Word: bergmans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...LAST Ingmar Bergman has stopped posing questions and begun taking them for granted. Shame is probably his greatest film--and it is the first to aim exclusively below the neck. We had expected "A Film from Ingmar Bergman" on the subject of war to be filled with long dialogues, endless questioning; in our mind's eye we can see a low-key closeup of Liv Ullman or Max von Sydow asking, "Why is this happening to us? Why doesn't it make any sense?" But this is precisely what Bergman avoids. For the first time we can walk...
THERE IS enough evidence to convince the most benighted of critics that Ingmar Bergman is an artist of massive integrity, possessing an acuity that equals that of the very best novelists and poets of our time, and a fearless honesty of both subject matter and technique that separates him from his contemporaries in film. His latest effort, Shame, and the earlier Seventh Seal very possibly could render him, along with Gunter Grass among novelists and John Berryman among poets, one of the eminences of art of this century. His new film concerns itself with difficulties of a young couple living...
There are no categorical symbols, no sacrifice of credibility or insistence upon obvious epiphany to legitimize the film's posture towards its character and their situation. Though Shame literally transfixes the viewer, Bergman never once imposes upon him. Though not one detail of the source of the conflict, or of who is fighting whom is revealed, the conduct of the war is so painfully real, so utterly believable, that there is no necessity for explication. Shame avoids, rhetoric and relies instead upon demonstration, letting the events speak for themselves. One cannot find Bergman in his latest film, except those parts...
MUCH HAS been made of the "difficulty" of Bergman films. True, they are as difficult as thinking about life; but if what is meant by "difficult" is that he is obscure or diffuse or private in his passion for understanding, I think that it is wrong to characterize him so. What he seems to be about is creating a modern mythology, like Grass or Berryman, that resonates within the being of a modern person. Part of the unacceptability of the classical myths as metaphor for modern life seems to stem from their very inaccessibility to most people, who are first...
...SHAME. Ingmar Bergman examines war and the artistic conscience in his 29th film. The visual imagery is brilliantly desolate, and the performances-by Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand and Liv Ullman-are orchestrated with precision...