scenes from a marriage is amazing, but you wouldnt know cuz your busy championing TRANSFORMERS. yes im a snob

Even in film school he is rarely discussed, I think because his films don't really lend themselves to the playful academic deconstruction that dominates theory. And yeah, the film buffs I know don't even like him very much. I loved him when I was a teenager, but most of his work seems really stodgy and conservative to me now. His trilogy--Winter Light, Through a Glass Darkly and The Silence--is still pretty unfuckwithable, and The Seventh Seal will always be a sentimental favorite of mine (like many people, it was my first "fuck, there is so much more to film than I ever imagined" moment), but once I moved on to Herzog and Tarkovsky and Ozu and Godard et al., Bergman seemed somewhat simple and sheltered.

Who knew? Ingmar Bergman was still alive. Hmm.

The problem with Bergman's films is that they're about as opposed to American sensibilities as can be. They come across pretentious and goofy. I've never liked them. Seventh Seal is probably my favorite of a miserable lot. Even when my dad was in film school in the early '70s, they were largely despised, except by certain professors.

But there's always a group of people who like anything different or weird just for the sake of it being different or weird. Look at the cult following for movies like Crash (the Cronenberg version) which has to be one of the most unintentionally funny movies of all time.

What about Wild Strawberries, with a rivetic performance by the great silent film star and stage director Victor Sjostrom playing an old professor close to death, or the atmospheric, 4 Oscar-winning Fanny and Alexander (the 5 hour version)- love the Christmas scenes and the theatrical motif- or the comedic Smiles of a Summer Night, which inspired Sondheim's A Little Night Music, or those haunting Liv Ullmann performances, or Cries and Whispers... Check 'em out!

'Fanny and Alexander' is as entertaining and contemporary as anything by PT Anderson, and is one of the best-LOOKING films ever made, completely accessible. 'Wild Strawberries; is a gem. 'Personae' is a very influential exercise in style that is so widely imitated it flies right over our contemporary heads, but it helped MAKE the mediated world we live in. Now. 'The Seventh Seal' is still inescapable, (even by Bill and Ted) unforgettable, and weird. You forget some people are alive because they're old, and they've done every damn thing a person is supposed to do. Erik, you ARE wrong, but I'm glad you admit the possibility. You've never TALKED to anyone under 75 who's seen Bergman's films? I...I...wow. Wow.

Well, I went through a lousy film studies program in the mid-90's and we watched absolutely no Bergman, which I've had to correct for post-graduation. 'Wild Strawberries' is fantastic, but I'll second the recommendation for Fanny and Alexander as a great entry point (even with the somewhat daunting 5-hour running time - it's broken into episodes, so you can easily watch it over several nights if you don't have a lot of patience). The Multnomah County library's got the nice Critereon Collection version available, so you really have no excuses (strangely, they don't have the DVD release for Persona).

That said, I think his reputation (based largely on the earlier symbolic works) is not connected with his actual influence on other filmmakers (which is much more from his character/relationship studies like 'Scenes from a Marriage'). Woody Allen spent the better part of a decade making Bergman knockoffs, and I've seen a couple reviewers who cite Nicole Holofcener as the heir to the Bergman tradition.

really, no one under 75? hmmm...
the trilogy is impeccable and wow I think scenes from a marriage is mind blowing. it doesn't speak well that americans don't get his movies - they are extremely beautiful, well written, and feature some of the best acting I have ever seen. not to mention they actually dwell on topics that are deeply interesting.

Geez louise. Can't you just leave the guy alone? What kind of obituary is this? "He's dead but nobody except snobby assholes liked his movies anyway. Keanu Reeves is funny"

Weak.

Just for the sake of clarification, I feel kind of obligated to link to this.