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

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

https://fontsinuse.com/uses/8894/persona-opening-titles

This. Or the same with black & white reversed.

Well I give up, look up "Persona font." I think the font is called Florida.

Looks like The Seventh Seal through Shame have the same titles. (1957 to 1968).

Dreams seems hard to see (no US DVD, no Kanopy stream), but I think I'll pass. P Kael snorted at it (also Secrets of Women, which I can see online).

Dreams was solid, if a few degrees more predictable and conventional than I would expect from Bergman. Harriet Andersson nails her role, has a terrific drunk scene, and p much carries the film (one of the revelations of this Film Forum series is that Harriet Andersson is so goddamn great all the time, in many different roles). Cinematography excellent throughout. I felt the dialogue became repetitive and banal in Eva Dahlbeck's big scene about 3/4 of the way through and there the film dragged, but it picked up when the humor that had been essential previously returned at the end.

Would like to talk to anyone who saw All These Women (1964), which was, um... something. Bergman working well out of his comfort zone trying to do a '60s-style sexy comedic farce (tone somewhere in the neighborhood of What's New, Pussycat?). Nice to see the famous Bergman actresses in color for the first time, but the film doesn't really ever click comedically. Jarl Kulle is David Niven-ish, but no David Niven (or Peter Sellers).

Haven't seen it; apparently it's regarded as a riff on 8-1/2. It's the year before Pussycat, so we can't accuse IB of imitating Woody Allen. ;)

I had heard that re 8 1/2 but I didn't really see it, except very superficially (decor, clothes)

I can see it later...

https://www.kanopystreaming.com/product/all-these-women

77 minutes, huh. Seems a lot longer.

I can see it later...

https://www.kanopystreaming.com/product/all-these-women

well, that sucks, not that i have watched a single thing on it yet.

two talks with Liv at Film Forum

https://filmforum.org/events/podcasts

^ Currently enjoying. In the earlier one the interviewer makes a big blunder saying that Sven Nykvist's first film with Bergman was Persona (and Ullmann goes along with it). Nykvist had been IB's sole cinematographer since The Virgin Spring in '59.

Thought about going to FF the other day but went instead to MoMA to see Rio Escondido.

The two (well, three) filmmakers I've most softened on in the last five to ten years are Ingmar Bergman and the Dardennes. With age comes misery.

30 movies showing here starting with Crisis and Port of Call later this month. Very excited.

Crisis was pretty good for a first film. Surprised by how much of a piece it felt with the rest of his work. As with every movie of his I've seen there's at least one moment that is transcendent - in this one, the train sequence with the triple superimposition of Mutti's face and those memories. Retro here is only doing one a month though, so Port of Call in a month, To Joy in May. So it'll be minor work for a while, at least until the summer.

I watched the Criterion of Summer with Monika last weekend, remembered very little about it, including the "Look how hot my new girlfriend is" angle. The famous closeup of Harriet Andersson near the end is really something, but it's hard to read the denouement as anything but a Goddamn Bitch cautionary fable.

It might be fun to watch the US exploitation cut sometime:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2332-monika-trailer-for-broad-minds-only

Also the CC has a short edited from IB's location movies (taken with a Bell & Howell); look, Ingmar laughs! Constantly!

wow that trailer is nuts. is the dubbed version actually a different cut? I prefer Summer Interlude, though I like Monika more than SMOASN, which I thought really dragged (108 minutes feels long for him).

yes, it was scissored down by an American hustler and dubbed with what sounds like a completely different script.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2317-monika-the-story-of-a-bad-girl

Centennial day on Saturday, and afaik no films showing in New York.

Watch the TV version of Fanny and Alexander at home.