Ingmar Bergman is still the doyen of cinema. He is known for masterpieces of controlled human emotion, exploring every facet of the personality in relentless detail. He wrote: "I had the possibility of corresponding with the world around me in a language that is literally spoken from soul to soul." These two screenplays, liberally illustrated with production stills featuring actors, including his favourite actress, ex wife, Liv Ullman, are classics of the screen. They will be sought after by film students, and lovers of his films, New interest in Bergman is being generated by the recent release of Faithless, Liv Ullman's 2001 masterpiece, with a screenplay by Bergman. Born in Sweden in 1918, Ingmar Bergman is still contributing to his canon of work.
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.
"From Marianne and Johan, the agonized couple in Scenes from a Marriage, to Charlotte and Eva, the mother and daughter who both love and repel one another in Autumn Sonata, [author] hase created a cast of characters who both uplift and enlighten us, and who bring us more closely in touch with ourselves."--Back cover.
Presents Bergman's creative adaptations of three stage works - "Nora," "Julie" and "Scenes From a Marriage" - in which women come to grips with the possibilities of sexual and social emancipation. The book allows Bergman devotees to compare the director's cinematic and theatrical techniques.>
In this original, extraordinarily moving, and highly personal novel, world-renowned stage and film director Ingmar Bergman goes back to the time of his parents and grandparents, to the years shortly before, during, and just after World War I. Set in the decade beginning in 1908, The Best Intentions is, ultimately, a love story on many different levels: a man and woman in love; parents and children; and love as miracle, that love which is overriding and, so often, inexplicable. Bergman was inspired to write this loosely biographical novel when he began rummaging through the voluminous family picture albums. That, plus family letters and records, and his own memories and unique imagination, helped him recreate this lost world in evocative and graphic detail. Henrik is a poor divinity student. Anna is the much loved but slightly pampered daughter of bourgeois parents. They fall in love and, after a long and tortuous courtship, marry, despite the objections of Anna's parents - especially of Anna's mother, Karin. Karin uses everything in her power, including deceit, first to prevent the marriage, then to break it up. Yet, even her basest actions are never monstrous but filled with good intentions. In fact, all the characters act with the "best intentions", however wrongheaded their behavior. "That Bergman can extend sympathy to such behavior is a great and generous gesture, one that allows him to create characters of astonishing depth", wrote Caryn James in the New York Times. Incorporating some of the elements of stage and screen, including filmic dialogues and personal "asides", which he weaves artfully into the narrative flow, Bergman has written a novel of great beauty and uncompromisinghonesty, a work filled with joy and sadness, sacrifice and reconciliation - and above all, abiding love.
A collection of interviews which provides an unusually intimate look at how a major filmmaker has developed her craft, both in front of and behind the camera.
Ten short films, each based on a broken commandment, set in and around an apartment block in Warsaw. The stories are simple, describing experiences and emotions common to us all - the fractured quality of modern family life, its sadnesses and hopes. These brilliant films explore the significance of the choices we all make, every day of our lives. This edition includes an introduction by Kieslowski about his work, together with the feature-length scripts for A Short Film about Killing and A Short Film about Love.