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Originally Posted by evollove
Father was Lutheran minister. Ingmar's brother received a "magic lantern" for Christmas, and Ingmar tricked him into trading. He was a rebellious brat, and figured a life in the arts would piss his parents off well enough. He began in the theater, working his way into the prestigious Royal Dramatic Theater. He wrote as well, and one of his scripts got turned into a movie. It was a matter of time before this theatrical genius was given a shot at making a film of his own. While he was popular enough in Sweden, it wasn't until Smiles of a Summer Night that the international audience took notice, and his next film, Seventh Seal, made him an arthouse star. For the next few decades, he'd spend the summer filming, the winter directing a play. "Theater is my wife, film is my mistress."
In the mid-70s, the Swedish authorities accused Bergman of tax evasion. He fled to Germany. It all got sorted out. He lived the rest of his life on the tiny island of Faro, where he filmed a number of bleak things.
He's been married five times and has had countless long-term relationships otherwise, Liv Ulmann maybe most famously. His last one, to a chick named "Ingrid" (no, not that one) was the longest. She seemed cool.
He retired from film with Fanny and Alexander in 1982, but continued to write. Shortly before dying, he added one more film to his oeuvre--Saraband, a sequel of sorts to Scenes from a Marriage. (The DVD of Saraband has a meaty "making-of" thing that would contrast well with the much earlier documentary.)
I think he's the greatest director in cinema history. But if that's too much, you have to agree he's at least one of them.
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I'll agree aesthetically he's one of the greatest, but I'll say this about this one negative thing about him-he had generally one style.
Put it this way, Kubrick was able to do the almost painfully slow films like 2001 (and no that isn't a slight on him as that's one of my fav. films), but yet he clearly had the talent to pull off a comedy like Dr. Strangelove or a horror like The Shining. Honestly I couldn't ever imagine Bergman being able to pull off a comedy film. Don't get me wrong he was incredibly brilliant at what what he did and his style, but for me a level of greatness has to be attributed to their ability to do more than one style of filming.
Sure you can do the long shot of a slow scene, but could you do a scene that tried to kick things up a level.
OPEN THE FLOODGATES OF WRATH!