In each of our lives there are a handful of individuals who made a real impact, who by direct influence or by example helped to explain the world and shape our character. For me, Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman was such a person. He died today, age 89.Along with my parents, a few family members and close friends, Bergman taught me much of what I know of the world, the human psyche, love and sacrifice, hard work and craft, balance and composition, movement and timing. By exploring its many contrasts, he helped me to comprehend art's many facets and its incalculable value to human beings.
Through his films, stage direction and writing, Bergman explored the full spectrum of the human condition: love and death, madness and compassion, raw selfishness, bitter hatred, joyous optimism, faith and despair. As he said through his character, Eva, played by Liv Ullman in his film, Autumn Sonata:
To me, man is a tremendous creation, an inconceivable thought; and in man there is everything, from the highest to the lowest, just as in life..."In a Seattle interview six years ago, Woody Allen -- who frequently gave homage to Bergman in films like A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Interiors -- said:
There's no question in my mind that Bergman is the greatest of all filmmakers. No one else even comes close. His accomplishment is that immense. He is the only movie director to ever probe the human psyche on such a (skillful) or profound level. He's the first director to dramatize metaphysical issues. His body of work compares to Proust's cycle of novels or even the plays of Shakespeare. In art, there's good and there's great and there's genius -- Bergman is genius.
I will leave a detailed examination of Bergman's many works to others more qualified. But let me give you one personal example of his amazing talent.
In 1985 a Strindberg play called Miss Julie was performed near my home in Los Angeles. Cast and directed by Bergman, the play was performed entirely in Swedish. A day prior to the performance, however, I read an English translation of the play and so had the plot fresh in my mind on the evening of the event. Soon after the curtain rose and the play started, I found myself asking a series of unusual (for me) questions:
What is happening between the lines -- or perhaps, in spite of them? How should an actor move across the stage? What should he be doing with his hands -- his body language -- when another actor is speaking? What might be done to enhance the vision of the play? What action may be introduced by the characters that may either promote or contrast with the words being spoken? Scene by scene, moment by moment, how might color and light be used to best effect?
These were questions that had never occurred to me before seeing this production, and as the play progressed it became increasingly apparent that the raw words of the play were being manipulated by a genius. Bergman's direction doubled the play's assets and halved its shortcomings. Like a master illusionist, he took the sparse lines of the play and breathed life into them. It was not only Stringberg's play I was seeing, it was Bergman's as well.To me these insights were breathtaking and profound, and I never forgot them: a drawing or a painting should be a picture of not only the subject, but the artist as well.
For a complete list of the films and stage productions of Ingmar Bergman, go here.
