"The people in my films are exactly like myself -- creatures of instinct, of rather poor intellectual capacity, who at best only think while they're talking," Mr. Bergman once said. "Mostly they're body, with a little hollow for the soul."I saw my first Bergman film in 1974 when I was working for a public TV station that ran Bergman films in a late Friday night time slot. I learned to appreciate them later when I took a course in Scandanavian drama in grad school and the professor said that the best way to understand the Scandanavian soul and the plays of Ibsen and Strindberg was to watch the films of Bergman. And in spite of his reputation for being dark and depressing, Bergman was able to show touches of humor. (You had to really look for it though; as a dear friend of Scandanavian descent once noted, the shortest book in the library is one called Swedish Humor.)
To Mr. Bergman, solace was only possible through erotic and intellectual connections, but this was complicated when people cloak their true emotions. He underscored this theme by focusing on characters involved in theater and who are used to disguises and role playing.
Mr. Bergman won favorable comparisons with August Strindberg, the 19th-century playwright he admired, for his psychological insights and for addressing themes often ignored by his contemporaries.
Film critic and scholar David Sterritt said Mr. Bergman made it fashionable among American audiences to discuss movies as an art form. Previously, that distinction was largely reserved for adaptations of Shakespeare or other old masters. "He showed that cinema could be a genuine art that could take on the deepest of all human themes," Sterritt said.
With their heavily abstract, sometimes allegorical storytelling technique, Mr. Bergman's nearly 60 motion pictures found their greatest fans among viewers in small, "art-house" theaters. His most enthusiastic American champion was Woody Allen, who tried to mimic Mr. Bergman's themes with "Interiors" and "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy."
Three of Mr. Bergman's movies received Oscars for best foreign language film: "The Virgin Spring" (1960), about a 14th-century Swede who avenges the rape and death of his daughter; "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961), about a crumbling modern family; and his final film, "Fanny and Alexander" (1982), a story of terrifying adolescence.
And if it wasn't for Ingmar Bergman, American filmgoers would never have seen the luminescence of Liv Ullman or the range of Max Von Sydow and perhaps would never have known that Woody Allen was capable of being more than just a stand-up comic. Those accomplishments alone are enough to be grateful for a lifelong contribution to art.
