Cinema Loses One of Its Greats

Director Ingmar Bergman has died at age 89. I was first introduced to Bergman's work through a very unlikely avenue--The Seventh Seal parody in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (I wonder how many other suburban kids found him this way). From the NY Times:

Ingmar Bergman, the "poet with the camera" who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.

Critics called Mr. Bergman one of the directors -- the others being Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa -- who dominated the world of serious film making in the second half of the 20th century.

He moved from the comic romp of lovers in "Smiles of a Summer Night" to the Crusader's search for God in "The Seventh Seal," and from the gripping portrayal of fatal illness in "Cries and Whispers" to the alternately humorous and horrifying depiction of family life in "Fanny and Alexander."

Mr. Bergman dealt with pain and torment, desire and religion, evil and love; in Mr. Bergman's films, "this world is a place where faith is tenuous; communication, elusive; and self-knowledge, illusory," Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times Magazine in a profile of the director. God is either silent or malevolent; men and women are creatures and prisoners of their desires.

For many filmgoers and critics, it was Mr. Bergman more than any other director who in the 1950s brought a new seriousness to film making.

(Photo by Jonte Wentzell/Prestige/Newsmakers)