Ingmar Bergman, Conventional Film Director
Ingmar Bergman: A mere director of actresses?
David Bordwell on Jonathan Rosenbaum’s New York Times Op-Ed on Ingmar Bergman:
"Jonathan Rosenbaum has created quite a stir. His New York Times Op-Ed piece, ‘Scenes from an Overrated Career,’ offers a fairly harsh judgment on the films of Ingmar Bergman. In one sense the timing was awkward; the poor man had just died. But the article wouldn’t have attracted much attention if Rosenbaum had waited a few months, so if creating a cause célébre was his goal, he chose the right moment.
"Timing aside, there wasn’t much in the piece that hasn’t been said by certain cadres of cinephiles for decades. Back in the 1960s, people called Bergman ‘theatrical,’ ‘uncinematic,’ pretentious, and intellectually shallow. He was even accused of hypocrisy. His spiritual, philosophical films always seemed to depend on a surprising number of couplings, killings, rapes, and gorgeous ladies, often naked. Rosenbaum contrasts Bergman with [Robert] Bresson and [Carl Theodor] Dreyer, more austere religious filmmakers as well as great formal innovators, and this gambit too is familiar from late-night film-society disputes. Jonathan’s case is news in the good, grey Times, but it’s an old story among his (my) generation."
The most curious thing about both Rosenbaum’s and Bordwell’s articles is that Bergman somehow comes across as a (at least somewhat) conventional filmmaker. I wonder if they’ve watched the same Bergman films I’ve watched. Are there many versions of Cries and Whispers, The Seventh Seal, or Persona floating around?
Also, in his lengthy (and highly informative) article, Bordwell discusses the use of "deep space" on film. Curiously, he doesn’t mention Jean Renoir’s naturalistic — though, in my view, quite overrated — La Grande illusion, made back in 1937, or four years before Citizen Kane.
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