Of all the obits appearing on today's papers I prefer this of the Washington Post.
"The "Bergmanesque" style of intensely personal cinema, in which desire and suffering dominated the character's lives, first gained wide attention in the early 1950s -- when many American filmmakers were making soapy dramas or promoting gimmicks like Smell-o-Vision.
In Europe, movie directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut helped break visual and narrative rules, but Mr. Bergman stood out for dreamy and often disturbingly psychological films that expressed emotional isolation and modern spiritual crisis.
Women were especially prominent in Mr. Bergman's films and not as cardboard heroines. Confused by their doubts and desires, sometimes entirely driven by their passions, Mr. Bergman's female characters usually stood on the brink of mental collapse. Meanwhile, his men were often hapless bystanders, incapable of understanding their own lives, much less those of anyone around them."
Rarely, rarely of all male filmmakers there has been one so capable to portray women, helped in these by such great actresses like Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson and Harriet Andersson.
Wild Strawberries, Seventh Seal, and Persona are among his best.
30 Jul 2007, 5:26 am
