Bergman: A great artist's canon is closed
Farewell, Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)
From The New York Times, July 30 --- Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the camera” who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.
Erm, ONE of the greatest directors? If that list includes only 5 or so. Some other excerpts and comments ...
Tributes
Woody Allen: “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera.”
Bertrand Tavernier: “Bergman was the first to bring metaphysics - religion, death, existentialism - to the screen."
A New York Times profile: In Mr. Bergman’s films, this world is a place where faith is tenuous; communication, elusive; and self-knowledge, illusory. God is either silent or malevolent; men and women are creatures and prisoners of their desires.
On the Role of the Author
Once, when asked by the critic Andrew Sarris why he did what he did, Mr. Bergman told the story of the rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral in the Middle Ages by thousands of anonymous artisans.
“I want to be one of the artists of the cathedral that rises on the plain,” he said. “I want to occupy myself by carving out of stone the head of a dragon, an angel or a demon, or perhaps a saint; it doesn’t matter; I will find the same joy in any case. Whether I am a believer or an unbeliever, Christian or pagan, I work with all the world to build a cathedral because I am artist and artisan, and because I have learned to draw faces, limbs, and bodies out of stone. I will never worry about the judgment of posterity or of my contemporaries; my name is carved nowhere and will disappear with me. But a little part of myself will survive in the anonymous and triumphant totality. A dragon or a demon, or perhaps a saint, it doesn’t matter!”
On Quitting
In 1982, Mr. Bergman announced that he had just made his last theatrical film - it was “Fanny and Alexander,” a look at high society in a Swedish town early in the last century that was in part inspired by his own childhood.
“Making ‘Fanny and Alexander’ was such a joy that I thought that feeling will never come back,” he told Ms. Kakutani. “I will try to explain: When I was at university many years ago, we were all in love with this extremely beautiful girl. She said no to all of us, and we didn’t understand. She had had a love affair with a prince from Egypt and, for her, everything after this love affair had to be a failure. So she rejected all our proposals. I would like to say the same thing. The time with ‘Fanny and Alexander’ was so wonderful that I decided it was time to stop. I have had my prince of Egypt.”
“Fanny and Alexander” won four Oscars, including the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1984.
On Death
Mr. Bergman’s celluloid carvings often revealed an obsession with death. But in later life he said that the obsession had abated. “When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying,” he said. “But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It’s like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about.”
Many of his earlier films had been animated by an anguished search for belief, ...but “Winter Light” (1963) - which shows a minister’s own loss of faith - implies that whatever answers there are are to be found on earth.
Mr. Bergman explained that the philosophical shift occurred during a brief hospital stay. Awakening from the anesthesia, he realized that he was no longer scared of death, and that the question of death had suddenly disappeared. Since then, many critics feel, his films have contained a kind of humanism in which human love is the only hope of salvation.
My thanks
Many of my film students last year said "Wild Strawberries" (1957) was the film that spoke to them the most profoundly about human life, of all of those we watched. In that film, the elderly scientist Isak Borg drives across the countryside to receive an award. Along the way his encounters with his childhood home and other people leads him to relive the memory of his first love and his unhappy later marriage, his career and his family. At the end of the day, he comes to terms with his life of emotional isolation. Certainly, that film stimulated the students' most thoughtful writing of the year. I saw his "Fanny and Alexander" the year after my father died and it broke me into a million painful pieces from which I could begin to reassemble a different life.
I hope that having found all the answers he needed on earth, Ingmar Bergman set out gladly for death, "the ultimate adventure."
From The New York Times, July 30 --- Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the camera” who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.
Erm, ONE of the greatest directors? If that list includes only 5 or so. Some other excerpts and comments ...
Tributes
Woody Allen: “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera.”
Bertrand Tavernier: “Bergman was the first to bring metaphysics - religion, death, existentialism - to the screen."
A New York Times profile: In Mr. Bergman’s films, this world is a place where faith is tenuous; communication, elusive; and self-knowledge, illusory. God is either silent or malevolent; men and women are creatures and prisoners of their desires.
On the Role of the Author
Once, when asked by the critic Andrew Sarris why he did what he did, Mr. Bergman told the story of the rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral in the Middle Ages by thousands of anonymous artisans.
“I want to be one of the artists of the cathedral that rises on the plain,” he said. “I want to occupy myself by carving out of stone the head of a dragon, an angel or a demon, or perhaps a saint; it doesn’t matter; I will find the same joy in any case. Whether I am a believer or an unbeliever, Christian or pagan, I work with all the world to build a cathedral because I am artist and artisan, and because I have learned to draw faces, limbs, and bodies out of stone. I will never worry about the judgment of posterity or of my contemporaries; my name is carved nowhere and will disappear with me. But a little part of myself will survive in the anonymous and triumphant totality. A dragon or a demon, or perhaps a saint, it doesn’t matter!”
On Quitting
In 1982, Mr. Bergman announced that he had just made his last theatrical film - it was “Fanny and Alexander,” a look at high society in a Swedish town early in the last century that was in part inspired by his own childhood.
“Making ‘Fanny and Alexander’ was such a joy that I thought that feeling will never come back,” he told Ms. Kakutani. “I will try to explain: When I was at university many years ago, we were all in love with this extremely beautiful girl. She said no to all of us, and we didn’t understand. She had had a love affair with a prince from Egypt and, for her, everything after this love affair had to be a failure. So she rejected all our proposals. I would like to say the same thing. The time with ‘Fanny and Alexander’ was so wonderful that I decided it was time to stop. I have had my prince of Egypt.”
“Fanny and Alexander” won four Oscars, including the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1984.
On Death
Mr. Bergman’s celluloid carvings often revealed an obsession with death. But in later life he said that the obsession had abated. “When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying,” he said. “But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It’s like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about.”
Many of his earlier films had been animated by an anguished search for belief, ...but “Winter Light” (1963) - which shows a minister’s own loss of faith - implies that whatever answers there are are to be found on earth.
Mr. Bergman explained that the philosophical shift occurred during a brief hospital stay. Awakening from the anesthesia, he realized that he was no longer scared of death, and that the question of death had suddenly disappeared. Since then, many critics feel, his films have contained a kind of humanism in which human love is the only hope of salvation.
My thanks
Many of my film students last year said "Wild Strawberries" (1957) was the film that spoke to them the most profoundly about human life, of all of those we watched. In that film, the elderly scientist Isak Borg drives across the countryside to receive an award. Along the way his encounters with his childhood home and other people leads him to relive the memory of his first love and his unhappy later marriage, his career and his family. At the end of the day, he comes to terms with his life of emotional isolation. Certainly, that film stimulated the students' most thoughtful writing of the year. I saw his "Fanny and Alexander" the year after my father died and it broke me into a million painful pieces from which I could begin to reassemble a different life.
I hope that having found all the answers he needed on earth, Ingmar Bergman set out gladly for death, "the ultimate adventure."