07.30.07 Ingmar Bergman Died At The Age
Of 89
Ingmar Bergman - Wikipedia
Ingmar Bergman, director who captured
life's emotion, dead at 89
Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic
Monday, July 30, 2007
(07-30) 20:31 PDT -- Over a 60-year career as either
writer or director and usually as both, Ingmar Bergman,
the Swedish filmmaker who died Monday, created a body of
work that's unmistakable and unique in its depiction of
the soul's inner struggle. Using a medium that records
surfaces, he captured the private, the elemental, the
unspoken longings and shattering terrors that define the
real experience of life on this planet. And he did so
with more raw intensity and uncluttered truth than any
filmmaker before or since.
Bergman, who was 89 and died at his home in Faro,
Sweden, was a towering, unsurpassed figure in world
cinema and one of the dominant and defining artists of
the 20th century. His pursuit of truth was unyielding
and lifelong. From his first film to his last, he saw
life as a series of mysterious circumstances, and he
would not yield to any facile attempt to define it.
Instead, he used his camera to record the nature of that
mystery, by cutting through the clutter of hope, worry
and ego to perceive life as it is.
His fascination was, as he put it, "the wholeness inside
every human being," and his subjects were love, death,
God, lust, emotional alienation and cruelty -- basic
emotions and concerns that give the lie to the pervasive
impression of Bergman as a cerebral, austere filmmaker.
He was born July 14, 1918, the son of a Lutheran
minister to the court of Sweden and a wealthy mother.
Bergman's observations of the tensions and infidelities
within his parents' marriage would make a lifelong
impression and form the basis for many of the
relationships depicted in his films.
Though he insisted he was never a bookworm, he studied
literature and art at the University of Stockholm. His
goal was to be a stage director, and in 1944 he became
the manager of the Halsingborg City Theater. For the
next 20 years, even as film dominated his life, Bergman
would always maintain his connection with the stage,
working in theaters throughout Sweden. It was through
the stage that Bergman found most of the remarkable
actors that would form his cinematic stock company:
Erland Josephson, Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Max
von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bibi
Andersson and others.
In 1946, he became a director with the film, "Crisis,"
and over the next seven years developed and honed his
skills as a filmmaker, directing nine films and writing
several more. In 1953, he directed a free-spirited
Harriet Andersson in "Summer With Monika," about the
complications that ensue when two young people fall in
love and the girl becomes pregnant. The shot of
Andersson on an incline in the midst of nature, as seen
from below with her blouse half undone, became an iconic
image of the new European cinema.
But it was with "Smiles of a Summer Night" (1955), a
romantic comedy, that Bergman first came to
international attention. Two years later, "The Seventh
Seal" (1957), in which a medieval knight (von Sydow)
plays chess with death, introduced the filmmaker in a
darker, more questing vein, while providing one of the
classic tableaux of Bergman's oeuvre. "Wild
Strawberries," released later that year, received
widespread acclaim, with its story of an old man's
(Victor Sjostrom) journey of discovery, as he comes to
grips with his personal failings, in anticipation of
death.
During the early '60s, Bergman made three chamber films,
each dealing with the issue of faith, and each requiring
performances of profound emotional intimacy. In "Through
a Glass Darkly" (1961), which won the Academy Award for
best foreign film, Bergman traces the descent of a
lively young woman (Harriet Andersson) into mental
illness. The solo moments, in which Andersson retreats
into a room to commune with the spirits in her mind, are
staggering in their emotional nakedness. In "Winter
Light" (1962), Bergman told the story of a Lutheran
priest (Bjornstrand), who tries, without success, to
dissuade a depressed man (von Sydow) from killing
himself. The last film in the faith trilogy, "The
Silence," created a stir in 1963 for its use of nudity
and its presentation of raw carnality.
Bergman's austerity was only on the surface. His films
were about little besides emotion, and his focused
commitment to depicting emotion made his films more
truly passionate than even those of his Italian
contemporary, Fellini.
"No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as
film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the
twilight of the soul," he once wrote. Beginning with the
faith trilogy and for the rest of his career, Bergman
worked to create a cinema that consisted entirely of
such moments of deep psychological penetration.
Other directors might settle for less. Other filmmakers
might guide an audience through an entire story just to
arrive at some special moment of intensity or
revelation. Bergman found such achievements too small
for his talents. Other directors might entertain an
audience through plot just to arrive at some golden
moment of meaning.
Bergman strived to make films that were all meaning,
that revealed themselves and kept revealing themselves,
peeling away layer after layer, and finding a deeper
truth. In that sense, "Cries and Whispers" (1972), about
two sisters who gather around the death bed of a third
sister, can be seen as Bergman's apotheosis.
Having put away metaphysics with the faith trilogy,
Bergman entered his great period with "Persona," about
an actress who can no longer speak (Ullmann) and a
talkative nurse (Bibi Andersson), with whom she develops
an intense and tortured relationship. The film, about
emotional vampirism and identity, contains one of the
most famous images in 20th century film: Andersson and
Ullmann looking directly into the camera, their faces
pressed together. "Hour of the Wolf" (1968) continued in
this psychological vein, with von Sydow as a man
struggling with his sanity.
"Shame" (1968), about the effect of civil war on two
artists (von Sydow and Ullmann), was Bergman's artistic
response to the Vietnam War. His strategy was simple but
brilliant: He showed westerners going through what the
average Vietnamese citizen was going through -- terror,
anxiety, degradation and confusion.
"Cries and Whispers" was nominated for a best picture
Academy Award but lost to "The Sting." The following
year Bergman created one of his most accessible and
popular works, "Scenes from a Marriage" (1974), starring
Ullmann and Josephson as a suburban married couple with
deep resentments boiling beneath the surface.
In 1976, Bergman was arrested by Swedish authorities for
income tax fraud and suffered a nervous breakdown. He
left Sweden and moved to Munich, where he directed for
the stage and made films, including his masterful
mother-daughter study, "Autumn Sonata" (1978), starring
Ingrid Bergman (in her last film performance) and
Ullmann.
The charges against Bergman were dropped, and he
returned to Sweden in 1981 to film the autobiographical
"Fanny and Alexander" (1983), which became his greatest
international hit. Upon its completion, the 65-year-old
director announced it would be his final film. But like
that great retiree, Frank Sinatra, Bergman found himself
surprised by longevity, and over the next 20 years, he
continued to work. He directed for the stage and
provided the screenplays for a number of films, most
notably for "Faithless" (2000), a semi-autobiographical
film about adultery, directed by Ullmann.
Bergman's vision, which once shocked audiences by
showing the passion underneath the facade of repression,
now seemed reassuring in at least one regard. Rare among
21st century artists, Bergman still believed in human
complexity and value. He believed that the actions of
people mattered. Finally, in 2003, Bergman, still
enjoying good health, did the inevitable -- he went back
to directing, with "Saraband." Starring Ullmann and
Josephson, the film took the characters they'd played in
"Scenes from a Marriage" and told the story of the
ensuing 30 years. The master had lost none of his fire.
Like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in literature,
Ingmar Bergman strove to capture and illuminate the
mystery, ecstasy and fullness of life, by concentrating
on individual consciousness and essential moments. His
achievement is unsurpassed. He is one of the few
filmmakers who can be spoken of in the same breath with
those artists and with other supreme figures of other
disciplines.
Bergman is at the pinnacle. He is in the eternal
pantheon. Without question, Bergman was one of the 20th
century's greatest artists.
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