So farewell my lovely, you were a giant, an intellectual, a description that was once the highest form of compliment, and not a disparaging word as it has become.

Thank you for all those heart stopping moments of cinema, for showing us insight into the human psyche beyond most of us.

Perhaps you are now yourself on some windswept, nameless beach, sittting, smiling grimly across a chessboard at Death, now a companion, no longer merely an actor in your company.

Nobody else wants to talk about Mr. Bergman?

I've not seen any of Mr. Bergman's films, but I picked up The Seventh Seal for a view this weekend. Hopefully, I can fit it in between work.

I was going to post an appreciation thread and then respond to this, but things have kept me from it for some reason. Talking Bergman is an enormous undertaking.

The Virgin Spring just came out on DVD and that's the next film of his I'm going to watch. My favorite Bergman's are The Seventh Seal, which for all its iconic and sometimes bleak imagery, I find to be very funny, and Wild Strawberries, which always grabbed me right from the awesome dream beginning, but now the old man's journey carries far more resonance for me than it did when I was a teenager. I'm also quite fond of The Magician, and I wish they'd put that out on DVD because I find it better than either The Prestige or The Illusionist, plus a lot scarier.

I'll try to come back to discuss his even more personal films where he started to get really quite experimental (Persona, Face to Face, etc.)

Alllllright!
I have company on my bleak little journey of appreciation.

I haven't seen The Magician. I've not even seen it in a dvd shop for rent. One to hunt down.

I particularly love his religious films, as wierd and wonderful as of a bunch of Scandinavian philosophy usually is.
Winter Light
Through a Glass Darkly
The Silence
These are fascinating to me in their dissection of spirituality, madness and personal responsibility - how does God want us to live.

Whats that you say,... you think an atheist doesn't care about how God wants him to live?

I've never, ever said that, and I don't believe atheists to be any less spiritual than bleeding heart religiosos. I just find it interesting that you may believe in the spirituality of Man (as I do), but not wonder if we DIDN'T make the whole thing up. Maybe the Spirits move all of us in mysterious ways.

My fave of Bergman's trilogy is Through a Glass Darkly. I believe it probably was because he was starting to evolve as a filmmaker from more plot-driven films to more experimentalism. This one still hits home the most to me of the three, and coincidentally, it's the first, but with a creator like Bergman, you really have to give all his films multiple chances to understand where they fit into the "Big Picture".

Oh dear!!

quote:

Posted by mark f
I've never, ever said that,

No mark. I wasn't referring to you you!

I was talking in the abstract, to a hypothetical audience.
It was meant to be a joke, y'know, like having a go at myself.
Self-deprecation.

I don't believe in spirituality at all. I'm a hard core materialist, so I was actually trying to joke around with my own image.

Gee whiz. I hate internet chat sometimes.

OK. We sorted?

(If you're not familiar, and I hope you're not, in Houston there was a man named Marvin Zindler on the news who did the "this old lady was wronged!" kind of stories, and the "SLIIIIIIIIIME IN THE ICE MACHINE!" stories where he'd report on dirty local restaurants. Then he'd end MARVIN ZINDLER, EYE-WITNESS NEWS" very much in all caps. And he looked pretty leathery.
http://www.newyorktelephone.net/tv/KTRK2005008.jpg

Anyway, Dad comes by the other day and says "Hear Marvin Zindler died?" I reply "Hear Ingmar Bergman died?" "Who's that?" And then I wept for humanity. "A fantastic director..."

And he was. The only ones I've seen are The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, but I love them both a lot. There's a lot more I can say about him, but it gets really esoteric (even for me) and I don't know how much it'd actually add. If you're not familiar with the man I encourage you to seek out his work, it's some of the most beautiful existentialism. He was a real favorite of mine

I've always enjoyed Bergman's work in smaller doses. All that Scandinavian angst gets to me after a while. I agree that his best films are Wild Strawberrys, and the Seventh Seal but Scenes From a Marriage is also a great one.

Bergman was the best.