Amen."

- Have you met his family?
- I've not seen him pray either.

He sits there like a monk!

It was distressing
for the older children

to see so much illness
and death.

Are you sick?

"If anyone worships
the beast's image

"and receives a mark
on his forehead or hand

"he shall drink
the wine of God's wrath

"poured unmixed into
the cup of his anger

"and he shall be tormented
in the presence of the holy angels."

To be free on Sundays I have to work
17 to 18 hours the other days.

It's hard work.

Some of my friends,
after working hours,

make so little that they often
take to the streets.

The prostitutes of Kristiania

many of them from the district
known as "Vika"

are legalised
into a public institution

under the control
of the police health authorities.

Look at prostitution
in Kristiania today.

According to Christian morals
there is no prostitution today.

It's typical that prostitution
is controlled by the police.

But you're for making people
live on prostitution.

No. In my society there is
no room for prostitution.

There are 300 police officers
in the city of Kristiania.

Amongst their principal duties,
the control of venereal disease.

It's the bourgeoisie
who gain from prostitution.

Yet bourgeois morals
do not allow it to exist:

"Thou shalt not commit adultery."

What are your views on marriage?

In my opinion

marriage is an incalculably
important and necessary institution

which undoubtedly
forms the foundation

of our social and cultural structure.

Without marriage, rootless
and chaotic conditions would arise

which in turn, I fear,

might easily lead to anarchy.

In brief, if we want
to maintain peace and order,

it is essential to support
and expand our institutions.

The way society is today,
if one marries and has a wife,

she is just as prostituted
as "the girls from Viken".

Once every week each prostitute must
report to the police for inspection.

Sit there.

The year 1884.

An American inventor called Maxim
develops the machine gun

and the United States receives
Pearl Harbor

as a Pacific naval base.

Those who are prostituted
are excluded from society

by the same people...

Lean back.

...who've put them
in that situation.

That's the bourgeoisie's
love of humanity.

A little wider.
Raise your feet higher.

- Name and address.
- Line Pedersen.

When I ask for your name,
I want your surname first.

- Pedersen.
- Name...

Pedersen.

Because of my illness,
I'm grateful for the girls in Viken

but I don't use them any more
than Mr Average uses his wife.

To me marriage
is legal prostitution.

You can go now.

I assume the present assembly

is well aware of who it is

that uses prostitutes:
the bourgeoisie and the police.

Once, when Grandfather came
home from a business trip,

he found Granny behind
a screen together with

three dead children.

When Edvard Munch first shows
his completed painting, Inger in Black

the conservative press
in Kristiania refer to...

"his almost frighteningly
ugly portrait

"of a lady in black"

thus beginning a critical assault
on his work

that is to last
for at least 15 years.

In May 1885,
Edvard Munch visits Paris.

For the first time in his life,
he comes

face to face with
full-size classical art.

He sees Velasquez
and Rembrandt

and Manet.

Three weeks later,
Munch returns to Norway

and shortly afterwards
takes a boat with his family

down the Kristiania fjord
to the little village of Bone.

Hello.

You live quite close to here?
Then we're neighbours.

- Will you visit me one day?
- I'd like to.

Some ladies are visiting today.
Perhaps tomorrow?

In his diaries, Edvard Munch
refers to this woman

as "Mrs Heiberg".

It is not her real name.

- Aren't you hungry?
- Yes, I am hungry.

Beautiful landscape here.

It's so blue.

The year 1885.

General Gordon dies at Khartoum

Serbia invades Bulgaria

the British annex Bechuanaland

Karl Marx writes
volume two of Das Kapital

and the future General Patton
and D. H. Lawrence are born.

All the things he'd wanted to say!
He felt awkward and afraid.

They walked on in silence.
His cheeks burned.

Later in his life, Edvard Munch
is to express a deep disillusionment

that all his father could do,
as a doctor

for his dying mother and
his dying sister and for himself

was to put his hands together
and pray.

She spent time in bed

coughing into a handkerchief.

Did blood come this time too?

- I kissed you. Are you angry?
- No.

Kissed your neck...

If you're angry, you can beat me.

I'm not angry.

Perhaps you'll let me
kiss your mouth?

I'm in a fortunate position,
married with no children.

One is free when one is married
and has no children.

But what about your husband?

He's nice. He lets me do
as I please.

- Is he as nice as that?
- He's awfully nice.

I probably hurt him
but I can't help it. I have to.

Stand still like that.
Let me see you.

How picturesque
you are in this light.

I'm so restless at night.
I can't sleep.

I have such dreadful dreams.

I sleepwalk. I have such
a longing to come to you.

I do so like the dark.
I can't stand the light.

It should be like tonight.
So mysterious.

I could do the most awful things
in the dark. Anything.

Upon his return to Kristiania

Edvard Munch pays
his first social call

on the home of Mrs Heiberg.

He looked at the worn steps.

He remembered all
he had heard about her,

all the lovers who had passed here
and quarrelled with her husband.

He looked well, he thought.

It was so heavy and dark
and subdued.

He'd heard she usually lay
on the couch all morning.

The light in here was favourable.

Have you seen how the hair
grows out of his ears?

Now he felt shy.

He could find nothing to say.

When they were near he felt
that she waited for him

to throw his arms about her.

We got these last spring.
They were rather expensive.

But he thought it was...
he felt cold.

It was the same shyness.

He longed to be out
in the fresh air.

This is where my husband works.
He's very orderly.

Daddy, what I'm spitting up
is so dark.

Everything has its place.

I made that for him.

- Shall we go out?
- No, I can't.

Perhaps this evening?

It's blood, Daddy.

I don't want to!

He stroked his head.
Don't be afraid, my son.

I don't want to!

What? Don't you want to?
Come here.

Are you crazy?

Don't be so frightened.

What a wretched idiot you are.

A cowardly wretch!

Why are you so set on
becoming a great painter?

You're going to die anyway.
Then you'll be gone.

Using his aunt and a young girl
called Betsy as models

Edvard Munch begins work
on a canvas measuring

119.5 cm by 118.5 cm.

The death of his sister Sophie.

How quiet it is in the forest.

Imagine living here, not alone
but with someone else.

It's so mysterious here.

Shouldn't he sit a little closer?

But he remained where he was,
staring at Mrs Heiberg.

At table Petra said,

"I saw you talk to Mrs Heiberg.

"Wasn't it Mrs Heiberg?"

"Yes," he said carelessly
and reddened.

"She looks dull," his father said.
"She behaves badly to her husband."

People talk so much.

What a ridiculous dream

it has been all these years.

A great painter...
It's better than being a doctor.

But, compared to a king, it's nothing.

And a king is no more
than a tiny microbe.

Munch now begins to add
layer upon layer of texture

with brush, palette knife
and even kitchen blade.

I've started work on
a few canvases

and there is one of them I think

I can get something out of.

I think it is going to be

a good painting. I'm already
very pleased with it.

I've been thinking of you.

In the colours especially,
I can develop myself.

It's something new.
As I said, I think it will be good.

Is something troubling you?

I do have a lot on my mind.
I have worries too.

I have my work to think of.

The beautiful pale face
with its soft full mouth,

half closed eyes and throat.

He had to own it again,

to look into those eyes,
so often hard.

Sophie and Edvard...

I shall soon be leaving you

and I'm so afraid of what
will happen to our family.

That's why I want to talk to you

and I hope you can promise me

to take care of
Laura, Andreas and Inger

so that I can go to heaven
with an easy mind.

- Will you promise me, Sophie?
- Yes, Mamma.

- Will you promise me, Edvard?
- Yes, Mamma.

I feel you in here very strongly.

- Have you had physical relationships?
- Many.

Do you feel that you've fulfilled
yourself as a human being?

I try. But there are
many obstacles.

- Do you achieve satisfaction?
- Now but not before.

When one is born one knows nothing.

One is surrounded by adults
one looks up to,

adults full of words and prejudices.

Particularly in my family
which is very bourgeois.

I was filled with lots
of admonitions.

You mustn't do this. Do that.

Things that I wanted to do

were considered wrong
and conflicts arose.

I've been thinking of you all night.
I haven't slept.

A plate was broken today.

Was it you?

- No, it was Sophie.
- Sophie, did you do it?

No. Edvard.

- Sophie, was it you?
- No. Edvard.

In Jæger's book
'From The Kristiania Boheme'

he describes a scene
with a 16 year-old girl

whom he has met on the street.

"I went down on my knees

"and stretched my hands
with my gaze resting on her eyes.

"Her eyes retained
their shy expression.

"Then at once they grew
large and tender.

"And she drew me up to her,
put her arms about me

"and rested her head
against my shoulders.

"I leaned my head against hers
and kissed her black hair."

Munch writes in his diary:

"They were lying beside each other.

"They didn't talk much.

"'Poor you', she said

"and stroked his wet hair
slowly... slowly."

"She lay there with her head back
and her beautiful throat exposed.

"I kissed it and wanted
to carry her to the bed.

"But the touch of her soft limbs

"took all strength from my arms."

"She lay down on him.

"The moment again when everything
ceased to exist.

"Again and again."

And that married woman -
you shouldn't be seen with her.

Have you got something
besides your work to think of?

I feel much calmer.
I sleep at night too.

That's fine.

You know that I need you.

I'm so happy you came.

What wonderful lips you have.

Munch writes in his diaries
of making appointments to meet

Mrs Heiberg on the Karl Johan

only to have her pass him by with
her husband or a friend on her arm.

Exactly who began to break
the appointments first is not known

but Munch writes of retaliating

by ignoring Mrs Heiberg
when they next meet.

I waited for half an hour
on the Karl Johan.

And when at last she came

she simply walked past.

She scarcely looked at me.

It's a good thing
I don't like her any more.

At about this same period,
Oda Lasson has told Hans Jæger

that she is becoming emotionally
involved with Christian Krohg.

When I try to live according to
what is right for me

and try to find my freedom
and live according to my rules,

the only thing the bourgeoisie
are interested in

is how many love affairs I have.

Only my friends look at
and talk about what I do...

talk about my paintings.

She talked about how
he had not greeted her on the street,

how she was just as good
as other ladies.

Look at Mrs Pettersen who
went with the lieutenant to Paris.

It made him shudder to hear
of her affection.

At first, Munch adds

domestic details to the periphery
of the painting

such as a chair, a glass, a bottle,

a flowerpot on a window
and curtains.

Then, slowly, over the months

he begins to remove these details

concentrating more and more
on the head of his sister.

Munch's affair with Mrs Heiberg
is already deteriorating.

He takes the hand of his sister and
paints it in broad and vague strokes

blurring out its ability
for human contact.

Her hand was large and coarse.
She placed her cheek against his.

He turned his head away

so their mouths didn't meet.

She was too repulsive.

I'm so glad you came.

I saw you out with another man.

Just a friend.

Just a friend?

I'd been waiting half an hour
and you walked straight past!

I was with Lt. Lund.

He's just a friend.

Don't shout.

Everybody can hear.

Damn it, I have hundreds of things
to think of. This can't go on!

I waited for more than half an hour!

- Who was it?
- The banker.

The year 1886.

The French government
presents the United States

with the Statue of Liberty

and equips its own army with
the Lebel smokeless powder rifle.

Perhaps if I tell her
that it's all my fault...

Perhaps then she'll like me...

If I tell her I could die for her...

This is nothing to laugh at!

Don't take it so much to heart.

There are plenty of women
with her qualities.

I find it difficult to know
what life I should lead.

Even if I try to live freely
with men, they don't change.

They consider that
a woman should behave

in such-and-such a way,
which I can't do.

It's long past midnight

and you're out every evening.

Will you answer?

- Don't push me!
- Are you drunk?

What do you do when you're out?

He's just a friend.

This can't go on!

I feel that if ever
I am to find myself

I can't adapt myself
to their standards.

Men I am with,
who say that they are free,

have beliefs too,
which obstruct my freedom.

In fact I don't even know
what my freedom is.

I can't take any more of this.
You know that!

We mustn't speak to each other
like this. We mustn't.

You're a human being
in a society oppressed

by standards and prejudices
in every direction.

Painters can't take notice
of political programmes.

You have to paint something
as you see it.

You can't sit down
and paint details.

If you come from a bedroom
into the living room in the morning

and see everything
as if in a bluish light,

even the darkest shadows,

that's how you should paint it.
As you see it.

Colour means a great deal.
Colour is the mainstay of painting.

Mood as well.

She let herself be drawn closer.
Right up against him.

He held her gently about the waist.
She reached up towards him.

He felt a warm mouth against
his throat, a wet mouth against his

and his mouth slipped in
towards hers.

"A feeling of sweet impotence
poured over my shoulders

"and flowed through my limbs.

"I knelt and pressed her
tight against me

"and kissed her uncovered throat
like one possessed."

Haagen Ludwig Berg, an actor

and a Lieutenant
in the part-time army.

Miss Drefsen, referred to by Munch
as "Miss Rocker"

whom he recently met at a carnival.

Something I don't understand
occurs again and again

and that is that a relationship
starts strongly.

And I know what passion is.

I don't know what love is
but I know what passion is.

The odd thing is that it
begins with the feeling

that all is worthless

without this one person.

We should not have spoken of it.

And gradually, without you noticing
what is happening,

this person becomes
the one who holds you back.

Seeking now to de-emphasise
all unimportant details

by blurring their images

struggling to eliminate
Mrs Heiberg from his mind

striving somehow to impart the
quiver and intensity of his feelings

onto the raw surface
of his canvas

seeking to awaken
a similar mood in the viewer

Munch works and reworks
the head of his sister

detailing hair, eyes and mouth

only to scrape the oil
from the canvas and begin again.

Using his knife, the back
of his brush, the point of a pencil

Munch scratches and scores
deep into the thick oil

as he struggles to remember
and struggles to forget.

She looked into my eyes
with her fair hair

and her pale, delicate skin.

We had a good time
when last we met, didn't we?

- I like you.
- You're sweet.

I've been thinking of you.

The whole time.

- I like you too.
- How beautiful you are.

You're strange.

But you're a fine person.
You're sweet.

What do you think of women

who have extra-marital
relationships?

In my opinion a woman is
and ought to be a defenseless

and beautiful little being,
both in body and soul,

who needs the protection
and security

of a man.

If you think this is funny, it's...

She smiled with her pale lips
and white teeth.

We suit each other, don't we?
You're so strange, Munch.

In December 1885 Hans Jæger's book,
From The Kristiania Boheme

is confiscated within two hours
of its publication.

Four months later Jæger
is found guilty of blasphemy

and "violation of
modesty and morality".

He is sentenced to 60 days in prison

and the permanent banning
of his book.

Aimar Sørensen, Minister of Justice
in the Liberal Government.

I received a copy of the book
from the police in Kristiania

with certain parts underlined.

I telegraphed at once to ask
all the police commissioners

to stop publication of the book.

In this part the lead character
in the book

addresses himself
to a very young girl,

so young that she could be
his daughter.

She is sitting on his knee.

This will give you an idea
of what it's about.

"Listen, I said to her
while I patted her on the cheek.

"Let's have a sensible little chat.

"Do you know what this is?
I had taken a condom from my pocket.

"No, she said.
Well, I'll tell you..."

The following year Hans Jæger
will be forced to flee from Norway

after the Liberal government
imposes upon him

a second sentence of
150 days in prison

this time for sending
300 copies of his book

out of the country to Sweden

under a cover entitled
"Christmas Tales by Hans Jæger".

"...and it doesn't pass
through because...

"And I blew up the condom.
Not even air passes through."

I could read more
but I think that suffices.

Cell no. 1 of the Møllergaten
district prison in Kristiania.

Does imprisonment
influence your work?

No, it has no influence whatsoever.

That good people,
who use literature for diversion,

scream and cross themselves
means nothing. I knew they would.

It provokes the bourgeoisie
who live their cosy, false life.

It provokes them to see free women.

Everything outside the fence
they have raised around themselves

is so terrifying for them

except perhaps in their dreams,
when they indulge in fantasies.

But, because I live openly and freely,

I think they become terrified.

The so-called free women
we're always hearing about,

they can't be quite normal

but they can become normal
if they discover their real capacity.

Half an hour before she came

and she just smiles
as she passes by...

with another man.

Oh, damn!

Finally I finished, exhausted.

I had brought out a lot
of the first impression,

the trembling mouth,

the transparent shine
and the tired eyes

but the colours were not finished.

It was pale and Grey.
The painting was heavy as lead.

At almost the last stage,
Munch attacks the canvas again

scoring deep into the oil

and, in one gesture of
broad sweeping strokes

eliminates the carefully executed
window, curtains and flowerpot

on the right-hand side
of the canvas.

The final distracting details

have gone.

Edvard Munch is aware that
he has made a major breakthrough

in terms of his own art.

But he is not yet aware of
the dimensions of this breakthrough.

At this time, in the mid 1880's

each of the major artists
in the Western World

is still involved in the traditional
presentation of the exterior reality.

Cézanne...

the early work of Gauguin
and, even at this stage...

Vincent Van Gogh.

The difference between these works
and Munch's canvas

is most clearly seen in

the contemporary presentation
of young women:

Auguste Renoir...

Berthe Morisot...

the American Mary Cassatt...

the Norwegian Hans Heyerdahl.

But Edvard Munch's canvas,
with its deeply scored surface,

which has transcended
all exterior reality

to become the first
expressionist painting of "feeling"

in the history of Western art,
is strongly attacked

both by the Kristiania public
and by its conservative press.

The public won't accept
that sort of madness.

When one passes

people stand laughing
at the painting.

Some people always set themselves up
as guardians over others.

In literature they decide
what is decent and indecent.

Says one colleague to Munch,
"I think that your painting is shit."

Asks another,
"What are all those strokes for?

"It looks like it's raining."

A human life is decent

but writing about
human sexual life is indecent.

Another friend tells Munch
that he will go mad

if he continues in this way.

As long as I can write,

I'll combat society and its rules
to create a society

in which literature is free.

Who has the right to stop anyone
writing about his emotional life?

No one!

The best way to judge Munch's picture
is to see it at a distance.

Andreas Aubert, art historian
and critic.

The colours and contours appear
most clearly on cloudy days.

If one really wants
to get a better impression

of this extremely strange painting,

one should look at it like this,
between two fingers.

At some point in this period
of his life

Edvard Munch writes in his diary
of chasing a woman through the streets

whom he believes to be Mrs Heiberg.

I'm faltering. I think I am falling.

But he has been lured
into throwing away his talent

in such a useless way

and encouraged to follow
this path which leads nowhere.

I have no feeling in my legs.
They won't carry me.

Everyone passing looks
alien and strange.

I think they are all staring at me.

My whole body is shaking.

Sweat pours from me.

I have received an anonymous letter
in my capacity as critic

in which the writer claims to see
nothing but meaninglessness

and an attempt to be original
in Munch's work.

All I can say to this person
is that he get himself

a new pair of eyes.

Anyone who can't see that
here we have a great

and genuine talent,
has no right

to judge art at all.

I want life, that which is alive.

What do I care whether
the chair is properly made?

What I wanted to bring out is
what cannot be measured.

The tired movement
in the eyes, in the eyelids.

The lips must seem
to have whispered something.

It must have been painted
by one almost mentally deranged

who sees hallucinations
as if in a fever.

I lay down on a sofa in the corner.
I lay half asleep.

I hated them for looking at me.

It is possible that Munch can speak
in some way or other

to those with a sick emotional life.

But I think it's one of the most
dreadful things I've ever seen.

One would have expected that
a painter who presents his paintings

at a public exhibition,
would respect people's taste

in a totally different way.

Hurt and confused by the attack
on The Sick Child

and by the constant references
to his work as "unfinished sketches"

Edvard Munch now checks the advance
begun by his revolutionary painting

and steps back.

He paints a third self-portrait,
this time with eyes veiled

a pose of defiance,
looking down on the viewer.

A 2-year period of withdrawal
has begun.

January 1888.

By this period, the group
known as the Kristiania Boheme

has begun to disintegrate.

Personal tragedy, alcoholism,
syphilis

scarring relationships,
social isolation

have taken their toll.

The writer Karl Jensen-Hjell
will die of stomach tuberculosis

within a month.

And six more of the young men
at this table

many of them personal friends
of Munch

will not reach the age of 40.

Bertrand Hansen will die
of consumption.

Jørgen Sørensen will die an invalid

and the popular painter Kalle Løchen
will kill himself at the age of 28.

Jæger himself, with the germs
of cancer in his body

will die in 1910,
a pauper and an outcast.

Outside the death room,
a debtor will be waiting

to claim a bottle of whisky.

The summer of 1888.

Edvard Munch rents a cottage
in Åsgårdstrand

near the village of Bone
on the Kristiania fjord.

The affair of Oda Lasson
with Hans Jæger has ended.

Oda Lasson is now married
to Christian Krohg.

At the same time,
with Krohg's knowledge,

Oda is developing the interest
of Jappe Nilssen

age 18, student of French Literature,
friend of Edvard Munch.

Inger Munch is now
a close friend of Sigurd Bødtker.

Laura Munch, age 21,
remains unmarried.

Why do you think
I shouted so angrily

and said I couldn't see you again?

It was because you lied!

It's your inaccessibility
that makes me so angry!

You said I shouldn't come so often.

Yes, but then I didn't know
how much I liked you.

You've forgotten me now.
You have someone else.

I love you.

If I'd only known that you went to
somebody else to punish me.

It's the uncertainty that
makes me so nervous, so furious.

You demand more and more
love from me.

Don't you understand I can't
give you more than I have?

The moment you show
your feelings, it seems like

you want to take something stolen back.

Is it for your art you save yourself?

1888.

August Strindberg writes
Miss Julie.

The pneumatic Tyre and cordite
are invented.

Vincent Van Gogh paints
Sunflowers

The Drawbridge At Arles

and The Sower.

An unemployment demonstration
in Rome is suppressed by the military.

And Wilhelm II

becomes Emperor of Germany.

Whilst he continues
to pursue Mrs Heiberg

at the same time, Munch is trying
to escape from her.

He begins to cultivate
his acquaintanceship

with Åse Carlson, age 19

herself a painter and engaged
to be married to a Kristiania lawyer.

You need a woman
and yet you don't want one.

I like you but we really
can't meet like this.

You follow me everywhere.
You plague me.

Munch writes in his diaries,
repeatedly

of following Mrs Heiberg
to her rendezvous with other men...

Jealousy is possessiveness.

Your jealousy is driving me
to other love affairs.

...of endlessly waiting.

You can't own a woman.

It's impossible.

They kiss each other,
just now, at this moment,

and she says she is fond of him.

Hidden behind the stairs,
she whispers to the lieutenant

the same words as she previously
whispered to him.

It is probable that at this time

Edvard Munch asks Åse Carlson
to marry him.

Do you want to hold my hand?
I'm so alone.

No, not here.

You know that I like you, but...

...more as a friend.

Friendship is...

Friendship is so little.
Life is short.

In this winter of 1888

after heavy drinking with friends
in the country near Slagen

Munch is pushed into frozen water

by an artist named
Palle Dørnberger

and almost dies.

This is very serious.
We should notify them.

On the left is Dørnberger's sister,
Charlotte, age 20.

I don't know where they live.

I feel so young.

I try to see life optimistically.

We have different views on life.

You seem a little gloomy.

You seem weak,
a little tired of life.

A feeling of tension
and loneliness

now enters the canvases
of Edvard Munch.

People appear still...

immobile...

often as though helpless
in the face of nature.

I don't want to kiss you.

They looked at each other
without speaking.

At that moment he had a feeling
that life's greatest happiness

had slipped from his grasp.

There were tears in her eyes.

Munch now prepares himself again
for the public and the critics

often in the introvert company
of Sigbjørn Obstfelder, the poet

and Jorgen Sørensen,
the crippled artist.

April 1889.

Edvard Munch again
faces the public...

and to show exactly where he stands
and what he stands for

exhibits everything
he has ever created:

110 canvases and
innumerable drawings.

Dominating the exhibition
is a huge canvas.

Entitled Spring, it is a re-working
of The Sick Child.

But gone now is
the loose expressive brushstroke

of the earlier work.

Here, there is minute detail:

a strand of hair

a blood stained handkerchief

a carefully outlined bottle and vase

the detailed top of a cupboard

and even the pot of flowers.

Have you seen Miss C.
since she married?

I expect things are difficult for you.

It must feel strange
when you think of her.

Why has Munch's work changed
so much since The Sick Child?

I can only guess something
must have happened to him,

which made him lose faith
in himself and his art,

poor criticism and other factors.

Society accepts
that a man has a mistress

but, if a woman has a lover,
it's quite different.

Later perhaps...
Perhaps we can meet then.

Everything could be different.

We mustn't take it so casually.

If I marry, I must live
for my husband.

A woman often marries
because she needs to be supported.

She can't earn what
she needs to live.

What was she thinking
as she sleepwalked along?

A Madonna-like beauty.

That's the way it goes,
year after year, a sort of trap.

Having now promised
to live together in matrimony

and vouchsafed it before God and
this congregation, I declare you...

Was she now thinking also
of the pale man behind the column?

...and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

What God has joined together,

let no man put asunder.

The affair between Jappe Nilssen
and Oda Krohg is now developing.

Åsgårdstrand, 1889.

She forced her way
between me and my ideal,

my art!

Yet I can't stop loving her.

I can't put up with

any more of her lies!

Her love is poisonous!

She has feelings, too.

I don't give a damn!

Damn it, I said to her,
you're lying on white sheets.

Your body will be deformed
by disease and rot.

You're going to die
ugly and stinking!

I'll laugh while I drink wine
with beautiful women.

My joy will be even greater than
the despair she brought.

I shall laugh, laugh,
laugh!

We wish to thank
the men, women and children

of Oslo and Åsgårdstrand
who appear in this film.

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.

Hurt and angered by
the continuing viciousness

of the Kristiania critics

seeking to escape from the pain
of his personal existence in Norway

Edvard Munch leaves
for France, to study art.

He meets with Emmanuel Goldstein,
a 27 year-old Danish poet

whose own work bears
a disillusioned view on love.

Munch shares a room
with Goldstein in St. Cloud

outside Paris,
on the first floor above a cafe

overlooking the river Seine.

November 1889.

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.

Now that he and his father
can never be reconciled

Edvard Munch begins to re-assess
the values and beliefs

that Hans Jæger has taught 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."

1889.

The Eiffel Tower is built and the
box camera comes into production.

Vincent Van Gogh paints
Landscape with Olive Trees

and Wheat Field with Cypresses.

And Adolf Hitler is born.

In French literature,
the "symbolists" hold

full sway in Paris.

Verlaine, Huysmans,
the poet Mallarmé.

A rebellion against Naturalism

is now taking place
in the French capital.

Amongst the painters

the older generation has already
paved the way for the breakthrough.

Puvis de Chavannes...

Gustave Moreau...

and Odilon Radon

who emphasises the role
played by the sub-conscious

in an artist's work.

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."

Munch now sees the work
of Auguste Rodin in Paris.

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?

Munch now begins to formulate
the artistic philosophy

that he is to pursue
all his life

to understand and express
the purpose of man's existence

of woman's existence

the purpose for their pain,
their love, their despair

links in an endless chain tying
together thousands of generations.

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.

Munch's painting
Night in St. Cloud

a study of despondency in
swirling blue and black silhouette

is a major breakthrough

in parallel to the similar breakthrough
now occurring in Norwegian literature

a subjective and personal
form of art.

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.

September 1890.

As proof of his work in Paris

Edvard Munch submits 10 paintings

to the official State Autumn
Exhibition in Kristiania.

The painting which he calls
Night in St. Cloud

is heavily attacked.

For the second time

Edvard Munch returns
to self-exile in Europe.

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.

And the critic of Aftenposten refers
to Munch's "sick mind" and states that:

"the borderline between madness and
genius is unconscionably narrow."

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.

To the young poets
and writers of Norway

now rejecting Naturalism

the work of Edvard Munch
proves a revelation.

Wilhelm Krag:

"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

Albert Aurier, critic.

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.

Nice, 1891.

Two lovers, their faces
dissolved together, featureless

lurk in the comer of a room.

Perspective has vanished.

Broken, slashing strokes
of thin paint.

The breakthrough has begun.

She was affected,
a liar and a whore!

The affair between Oda Krohg and
Jappe Nilssen is now at crisis point.

Jappe wants his relationship
to be clearly defined.

She, still married,
feels differently.

Jappe is now taking drugs
and has threatened to kill himself.

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.

Seeking a way of peeling down
to the essence of the inner reality

of stripping away needless
detail and perspective

Munch now combines all
the forms of media at his disposal

using pencil, pastel,
oil and charcoal

not separately, but together.

He applies the oil thinly

to permit the canvas texture

to remain a visible component
of the finished work

to emphasise its flat surface.

He allows the preliminary drawings
in pencil and pastel

including the corrections
made in them

to remain in the final work
to show its spontaneity.

On this canvas, to be known
variously as Melancholy

Evening or The Yellow Boat

Munch is attempting,
for the first time in his work

to depict jealousy.

And not merely
the event of jealousy

but its psychology
and innermost quiver.

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.

This canvas marks a major development
in the work of Edvard Munch.

It develops still further
the flat application of colour areas

the lack of perspective

the tension between
space and surface.

It is dismissed by the critics
as a "sketch".

Edvard Munch is now seeking to take
the practical artistic consequences

of what lies behind
the theories of the symbolists.

He wants to realise them
in all-powerful subjectivity

to pass on what he and he alone
experiences from the motif

at the very moment
that he grips it, or...

that he is gripped by it.

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 German Kaiser visits London,
hoping that Britain will agree to

the Triple Alliance
with Austria and Italy.

There is civil war in Chile,
widespread famine in Russia.

Munch now paints and exhibits
a portrait of his sister Inger.

Another breakthrough.

Perspective has vanished.
Space and surface are one.

But this canvas and his work
known as Despair

with the artist's featureless
and blank profile

its large disconnected strokes of
heavy colour running over each other

are heavily attacked
by the Norwegian press as

"an awe-inspiring
gibberish of futuristic art."

For reasons
which still remain unclear

Edvard Munch is now formally invited
by the Berlin Art Association

the Verein Berliner Künstler

to arrange a one-man exhibition
of his work

in their new exhibition hall,
the Architektenhaus

a converted beer-parlour
on the Wilhelmstraße.

On the 5th of November
the exhibition opens

containing many of
Munch's latest paintings

a total of fifty-five canvases.

The Berlin press is here in force

including Adolf Rosenberg,
of Kunstchronik

and a representative from
the conservative National Zeitung.

Here in the Berlin
of Kaiser Wilhelm II

"impressionism"
is still a term of abuse.

The Kaiser himself,
who once referred to Richard Wagner

as "a cheap little conductor,"

is dedicated to fighting
what he calls

"the un-German type of art"

or "art of the gutter."

The entire exhibition is a mockery.

Every painting!

The man must be mad.

The colours are so unnatural.

Within a matter of days,
the exhibition of these paintings

the like of which has never before
been seen in Germany

has broken into a notorious scandal.

We haven't had a revolution!

Just think of people's reaction!
To invite someone who...

Hermann Eschke, sculptor

professor at the Berlin Academy of Art,
seen here in the foreground

has raised a petition amongst
the conservative members of the Verein

to force through
the immediate removal

of Munch's "anarchistic smears."

The conservative majority
is led by Anton Von Werner

a painter of court and
battle scenes for the Kaiser.

Von Werner, strongly attacked
by the liberals

who refer to him as a
"boots and uniform" painter

urges the removal
of Munch's "Schmiererei."

This rubbish doesn't belong here.

In opposition to these conservatives

is the small caucus of liberal artists

amongst them Ludwig Knaus
who argue

not so much for Munch's
freedom of expression

as against the social incorrectness
of the Berlin Academy

for throwing out an invited guest.

Amid reports
of anarchist activities in Paris

and rising beer taxes in Bavaria

the German newspapers headline
"the struggle taking place

within the Verein."

We must be united
on objective grounds.

That's nonsense! No!

We'll withdraw from the Society

if the exhibition is closed down.

On the 11th of November,
a conservative bloc carry

the vote to close the exhibition

and Munch is ordered
to remove his "Schmiererei."

The Kunstchronik charges
Edvard Munch

with "brutality, crudity
and baseness of expression."

The National Zeitung accuses
"this man E. Blunch"

of selling himself body and soul
to the French Impressionists.

Edvard Munch has arrived
in Imperial Germany.

One critic even states
that Munch knows next to nothing

and should only exhibit

if he is in dire peril
of dying of starvation.

I went to the Rotunda for a laugh.

Theodor Wolff,
editor of the Berliner Tageblatt.

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.

Munch, choosing to be true
to his vision

has painted the clouds
over the Kristiania fjord

as he saw and felt them.

He argues that if he experienced
clouds as blood

during an agitated mood

then that is how
he should paint them.

Accompanied by his
"anarchistic Schmiererei"

Edvard Munch moves into
the room of a hotel

in the Charlottenburg
district of Berlin.

Memories and images
stored for over 20 years

are about to break forth.

All that is needed
is one final catalyst.

On the corner of Neue Wilhelmstraße
and Unter den Linden

is a tavern, serving
over nine hundred kinds of liquor

and nicknamed "The Black Pig"

a meeting place for writers.

Amongst them, now living in Berlin,
August Strindberg

who holds court in "The Black Pig",
where, in the words of a historian

"he is virtually a tourist attraction
for the intelligentsia."

Laura Marholm, journalist

who with her husband has given
financial aid to Strindberg

a source of growing resentment to the
poverty-stricken Swedish celebrity.

With Strindberg in this room

are as many Scandinavians
as there are Germans.

Christian Krohg, who has accompanied
his wife Oda to Berlin

where he watches
her intense love affair

with the Norwegian author
Gunnar Heiberg.

Sigbjørn Obstfelder and,
next to him, Bengt Lidforss

Swedish botanical student

recently engaged
to a 12 year-old girl.

Hermann Schlittgen,
painter and engraver.

In this room, a centre
of the literary storm

that is to sweep over Europe

are those who have already
rejected Naturalism

who are now seeking
an artistic or literary means

of presenting the interior
macrocosm of the soul

peering into
the darkest abyss of man.

Here, in the words of a historian

ideas change hands
"faster than mistresses."

Here the writers feed upon
the staccato genius in their midst

August Strindberg,
in self-exile from Sweden

where he has been condemned
as a blasphemer

where educationalists clamour
for the suppression of his books

and where he is spat upon
by parents in the streets.

Within this room, all is discussed:

art, black magic, spiritualism,
the philosophy of Nietzsche

the erotic work of
the Belgian etcher, Felicien Raps

such as Thievery and
Prostitution Rule The World.

Richard Dehmel, currently writing
a cycle of poems about sex

their purpose to raise sexual love
to the level of religious mysticism

shortly to be prosecuted

because of his description
of a nun masturbating.

Stanislaw Przybyszewski,

Polish-German author
and medical student

involved with the occult,
studies satanism

who rewrote the opening
of the Gospel of St. John to read:

"In the beginning there was sex..."

And Edvard Munch

famous overnight
as the centre of a storm

that has rocked the German art world
to its very foundations.

Already he has received invitations
to exhibit in Düsseldorf and Cologne

and he has been prevailed upon
by the Berlin intellectuals

to make his home here in Germany.

Of all the men in this room

two will have the most marked effect
upon the work of Edvard Munch.

Stanislaw Przybyszewski
who is to later believe that

his passionate interpretation
of Chopin

will have more meaning
for German literature

than all his writing

and August Strindberg, divorced

separated from the children
he adores

who presents the "Black Pig"
with a triple credo:

woman the inferior

woman the whore

woman the man-weakening vampire.

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.

Amongst the group in "The Black Pig"
is Laura Marholm's husband

the Swedish poet, Ola Hansson

who has had to leave his country
following the reaction to his publication

of a collection of short stories

describing man's split
emotional sex life.

Ola Hansson tells Munch that
he suffers from a fear of life

constantly seeing "Death...

following him like his own shadow."

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.

Dagny Juel, age 26, daughter of
a Norwegian country doctor

who has come to Berlin
to study the piano

and who has been introduced
to "The Black Pig"

by her family friend,
Edvard Munch.

On the other hand, she feels
a sort of instinctive sympathy

for beggars, braggarts,
liars and dogs,

especially mangy ones.

Under the eyes of Przybyszewski
who is in love with her

Dagny Juel now becomes
the mistress of Edvard Munch.

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?

At this time, Edvard Munch
is beginning to suffer

from agoraphobia,

a fear of open spaces.

He walks close to walls
and dreads to cross an open square.

I do as I please.

The year 1893.

There is a general strike in Belgium

serious riots
suppressed by the police.

Hermann Göring is born.

And Peter Iljich Tchaikovsky dies.

Not the slightest artistic tradition

or affinity with
accepted artistic ideals

can be found in Blunch
or his colleagues.

Here, in the Germany
of Kaiser Wilhelm II

Edvard Munch begins work on the
subjective image of a naked woman

seen as from the viewpoint of
her partner in sexual intercourse.

Around her head,
the halo of a Madonna.

For his exterior model,
Munch uses Dagny Juel.

Dagny Juel...

described by Strindberg as...

"tall, thin, haggard
from liquor and late hours

"speaking with a drawling voice
broken as if by swallowed tears

"with the figure of a Madonna and
a laughter that drove men insane."

Strindberg has discussed with Munch

fear and distaste
at the idea of his sperm

coming in contact with
the sperm of another man

in the vagina
of their common mistress.

He believes that this meeting
of similar poles

sensual contact with another male

is so unbearable and horrible

that the normal man would often
even prefer death.

"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.

1893.

An army bill increases the size
of the German armed forces.

An anarchist bomb explodes in
the Paris Chamber of Deputies.

When he breathed it felt as though
his chest had come loose

and all his blood poured
through his mouth.

Jesus Christ!

Strindberg has posed to Munch
the question, "What is jealousy?"

and has answered

"Jealousy is not
the fear of losing

"but the fear of dividing."

Przybyszewski feels differently.

He believes that no man
should possess another human being

and has even offered the key
of his apartment to Strindberg

so that he may avail himself of
Przybyszewski's common-in-law wife.

Strindberg has declined.

Przybyszewski tells Munch

that he believes sex
to be life's basic substance

and the inner essence
of individuality

the ever-creating, the transforming
and the destructive.

Sex created the brain,
says Przybyszewski

but between them there will
always be a constant fight

that will inevitably lead
to death and destruction.

Three years from now, in 1896

Dagny Juel, accompanied
by Stanislaw Przybyszewski

will travel to the Russian city
of Tiflis to meet with a lover

who will shoot her through the head

and then himself commit suicide.

I feel better now.

May I look out the window?

Working simultaneously
on themes of love

pain, despair and death

searching for the ever-elusive
artistic solution

to the expression of his feelings

Edvard Munch turns now to tempera,

the use of egg-white
to roughen the quality of the oil

to flatten and condense the image.

He begins a new canvas
depicting the death of his sister

one of a series to deal with the
grief and isolation of his family...

of himself.

God bless you, my child.

Munch depicts himself,
his brothers and sisters

at the same age as if these events
were happening in the present.

- 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.

Munch paints his Madonna with
what he calls "a corpse's smile"...

the moment of conception.

"Life shakes the hand of death."

Is it the whole night
or only half an hour?

The night.

30 marks, please.

At some time in this period,
Strindberg

who is now courting
an Austrian woman living in Berlin

takes Dagny Juel as his mistress.

Referring to himself as "Andersson",
he writes in his notes:

"Andersson liberates her from the
anxiety of a disorderly way of living.

"The hollow cheeks are filled out
with fiery blood.

"The creator admires his creation.

"The painter is ignored
and accepts it without protest."

Good you have time.

It's much better.

Thank you.

"A kiss, a kiss is not a sin."

Munch begins work on a canvas

showing a woman bent over
the neck of a weakened man.

He says of this painting that
"in reality, all it is

"is a woman kissing a man
on the nape of the neck."

He calls the painting
Love and Pain.

But to Przybyszewski,
the work depicts Woman

sucking the strength from a man.

He re-titles the painting
The Vampire.

Munch lets the new title stay.

I need you.

The woman known as Mrs Heiberg

divorces her husband
on the 4th April 1891

and remarries a month later.

Her ex-husband, the doctor,
dies shortly afterwards.

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.

February 1893.

Edvard Munch is in Copenhagen.

The first exposure of his work
in Denmark.

It is his 15th exhibition.

Munch uses the occasion to study

the effect of his paintings
placed next to one another

in the order of
their developing theme

for now he is planning

and working on

a whole cycle of paintings
that will link together

a Frieze of Life,
as Munch calls it

to unfold the very meaning

of nature and existence.

It's so calm.

May I kiss you?

Munch returns to Berlin.

The Danish critics echo
the Norwegians and the Germans:

"Some of the pictures
are shockingly bad."

"There is little hope that
the artist's talent will develop."

Do you sleep better now?

"The disease is almost
certainly incurable."

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.

By the early Spring
Strindberg writes of Dagny Juel:

"When the spark has leaped
and the currents are neutralised

"he discovers that she is ugly.

"When he remembers
how she has offered herself

"he is overwhelmed
by revulsion for her body."

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.

Strindberg first offers Dagny Juel
to the student Lidforss

who is known to be in love with her.

But Lidforss tells Strindberg
that he cannot accept.

He is suffering from syphilis.

Strindberg then turns to
his next alternative

Doctor Ludwig Schleich,
a habitué of the Black Pig.

Schleich accepts.

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!

Przybyszewski says of this painting:

"A man broken in spirit

"on his neck the face
of a biting vampire."

"There is something terribly silent,
passionless about this picture.

"The man spins around and around,
powerless.

"He cannot rid himself
of that vampire nor of the pain

"and the woman will always sit there,
will bite eternally."

In his canvas
Death in the Sickroom

contrasted to the detailed, staring
face of his younger sister Inger

Munch depicts himself

turned away, in profile,
his face a blank mask.

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.

At this period

as he paints Mrs Heiberg
standing outside her summer cottage

her shadow looming large

the psychic and sexual tension of
Edvard Munch is at an unbearable peak.

Constantly his nerves
are at breaking point

as he struggles to find
the artistic solution

to expressing his feelings.

He is isolated from his family,
separated for ever from his father.

His work is rejected
in his own country.

He watches his mistress, Dagny Juel,
pass from one hand to another.

His bronchial condition is worsening.
He is drinking heavily.

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.

He believes that he is going insane,
that he is about to die.

The affair between Dagny Juel
and Ludwig Schleich

lasts, again, for only two weeks.

Strindberg then agrees to help
Schleich pass Dagny on to another man

and now offers her
to Stanislaw Przybyszewski.

Strindberg himself is in good spirits
at this time.

He is about to leave Berlin
for his marriage.

He declares himself to be in love

and glad to be rid of
the "wretched woman DJ."

You're disfiguring yourself!
You'll die. Ugly and stinking.

And I, I shall drink wine
with exultant women.

I shall laugh

even more!

At this time in Berlin,
a party is held in "The Black Pig."

Accompanied by the sound of the sea
Oda Krohg and an ex-lover of Strindberg

dance in the centre of the room
with crab-tails placed in their hair.

With Sigbjørn Obstfelder,
Edvard Munch briefly visits Kristiania.

At the same time, in Berlin

Dagny Juel is marrying
Stanislaw Przybyszewski.

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."

In late 1893, using pastel
on a base of cardboard

Edvard Munch creates The Shriek.

December 1893. A gallery on
the Unter den Linden in Berlin.

Edvard Munch's 24th exhibition.

Amongst the works exhibited
are 5 of his Life Frieze

listed in the catalogue
under the title

Studies for a Series on Love.

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.

In the wards of Oscar Kokoschka,
the Austrian Expressionist painter

"It was given to Edvard Munch's
deeply probing mind

"to diagnose 'panic dread'

"in what was apparently
social progress."

One member of the public
writes in his catalogue

that the exhibition is
"the world's greatest swindle.

"Junk! Take it all
to the insane asylum!"

And Munch himself has written

in pencil in the red sky
of The Shriek

"Could only have been painted
by a madman."

1894.

A canvas entitled Anxiety.

The faces of Edvard Munch

Stanislaw Przybyszewski
and Dagny Juel.

Here, as in "The Shriek"

the individual is in the grip of
something far beyond his control.

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!

Munch has now completed
another three canvases:

a woman pressed into
the embrace of Death

the gaunt face of Przybyszewski
above his skeleton arm

and Dagny Juel, poised...

inviting.

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.

Przybyszewski has himself
published a short novel in which

the hero gives his wife to an artist

and luxuriates in the feelings
of hate and jealousy

that he has aroused in himself.

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.

August Strindberg describes Munch's
canvas The Kiss as

"the fusion of two beings

"the smaller of which,
shaped like a carp

"seems on the point
of devouring the larger

"as is the habit of vermin

"microbes, vampires
and women."

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."

Munch creates yet another version
of Melancholy.

"Blank against the twisting,
sinuous shore of Åsgårdstrand.

"two rocks, like the black eyes
of a snake

"stare at him."

I can't go on.

A predominant characteristic
of Munch's work in this period

is the lack of contact between
the human beings in his paintings.

People remain isolated

even though in direct
physical contact.

The sensory organs disappear

faces become blank

hands are clubs or curved hooks

as the features of human contact
are eliminated.

For Edvard Munch himself

human contact
is becoming a matter of fear

fear of his own ego
dissolving into the psyche

and into the body of another.

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.

Working in hotel bedrooms,
on park and railway station benches

in bars and restaurants

using the small piece of copper
which he carries in his pocket

Edvard Munch begins
his first engraving

the theme which he captured
the prior year on his canvas

Death And The Maiden.

A naked woman,
stretched on tip-toe

presses her full body
into the embrace of Death.

Towards the end of the 19th century

a new interest has developed
in the medium of the graphic.

In Germany, Munch

here in the company of a professor
of graphic art at Berlin University

studies the latest trends
in copper engraving.

In particular, the widely
published etchings

of the German Max Klinger.

Here his cycle of eight developing
studies entitled "Eine Liebe" -

A Love.

The technical brilliance
of Klinger's work

its painstakingly studied detail,
its use of black and white masses

its fashionable though
superficially treated themes

of eroticism and despair,
intrigue Munch

and reinforces his desire
to treat a similar cycle

on afar deeper
and more expressive level.

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."

Munch writes in his diary:
"Ill, ill and lonely.

"He wanted to put his tired head

"on a soft lady's breast

"smell her perfume,
hear her heartbeat.

"Feel her soft curved breasts
to his cheek.

"And, when he looked up,
meet her look above him

"and then he would close his eyes
and feel her warm deep look

"and her soft, lustful smile.

"And then she would stroke
his hair softly downwards...

"downwards..."

In Munch's diaries
appear these words:

"I greeted.

"The girlfriend laughed a little.

"The pale one smiled a bit, too.

"May I introduce myself? Painter.

"I take the liberty...
I want to paint you.

"I bought half a bottle of port
and went to the studio with them."

"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?

"They stopped.

"Brandt looked at the large house
sombre-looking between the trees.

"The maids had gone to bed.

"Then it was as if he was supposed
to say something

"but was unable to find the words.

"'I have to go,' she said slowly.

"He put out his hand
and took hers without shaking it.

"'Goodbye then,' he said and left."

"She was a swan.

"I lived down in the water
among slime and horrible animals

"remembered a time
when I lived up there.

"I forced myself up,
reached for the swan.

"Couldn't reach it.

"I saw my face, terribly pale.

"I heard a shriek and I knew
it was I who had cried.

"The swan was far away."

During the two years of 1893
and 1894, sometimes alone

sometimes with the help of
Adolf Paul, biographer of Strindberg

Edvard Munch lists, labels,
checks, crates and dispatches

upwards of 50 or 60 canvases

to each of nearly
a dozen major exhibitions:

Dresden, Breslau, Hamburg,
Berlin, Frankfurt.

He travels hundreds of miles
by train.

Sorrow... Sunset...

Countless hotel bedrooms

often working on three or four
canvases simultaneously

and always under attack.

In July 1894, at the age of 31

having painted for 14 years,
created some 80 canvases

organised 30 exhibitions

Edvard Munch receives his first
serious recognition as an artist

500 miles from his own homeland.

The publication in Berlin
of four essays

by the influential art-critic
Julius Meier-Graefe

Stanislaw Przybyszewski

and two other German critics.

The first evaluation
of Edvard Munch's art

and its importance
for the contemporary age.

Constantly seeking other forms
of graphic art

Munch moves to etching and aquatint

the use of acid to bite the image

and a base of cooked resin powder
to give added texture.

His theme, a man comforting
a crying woman.

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.

At this time, Strindberg is in Paris

already separated from his wife,
living in the utmost poverty

engaged in chemical experiments
trying to make gold from copper

about to begin the writing
of his short story Inferno

an autobiographical study
of psychological collapse.

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."

1894.

President Carnot of France
assassinated.

Alfred Dreyfus arrested.

In Sicily, food riots,
martial law

suppression of the Italian
socialist parties.

Japan declares war on China.

"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."

October 1894.

The first exposure of Munch's work
in Sweden, the land of Strindberg.

With one exception,
the critics are merciless

even discovering points of similarity

in the erotomaniac drawings
of the mentally deranged.

Edvard Munch returns to Berlin.

The Swedish Academy officially
repudiates Munch's work, stating

that the Academy allies itself
with "the verdict of rejection

"of which Edvard Munch has become
the object on the continent."

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.

Much of the tension in Edvard Munch
during these years

is his search for a "knot"
to tie together

the disparate themes
of his Life Frieze

to explain and clarify
and unite them.

Now, a theme emerges.

The triple aspect of Munch's
feelings for Woman:

the Temptress, the Devourer

for whom he has both a revulsion
and a deep longing

the Virgin, the Innocent

for whom he has respect

the Giver of Life, the Mother,
the Sacrifice

for whom he has compassion.

The complexity

of Munch's suffering, of his art

is that each of these three images,
for him...

are one and the same woman.

April 19, 1895.

Munch's younger brother Peter Andreas
marries Johanne Kinck

age 22, daughter of a headmaster

with, it is said,
the mental age of a girl of 12.

Munch writes: "He should not
have gone through with it.

"From father's side of the family
we inherited poor nerves.

"Then there was mother's
lung weakness..."

The year 1895.

H. G. Wells writes
The Time Machine.

Sigmund Freud founds
psychoanalysis.

Italian troops advance into Ethiopia.

And Edvard Munch creates
a new lithograph

Self-portrait with Skeleton Arm.

"Then I thanked her shortly
and accompanied her to the gate.

- "'Won't you come inside?'
- 'No, thanks, it's getting late. '

"She looked a little bit
disappointed, I thought.

"I went home quickly,
rather satisfied with myself.

"I felt I had got a small revenge."

"A lady dressed in black.

"He quickly walked up
the street after her.

"He started to run, ran like mad,
pushing people away.

"He stopped, short of breath.
He was ashamed, running like that.

"Fool. It wasn't her after all."

"At times the blood ran
down the sheets.

"His father was on his knees
in front of the bed praying.

"His hands stretched upward.
His voice husky from crying.

"'Lord, I beg you.
I demand from you.

"'Don't let him die today.
He is not prepared.

"'I beg you, have mercy on us.
Let him live.

"'He will always serve you.
He has promised me that. '"

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.

October 1895.

The Blomqvist gallery in Kristiania.

Munch exhibits 40 works.
Amongst them, The Life Frieze.

The exhibition is heavily attacked.

The newspaper Morgenbladet states:
"so much nonsense and ugliness...

"dreadful... low and repulsive...
grimacing and confused...

"crude and shrieking hideousness."

The newspaper Aftenposten

attacks The Life Frieze as being

"a number of sensual fantasies,
the hallucinations of a sick mind."

A boycott of the building is called for
and the police are summoned.

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.

Edvard Munch returns to Berlin.

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.

In late November,
Peter Andreas Munch

now married for six months,
writes to his family

"I can't stand life anymore..."

and 3 weeks later is dead.

Many of Munch's contemporaries
now rally to his support

realising that his art
is probing into

a new and revolutionary
understanding of the human psyche.

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.

Working on the theme
of the staring, isolated faces

in his oil on canvas Anxiety

Munch now turns to the final of the
graphic arts that he is to conquer:

woodcut.

Already he has seen the use
made by Paul Gauguin

of the grain and texture in wood

the stark and simple
outlines of the blocks

cut in Tahiti.

The Japanese use

of differently coloured
contours of wood.

The instant impact in the use

of primary white and black

by the Frenchman Paul Valloton.

In this field Munch perhaps
surpasses all his other work.

He invents a method of
cutting out individual pieces of wood

shaped to various contours
in the picture

inking the pieces
in their different colours

and then fitting them
back together again

like a jigsaw, ready for printing.

He uses the grain in the wood

and takes again the familiar themes
of the Frieze of Life

reducing them to
an essential force and simplicity

for which he has been searching
for 10 years.

Seeking for more effective ways
of spreading

his philosophy of life and death

constantly fighting against
what he sees as

the suppression of
his own personality

Edvard Munch turns more and more

to graphic art
with its multiple prints.

Within one year
his graphic output has tripled

as he turns from dry-point
to etching to wood-cut

to lithography
in black and white and colour.

In a letter written by
the nurse of Peter Andreas Munch

were these words:

"He asked me to read a little
to him on the Friday afternoon.

"He wanted Christ's speech
from the summit.

"With each attack of suffocation
I had to give him a shot of naphtha.

"In the last attack three shots.

"On the Saturday night, we put him
in his bridegroom clothes."

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.

For the next 14 years,
Edvard Munch is to lead a life

of increasing pain and isolation.

His illness, aggravated by smoking
and alcohol, is to grow worse.

He is torn by the themes
of jealousy and suffering

by the thought of
his own death

and his descent into a literal Hell.

The conservative press is to
continue its attacks on his work

and other than for periods
spent at Åsgårdstrand

where he once met
with Mrs Heiberg

he is to spend most of 14 years

travelling endlessly
from one country to another.

He is to paint a major theme,
The Dance of Life

in which the couples
do not see each other.

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.

Though most of his work is to deal with
the problems of human communication

Munch is to try again
with two more relationships

one of which will result in
physical and psychic injury

And following a nervous breakdown,
he will finally place himself

into a psychiatric clinic
in Copenhagen in 1908.

At the same time,
Munch is to be notified

that he has been made a Knight

of the Royal Norwegian Order
of St. Olav.

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.

Edvard Munch's aunt, Karen Bjølstad

will never marry.

His sister Inger will never marry.

Laura Munch will withdraw
deeper into her isolation

and will spend a brief period
in a clinic.

Oda Lasson is to break with
with Gunnar Heiberg

and to become the lover
of a Norwegian doctor

while remaining married
to Christian Krohg.

Åse Carlsen will remain married

until her death at the age of 40.

Dagny Juel, accompanied by
Stanislaw Przybyszewski

will go to Tiflis
to meet with a Russian lover

who will shoot her through the head.

The woman known as "Mrs Heiberg" will
divorce for the second time in 1911.

She and Edvard Munch
will never meet again.

"I felt as if there were
invisible threads between us.

"I felt as if invisible threads
from her hair

"still twisted themselves
around me.

"And when she completely
disappeared there, over the ocean

"then I felt still how it hurt,
where my heart bled

"because the threads
could not be broken."