TSPDT

Key Production Countries: Sweden, Germany
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, Family Drama, Marriage Drama, Comedy, Reunion Films, Ensemble Film, Period Film, Romantic Drama, Satire, Comedy of Manners, Fantasy
Key Collaborators: Sven Nykvist (Cinematographer), Gunnar Björnstrand (Leading Character Actor), P.A. Lundgren (Production Designer), Erland Josephson (Leading Character Actor), Allan Ekelund (Producer), Max von Sydow (Leading Actor), Bibi Andersson (Leading Character Actress), Erik Nordgren (Composer), Liv Ullmann (Leading Actress), Oscar Rosander (Editor), Harriet Andersson (Leading Actress), Gunnar Fischer (Cinematographer)

"What, then, is this place that is the human condition? What does this moral landscape look and feel like, what are its most basic features and laws? Bergman’s “reduction” reveals our lives as moral and spiritual beings to be constituted by six fundamental kinds of experience and their interrelationships. These occur throughout Bergman’s films in many variations and combinations. Sometimes all are present, sometimes only a few. They are the seminal moments of judgment, abandonment, passion, turning, shame, and vision. Together they delineate the kind of journey life is and the kind of road it must travel. They are the “plot points” through which all of Bergman’s stories develop, and they provide the framework for understanding Bergman’s films and his achievement as artist and “filmic metaphysician.” - Jesse Kalin (The Films of Ingmar Bergman, 2003)

"The son of a pastor, Ingmar Bergman made films filled with religious imagery, which paradoxically express a godless, loveless universe. Bergman's entire oeuvre can be seen as the autobiography of his psyche. Dividing his time between the stage and screen, Bergman often introduced the theatre into his films as a metaphor for the duality of the personality. At least five of his films take place on an island, a circumscribed area like the stage." - Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)

"One of the most revelatory voices to emerge from the postwar explosion of international art-house cinema, Bergman was a master storyteller who startled the world with his stark intensity and naked pursuit of the most profound metaphysical and spiritual questions. The struggles of faith and morality, the nature of dreams, and the agonies and ecstasies of human relationships—Bergman explored these subjects in films ranging from comedies whose lightness and complexity belie their brooding hearts to groundbreaking formal experiments and excruciatingly intimate explorations of family life." - The Criterion Collection

"Bergman has never set out to be less than demanding; and as an artist his greatest achievement is in digesting such unrelenting seriousness until he sees no need to bludgeon us with it... Bergman has seen no reason to abandon his faith in a select audience, prepared and trained for a diligent intellectual and emotional involvement with cinema." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"As one of the most accomplished and influential directors of all time, Ingmar Bergman charted an unparalleled career in film and television, while also staging numerous theatrical productions throughout the decades. Bergman's artistry concentrated on spiritual and psychological conflicts that were complemented by a distinctly intense and intimate visual style. As he matured as an artist, however, Bergman shifted from an allegorical to a more personal cinema, often revisiting and elaborating on recurring images, subjects and techniques." - Turner Classic Movies

"Although he may be faulted for an occasional cold, humourless pessimism that may seem contrived, both his intellectual gravity and his uncompromising devotion to cinema as a serious art form are undeniable." - Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)

"Although a comparison to Strindberg is far too confining, his films reflect as powerfully the summer fevers and winter darkness of the Swedish character, expressed through a versatile range of moods from the sophisticated comedy of morals (A Lesson in Love, 1954) to the doomed vision of an apocalyptic future (The Shame, 1968)." - Margaret Hinxman (The International Encyclopedia of Film, 1972)

"Bergman's unique international status as a filmmaker would seem assured on many grounds; his prolific output of largely notable work; the profoundly personal nature of his best films since the 1950s; the innovative nature of his technique combined with its essential simplicity even when employing surrealistic and dream-like treatments; his creative sensitivity in relation to his players; and his extraordinary capacity to evoke distinguished acting from his regular interpreters." - Roger Manvell (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)

"Bergman's childhood, as the son of a rigid Lutheran pastor, may provide a key to the metaphysical and religious speculations in his films. However, Bergman's reputation for melancholy and pretension does no justice to the sheer inventiveness of his visual style and the lyrical beauty of his films." - The Movie Book, 1999

"Human laughter, sorrow, joy, and anxiety are analyzed and compellingly illustrated by Bergman, one of the great directors." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

"Bergman is amazing. Experimental, alive, almost shockingly modern at times, Bergman’s films are not museum artifacts set back behind glass, but enormous, immersive, thrummingly alive works of art that can impact you so profoundly that all you really want to do is devour one after another at a gallop and see if you are even remotely the same person on the other side." - The Playlist Staff (IndieWire, 2015)

"Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls." - Ingmar Bergman

"I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images." - Ingmar Bergman