Ismael?

I guess Bergman wanted to stress that Ismael is outside of normal differences, in a way "beyond Good and Evil". There is something Sacred and untameable to him, just like in Art itself.

I see what you mean, although the "molesting" or intrusion is more on a mental plane. In one way, Ismael represents the chaotic forces that any major artist has to face and "bring to be his own" - he's contrasted with Aron (played by the son of the director, Mats Bergman) who is also exploring Art, in a more acceptable way.
I remember an author saying, you're able to become a truly creative writer if you can take the risk of losing control, of losing yourself for a while and emerging on the other side of the tunnel with what you got. Alexander faces that risk here, perhaps for the first time. He gets in touch with the power of his wishes and the magic of Art.

The name Ismael, from the Hebrew Ishmael, means God will hear him. Abraham was, according to scripture, ordered by a messenger of God to name his child this and, later, when Sarah had him throw Hagar and his son out and they were dying of exposure in the desert God heard his cry and saved them. Ismael's character is the personification of wish fulfillment to be delivered from the stark and harsh wilderness that is life under the Bishop's roof. I suspect that the name was chosen before the idea of casting a woman in the role, especially since Yitzchak, or Isak, was the name of Abraham's other son and means he laughed, which is a statement of the pleasure which Yitzchak gave to Abraham upon his birth and may also refer to the pleasure that Isak gives to the Ekdahl matriarch.

The woman, with eyebrows shorn, was perfectly androgynous which probably has separate significance from the name. This may have been a reference to the kabbalistic interpretation of God as having jointly male and female aspects or to the Jewish tradition of angels being androgynous. Aron is an atheist and does not believe in mysticism whereas his brother seems to be savagely steeped in it.

Her appearance as Ismael also created an illusion of not only youth but illness as well, which may be the real reason for her being casted in the role. We are not given a sense of age for either of Jacobi's nephews but Ismael does seem to be the younger of the two. Aron has just played several tricks on Alexander and this may simply be another one of them seeing as they were the children of magicians. Keep in mind that the film is shot from Alexander's perspective so the fantastical elements may be considered more his interpretation of what is happening to him rather than anything else (remember the moving statue in the prologue that had returned to normal after his the maid made noise dumping coal or the vomiting ghosts in the Bishops attic which left no trace when Emilie came for him), in which case we may interpret the scene with Ismael as an fantastical elaboration of his attempts to kill the Bishop with his mind with Fanny earlier in the film. This is supported by the appearance of the Bishop's ghost toward the end as a manifestation of guilt that he sneaked cookies but also from guilt that he had caused the death.

Of course I could be wrong and am not a film scholar.

I think I agree AND disagree with cab1979-1's remark!

I think it's really fairly straightforward: Bergman probably chose to have an ACTRESS play the male role of Ismael specifically so that people would NOT interpret the scene as some sort of homosexual contact between this mysterious older male and the adolescent boy.

I think he wanted there to be a PSYCHOLOGICAL and emotional bond forming between the two youths, and wanted them to stand in this intimate embrace without anybody misunderstanding and thinking that a sexual touching was taking place.

The scene was meant to capture a deep intimacy between the two characters, but not a specifically SEXUAL intimacy--and with a male actor playing the role, especially a role that is pale and thin and delicate and peculiar, an audience was almost certain to misunderstand and get hysterical.

This scene, I think, is in sharp contrast to the terrifyingly rape-like punishment of Alexander by his step-father; THAT scene was clearly MEANT to frighten us with its homoerotic cruelty--and did! For this climactic scene to work, though, such anxieties had to be entirely silenced, and since the film is full of stylized theatrical conventions, and characters who are like actors in make-up and costume, playing roles, Bergman brilliantly elects to employ the old and ultimate role-playing convention, that of one sex playing another.

I think it's important also to parallel this mysterious scene with the one in which Alexander and Fanny pray, impotently, in their locked room, that the Bishop may fall down dead--and are very chagrined that the continue to hear him practicing his flute!

Ismael is showing Alexander how to pray more EFFECTIVELY in this scene--and the irony, of course, is that the man who teaches him to pray is neither Christian nor "good"--as the Bishop, supposedly is--and is not even a man, but a character in a play, played by an actress who is nothing like Ismael. We are forced to "believe" what is happening...and Alexander is made to believe...and, in that belief, he develops a power to take control of his life and shape it.

I'm glad someone's question made me think more carefully about all this.

Very good film.

Yes, I think cab1979-1 is absolutely right. The ambiguous scene in which Ismael holds the adolescent boy in his arms, naked, would undoubtedly have been grossly misunderstood, had Ismael been played by a handsome male actor.

The entire night scene at the home of the Jew, Isak, is shot through with an undercurrent of male tenderness and a certain amount of homoerotic imagery, I think, but I don't think the point is eroticism so much as an all-male "rite of passage" retreat.

I believe that the whole point of introducing the somewhat foreign home of the Jewish antiquarian is to direct our attention to something very fundamental and basic and historical--"deep in the race" as it were. I think this is also the reason for the introduction of the ancient, breathing mummy.

Both the scenes with Aron and the scene with Ismael is filled with a tender closeness between the soft youth and the older man "initiating" him--exposing him to his fears, helping him face and confront what threatens him, etc.

While the actions of the scenes with Aron didn't get so touchy as to mislead the audience, had a male actor played Ismael, an audience could easily be misled into thinking that the point of the scene was that Ismael was engaging in sexual congress with the boy--which isn't really what is going on in the scene: there is a supernaturally deep intimacy, and the boy exposes himself, making himself even more vulnerable than he was in the previous act, when he was exposed to the ferocious anger of the Bishop--but it is not a SEXUAL vulnerability, it is a SPIRITUAL one.

By having a female actress portray Ismael, Bergman skillfully turns the audience's impression AWAY from the possibility of an adult male's feelings of LUST and sexual pleasure--and toward the spiritual union that is taking place between Alexander and the imprisoned poetic spirit hidden in the home of the ancient Jew, singing in the night, and, from his prison cell, capable of immolating a vicious man and ending the nightmare he wreaks on three innocent, child-like creatures--through the power of his artistic vision alone.

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