Persona/ / Ingmar Bergman
This, what could be Bergman's 27th effort as writer and director, is a film I've gone back to over the years, because over time I wish to work out what it truly means. Everything that we see in its way of communication, its dialect, its structure of implications are completely apparent. Its only mere evocations are of hidden realities, and we lose hope of finding them. It is about motherhood, or abandoning it. It is about existentialism, or a sensation of bewilderment and loss of nerve despite a...
Ingmar Bergman's classic (and influential) film about three brothers, two of whom rape and kill a young girl only to end up at the girl's house later that night where her father (Max von Sydow) seeks vengeance. This was my second viewing of this film and it was certainly better this second time even though I loved it on the first viewing. As I said last year, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left and the Italian shocker House on the Edge of the Park ripped this film off quite heavily and went ...
This classic is filled with a lot of memorable images - from the opening scenes on the seashore to the effective concluding shots, creative thoughts are combined with some fine camera work. There are several significant or interesting questions raised by the characters - from the imagery of the "Seventh Seal" in Revelation, to their simple but important concerns about eternity - but it is the way that the visuals play off of the ideas that make the movie so worthwhile.
The recreation of the med...
This was director Ingmar Bergman's break-through film, the winner of the 1956 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, the first of his many internationally acclaimed films. The story is a time honored one, referencing the same tradition of romantic complications found in Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Rostand's LA RONDE: every one is either in love with or married to the wrong person.
A famous actress with two very different lovers invites both, their wives, and the son of one love...
Sawdust and Tinsel- or The Swedish Master, or The Naked Night, take your pick on a title- is about a man who can't stand himself in his profession, but loves it so much at the same time: the low-brow sensibility of it, the wildness, the freedom to cut it loose with drink or with mad gimmicks during a show, and abandon of the rules when confronted with the law. But he also has a love whom he has his problems with, and her with him as well, leading to an infidelity drama that plays out harshly. In...
Monika is going for the Summer of her life. No longer a child she dreams of freedom and living the most of her own existence. She finds herself in the middle of a struggle between her tedious family life and work and the pungent idealistic thoughts that cross her mind. When she finds an ally- Harry, the love between them comes spontaneously and the escape from their misfortune seems possible. And then the summer comes to heat their naked skins as they reveal their bodies and souls to find the fr...
This is an astonishing piece of work proving that Bergman had a clearly defined set of aesthetic ideas from very early in his career. The idea of the silence of god, the meaningless nature of life and consequently (and tragically) of art, the communication blocks dominating most of human relations and the epiphanic character of dreams. What distinguishes this movie most is it's very elaborated construction. For its 75 minutes the movie consists of layers upon layers of meaning that tend to make ...
Hamnstad" is one of the rare Swedish films focusing on family life.Its uniqueness is due to the fact that it has an eclectic mix of serious themes. These themes include bitter, harsh realities like abortion,broken home, correctional house etc. Bergman has deftly portrayed the dreary lives of its two lonely protagonists : Gosta and Berit. For this purpose, he has chosen a small provincial port town where nothing much happens. This film is a good record of how gloomy the life in Sweden (Europe) du...
For some reason, when I heard the term "early Bergman," I envisioned 'Music in Darkness (1948)' to be a rather primitive piece of film-making. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised, instead finding the film to be beautifully photographed by cinematographer Göran Strindberg, with all the refreshing themes and visuals we've come to expect from Sweden's master director. Bergman's fourth as director, the film is a fairly straightforward melodrama, dealing with a young man's attempts to accept a ne...
Kris/ / Ingmar Bergman
Bergman's adaptation of Leck Fischer's play behaves like a stage play that has been slightly adapted for the screen. It is essentially a chamber melodrama and it makes little use of the cinema's expanded scope. The film is watchable and the cast is competent. Almost everything about it is competent. It was Bergman's first go at directing a film. He was 27/28 years old at the time.
Bergman is clearly influenced by Ibsen - I say "is", because the old master (nearly 85 years old now) is still at i...
故事发生在13世纪，一个传教士来到了一个野蛮未开化的地方，他将基督的福音和训诫传递给当地的人们，从而改变了他们的思想和生活，最后弗朗西斯和修道士继续上路，传播福音。影片根据意大利阿西斯镇上一个圣芳济修道院的壁画改编，它以11个片断表现了弗朗西斯传道的故事，这部在当时商业上惨败的电影在半个世纪后却成为经典，他在银幕上第一次提出了非暴力的精神，那个去感化野蛮人的教士是令人感动的。《圣弗朗西斯的花束The Flowers of St. Francis》是值得一看的，当野蛮人都可以教化的时候，我们的时代有必要回到狼群吗？可是，我们的...
Enjoyed this Foreign film produced by Federico Fellini film depicting a group of men who really do not like to work and manage to live off their families and love to drink, party and love women. There is a nice young couple who love each other, however, this woman becomes pregnant and creates a difficulty between the couple and even though he loves his wife he is always hitting on other women for romance. This story goes into great detail about each of these vagabond men who never seem to advanc...
Italy. Zampano is the only member of a circus act traveling across the country and performing for street charity. One day he buys a new member for his act, Gelsomina, a young and slightly retarded innocent woman. Traveling around the country and performing acts - Zampano is breaking the chains from his chest while Gelsomina is entertaining the audience dressed as a clown - the two of them come closer...
"The Road", winner of an Oscar for best foreign language film, is a real full blood masterpi...
Gorgeous early Fellini, often considered the mid-point in his career, between the more obviously reflective, supposedly realistic early work, and the bleak extravaganzas that followed. But Fellini was never a neo-realist in the dull way Rossellini was: his use of landscape was always heavily symbolic or subjective. Here Cabiria lives in the middle of a bleak wasteland, which perhaps serves to figure the emptiness of her life, the sterility of life for women in macho Italy, or a comment on post-f...
Deeply personal and engaging, Fellini's story has an authenticity
to it that is very unique. As we marvel at the method actors and old
American films of the 50's & 60's, it is in the foreign films during
this era where the most impressive and innovative work was
being created (8 1/2 tops that list). I find films with stage-like acting, blatant morality, and little bits of
exciting action (like the American cinema of the 50's and 60's) to
be uncompelling. Personal stories are compelling. Pe...
