Word: bergmans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Each man asks the other to express his views, and Bergman treats Simon with respect...
Simon asks about difficult passages from Bergman's past films. With Steene, Bergman's reaction to such topics was "Birgittal" but with Simon it is, "I will try to be honest." He does think about the past films, had seen Winter Light a few weeks before and was "very satisfied." The Seventh Seal is sometimes successful, sometimes not. Bergman even discards a major myth he had created. Concerning the endlessly quoted parable he wrote for Cahiers du Cinema (July, 1956), in which he compared himself to an anonymous artisan working on the cathedral at Chartres, he now tells Simon: "Very...
...presumption of the interview, as of the rest of Simon's book, is that Bergman is the greatest genius the cinema has produced. The sum of his artistry, in Simon's view, surpasses all other film-makers'; the individual works are unmatched except by Fellini and Antonioni at their best. In the interview. Simon tells Bergman his judgment straight off, but the book is by no means mere obeisance, though the unsparing acidity characteristic of Simon's New York magazine theater column corrodes few Bergman frames...
Four long essays fill most of the book, one each on the films Simon considers to be Bergman's best: The Naked Night (1953) which Simon, setting a welcome precedent, calls by its correctly translated title The Clown's Evening: Smiles of a Summer Night (1955); Winter Light (1962)) and Persona (1966). Simon's analytical and descriptive abilities, seen most often in his film reviews in The New Leader, flourish in these expansive essays, unencumbered by the disputatious color of his reviews...
Simon's most enduring articles have always been on the few films he loves, while he has been quick to trifle with or even denounce the imperfect nascent films so influential in the development of a classical style like Bergman's. In dealing with the classical, he is on his own firmest ground, and in his Bergman book Simon is willing, for the first time, to take his stands, in relation to--not merely above--other crities...