Ingmar Bergman

Another bad day for the film world: Ingmar Bergman has died. Greencine rounds up reactions. I find myself startled that I didn't put any of his films in my top 100 - and dismayed that I didn't put any in my top 10 by decades list. (Though not as dismayed as when I was informed I didn't have any Bresson on there: both Bergman and Bresson suffer, perhaps, for doing their best work in the 50s and 60s - impossibly rich periods for films.) Still - it's a fair assessment: I have always respected Bergman (he was one of the first directors I noticed as a director - along with Eisenstein, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Lynch), but never really loved him. He's always been a problem to me. He didn't make any bad films that I know of; everything I've seen of his has been near-great to great. But even at his best (my vote goes to Persona) he leaves me cool, with doubts and reservations. (And the tendency to think how Godard or Imamura or Altman did it better - literally, like the difference between Bergman's flash to white in Persona vs. Imamura's in The Pornographers - Imamura did it by having someone push a bank of lights across the stage - I don't know if he was trying to signify on Bergman, but it's such a cool moment.....)

But taken together - that coolness, contrasted (and combined) with his consistent excellence, and undoubted influence, made him, for me, the illustration of the difference between a favorite filmmaker and a great filmmaker. He was, I'd have to say, second only to Godard as the world's greatest living filmmaker - and the third of the top four (for my money) to die in the last year or so (after Altman and Imamura). It's a great loss.