Ingmar Bergman, an undisputed giant of modern cinematic art, here talks frankly and extensively about himself and his films. This discussion with the great Swedish director ranges from Bergman's childhood memories to his admiration for Strindberg to his relationship with the stars whom he made famous - Liv Ullmann, Harriet Andersson, Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson, among others. Originally published in 1973, this work covers Bergman's career from his early films through the works: The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, The Passion of Anna.
Long held to be among the world's greatest filmmakers, Ingmar Bergman shaped international art cinema from the 1950s to the 1980s. Among his many works, Persona is often considered to be his masterpiece and is often described as one of the central works of Modernism. Bergman himself claimed that this film 'touched wordless secrets only the cinema can discover'. The essays collected in this volume, and published for the first time, use a variety of methodologies to explore topics such as acting technique, genre, and dramaturgy. It also includes translations of Bergman's early writings that have never before been available in English, as well as an updated filmography and bibliography that cover the filmmaker's most recent work.
Born to a mother who did not want him and a father who humiliated him during his upbringing, Ingmar Bergman somehow endured his dysfunctional family to become one of the great artists of the twentieth century. However, the scars left from his early agony affected him both physically and emotionally. He suffered with a disabling psychosomatic gastrointestinal illness and serious problems in his interpersonal relationships. In The Persona of Ingmar Bergman: Conquering Demons through Film, Barbara Young looks at how the director’s personal life shaped his creative output. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Young probes Bergman’s relationships with his parents, his wives, his children, and his colleagues to explore the meanings of his many films. As Bergman gradually began to work through his psychological problems, he accomplished something that few people have ever done—he analyzed himself. The films examined in this study include the majority of his features, including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, The Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers, Face to Face, Autumn Sonata, Fanny and Alexander, and Persona. Young also draws upon recorded interviews and Bergman's autobiographical novels to provide further insight into the director's creative process. While many books have been written about Bergman and analysts have studied particular films, this volume represents a unique attempt approach to understanding an artist through his art. The Persona of Ingmar Bergman will appeal to film and art students, as well as those in the psychotherapy profession, and of course, the director’s fans throughout the world.
The 1976 premiere of Face to Face came at the height of director-screenwriter Ingmar Bergman's career. Prestigious awards and critical acclaim had made him into a leading name in European art cinema, yet today Face to Face is a largely overlooked and dismissed work. This book tells the story of its rise and fall. It presents a new portrait of Bergman as a political artist exploring a new medium with huge public impact: television. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen, feminism, and alternative psychotherapy, he made a series of portraits of the modern bourgeois family focusing on the plight of women; Face to Face followed in the tracks of The Lie (1970) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973). By his workbooks, engagement planners, and other archival material, we can trace his investigation into the heart of repressive family structures to eventually glimpse a way out. This volume culminates in an extensive study of the two-year process from the first outlines of the screenplay to the reception and aftermath of Face to Face. It thus offers a unique insight into Bergman's world, his ideas and artistry during a turbulent time in cinema history.
Ingmar Bergman has long been revered as a master craftsman of cinema, whose works are intensely revealing of himself while resonating powerfully with his audience. This book explores how Bergman achieves this cinematic magic through specific choices in the use of film language and the texturing and structuring of his images, sounds, and rhythms.
Acknowledged as one of the greatest filmmakers of this or any other time, Bergman has with few exceptions written his own screenplays--an uncommon practice in the film industry--and for this practice critics refer to him as a "literary" filmmaker: In this work, Gado examines virtually the entire range of Bergman's literary output. While treating the matter of the visual presentation of Bergman's films, Gado concentrates on story and narrative and their relationship to Bergman's personal history. Gado concludes that whatever the outward appearance of Bergman's works, they contain an elementary psychic fantasy that links them all, revealing an artist who hoped to be a dramatist, "the new Strindberg," and who saw the camera as an extension of his pen.
Until his early retirement at age 50, Hasse Ekman was one of the leading lights of Swedish cinema, an actor, writer, and director of prodigious talents. Yet today his work is virtually unknown outside of Sweden, eclipsed by the filmography of his occasional collaborator (and frequent rival) Ingmar Bergman. This comprehensive introduction—the first ever in English—follows Ekman’s career from his early days as a film journalist, through landmark films such as Girl with Hyacinths (1950), to his retirement amid exhaustion and disillusionment. Combining historical context with insightful analyses of Ekman’s styles and themes, this long overdue study considerably enriches our understanding of Swedish film history.
When The Silence was released in 1963, Bergman's stature allowed the film's depiction of sexuality to challenge the boundaries of the censorship boards in Sweden and the U.S. Yet, Swedish film critic Maaret Koskinen - one of the first scholars given access to Bergman's private papers - found his notebooks revealed his tendency to self-censorship, as well as the difficulties he experienced in writing for the medium of moving images. She draws a picture of Berman that reveals his attempts to make his work relevant to a new generation of filmgoers.
