At some point in the 1960s, the phrase “a Bergman film” established itself as a fixture in the vocabulary of American art-house cinema goers. For this new, mostly college-educated cinema audience, the viewing of a “Bergman film” often functioned as a formative intellectual experience. Bergman was the auteur's auteur, the master of profundity, and he encouraged earnest young intellectuals to see the world cinematically and seriously.
This year marks fifty years since Bergman directed his first film, Crisis. By the time he ended his filmmaking career with Fanny and Alexander in 1982, the cinematic climate that facilitated that first wave of reverent Bergman reception had most certainly shifted, and the idea of the European auteur had acquired a certain historical patina. PFA's current well-timed retrospective of nearly all of Bergman's films in this respect does not simply trace his personal artistic development, but also allows us to glimpse the historical trajectory of the international art cinema of the 1950s and ‘60s in its perhaps most representative form.
The high quality of these new prints will also make clear the degree to which the reputation of this auteur depended on a collaborative artistic process. “The Bergman film” as a concept is impossible to imagine, that is, without the cinematographic contributions of Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist, or without the extraordinary acting of the intimate ensemble cast. The lines of continuity from film to film go beyond Bergman's famed thematic repetitions and reveal a remarkably impressive body of cinematic work, one worth revisiting-or even visiting for the first time. - Mark Sandberg
Mark Sandberg is Assistant Professor in UC Berkeley's Scandinavian Department and teaches regularly in the Film Studies program. He is teaching a course on Ingmar Bergman in UC Extension this summer, in conjunction with this series, and at Cal in spring of 1997.
