Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
RANKED:
16. The Magician (1958)
After the phenomenal year Ingmar Bergman had with his international successes, "The Seventh Seal" and "Wild Strawberries," he made a psychological drama that turned the lens around to reflect on his own artistry. The film, 1958's "The Magician," centers on a mute magician and his travelling performing troupe, known for their 'supernatural' shows. Perhaps the titular magician stands in for Bergman himself, whose performances are able to illicit such strong emotions from people, despite the notion that they are all slight of hand and psychological manipulation. "The Magician" finds Bergman reflecting on his own 'performative' artistry, while also acknowledging that his titular magician is both a genius and a fraud.
15. Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)
Centering on a band of traveling carnival performers, Ingmar Bergman's 1953 film "Sawdust and Tinsel" is brimming with regret, desperation, and sadness. All of the carnies face economic woes, relationship problems, and philosophical and existential crises. As the film progresses, these woes never get satiated and only get worse. There is no sense of relief. Rather, they must hit the road and keep going. With this notion, "Sawdust and Tinsel" becomes Bergman's frustration with life itself. The film is like a continuous existential gnawing of life's depressing continuance. But there is nothing to do with that gnawing except continue to endure it.
14. Summer Interlude (1951)
1951's "Summer Interlude" is often considered by many film scholars to be the starting point of Ingmar Bergman's auteuristic style. His poetic mediation of the environment, his Dreyer-esque close-ups, and his melancholic attitude that seeps into the film. This melancholy is mixed in so deep with joy and love in this film that the two become inseparable. As an aging ballerina reflects on a brief summer romance from her youth, she also begins to reflect on the person she is now and all the ways in which she's built up a protective wall around herself. The film meditates on youth and abandon, while also contrasting those memories with the solemnness that comes with aging and disillusionment. It's a film that starts the artistic prowess of a man who would become one of film's greatest artists.
11. The Passion of Anna (1969)
1969's "The Passion of Anna" is perhaps the most tonally bizarre film I've seen from Ingmar Bergman yet. Its characters are listless carcasses of human beings that fail to provide any sort of humanity or comfort to the viewer and Bergman's film stews in its own emptiness and self-loathing. Interspersed in the drama are cutaway scenes of the actors commenting on their own characters. It's an interesting amalgamation of a film that doesn't quite have the emotional peaks as Bergman's other films, but it certainly is perhaps one of the more unique and hard-to-define works. Continuing the tonally empty and hollow works of his 1960s work, "The Passion of Anna" identifies a post-war malaise that left society in a state of feeling as though one were living a meaningless existence.
12. Shame (1968)
With the Vietnam War raging and the threat of nuclear fallout threatening the globe in 1968, Ingmar Bergman observed his existential anxieties through his film "Shame." Centering on a married couple living on a rural farm, the film takes the viewer through the possible horrors and terror that could take place to the average, ordinary person caught in the middle of full-out war and invasion. The war in the film is a fictional one, making the film and its depicted events feel much more futuristic and dystopian. As the couple traverses these horrors, we watch as their marriage begins to crumble. Not only this, their very humanity begins to evolve, or even devolve. "Shame" devastatingly demonstrates how war and terror affects the individual at an intimate level and offers an eerie glimpse into the possible horrors that await us all.
11. Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Once you make a masterpiece like "Persona," where else is there really for you to go? Ingmar Bergman faced this issue after his 1966 masterpiece and went into a state of creative crisis. It seemed almost too spot on to convey this creative crisis through his next project, which would end up being 1968's "Hour of the Wolf." The film centers on an artist's rapid psychological disintegration while on a small island with his pregnant wife. Through a series of hallucinogenic episodes, Bergman reveals his deepest depravities, insecurities, perversions, and other facets that renders him humiliated in the light of his own audience. Bergman infuses this psychological descent into madness with expressionism, surrealism, and gothic imagery, along with adding elements from horror folklore. "Hour of the Wolf" is the only film in Bergman's catalog that scholars would classify as 'horror' and rightfully so.
10. The Silence (1963)
Because Ingmar Bergman's 1963 film "The Silence" is so bewildering, it would be better to describe it in comparison to the films of the 1960s that film scholars would call 'modern.' Taking the anti-plot narratives from the likes of Antonioni and Resnais, Bergman constructs a narrative that does not grant the viewer full context. It centers on two sisters staying in a foreign hotel, both seething with jealousy and bitterness for each other. There are many who interpret the two women to be symbolic reflections of one singular women, while others point to a dark incestuous undertone to their fraught relationship. Regardless, the uncertainty of the context leads the viewer to claw and scrape at reason, meaning, and understanding. This is precisely the point. Bergman's brief explanation of the film, "God's silence - the negative imprint,' notions that the film's anti-plot and lack of thematic rationality only illustrates those lacks in life and modernity. "The Silence" is, in fact, a negative imprint. It is a canvas of cold emptiness, bitterness, and isolation that doesn't offer any explanation for these sentiments.
9. Winter Light (1963)
With one of the two 1963 efforts from Ingmar Bergman, "Winter Light" depicts a pastor in crisis. In what is an unofficial second act in a trilogy of films between "Through a Glass Darkly" and "The Silence," "Winter Light" is an unshakable film full of stagnant, quiet desperation about one's faith in continuing forward with the charade of existence. Bergman and frequent collaborator, Sven Nykvist, compose stark images of unflinching white light that encompasses the picture. Although you would think the subject matter would call for a darkly light dreary visual image, "Winter Light"'s visual images are bright and white, which seem to bring forth the ice cold bleakness it emanates. It is one of Bergman's greatest achievement, which isn't saying much since Bergman's catalog is littered with masterpiece after masterpiece.
8. Wild Strawberries (1957)
Often considered one of Ingmar Bergman's most significant films, 1957's "Wild Strawberries" takes the psychology of an aging physician and places its audience directly into his psyche. Focusing on a 78-year-old grouchy, stubborn egoist, the film dissects his dreams and fantasies, filled with nostalgic wanting of youth and regrets of a wasted life. Through the renderings of a subconscious mind, we get to see our own. Our memories, our childhood hopes, our contemporary fears and troubles, etc. Bergman's film calls out to us from the future. Our future selves are looking at us currently with such nostalgia, such shame, and such regret. The film is a short, solemn affair of a troubled human spirit, one that awaits us at the end of our life.
7. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
To call Ingmar Bergman's 1955 film "Smiles of a Summer Night" a 'sex comedy' would be too much of an oversimplification and perhaps an undermining phrase. You have to remind yourself this is Bergman we're talking about. So, of course there's got to be some existentiality and philosophical underpinnings to this 'sex comedy.' The film finds a group of early 20th century characters all involved in invisible games of seduction and foreplay during a romantic weekend retreat where four couples convene, swapping partners and pairing off in unexpected ways. "Smiles of a Summer Night" is Bergman at his most playful, as he navigates the comedy and occasional drama to examine the relationships between men and women and their equally intriguing stereotypes, personas, pretensions, and insecurities.
6. Summer with Monika (1953)
You can always tell the mark of a great filmmaker by how much they can say with such simple stories. With Ingmar Bergman, he somehow manages to fit the totality of life and human experience into small, intimate tales. In his 1953 masterwork "Summer with Monika," he meditates of our youthful desires turning into nothing but hollow, unfulfilled frustrations with the story of two young lovers running away for a summer. Their youthful abandon offers a respite to the harshness of the 'real world.' However, one must always return to reality, as the summer is only temporary. It's a film that begins hopeful and playful and ends tragic and bitter. It's a coming-of-age story, a story of disillusionment, and a meditation on how quickly time passes. In the hands of Bergman, this story of a summer romance becomes a story of youth, love, and the aggregate of our lives. Our youth and our insatiable desire for escape is only a shiny object that beckons to us, a fantasy that has slipped from our grasps.
5. The Virgin Spring (1960)
Now that Ingmar Bergman had global successes like "The Seventh Seal" and "Wild Strawberries" under his belt, he was more free to make the kind of films he wanted to. The films he made often reflected his state of mind at that moment in life. By 1960, Bergman entered his darkest period, which was reflected by films that began to ponder the absence of God and the horrific brutality of the world. The first film in this period of his life was 1960's "The Virgin Spring," set in 14th century Sweden and details the brutal rape and murder of a virginal rancher's daughter and his subsequent wrath and vengeance. The brutality of the film is so upfront and stark, it caused a bit of controversy, as many people even walked out of the film's premiere in Stockholm. The brutality of the film reflects the post-war nihilism at the time, as many questioned the presence of God after the horrors and terror that reigned in the years that were still fresh in the minds of many.
4. Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Despite being known for his typically optimistic and cheery films (joking, of course), Ingmar Bergman delivered a bleak and devastating look at a woman descending into schizophrenic mania in 1961's "Through a Glass Darkly." The film is the first installment in what Bergman calls a trilogy, preceding 1963's "Winter Light" and the "The Silence." Although they are completely unrelated stories, the thing that combines them into a trilogy is the unifying theme of the absence of God. What "Through a Glass Darkly" does successfully is leave the viewer with an empty feeling of desolation and devastation. The characters must contend with the notion that reality is full of horrors and there is nothing you can do to slow the progress of pain and death. Everyone must deal with the truth of reality in one way or another and everyone must come to term with the notion that God is not love as the father suggests in the final remarks. Rather, God is a spider - a spider that will try its best to penetrate and harm you. The best you can do is fight it off, but in the end, the spider will always consume you.
3. The Seventh Seal (1957)
When speaking about the career of Ingmar Bergman, there are many masterpieces to choose from. However, you wouldn't be able to speak on his career without speaking about his 1957 film "The Seventh Seal." In fact, you could even go so far to say that you can't speak about the history of cinema or the artistic and cultural reaches of film without speaking about "The Seventh Seal." It is a film that muses about the nature of death. However, it is so much more. It is a film that philosophizes about Bergman's own past, Swedish culture, political burnings, and religious melancholy all poured into a series of pictures that carry a swell of contributions and contradictions so effortlessly. The deepest questions of religion and the most mysterious revelation of simply being alive are both addressed. The film muses about the utter silence of God in the face of terror and chaos. At the time of the film's release, 1957, this Nietzschean notion of the 'Death of God' could be abstractly applied to questions regarding the possibility of faith in a post-Holocaust, nuclear age. On top of this dense intellectual philosophy held within the confines of film's frame, the film itself has spurred endless parody, imitation, and cultural recognition. All of this to say, ladies and gentlemen, that "The Seventh Seal" and all its notions, questions, philosophy, faith, melancholy, and whatever other existential questions a human being ponders, is considered one of the greatest and most influential films in human history.
2. Cries and Whispers (1972)
Although it doesn't get nearly as mentioned as much as works like "The Seventh Seal" or "Persona," 1972's "Cries and Whispers" is perhaps one of the most intimate and profoundly existential films in all of Ingmar Bergman's filmography (which is certainly saying something). Set in a mansion at the end of the 19th century, the film is about three sisters and a servant who struggle with the terminal cancer of one of the sisters. Infusing the film with the color crimson, Bergman explores death itself and the many ways in which death dictates our behavior, gender roles, sexuality, class, and every facet of human life in general. "Cries and Whispers" delves deep into the dark abyss of the human soul and explores this fear of death at its most intimate place. Each character deals with death in dramatically different ways. In exploring this, Bergman explores how death manages to dictate our very existence, as each and every little moment, memory, and social contract extends from the terror in finality and suffering. While death is a common theme in all of Bergman's work, "Cries and Whispers" seems to strike at these anxieties in some of the most profound ways.
1. Persona (1966)
After completing his existential trilogy on the absence of God, Bergman decided to adopt the Nouvelle Vague method of postmodernism with his 1966 film "Persona." Turning this metatextual lens inward, Bergman was able to construct a phycological drama about the nature of infinitely complex notions like identity, transference, psychology, duality, gender, sexuality, vampirism, art, ego, and whatever else you can mine from its vast well of thematic interpretation. The plot is simultaneously both complex and simple. The simplistic aspect of the plot centers on a stage actress who checks in to a psych hospital after a conscious decision to stop speaking. However, the complexity of the plot stems from the slow disintegration of narrative and logical understanding. Bergman blurs the lines between the two women, along with blurring the line between the viewer and the film, between himself and the film, between the viewer and himself, and between the observer and that which is observed. "Persona" continuously reminds the viewer of its artificiality throughout the film, and yet is still able to tap into emotional truths within the viewer. Art, despite its construction, is still representative of truth. And the personas that we construct as humans, despite their artificiality, are still the way we communicate ourselves to others. Bergman's artistic masterpiece is an unyielding monolith in the history of film. Its acclaim is unparalleled and its meanings, interpretations, and commentary are endlessly boundless.
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