Defending Bergman and Antonioni
by Andre Soares
Derek Malcolm in The Evening Standard (via This Is London):
"The time when crowds rushed off to the Academy or the Paris Pullman art houses to mull over the latest masterpieces from Ingmar Bergman or Michelangelo Antonioni seem like an age ago. Now they are both dead, and within 24 hours of each other, too. The shock waves, at least for cinephiles, are considerable.
"These two men, one Swedish and one Italian, commanded the European film scene, with a whole bevy of others such as [Federico] Fellini and [Luchino] Visconti, like colossi. They were regarded as directly opposed to Hollywood and its determined commercialism, even though they actually admired Hollywood as much as Hollywood, albeit reluctantly, admired them.
"Now the mood appears to have changed, or so some of even the upmarket media would have it.
…
"This refusal to admit the worth of serious films and to extol instead movies as pure entertainment leaves Bergman and Antonioni out in the cold. To hell with Bergman’s charming, humorous and relevant Smiles of a Summer Night or Antonioni’s astonishingly beautiful La Notte. Bruce Willis battering the life out of Die Hard 4 is the thing the great British public want to see."
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