Ingmar Bergman

Bergman, Ingmar 

Born July 14, 1918, in Uppsala. Swedish theater and motion picture director.

In 1942, Bergman began to work in the theater; in 1943 he began to work in motion pictures, first as a scriptwriter, then as a director. He received wide recognition in the mid-1950’s. The films Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1956), Wild Strawberries (1957), The Face (1958), and The Virgin Spring (1959) pose moral and philosophic problems involving the tragic situation of man in the crisis and decline of spiritual values in bourgeois society.

Bergman is inclined toward a negative, pessimistic world view, but the theme of moral opposition to the forces of evil resounds in his films. The search for the meaning of life often has a religious aspect in Bergman’s films.

In the 1960’s, Bergman’s films took on a particularly somber coloring. The mournful theme of a man who has lost the real substance of human existence—love for people—runs through the trilogy Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), and The Silence (1963). The films Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1968), and Shame (1969) develop the theme of the disintegration of the human personality; apocalyptic motifs are intensified in these films.

The style of Bergman’s films is characterized by a combination of realism, allegory, and symbolism, by a poetic feeling for nature, by severity, by fluid portrayals, and at times by a propensity for expressionistic effects and accentuation of brutality. Many of Bergman’s films have been awarded prizes at international film festivals.

REFERENCES

Béranger, J. Ingmar Bergman et ses films. Paris, 1959.
Ingmar Bergman. Moscow, 1969.

V. I. BOZHOVICH