"Ingmar Bergman's films utterly depressing" -- Ingmar Bergman

(how many hail mary's is that?)

I would say that Wild Strawberries is far from depressing.

The one about God being a spider is a bit depressing. Cries and Whispers is certainly quite depressing.

I think the one you are thinking about has a mother and her son waiting around in some hotel room or something? The mother is waiting for a phone call from the other woman. Then the boy sees a tank roll through the streets. The end.

That's Persona.

who wrote the famous piece about not-interviewing bergman?

http://www.ingmarbergman.se/

I decided in the end that "The Fast Show" just starting on BBC2 would be more valuable for me culture-wise..... Meh.......

that's disappointing.

i don't know, bergman having occasionally questionable taste is something i don't care too much about, it's bergman recklessly insulting other filmmakers that seems a bit gauche. also anyone making common cause with john simon is pretty suspect.

"For me he's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of— is all the critics' darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie's got is absolutely unbelievable."

He doesn't look very glamorous in that link.

RIP :-(

Are you watching his films in descending order of length? Fanny and Alexander next then.

I was going to ask what to watch next …

Here’s my review 2/3 way through
First third strong, delicious writing
Second third weaker. Where are the daughters?

I watched The Magic Flute today, found it hard to stay engaged with but was pleasant background

Second third weaker. Where are the daughters?

Otm.

i'm three episodes into the HBO scenes from a marriage remake, and i like how the daughter is actually a presence in the story, as opposed to being completely ignored in the original. not finding much interesting about it beyond that, though

Bergman Island begins as a droll, faintly precious Hong Sang-soo flick before going in an unexpected, delightful direction. Mia Hansen-Løve wrote and directed.

Pulled Dreams out of the box last night and really enjoyed it, as good as his early/"second tier" stuff gets. But I will always remember it for the little button at the end of Eva Dahlbeck's last scene with her lover, which got a huge LOL from me, maybe the single best joke in his filmography imho.

I like the film a lot, can't remember the joke

Just a perfectly staged & timed black-comic gag after an intense dramatic scene. (Hope I got the spoiler tag right bc I dont want to ruin it for folks.)

http://i.imgur.com/cAIEp5U.jpg

Ah, thanks!

to me the miniseries is just the guy from Star Wars and the lady from zero dark thirty having relationship problems no thanks

Damn I do want to catch the reissue of Cries and Whispers.

The new BFI trailer for it is excellent, but really pushes the horror movie angle (which of course it is and isn't, like so many Bergmans):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pbh0oTQXmE

Caught it at the GFT last week, it jumped from one of my least favourite Bergman's to one of my favourites

While filming "Winter Light" (1963), Ingmar Bergman felt Gunnar Björnstrand was too happy to play the lead character. So, Ingmar asked a doctor to tell Gunnar that he suffered from a severe disease. Gunnar was then put on medication & became very depressed. pic.twitter.com/0zGRfVoTbU

— DepressedBergman (@DannyDrinksWine) September 10, 2023

Ingmar Bergman: Nazi?

https://variety.com/2025/film/global/stellan-skarsgard-nazi-ingmar-bergman-hitler-1236453049/

Stellan Skarsgård opened up about working with Ingmar Bergman at Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

“My complicated relationship with Bergman has to do with him not being a very nice guy. He was a nice director, but you can still denounce a person as an asshole. Caravaggio was probably an asshole as well, but he did great paintings,” said the Swedish actor.

“Bergman was manipulative. He was a Nazi during the war and the only person I know who cried when Hitler died. We kept excusing him, but I have a feeling he had a very weird outlook on other people. [He thought] some people were not worthy. You felt it, when he was manipulating others. He wasn’t nice.”

That was new to me, so I did a quick google and found a very similar claim from Roy Andersson:

Q: ...Ingmar Bergman. Were you affected by his death?

A: Of course in my opinion he’s – it’s hard to say – but in my opinion he’s a little overrated. He made in the beginning of the ’60s I think there were four movies that are excellent, brilliant, good art and cinematography, but there are so many bad movies he made. And he was also very right wing politically. He was almost a fascist, he was a Nazi sympathiser, and when he grew up, he was very coloured by fascistic values. He never left that himself, and it also coloured his person. He was not a nice person. He was a so-called inspector of the film school that I attended, and each term we were called and we had to go to his office and he gave some advice, or even some threats, and he said, ‘If you don’t stop making left wing movie…’ because a lot of the students were left wing at the time, Vietnam and so on… “if you continue with that you will never have the possibility to make features. I will influence the board to stop you.”

Tbf Sweden was in a strange bubble during WWII. According to Astrid Lindgren‘s War Diaries there were many people (including herself) believing Nazis the lesser evil vs the Bolshevik Hordes.

While officially 'neutral,' Sweden sold a bunch of iron ore to build the German war machine

There's "Sweden," and then there's "Bergman the individual." Also, we're not talking about Bergman in 1950 or something. Andersson interacted with him in the late '60s. Stellan Skarsgård worked with him in the '80s. That's a long time to remain fascist-friendly enough to rub those two the wrong way, though how Skarsgård knew that Bergman allegedly cried when Hitler died ... I dunno about that, but he sure was privy to some pretty nasty Nazi shit when he was in Germany. I was directed toward this 1999 BBC item:

Legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman has revealed that he was a great admirer of Adolf Hitler, only losing his enthusiasm for Nazism after the horrors of the concentration camps were uncovered.

The 81-year-old has spoken candidly to author Maria-Pia Boethius, whose book Honour and Conscience asks whether Sweden was genuinely neutral during World War II.

Bergman, maker of some of the world's most acclaimed films, has admitted that he was a Nazi sympathiser on previous occasions.

But he has now said he was impressed by the Nazi dictator after seeing him address a rally, reports the Swedish tabloid Expressen.

The young Bergman was on an exchange trip to Germany in 1936, staying with a Nazi family when he saw Hitler speak.

"Hitler was unbelievably charismatic. He electrified the crowd," said the Oscar-nominated film-maker.

Bergman describes his father as being ultra right-wing and his politics rubbed off on the whole family.

"The Nazism I had seen seemed fun and youthful," he admitted to the author. "The big threat were the Bolsheviks, who were hated."

The book also documents an attack by Bergman's brother and friends on a house owned by a Jew. The group daubed the walls with a swastika - the symbol of the Nazis.

But the director has confessed to being too cowardly to raise any objections.

The maker of Fanny and Alexander and The Seventh Seal retained his admiration of Fascism right up to the end of the war.

"When the doors to the concentration camps were thrown open, at first I did not want to believe my eyes."

"When the truth came out it was a hideous shock for me. In a brutal and violent way I was suddenly ripped of my innocence."

FWIW, Bergman may have been a teen when he was Hitler speak, but he was 27 at the end of the war, not some impressionable youth, and if Skarsgård is to be believed - and why wouldn't he? - it doesn't sound like time tempered Bergman's right-leaning tendencies.

Orson Welles also saw Hitler speak at a young age and his takeaway was "the only remarkable thing about him was how utterly unremarkable he was".

Anyway, I agree with Josh.

Yeah can totally believe it really (I knew he was a bit mean to actors but other than that), never wondered because there isn't much direct political commentary in his films, but hardly surprising.

Amazing interview, Skarsgard is really funny on von Trier.

Tarkovsky on Bergman (one of his idols):

15 September, Stockholm, I saw Bergman for the first time in person today. He had a meeting with young people at the Filminstitutet where he was presenting the documentary about the making of Fanny and Alexander, and providing a running commentary. Then he answered questions. He made an odd impression on me. Self-centered, cold, superficial, both toward the children and the audience.

He added: “I love the man, I love the work, and that doesn’t mean I agree with everything he does. You don’t agree with everything your wife does, either. [Before ‘Nymphomaniac’] he called me, saying: ‘My next film will be a porno. I went: ‘Ok, Lars.’

xp

Ingmar Makes a Porno

I once had a convo w/ a guy who thought Nymphomaniac got a rough reception due to false expectations - "ppl thought it was going to be this sexy erotic film" and I was like "no, absolutely no one expected that from a Lars Von Trier film". Guess the man himself did!

Unsourced quote from Wiki:

In response to claims that he had merely created a "porn film", Skarsgård stated "... if you look at this film, it's actually a really bad porn movie, even if you fast forward. And after a while you find you don't even react to the explicit scenes. They become as natural as seeing someone eating a bowl of cereal."

Anyway, Lars did try!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzy_Power

Puzzy Power (also known as HotMale) is a Danish film company started in 1997 as a subsidiary to Lars von Trier's company Zentropa, with the goal of producing hardcore pornographic films for women. It is the only time ever a mainstream film company has openly produced hardcore pornographic films.

He was a so-called inspector of the film school

That's a job?

I assume that means, like, an advisor or something like that.

Kubrick adored Bergman

or rather, the films of Bergman

Well, Kubrick sure knew cold.

Looking forward to Skarsgard's Oscar campaign for Sentimental Value

Nymphomaniac is one of the decade's great comedies.

"great"

the thing about Ingmar Bergman - I think he'd be the first to admit being a crummy human being. He's said so much about his parenting, how he treated his spouse and lovers, he was an egomaniac and control freak. We just have less tolerance these days for fawning over these kind of 'genius' filmmakers who are shitty humans.. Woody Allen, etc.
But Skarsgård is right - there are a few great films in there, some good ones, and some dumb ones... he wasn't beholden to box office success as they were largely gov't funded

Bergman's films remain unique among the era's uh auteurs: obv built on stage dramaturgy, beholden to Strindberg, many great women parts despite leaning towards Woman As Mystical Soul Force or Woman As Fascinating Crazy Person.

but was he a rockist

When I was in college in the mid 70s he was all the rage, maybe because my fellow students were interested in his earnest search for meaning, regardless of how bleak. It was a very earnest era

I think his warmest film is Wild Strawberries (1957) and it is one of my favorites

it's a great film, undeniably

^^^Later remade/ripped-off/homaged by Woody Allen as Deconstructing Harry.

#BecauseBergmanNeededMoreBlowJobJokes

He was a so-called inspector of the film school

That's a job?

― jmm, Friday, 11 July 2025 bookmarkflaglink

I assume that means, like, an advisor or something like that.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 11 July 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Sounds like he was basically given a lot of power to make and break ppl in a very small scene, because of the international success he had. Its appalling.

Really tenuous rubbish. Visconti? Lol

pic.twitter.com/kyYPp5t6X7

— Uchimama (@Uchimamalul) July 11, 2025

«Inspektør», which is the Scandinavian language term, would translate better with “supervisor”. Basically it’s a common word for a (mid-to high) leadership position at a school, below rector/dean, and typically oriented towards student counseling. While it would undoubtedly give a guy like Bergman a lot of influence (and why wouldn’t he have at a Swedish film school in the 60s and 70s?) the position itself was likely an ordinary one for a educational institution.

xpost

Really tenuous rubbish. Visconti? Lol

The Ozu one made me laugh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasujir%C5%8D_Ozu#Wartime

Details Ozu's involvement in war crimes! Not really blaming him tbh, I'm sure he'd rather have been making films back in Japan.

Yeah, without getting into the nitty gritty of which individuals could reasonably be blamed for what, on a macro level the Japanese film industry def didn't struggle with its fascist legacy in the way the German and Italian ones did.

I saw a counterpoint to Ozu as Kobayashi, who served and supported but supposedly refused advancement in protest, fwiw.