July 30, 2007: Ingmar Bergman, the hero of my youth, dies

I will never forget when I first saw Wild Strawberries at the age of sixteen. It changed my life because from that day on I wanted to work in the movies. Little did I know that the kind of movies Bergman made would be inaccessible to me just not because of the obvious insufficient talent on my part, but because the American film industry would not allow for Bergman-style film making, only for Woody Allen parodies.

Please put your favorite Bergman film here. I'm not sure of mine, but I will put Scenes from a Marriage for now.

Ingmar Bergman, we salute you. This is the first of many obits.

UPDATE: From the NYT obit - "Critics called Mr. Bergman one of the directors - the others being Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa - who dominated the world of serious film making in the second half of the 20th century."

That's my triumvirate as well.

Comments

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Sawdust and Tinsel. A very tough choice.

Posted by: SteveBrooklineMA at July 30, 2007 11:35 AM

Sawdust and Tinsel. A very tough choice.

Posted by: SteveBrooklineMA at July 30, 2007 11:35 AM

Smiles of a Summer Night

Posted by: Patrick Tyson at July 30, 2007 1:03 PM

Favorite Bergman? Well, it may not be his greatest film, but I'm very fond of The Magic Flute. For me, the combination of Bergman and Mozart and that lovely 18th-century theater are pure magic.

My favorite Bergman story, though, involves a double feature of The Seventh Seal, followed by Wild Strawberries. We saw The Seventh Seal first, and were, of course, deeply moved by Max von Sydow's performance as the Knight. Then, we saw the earlier film; and when von Sydow made his cameo as a gas-station attendant, complete with little paper hat, the audience cracked up. Two wonderful movies, but an unfortunately juxtaposition.

Requiscat in pacem, Mr Bergman, and many thanks.

Posted by: Brown Line at July 30, 2007 1:06 PM

I am sorry to ruin the glorious wake but I didn't like Bergman's portryal of Jews.

Bergman in his your was a member of a Swedish Nazi group and his view of Jews was a bit to shall we say problematic for me.

The on film he made with a Jewish character whose family survived the Holocaust showed him to be still indulginng in anti-Jewish fantasies.

Another film about a Jewish brilliant musician was equally antisemitic.

Posted by: scribe10 at July 30, 2007 2:22 PM

Here is what Begman said about his Nazi past:

"Bergman Reveals His Nazi Leanings As A Youth
8 September 1999 (StudioBriefing)
Eighty-one-year-old director Ingmar Bergman is being quoted in a Swedish tabloid, Expressen, that he was a Nazi sympathizer and admirer of Adolf Hitler in his youth. According to the tabloid, Bergman has given an interview to writer Maria-Pia Boethius for a book, Honor and Conscience, which questions whether Sweden was actually neutral during World War II. In that interview, Bergman reportedly stated that when he first visited Germany in 1936, "The Nazism I had seen seemed fun and youthful" -- even, apparently, when he watched his brother and friends attack the house of a Jew, painting the walls with swastikas. His attitude changed only after the war ended, he confessed. "When the doors to the concentration camps were thrown open, at first I did not want to believe my eyes. When the truth came out it was a hideous shock for me. In a brutal and violent way I was suddenly ripped of my innocence." "

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000005/news

Posted by: scribe10 at July 30, 2007 3:59 PM

I saw The Seventh Seal again recently. Maybe I've seen too many Woody Allen parodies, but it seemed melodramatic and overwrought to me. I always liked Fannie and Alexander, despite its sentimentality, and The Magic Flute, which among other virtues contained what is still the finest performance of the Ice Queen's spine-tingling aria I have ever heard, recorded or live. I thought Scenes From a Marriage was great at the time, but haven't seen it in ages. I wonder if it holds up today?

Posted by: freetotem at July 30, 2007 4:20 PM

Hour of the Wolf, Through a Glass Darkly, Fanny and Alexander, Persona, and my all-time favorite The Virgin Spring

Posted by: shockcorridor at July 30, 2007 5:40 PM

For me, Bergman was to film what Pollock was to painting, liberating and eye-opening; one joyful the other dour, breaking the bonds of conventional expression as dictated by the Manhatten and L.A. elites.

Posted by: Esbiem at July 31, 2007 5:53 AM

The 50s films, in general, seem to me to be his best, with Sawdust and Tinsel and Wild Strawberries topping the list. Things get problematic with the 60s films, though Persona is strange enough to make it worth watching (and possibly re-watching). Some of the 70s films strike me as pretentious, lugubrious, and forgettable, though Fanny and Alexander (1982?) was a great summation to his career.

Very strange that Antonioni has now died within a day of Bergman.

Posted by: Peter G. at July 31, 2007 8:09 AM

Bergman films: full of deep meaning when viewed in ones youth; full of unbearable pomposity when viewed in ones mature years.

Posted by: ricpic at July 31, 2007 1:26 PM

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