Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

[tryavna]

It scares me, but I sort of agree with Barmy about Smiles of a Summer Night. I guess I just don't see its charm, but it's one of my least favorite Bergmans that I've seen. It's the kind of movie that the French, especially Renoir, did so much more successfully.

[Eclisse]

A little 2 page tribute to Bergman and Antonioni on EW. Quotes from Scorsese and Elliott Gould:

Scorsese

Bergman was a giant;Antonioni was another.Both of them cast very,very long shadows.

Elliott Gould

Ingmar was always digging.He told me that, up until that time,his two best films were Persona and Winter Light.And the message in Winter Light is that even if there's nobody on the congregation,you must continue to deliver the message...That's what he's doing right now

[Michael]

I actually prefer Smiles of a Summer Night a lot more than Persona and Hour of the Wolf. It's full of charm and bitter humor, capturing the laziness of a summer day better than any other films, except for Dazed and Confused and Meatballs. It's sort of Bergman's Rules of the Game with all the swinging but of course it's very slight if sitting next to Renoir's opus. Plus a suicide attempt that turns out ultimately funny and romantic. I love that dinner gathering with the mom. And the windmill. It's a very beautiful, fun and simple film that never fails to leave me with a smile.

[jorencain]

I actually prefer Smiles of a Summer Night a lot more than Persona and Hour of the Wolf. It's full of charm and bitter humor, capturing the laziness of a summer day better than any other films, except for Dazed and Confused and Meatballs. It's sort of Bergman's Rules of the Game with all the swinging but of course it's very slight if sitting next to Renoir's opus. Plus a suicide attempt that turns out ultimately funny and romantic. I love that dinner gathering with the mom. And the windmill. It's a very beautiful, fun and simple film that never fails to leave me with a smile.

=D> I second that.

[Mr Sausage]

However, it must be said that Bergman's "style" is middlebrow, bourgeois and, even, suburban.

At least he escapes the middling banality of your statement.

Adultery is HI-LARIOUS!!!

Yes, it is, and has been since the late sixteenth century. Cuckoldry is one of the major themes of stage comedy (that and cross-dressing).

I do like Smiles of a Summer Night, I think it has a pleasant charm to it; but speaking of Bergman and the stage, the script--specifically its structure, themes, character-types--is heavily infused with theatrical convention, is indeed lifted from the tradition of stage comedy. Don't confuse that with saying it's a filmed play, it is not. But its debts to the theatre are large and obvious.

[Barmy]

Yes, it is, and has been since the late sixteenth century. Cuckoldry is one of the major themes of stage comedy (that and cross-dressing).

Umm, that's why it is so BORING now. It's been done and done and done. To death.

[tavernier]

Yes, it is, and has been since the late sixteenth century. Cuckoldry is one of the major themes of stage comedy (that and cross-dressing).

Umm, that's why it is so BORING now. It's been done and done and done. To death.

Hasn't everything?

[Barmy]

No. Mutilating your labia with a piece of glass has only been done once.

[MichaelB]

No. Mutilating your labia with a piece of glass has only been done once.

And you think this would have improved Smiles of a Summer Night?

[Barmy]

Yes. It might have made it funny.

[Mr Sausage]

Yes, it is, and has been since the late sixteenth century. Cuckoldry is one of the major themes of stage comedy (that and cross-dressing).

Umm, that's why it is so BORING now. It's been done and done and done. To death.

I might buy that if I thought you were actually aware of its tradition before today.

[tavernier]

Woody on Bergman in Sunday's NY Times.

[portnoy]

Can you post it for those of us who don't have TimesSelect?

[tavernier]

Can you post it for those of us who don't have TimesSelect?

The Man Who Asked Hard Questions
By WOODY ALLEN

I GOT the news in Oviedo, a lovely little town in the north of Spain where I am shooting a movie, that Bergman had died. A phone message from a mutual friend was relayed to me on the set. Bergman once told me he didn't want to die on a sunny day, and not having been there, I can only hope he got the flat weather all directors thrive on.

I've said it before to people who have a romanticized view of the artist and hold creation sacred: In the end, your art doesn't save you. No matter what sublime works you fabricate (and Bergman gave us a menu of amazing movie masterpieces) they don't shield you from the fateful knocking at the door that interrupted the knight and his friends at the end of “The Seventh Seal.â€

[portnoy]

Thanks

[Oedipax]

Can you post it for those of us who don't have TimesSelect?

Speaking of which, thankfully this will apparently be a thing of the past in the near future. The NYT is planning on offering all their content online for free, including their archives. Wise decision, I think.

[duane hall]

and I am sure he would have been only too glad to barter each one of his films for an additional year of life. This would have given him roughly 60 more birthdays to go on making movies; a remarkable creative output. And there's no doubt in my mind that's how he would have used the extra time, doing the one thing he loved above all else, turning out films.

Well that sorta thing could go on forever.

[Oedipax]

Bertrand Tavernier gets involved in the Rosenbaum-Bergman-Ebert debate.

[MichaelB]

I liked his sideswipe at Truffaut about attacking British cinema - Tavernier is one of the most scarily knowledgeable experts on the subject that I've ever come across (he and Scorsese would give most British scholars a run for their money!)

[duane hall]

I wish Rosenbaum's original op-ed was argued more carefully (and written less hastily). As it is, some pointless assertions (a bizarre number of them, really) detract from his intent, to which I'm sympathetic.

Anyway, most of us here know that Rosenbaum is much more helpful than reviewers like Ebert for anyone ready to venture beyond the canon, and I appreciate him a great deal for that and his uncomplacent, often critically tough opinions. He makes Ebert's writing seem sappy and superficial by comparison. "Tavernier vs. Rosenbaum" -- gimme a break, Rog.

[Sortini]

Yes, Truffaut may have been too harsh concerning the English cinema. However, I can't help remembering a sign in the window of a Moroccan restaurant that advertised "English Cooking" and how incredibly strange that looked.

As you remember, Truffaut said English Cinema was contradictio in adjecto like English Cooking.

Of course, nowadays London has some of the best chefs in the world.

[Michael Kerpan]

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=1139

He makes many interesting points -- one of which is that newspapers no longer afford sufficient space or time for anything much more comprehensive than drive-bys....

[tartarlamb]

I enjoyed the Bordwell article, but Rosenbaum continues to confuse me:

4. Moreover, I have absolutely nothing against Bergman having used blond and blue-eyed cast members, nearly all of whom are extremely talented as well as Swedish. My objection is only to the way this use and practice became "a brand to be adopted and emulated"-- by Woody Allen, among others.

Huh?

[tavernier]

I guess Woody's casting Max von Sydow in "Hannah and Her Sisters" made Bergman's actors a "brand" to be avoided. It sounds as if Rosenbaum wanted these actors to retire after Bergman did, so poor Rosenbaum wouldn't be reminded of those awful movies they were in.

And one note on the Bordwell article: he says he gave up after "Serpent's Egg," so he didn't catch up with "Cries & Whispers" and "Scenes from a Marriage" until much later, but where was he when those films were released 5 or 6 years before "Egg" came out?

[colinr0380]

He makes many interesting points -- one of which is that newspapers no longer afford sufficient space or time for anything much more comprehensive than drive-bys....

Reminds me a lot of Noam Chomsky talking about concision in the media in the Manufacturing Consent film!

An excellent article - I tried to write something in response to the Rosenbaum article but it came out a little muddled. The general gist was that I felt we need to separate personal reactions to films and filmmakers from studying where they fit in the canon of cinema. It doesn't mean that personal reactions are not as important, but that we need to be able to take a step back and see that films, filmmakers, styles or genres we might not like have the right to their place in making the world of cinema what it is. As much as I personally don't like the films of my favourite punching bag Michael Bay, his films have certainly got a place in the culture and are probably pushing the boundaries of blockbuster Hollywood filmmaking. Getting past the dislike could, if I had the ability to write such a piece, let me talk about editing patterns, characterisations and other filmmaking techniques that would talk about his films in a more useful way than just saying "Michael Bay sucks!" (even if that might be the eventual outcome of my piece, just with more analysis involved!)

I also don't particularly like weighing one filmmaker up against another to say that one is not as good, or rubbishing one person's films to big up a personal favourite filmmaker. It seems to me that every filmmaker has their own strengths and weaknesses or areas that they prefer to work in or not, and judging their latest film based on their previous work is often much more useful for discussing a filmmaker (though it is also important to have an awareness of other filmmakers working at the same time, other cultural influences, and a sense of the historical period in which the films were made).

I don't ever want to be made to choose between Bergman or Antonioni as to who was 'better' - it is a ludicrous attempt at ranking diverse and special talents in their own right.

(This perhaps brings us back to that old chestnut about the usefulness of making lists - I'm fond of lists for the general purpose of getting an impression of likes and dislikes or finding out about films that would be worth tracking down because a lot of people seem to have gotten something from them. The problem comes when a general list becomes a canon and the suggestion becomes that a particular film or filmmaker has to be the best film or filmmaker in all cinema, or when we get carried away because Vertigo is at position 2 under Citizen Kane etc. Cinema is a much more important than that - just watching the 100 or so 'best' films or 'best' filmmakers doesn't mean that the rest of film is not worth seeing or that you've even seen what many become your very favourite film. That's the beauty of cinema - there is often something amazing and worthwhile in any film, even if it is just an actor, a scene or a moment)

The most important thing is giving people access to films so they can appreciate them for themselves and decide whether they find value in them or not. So while I don't agree with Rosenbaum's piece I do approve strongly of some of the articles he writes bringing other filmmakers to my attention (especially in his Global Discoveries on DVD articles in Cinema Scope).