Bergman’s films address big subjects: sin, guilt, evil, the existence of God, identity.
For Bergman, who died in 2007 in semi-self-imposed exile on Faro island in the Baltic Sea, making films and working with actors was a form of play that he indulged in his entire life. Like many artists, Bergman, the son of a Lutheran minister and chaplain to the king of Sweden, was fixated on his childhood, which he examined over and over in his films, especially the 1982 masterpiece “Fanny and Alexander.” In fact, Bergman’s son Daniel, also a filmmaker, says his father was more interested in his own childhood, and in actors, than he was in his own children, who were not very close to him.
On film, we also see the work of Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Ingrid Thulin, as well as male leads Erland Josephson (“Scenes from a Marriage,” “Saraband”) and the great Max von Sydow (“The Seventh Seal,” “Hour of the Wolf”). Of course, appearing in the film are Bergman’s favorite surviving leading ladies, Gunnel Lindblom (“The Virgin Spring,” “Winter Light”) and Liv Ullmann (“Persona,” “Scenes from a Marriage”). The film, featuring such speakers as Olivier Assayas (“The Clouds of Sils Maria,” “Summer Hours”) and Jean-Claude Carriere (“The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “At Eternity’s Gate”), makes among other things a strong case for Bergman being the single most important influence on modern French cinema. Thus, it was only natural that she, along with Felix Moeller (“Forbidden Films”) and co-director and editor Bettina Bohler would make “Searching for Ingmar Bergman,” a documentary celebrating Bergman’s lofty place in the history of cinema. Like many of us, she was blown away as a young person by Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” which she analyzes shot for shot in fascinating opening scenes.
Ingmar Bergman, the Nordic Bard, is the reason Margarethe von Trotta (“Rosa Luxemburg,” “Hannah Arendt”) grew up wanting to be a film director.
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