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

Best Death ever!

The part where they are watching the witch be burned, and they are looking into her eyes and not seeing God in them, is pretty amazing.

For all the existential angst, there's a lot of humor in this.

I once tried to watch Wild Strawberries when I was on the comedown off Ecstasy. It's a great movie, but dear god, what was I thinking? I will never understand why I thought it would be suitable for that frame of mind. Had to turn it off.

Bergman has been my 2nd-favorite discovery since I started my heavy film-immersion program a few years ago. I recommend The Magician next or soonish.

Thanks, I will definitely check that out next!

This opens here shortly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELIMeemx-FI

I invented a new word to describe it: "Bergmanesque."

Summer Interlude is probably my favourite. Summer with Monika, Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and Through A Glass Darkly are all solid gold. and Virgin Spring (two really shockingly violent bits)

you're right about 7th seal and the humour - bloke climbs a tree to escape death, death gets out a saw. slapstick. also feels like every single frame of the film would make a great poster.

> Bergman has been my 2nd-favorite discovery since I started my heavy film-immersion program

and the first?

Yes, Death with the saw! So good! Also when the squire is off to the side calling every trick Lisa is going to use to calm her furious husband. "It's only a matter of time before she brings up his favorite dish..." This kind of humor is all over sitcoms!

Also the bit where they are doing that silly play with the devil and a somewhat vulgarly playful song and all of a sudden this mass of Black Death ecstatics wanders into town and just completely usurps their act. People whipping each other and calling out to God, making such a big show of it all. Suddenly the fool and his family dressed up in silly devil costumes seem the most genuine people around.

I definitely need to watch it again, there's a lot of commentary on the performance aspects of religion, on people willfully fooling each other. The painter in the monastery painting pictures to stir up church attendance, the witch who is desperately trying to convince herself - in the face of her own death - that the devil is real and in her eyes.

This movie seems heavily influenced by the tarot, beginning and ending w the fool, plenty of knights and cups and clubs, etc. throughout. Then again the Tarot is probably influenced by Revelations...

koogs -- #1 is Ozu

5-week retro in NYC

https://filmforum.org/series/ingmar-bergman-centennial-retrospective-series

Liv Ullmann talks about Bergman in anticipation of BFI retrospective:

http://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/38835/1/liv-ullmann-ingmar-bergman-bfi

Saw "Through a Glass Darkly" at the cinema only yesterday!

Got F&A out of the library for my first viewing in 15 years, particularly for the TV version, which I haven't seen. Is it worth it?

yes it absolutely is

Abysmal.

lol wrong thread soz

Yes, at least one of my favorite scenes is cut from the theatrical.

It was "The Silence" today. Still recovering.

and is there more of Fanny? I would think so.

i've never seen the theatrical cut so i can't say, but also nothing seems remotely excessive in the tv version so i don't really have a desire to watch the other one

http://static.adweek.com/adweek.com-prod/wp-content/uploads/files/blogs/just-do-it-hed-2013.jpg

I did two hours ago!

the silence is terrific

The full version of Fanny and Alexander is sometimes my favourite movie of all time.

So which is your favorite scene, Brad?

F&A is the one where the uncle blows out a candle in unorthodox fashion, right?

Fastest five hours I've ever watched, most of which in one sitting. Much of it remained familiar; it helped.

Anyway, F&A is a notch below his very best achievements, but as epic it's an ideal summa.

do any hoovering? running machine?

this WSJ piece has been up for 3 days, and the headline blurb calls him "the French icon"!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ingmar-bergmans-heart-of-darkness-1517434450

lol jesus

Bergman doesn’t really get talked about much these days, at least ime. I remember when he died my friend’s dad made fun of how pretentious The Seventh Seal was, and yeah that’s definitely my least favorite of the 10 or so I’ve seen, but he’s not the icon that Fassbinder is. I don’t know, half formed thought, but something I’ve been thinking about since I first saw Persona last year.

I'm not sure I agree with you there.

The reputation that The Seventh Seal has for "pretension" annoys me to no end. I'm assuming it has a lot to do with a) Bergman's presumed humourlessness (also B.S. as there is certainly humour in many of his films, and I don't just mean the comedies) and b) so many comedies (SCTV, Bill and Ted) utilizing the "playing chess with death" thing for laughs over the years, but mostly I just assume that most people who make the charge against the film haven't actually seen it.

Bergman has always been about, for as long as I've been aware of these things -- as an 'icon' or otherwise.

yeah like i said this could just be in my life, in the film community here, he hasn't had a resurgence in interest or popularity like Tarkovsky or Fassbinder. not sure. like i said, not a fully formed thought. and yeah i know the thing about him being humorless is just wrong. even Cries & Whispers has its moments

but yeah, maybe it's just he's always been around, like Hitchcock. his work has never been out of print or under appreciated, like Tarkovsky

I think he's always been around, but then I'd say the same about Tarkovsky, I don't when Tarkovsky's ever been under appreciated. The thing about Fassbinder is he might get talked about a lot but I'm always surprised at how few of his films people have actually seen.

Fassbinder has the lived fast died young thing going for him, and yeah he was super prolific but you're right, is there a consensus on his most seen/ most well known work? Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?

Tarkovsky has gotten a bump in recent years, certainly with the vastly improved Criterion remaster of Stalker last summer.

The upside-down melodramas are the widely accepted best (Ali, Petra, Merchant). It's reductive but there's too much of it and takes years to process his work.

Tarkovsky always been around - to such an extent he overshadows a lot of other, equally terrific filmmaking from the Soviet Union and former republics.

The reduced fashionability of Bergman has been a thing for forever. When I was kid, one of the only film books lying around the house was Ebert's mid-'80s video guide, which had an appendix devoted to writings on the most recent Sight & Sound poll, and one of his big talking points was the shock of Bergman falling out of the Top 20.

Beat me to it, I was just about to say:

I think it's fair to say Bergman isn't talked about as much as he once was. If you look at the Sight & Sound polls through history they would suggest his critical cachet peaked somewhere around 1972. That was the year he placed two films in their Top Ten (Persona and Wild Strawberries), whereas in no other year has he placed even one that high. Maybe there's just more directors to talk about nowadays. It's otherwise difficult to explain why he's seemed to be relatively out-of-fashion in recent decades though still respected.

Guardian is comin' for him!

pic.twitter.com/js6AqdFAHW

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) February 4, 2018

The reduced fashionability of Bergman has been a thing for forever. When I was kid, one of the only film books lying around the house was Ebert's mid-'80s video guide, which had an appendix devoted to writings on the most recent Sight & Sound poll, and one of his big talking points was the shock of Bergman falling out of the Top 20.

― Never Learn To Mike Love (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, February 3, 2018 5:22 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Beat me to it, I was just about to say:

I think it's fair to say Bergman isn't talked about as much as he once was. If you look at the Sight & Sound polls through history they would suggest his critical cachet peaked somewhere around 1972. That was the year he placed two films in their Top Ten (Persona and Wild Strawberries), whereas in no other year has he placed even one that high. Maybe there's just more directors to talk about nowadays. It's otherwise difficult to explain why he's seemed to be relatively out-of-fashion in recent decades though still respected.

― Josefa, Saturday, February 3, 2018

His films made money in American cities and college towns well into the F&A era. Note the profits of those films and the number of Oscar nods he got (three Best Director nominations!). Popularity hurt him too.

"Could this famously manipulative genius have survived in the #MeToo era?"

Dreyer is next!

lol was gonna say hitchcock but he actually did get me too'd

That Bradshaw piece is weird, he doesn't quote any of the actresses saying he assaulted them on set - any relationships seemed to have been consensual?

Unlike Hitch, who was an abuser.