All These Women: Ingmar Bergman

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/b-roll-ingmar-bergmans-women-1964/.

6/10

The Silence: Ingmar Bergman

[Revisit Review]

The first time I saw Ingmar Bergman's The Silence was in college...and I hated it. I'm not entirely sure why in hindsight: maybe I thought it was boring. But re-watching it years and years later, I'm stunned by the film's simple power. I think it might now be in my top ten favorite Bergman films. The scenes involving the tanks rolling by the train window is one of those blessed moments like the climactic "Life of the Mind" sequence in the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink (1991) that seem to have sprung fully formed from the filmmakers' foreheads with little to no artistic precedent. Bergman's images have rarely been more powerful.

9/10

Prison: Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman's Prison is proof that being well-made from a technical stand-point doesn't necessarily make a film "good." A bizarrely structured film-within-a-film, Prison juggles a number of different stories which all explore a similar idea: that earth is actually Hell. As one of his earliest films, it's fascinating to see Bergman fiddle so intensely with frame compositions, depth of field, and camera movement—much of which is very showy and exists purely for its own sake. There’s even an extraneous silent film sequence. Eventually everything collapses from a "narrative" to a string of successive images and apparently unrelated vignettes. Any philosophical or existential theme he tried to promote was ruined by the narrative pyrotechnics. Again, it’s superb from a technical standpoint. But because of its incoherence it fails to achieve anything it set out to do.

4/10

Through a Glass Darkly: Ingmar Bergman

[Revisit Review]

I'm honestly considering starting an official exploration of what I like to call "Family Horror." And by that, I don't mean horror films geared towards families. I mean films where horrific things seem to spring from the anxieties and fears of a family unit. These manifestations can be many things: ghosts (The Shining [1980]), monsters (The Babadook [2014]), and in the case of Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly (1961), mental illness. I don't think Bergman set out to make a horror film here, but many passages are nevertheless downright terrifying. Karin's first visit to the attic where she hears voices through a crack in the wallpaper is particularly unnerving. I was also fascinated by how, in its own weird way, the film has a kind of happy ending with the father reconciling with the son. Well, it's as happy an ending inasmuch as any Bergman film that wasn't an explicit comedy could end happily.

9/10

Persona: Ingmar Bergman

[Revisit Review]

Ingmar Bergman's Persona is one of the cinema's greatest enigmas. Countless critics and intellectuals have pondered over its meanings and possible interpretations. But what strikes me the most about the film is Bergman's use of visual language. One of the most understandable criticisms of Bergman's work is that it wasn't very "cinematic," instead seeming more like filmed theater. But in Persona Bergman invents and utilizes a stark, overbearing, and mesmerizing visual method that was not just unparalleled within the confines of his career, but within avant-garde cinema itself. At the time of my writing this, I have seen 29 of Bergman's films. And to my knowledge, none of them are as visually arresting as this nearly impenetrable riddle of a movie.

9/10

The Seventh Seal: Ingmar Bergman

[Revisit Review]

If the cinema is a language of images, then The Seventh Seal is one of Ingmar Bergman's most distinguished and valuable films. Very few of his other works would be so visually captivating. His conjuring of a chess game between a knight and the embodiment of Death and the danse macabre that concludes the film catapulted him, and art cinema in general, into immortality. And yet the film is very uneven. The general gloom, doom, and apocalyptic atmosphere are broken up one too many times by sunny scenes involving the family of actors. I can understand their value to the narrative. But Bergman failed to seamlessly transition them into the overall story without spoiling the film's tone.

8/10

Scenes from a Marriage: Ingmar Bergman

In an age when filmmakers are increasingly favoring digital media, the cinematic dream-team of director Ingmar Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist stand as one of the greatest testaments to the power and beauty of celluloid. From a formalistic standpoint, Scenes from a Marriage is one of their most stylistically controlled and hyper-realistic films. The film follows the gradual disintegration and eventual reconciliation of the marriage between two wealthy Swedes: Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Erland (Josephson). As can be expected of Bergman, the film delves deeply into their respective psychologies, explaining their motives for tearing the marriage apart and then tentatively limping back to each other. Originally made as a six-episode, 281-minute TV miniseries, the film is certainly fatiguing to watch in one single sitting. Still, Nykvist's cinematography and use of lighting transforms this domestic drama into a spectacle of heart-breaking beauty. Scenes from a Marriage is a veritable painting with film stock as the canvas, Nykvist's camera as the brush, and Bergman's artistic vision and direction as the painter.

8/10

Summer Interlude: Ingmar Bergman

As I pointed out to my twitter followers, one of these days somebody needs to do a scholarly dissertation on the significance of water in the films of Ingmar Bergman. So many of his films involve swimming, oceans, beaches, rivers, lakes, and ponds. His 1951 film Summer Interlude can be counted among these, as one of its most important scenes involves the death of a young man during a cliff-diving accident. The man's name was Henrik and he made his fatal plunge in order to impress his lover named Marie. That was thirteen years ago. Today Marie is a ballerina who discovers the diary Henrik's diary during a dress rehearsal for Swan Lake. When the rehearsal is cancelled due to technical problems with the stage lights, Marie spends her day remembering that fateful summer of love with Henrik. Told largely in flashback, Summer Interlude was one of the most important films in Bergman's early filmography. Perhaps I'll let the great Pauline Kael explain: "Bergman found his style in this film, and it is regarded by cinema historians not only as his breakthrough but also as the beginning of 'a new, great epoch in Swedish films.' Many of the themes (whatever one thinks of them) that Bergman later expanded are here: the artists who have lost their identities, the faces that have become masks, the mirrors that reflect death at work. But this movie, with its rapturous yet ruined love affair, also has a lighter side: an elegiac grace and sweetness." It's true that unlike many of his later films, Summer Interlude seems uncharacteristically optimistic. Even the tragedy of Henrik's death is countered by the start of a new, optimistic relationship with a journalist called David. The film even ends with a short dance number from Swan Lake that ends triumphantly. Whereas many of Bergman's later films would espouse tragedy and the impossibility of reconciliation, Summer Interlude is a brief glimmer of optimism.

7/10

From the Life of the Marionettes: Ingmar Bergman

Despite Bergman's reputation for odd, surrealistic films, very few of his movies were experimental in nature.  Most of his films are piercing character studies.  But Bergman did occasionally branch out and attempt bolder, more unusual films like Persona and The Silence.  After the 1970s, a decade almost completely dominated by character-driven dramas, Bergman made From the Life of the Marionettes.  It would prove to be one of the most unusual and daring films in his entire career.  It examines Katarina and Peter Egermann, a couple introduced in his film Scenes From a Marriage.  At the start of the film, Peter kills and sodomizes a prostitute with his wife's name in a scene of uncharacteristic violence.  The rest of the film is a non-linear examination of the events that led up to and followed the crime.  Simply put, Bergman's brash experimentation does not serve this film very successfully.  There was no real reason for the obtuse flashbacks and dream sequences.  This film probably would have been more successful if it had been a straight drama with a linear plot like his immediately preceding film Autumn Sonata.  Bergman's unusual cinematic machinations suited films like Persona because they reflected the shattered and scattered mindscapes of his characters.  The films were enigmas because their characters were enigmas as well.  But here in From the Life of the Marionettes, there is little to no room for such interpretation.  It is explicitly spelled out that Peter's actions came from feelings of sexual inadequacy and frustration in his marriage.  By clearly defining his characters' motivations, he is working counter-intuitively to the opaque and obtuse cinematic techniques that he employs.

6/10