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

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.

well, acc to Tippi (I believe her)

#metoo

Just last week someone I know was saying how long before Bergman's name comes up. As for Fassbinder, there's a can of worms.

That's a different scenario too -- iirc people would hang around and wouldn't leave when it got rough. Although Schygulla did for a while..

Whereas Hollywood there are contracts etc., more like a job.

That doesn't mean it should go on now. I won't watch people being chewed up and thrown out like garbage on film. I don't have the patience for that.

Seventh Seal is the only Bergman i've seen all the way through. i was surprised at how funny/light hearted it was. that dark Scandanavian humor...

Funny, yes. Not quite lighthearted.

on second thought yeah the subject matter is really quite dark. still ive had more dismal times in hollywood action movies

full length F&A is also one of my all time favorite films, to the extent I don't actually remember what was cut for the theatrical version anymore. (Same with Scenes from a Marriage). I usually don't watch in one sitting, which seems to fit the year-in-the-life-ness of it for me. Anyway, as in intro to Bergman, it's probably on the quaint side, but still has lots of darkness and weird psychological drama (especially the plot w/the Alexander and the bishop). I think for any budding artist, it's a great movie -- had a huge impact on me as a teen, for reasons I wasn't completely aware of at the time, but looking back seem obvious.

I think I learned about this guy from Woody Allen movies?

I just saw Summer Interlude and loved it. It may be my new favourite Bergman.

This final scene with the ballet master in costume as the sorcerer from Swan Lake is eerie, and feels like a prefiguration of the knight and Death talking through the confessional grill.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjg2OGU4NzYtOWM2ZS00MGZmLWJlOTQtYzY1OTU3NWE4Y2ZmXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUyNDk2ODc@._V1_SY500_CR0,0,683,500_AL_.jpg

Love the shot in Summer Interlude where the guy jumps on the rocks & the girls screams and the camera just tilts up to a small black cloud above them.

man do y'all realize how many critics awards trophies Liv Ullmann won for Bergman films in the 1970s? Also: I knew Bergman got three Oscar nods for Best Director but somehow forgot that one of them was for Face to Face.

Check this out!

I can't find it online, but there's a '70s Peanuts strip wherein Lucy reveals she uses a Liv Ullmann signature baseball glove.

holy shit^

This also happened:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS51eS-P-y5HIJt0gb1wvQEv_UPbEJwcFgTX9wmM5UsbLLqYV7e

on second thought yeah the subject matter is really quite dark. still ive had more dismal times in hollywood action movies

It's not even his only comedy (A Lesson in Love, The Devil's Eye).

Yeah, the NY critics din't start to turn in him til The Serpent's Egg, I think.

The Daily with links on the NY retro:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5373-a-bergman-feast-at-film-forum

Solid Lane essay.

Harriet Andersson turns 86 on Wednesday

I saw IB's second feature as director this weekend, It Rains on Our Love, and... everyone has to start somewhere I guess. A lurching mix of Pirandello, Renoir and Capra (I kid you not -- there are cutaways to the romantic leads' dog). Not much of interest besides the attractiveness of the stars (the very handsome Birger Malmsten did a slew of early Bergmans, and turns up in The Silence and Face to Face.

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/h632/bzB65ZCNROzO0YytI6E49HsgSlp.jpg

I'm re-reading Bergman on Bergman, a book of 1968-1970 interviews, in which he admits It Rains on Our Love was influenced by film noir, particularly Michael Curtiz.

He's pretty down on most of his 1940s work, and apparently his least favorite of all his films is This Can't Happen Here (1950). He feels he came into his own with Summer Interlude, which came out a year after This Can't Happen Here even though it was filmed before it.

That's weird, cuz Rains came out in '46, and the only Curtiz film I'd call a noir up to then was Mildred Pierce (which doesn't especially resemble his film aside from a little nighttime suspense, I suppose).

I wouldn't challenge him re Summer Interlude, as the only other '40s film I've seen is Port of Call. He wasn't fully formed yet. I do have Crisis on my shelf from the library.

Summer Interlude was the real eye-opener when I saw the Blu-ray print a couple years ago: that shit was sexy.

yeah Summer Interlude is great

I guess there's a bit of inexactness in his comment about film noir. Here's the passage from the interview:

Interviewer: [It Rains on Our Love] shows a heavy influence from the film noir.

IB: Yes. At that time the film noir directors were my gods. One who meant a lot to me was Michael Curtiz. I remember how Lars-Eric Kjellgren and I - we'd started together at SF [Svensk Filmindustri] and were close friends - saw Curtiz's films, the same films, over and over again, evening after evening, to find out how he did it. It was extremely good for us. Curtiz knew how to tell a story quite clearly, simply, and straightforwardly, as Raoul Walsh did.

Welles liked Curtiz too.

As did Fassbinder.

You can tell how good Curtiz and Raoul Walsh were: both failed to make the ILX 100.

I don't like magicians but I liked The Magician. saw the matinee at Film Forum today and for the first half of the movie they were fuckin drilling in the next room or something, lots of pissed geriatrics getting up to give someone words.

I saw his 1969 made-for-TV The Rite tonight, and I don't think the Film Forum crowd was ready when the phalluses and studded wrist cuffs appeared.

He got better at kink later.

(The actor who plays the censorious judge is named Erik Hell. He goes into a confessional and the priest is Bergman.)

It was fun to see Anders Ek in that (as Sebastian) 15 years after he was the clown in Sawdust and Tinsel. It's a weird one though.

One odd thing that's jumped out at me watching these Film Forum screenings... did Bergman use the same opening titles for all his films from the late '50s through at least Persona? Never noticed this before.

would explain Woody's thing