The knight playing chess with Death: The Seventh Seal Photos below, top to bottom: The Virgin Spring; The Magician; Wild Strawberries
Ingmar Bergman died today at age 89. He was one of the greatest movie directors of the past half century. His films, shot in Swedish, were some of the earliest subtitled movies to be widely viewed in the United States. He proved to viewers, to many perhaps for the first time, that movies could be a form of art, not merely a medium of entertainment.
Bergman directed a wide variety of films during his long career. Some were full of warmth and were easily accessible. Fanny and Alexander (1984), an Oscar nominee, was a fond recollection of his Swedish childhood and of the warmth of family life. The Magic Flute (1975), an excellent and highly enjoyable production of the Mozart opera, was sung in Swedish with English subtitles and has been called the best adaptation ever of an opera to the screen.
On the other hand, during the 1960's and 1970's, many of his films were studies of human isolati
on and inability to communicate, viewed especially from the perspective of women. These films tended toward long periods of silence, with little happening on the screen. Woody Allen imitated (or parodied, depending on the reviewer) these notoriously inaccessible films in a number of his own movies, such as Interiors (1978) and Another Woman (1988). I've tried, but failed, to appreciate them.
It was Bergman's "metaphysical" films from the late 1950's that have always made the greatest impression on me, and probably on most other viewers. These films appear motivated by Bergman's fear of death and search for God, a search that he later abandoned as his career progressed. The photography is shot bleakly in black and white. The settings lie in Sweden, and the movies are illuminated by the characteristic long twilight, or "white nights," of the Swedish summer. The themes are mysterious and haunting.
I'm familiar with four of the films from that period. The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring have medieval settings, mystical tales studying the meaning of life and death. The Magician, set in the 19th century, considers the nature of truth and illusion. Wild Strawberries portrays a doctor, near the end of his years, who looks back on the disappointments and missed opportunities of a lifetime.
The photography, imagery and symbolism in all four are stunning.
Some films have a profound effect, especially on impressionable young viewers. These four films certainly had that effect on me the first time I saw them. Rent one or more when you get the chance, and experience film as directed by a distinguished artist.
2 comments:
Film = art.
That's something that seems to be lost on the modern film-making industry. Sure, some movies might have storylines that could be considered artistic, but the style and feel of modern films is rarely creative.
I would blame that on special effects. Sure, they've made plenty of things possible that before would be impossible. But they've also shifted the mood of Hollywood films away from art and toward "realism." That's not an entirely bad thing, but it is kind of sad that so few films these days try to be truly artistic.
Yeah, absolutely. And you could write a whole essay on whatever happened to the idea of film as art.
Actually, I guess it's still around, in small indie movies shown at festivals, it's just that no one gets a chance to see them. Bergman and other directors had personal concerns with fundamental questions beyond romance, careers, adventure -- basic questions like "Why are we here? Is there a god and who is he and why doesn't he speak louder? What does it mean to live a good life? How do we handle death?"
He had the interest in these questions, he had the artistic skills to explore them in a compelling manner, and he had the ability to get his films into the theaters. Not all theaters, but art house theaters that could be found in every university town and big city, but that don't really exist anymore.
None of these conditions seems to exist now. Every film released is now a huge economic gamble by the studio. The audience for such films probably doesn't exist. Our country seems divided into a minority that is very concerned with these fundamental ideas (but only as viewed through the lense of their own religion), and a majority that doesn't want to even think about them -- in other words into fundamentalists and secularists. An audience of intelligent viewers who are interested, regardless of their own beliefs, in how these metaphysical questions can be handled by a director seems to be missing.
One possible exception I can think of is the first Matrix movie, which dealt in passing with the nature of reality, and maybe a few other science fiction movies. But even most of these films focus more on action and romantic relationships than on ideas.
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