Edvard Munch

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