Ingrid Bergman ca. early 1940s. Ingrid Bergman movies on TCM: From the artificial 'Gaslight' to the magisterial 'Autumn Sonata' Two days ago, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series highlighted the film career of Greta Garbo. Today, Aug. 28, '15, TCM is focusing on another Swedish actress, three-time Academy […]

'Fanny and Alexander' movie: Ingmar Bergman brilliant classic with Bertil Guve as Alexander Ekdahl. 'Fanny and Alexander' movie review: Last Ingmar Bergman 'filmic film' Why Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander / Fanny och Alexander bears its appellation is a mystery – one of many in the director's final 'filmic film' […]

Hitchcock: Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock Anthony Hopkins As Alfred Hitchcock Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins plays Alfred Hitchcock, who never won a competitive Oscar, in Sacha Gervasi's Hitchcock, which is scheduled to open in 2013. Hitchcock's massive double chin, prominent nose, and bald head are all there, but I can […]

Ingmar Bergman Jean Dujardin, Meryl Streep, Christopher Plummer, Michel Hazanavicius, Octavia Spencer, and surely Harvey Weinstein are thrilled they and/or their movies won Academy Awards last night at Hollywood & Highland. Not every Oscar nominee/winner, however, has felt that way. The Criterion Collection has posted (via dizzydentfilms) a May 12, […]

Lillian Gish in Victor Sjöström's The Scarlet Letter Considering that religious puritans (and their politically correct cohorts) continue to plague the world at the beginning of the third millennium, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter remains as relevant today as when it was first published in 1850. This evening, Turner Classic […]

Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata Ingrid Bergman's best on-screen performance, as Liv Ullmann's painfully self-centered mother in Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata, can be appreciated on Friday, August 6 – Ingrid Bergman Day – on Turner Classic Movies. TCM's “Summer Under the Stars” film series continues with twelve Bergman movies, […]

Watching Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's final work, Offret / The Sacrifice (1986), is an exercise in cinema appreciation. That's not because The Sacrifice is a great film, but because it has great moments interspersed with moments of sheer boredom. In fact, The Sacrifice is one of those rare films that […]

Clapperboard used in Ingmar Bergman's 1962 drama 'The Silence' Nearly 340 items that belonged to Ingmar Bergman are to be auctioned by Bukowskis in Stockholm on Sept. 28. Among the items are film cameras, Golden Globe awards, and the chess set that was “probably” used by Max von Sydow's Antonius […]

Laura Neiva in Adrift. Cannes 2009 review snippets At Firstshowing.net, Alex Billington on À Deriva / Adrift (above, with Laura Neiva), screened in the Un Certain Regard sidebar: “I think I stumbled across a big Cannes sleeper hit. From the beaches of Brazil comes Adrift, known as À Deriva in […]

 Jan Troell Swedish Oscars honor: Best Film Guldbagge Award winner Everlasting Moments with Maria Heiskanen. A feature film director since the mid-1960s (Here's Your Life, Ole dole doff), Jan Troell – whose credits include The Emigrants, The New Land, Zandy's Bride, and Il Capitano – is one of the most prestigious filmmakers in Swedish […]

Ingmar Bergman (right) will be the subject of a weekend-long salute – with the screening of five of his Academy Award-nominated and winning films – beginning Friday, April 4, at 7 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciencess' Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. The opening night of […]

Ingmar Bergman's 1969 drama En Passion / A Passion (in the U.S., mistitled as The Passion of Anna) is a great film – in fact, it may be the best of Bergman's mid-to-late-1960s efforts dealing with human relationships and the Self – e.g., Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Shame. A […]

Director Ingmar Bergman and his camera. Ingmar Bergman & Michelangelo Antonioni: Two film giants and their 'early / later' works Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni died on the same day – July 30, 2007. In the New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott remembered the two filmmakers: “The two of […]

Ingmar Bergman: 'Persona,' 'The Seventh Seal,' 'Cries and Whisper's director dead at 89 Ingmar Bergman, one of the most influential and acclaimed filmmakers of the twentieth century, died today, July 30, 2007 at his home on the island of Faro, Sweden. Bergman, whose filmography includes classics such as The Seventh […]

Ingmar Bergman's 1966 psychological drama Persona and Spike Jonze's 1999 psychobizarro comedy Being John Malkovich will screen as a double feature on Friday, July 20, at 7 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The psycho-double feature is being presented in […]

Vargtimmen / Hour of the Wolf, a 1968 film by Ingmar Bergman, proves the nostrum that even lesser work by a great artist surpasses the better work of lesser artists, for Bergman can get more from the prosaic than just about any other director. Hour of the Wolf is comprised […]

Maj-Britt Nilsson, best known for her roles in three Ingmar Bergman films of the early 1950s, died last Dec. 19 in Cannes. She was 82. No cause of death was announced. Nilsson's three Bergman films are Till glädje / To Joy (1950), in which she has the role of an […]

Water with Lisa Ray. Set in the late 1930s, during the British occupation of India, Deepa Mehta's Water created quite a stir during its production in that country. Spoken in Hindi, the film stars Canadian actress Lisa Ray as a young widow living with several other widowed women and girls in […]

I should no longer be surprised when critics miss the most obvious things in works of art, because they are human beings, and the vast majority of human beings are lazy by nature. That said, the simplistic notion that Ingmar Bergman's great 1968 drama Skammen / Shame is merely anti-war […]

Leo Tolstoy once opined that all happy families are happy in a few ways, while those that are not suffer in many unique ways. This apothegm was never more well evinced than in filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's five-hour 1973 Swedish telefilm Scener ur ett äktenskap / Scenes from a Marriage, a […]

Ingmar Bergman movies Autumn Sonata, Cries & Whispers at the American Cinematheque's Aero Theatre A number of Ingmar Bergman movies, among them the Ingrid Bergman / Liv Ullmann mother-daughter drama Autumn Sonata and Best Picture Oscar nominee Cries & Whispers, will be screened – in new 35mm prints – at […]

Man to Man: Defense of the human-ape link set in 1870s Africa will open the 2005 Berlin Film Festival. Régis Wargnier (Indochine) directed this tale about how scientists get things wrong – were pygmies the missing human-ape link? – when they let cultural prejudices get in the way of scientific […]