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Erkki

The films of Ingmar Bergman

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I think I'm almost done with Ingmar Bergman. I've seen 16 of his 63* films. God damn, how did he make that many while also making some of the best films ever? I think seeing them all would be too much, and currently I've seen mostly the highest rated ones and there are about 3 more I want to see: The Passion of Anna, Face to Face, The Magician.

 

So far I can say that he is one of my favourite directors and maybe one of the best directors when it comes to exploring the human psyche. As I've heard, his work might be best read in the context of religious life in early 20th century Sweden. That I don't really know anything about, but even without understanding that layer, the topics of his movies almost always penetrate the screen and touch me in some way. My favourites are Persona, The Silence, Scenes from a Marriage, Through a Glass Darkly, The Seventh Seal, and some others, I could keep going for a bit...

 

His mastery of the art of cinema hardly needs to be mentioned, although some of his movies are stronger than others. When it comes to visuals, I think I prefer Antonioni, Fellini and Tarkovsky from among the classic European masters. Why I think I'm almost done with Bergman is that I think I've seen most of his best work already, and I think I've seen some kind of pattern in his work, although I find it hard to describe - maybe I would say his films are very theater-like compared to his contemporaries, but maybe I'm wrong here as I don't know much about theater. Certainly they seem to me less cinematic, but peering more deeply into the human condition. It's kind of weird seeing the same few actors pop up again and again in his work. It's almost like seeing Jean-Pierre Leaud in every second or third French New Wave movie and starting to confound the personalities of the characters from different movies. Of course, the actors were brilliant, so I don't mind that much. Anyway, Bergman was a great director with an unbelievable amount of strong movies behind his belt and I think any movie buff should see at least Persona and Scenes from a Marriage, and then at least one of the god's silence trilogy (or all of them) and perhaps Fanny & Alexander.

 

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* according to Letterboxd, probably contains some non-feature films also.

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I feel bad because of how few Bergman movies I've seen. Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries might be the only ones I've seen, and Seventh Seal I saw only because it was shown to me in film class.

 

Maybe this is the time for me to dive into his katalog.

 

Also, I started following you on Letterboxd. Hope you won't mind.

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Persona is amazing (although it is at that point the limits of my own exposure to Bergman ends)

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Well, slightly more than I year ago, I had seen zero Bergman movies. What a catch-up time the last year and a half has been. I'm actually somewhat looking forward to getting tired of watching so many movies, though. It would be nice to put more time into other hobbies, but right now I'm still quite addicted and still have a long watchlist + goal of seeing one movie from each country this year (I've been lazy with that, though, as it gets progressively harder to find good movies to watch).

 

simonster, followed you back.

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