euro|topics - On the death of Ingmar Bergman

05/07/2009

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Main focus of Tuesday, July 31, 2007

On the death of Ingmar Bergman

Swedish film and theatre director Ingmar Bergman died aged 89 on Monday, 30 July 2007. His most famous films - which were censored in several countries - were "The Silence" (1963) and "Scenes from a Marriage (1973). The newspaper pays tribute to him as an exponent of European auteur cinema and analyst of the emotional world of the bourgeoisie.

Sydsvenska Dagbladet - Sweden

"Ingmar Berman was in a class of his own," the Swedish daily writes. "He was the master of existential composition. In his films and plays he moved through the realms of the starkest primal emotions and drives. Ingmar Bergman's own relationship with Sweden wasn't unproblematic. He was both a product and a critic of his homeland. In 1981 he returned to Sweden after living in Munich for five years, where he had fled to after the police arrested him at the Dramaten theatre for tax evasion he obviously hadn't committed. He wasn't bitter about this experience - at least not in public. But he could portray Sweden as boring and grey. Now it's become a little greyer." (31/07/2007)

Die Welt - Germany

As far as Hans-Georg Rodek is concerned there is no quintessential Bergman style. What his films have in common is their focus on the personal, his own commitment, and their introspective style. "Bergman's greatness lies ultimately in the fact that he combined his own doubts with the conflicts of a century and an entire continent, the doubts of Europe in the 20th century... A deep understanding of the emotional life of the bourgeoisie pervades his works. And because the bourgeoisie from Sweden to Italy and from Germany to Spain, felt similarly, and slid into crises - although not necessarily at the same time, Europe as a whole could identify with Bergman's films. Bergman's characters doubt incontrovertible authority - God, the Church, marriage - but are afraid to confront these doubts because of the consequences that would follow." (31/07/2007)

Le Figaro - France

"What a man! Intractable and vulnerable, full of demons and genius, one of the 20th century's most fabulous displayers of moving images", writes Marie-Noëlle Tranchant. "He drew his images from humanity's most vital and secret depths, from torrents of passion, the caves of the subconscious and the lakes of childhood. He turned them into a prodigious saga of man and woman lost in a world of wounds and blame, rage and desire, suffering and incomprehension. ... Aware of his genius, and indeed perhaps thanks to this awareness, Bergman always considered himself with much critical lucidity and rare honesty. .. [He] was also relentlessly in search of the artists' greatest truth: the dream, the revelation through illusion of the soul's real life." (31/07/2007)

Rzeczpospolita - Poland

Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi recalls a meeting with Ingmar Bergman. "I met Bergman at the European Film Academy's founding ceremony. He warned me that he had difficulties in his relations with other people, and he wasn't joking - it really was the case. His was the strange behaviour of a director who has proven that cinematic art can move people in the same way the best literature can: by dealing with eschatological subjects, life's secrets, religion, faith and inner conflict. This he owed to his childhood in a strictly Protestant family. And this is why Bergman's statements about family relations, education, religion and the hypocrisy it conceals were not an act of revenge but have the value of deeply-experienced reflection." (31/07/2007)

» To the complete press review of Tuesday, July 31, 2007

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