Word: bergman
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...masterly Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman, who found both humor and despair in the human psyche, redefined cinema worldwide. He was 89. (See Arts for an Appreciation of Bergman by Woody Allen...
...created indelible allegories of postwar man adrift without God. He was the movies' great dramatist of strong, tortured women and the finest director of actresses. More than any other filmmaker, he raised the status of movies to an art form equal to novels and plays. Yet when Ingmar Bergman died at 89, the popular description of him was, Woody Allen's favorite director...
...Many film critics assign Bergman to a lower rank because, they say, he makes filmed plays. I don't see this as a limitation, but wouldn't you agree that he was essentially a film writer who directed his own work...
...That could be said of me too. But you must also take a Bergman film like Cries and Whispers where there's almost no dialogue at all. This could only be done on film. He invented a film vocabulary that suited what he wanted to say, that had never really been done before. He'd put the camera on one person's face close and leave it there, and just leave it there and leave it there. It was the opposite of what you learned to do in film school, but it was enormously effective and entertaining...
...someone who hadn't seen any of his films asked you to recommend just five, what would be your Bergman starter...