Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the camera” who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.
Critics often claim that Bergman, along with directors Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa, “dominated the world of serious film making in the second half of the 20th century.”
In his more than 40 years in the cinema, Mr. Bergman made about 50 films, often focusing on two themes — the relationship between the sexes, and the relationship between mankind and God. Mr. Bergman found in cinema, he wrote in a 1965 essay, “a language that literally is spoken from soul to soul in expressions that, almost sensuously, escape the restrictive control of the intellect.
Here are two unforgettable scenes from my personal favorite films of his – one from the 1957 classic Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) and the other from his 1966 film Persona.
Plenty of Bergman’s films, for their imagery and thematic inquiry, influenced many of the successful directors to come after him. Woody Allen once said that Bergman was "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera.”
By audiences and artists, he will be remembered as a great master of modern cinema.
Goodbye, Mr. Bergman.
Ingmar Bergman on set, c. 1960
© Bonniers Hylen, Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
It’s with a great deal of sadness that I pass on today’s news of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s death. From the New York Times: