This Wednesday, it will be a year since Ingmar Bergman died. A “poet with the camera” and an auteur of metaphysical art, his films dealt with faith, desire and human struggle in a world faced with what he called God’s silence. The Swedish filmmaker’s beguilingly simple cinematic treatment of profound existential dilemmas won him fans—in the art house circuit and mainstream cinema—and awards, including a special Palme des Palmes at Cannes for lifetime achievement.Bergman wrote and directed over 50 films, some of them modern classics like Wild Strawberries, Cries and Whispers, and Smiles of a Summer Night—the last one a rare, flirtatious comedy from the director known for his dark, introspective genius. Other well-known works by the director include Through a Glass Darkly, a film about a mentally troubled woman, and Persona, which studies the coalescing identities of an actress who goes mute and her nurse. The Seventh Seal, in which a caped Death plays chess with a knight returning from the crusades, ranks among his most critically acclaimed films.Bergman’s films are a theatrical expression of what it is like to be human. He once famously said, “I don’t want to produce a work of art that the public can sit and suck aesthetically. I want to give them a blow in the small of the back, to scorch their indifference, to startle them out of their complacency.”
