San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
11 must-watch films from legendary director
In the opinion of many (me included), Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) is the greatest filmmaker who ever lived. He left behind an enormous body of work of profound emotional depth, and to explore his films is like stepping into an entire universe.
Yet that universe is so complete and multifaceted that I imagine it might be intimidating to novices. He made about 60 movies, depending on how you count, so where do you start? And where do you go next?
Film critics often make the mistake of assuming that every intelligent reader knows what we’re talking about. Meanwhile, most people have never seen a Bergman movie and could use a way in.
Enter Peter Cowie. He is recognized throughout the world as the premier scholar of the films of Ingmar Bergman. He has written more than 30 books, including four about Bergman, the first of which was published 60 years ago. Now, at 84, he’s released one of his best: “God and the Devil: The Life and Work of Ingmar Bergman,” a grandscale biography of the filmmaker published through Faber and Faber and released in hardcover last month.
Cowie, who’s a good friend, recently spoke to me via Zoom from his home in Montreux,
Switzerland (the city immortalized in the Deep Purple song, “Smoke on the Water”). I asked him to come up with 11 of Bergman’s must-watch films and the order in which they should be seen. Each film showcases the talents of a particular Bergman collaborator, because the Swedish master’s stock company and his cinematographers were essential to his art.
“He had the range of Shakespeare,” said Cowie, “covering all the stages and conditions of life, but at heart he was a Nordic artist, with as severe an outlook as Fellini’s was sunny.”
Most films below are available on major streaming services.
‘The Seventh Seal’ (1957)
Filmed in a high-gloss blackand white, this is the famed film in which a Medieval knight (Max von Sydow), returns home from the Crusades only to find Sweden in the midst of the Black Plague. The scenes in which he plays chess with
Death is one of the most famous in world cinema.
“This was the film that stunned a generation,” Cowie said. “It came out a couple of years before the French New Wave, a couple of years ahead of the Italian masterpieces like ‘La Dolce Vita’ and ‘L’Avventura,’ and filmmakers like Woody Allen, Walter Murch and Philip Kaufman have said that it had a huge influence on their work.”
‘The Silence’ (1963)
Ingrid Thulin, one of Bergman’s favorite actresses, “gives a scrupulous performance of great intensity,” according to Cowie. She plays a writer suffering from tuberculosis and has an unforgettable scene in which she is gasping for breath and almost dies.
The film, which takes place in a hotel on the eve of a war, contrasts this ailing intellectual woman with her callous, hedonistic sister. The scenes of Gunnel Lindblom nude, in particular, created something of a scandal in its time.
‘Persona’ (1966)
.Liv Ullmann plays an actress who has lost her will to speak, and Bibi Andersson plays the nurse assigned to care for her. The nurse talks and talks, revealing all her secrets, until finally it’s as if the actress has sucked out her soul. The most famous scene is one in which they look in the mirror and their identities seem to merge.
“Both Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson act with extraordinary power in this chamber work, but it’s Bibi who predominates,” Cowie said.
‘Summer With Monika’ (1953)
This is one of the best of the early Bergmans, the story of a pair of young lovers over the course of one summer. Harriet Andersson’s effortless natu
ralness and carnality still make a big impression more than 70 years later. The actress (no relation to Bibi) “came out of nowhere,” Cowie said, “a workingclass young woman who wanted to be an actress and who was found by Bergman when he cast ‘Summer With Monika’ in 1952.’ ”
‘Winter Light’ (1963)
Gunnar Bjornstrand plays a minister who can’t get anything right. He counsels a man who ends up killing himself. He has lost his faith, and he’s horrible to the one woman who believes in him. It’s a major film in which Bergman wrestles with his upbringing as the child of a Lutheran minister.
“Bjornstrand’s wit was as dry as a martini, and he represented
nd the stiff, controlled side of Bergman’s personality,” Cowie said.
‘Shame’ (1968)
Cowie has a particular fondness for this lesser-known Bergman film, about a husband and wife (von Sydow and Ullmann), who live on a remote island that suddenly becomes an epicenter of an ongoing civil war. Cowie calls this “a journey to the end of the night” and says that Ullmann “could communicate inner anguish more vividly than any other Bergman actor.”
‘Smiles of a Summer Night’ (1955)
It’s somewhat surprising that Bergman, who almost never made comedies, scored his first international hit with this buoyant romance, taking place over the course of a party celebrating the shortest night of the year.
As in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” various lovers find themselves attracted to people they can’t have, and there are lots of volatile emotions and bedhopping. Eva Dahlbeck, who starred in a number of early Bergman films, plays a stage actress who is the
object of desire for several characters.
“Bergman was in awe of actress Eva Dahlbeck, with her mature, confident, caustic personality,” Cowie explained. “He once called her a ‘battleship of femininity.’ ”
‘Wild Strawberries’ (1957)
Victor Sjoistrum was a pioneering silent filmmaker in Sweden and the United States. In this film, Bergman cast him as a cranky old professor, traveling to receive an award. Cowie considers the black-and white cinematography one of the great achievements of Bergman’s first cameraman, Gunnar Fischer.
“He was a master of chiaroscuro,” Cowie said of Fischer. “He could film Bergman’s dream sequences to remarkable effect.”
‘Cries and Whispers’ (1972)
Two sisters (Thulin and Ullmann) gather at the bedside of a third sister (Harriet Andersson), who’s dying. Andersson’s death scene is one of the most harrowing sequences in all cinema. Once seen it can’t be forgotten. But Cowie also wants you also to notice the work of cinematographer Sven Nykvist, particularly his “outstanding use of the color red, in all its shades and moods. It’s a visual feast and yet another voyage into the human soul.”
The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including
one for best picture.
‘Fanny and Alexander’ (1983)
This is a semiautobiographical film about a pair of siblings in the first years of the 20th century, coping with the death of their father and their mother’s remarriage to a local bishop, who turns out to be a strict disciplinarian. That aside, the movie also has a light, optimistic feeling about it.
“It’s like a summing up of all Bergman’s themes and obsessions, tracing the trials and tribulations, and joyous moments, of a bourgeois family in the early years of the 20th century,” Cowie said.
One of Bergman’s most accessible films, it won four Oscars.
‘Autumn Sonata’ (1978)
Described by Cowie as “very harsh” but “very impressive,” this movie is an emotional slugfest. Ingrid Bergman (no relation to the filmmaker) plays a successful, in-demand concert pianist who goes home to Sweden for a short visit with her shy, resentful daughter (Ullmann), and over the course of a single night they have a series of brutal arguments. It’s one of the greatest and most terrifying depictions of a mother-daughter relationship ever committed to film.