Word: bergmans
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...dark and gloomy film, The Clown's Evening presents life as a brutal humiliation--a life difficult to endure which, in the final analysis, resignation and companionship may make tolerable. Many people interpret the film as absolute pessimism, probably because it eschews the idyllic presentation of Bergman's earlier films such as Summer Interlude and Summer with Monika. But the romance in those films eventually breaks down--totally. The more concentrated Clown's Evening begins after the break-down, discrediting illusions that we never see on the screen...
...unclear. He would never tolerate such bilidity on the part of a film-maker. His examination of The Clown's Evening is, however, sufficiently perceptive on all counts to make this weakness merely an organizational problem. Attaching defailed comment to extensive paraphrase. Simon gives a clear picture of Bergman's command, particularly of the nightmarish flashback done with heightened contrast and masterful manipulation of sound. Drawing somewhat on earlier analyses by British critics Peter Cowie and Robin Wood, he integrates his observations, obtaining a more complete picture of The Clown's Evening than has been seen before...
...Bergman's best comedy, Smiles of a Summer Night, has a clever structure that allows its tone to range from the comic to the bitterly tragic. At base level, its concern is with the rebounds its numerous characters make between lovers. Though its charm and impact are unique, its subject and its unusual emotional range create an often-noted resemblance to Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game--a film Bergman had not seen at the time he made his production, and which he does not like today...
Simon chose Winter Light to represent Bergman's religious trilogy from the early 60's. More than any of Bergman's other films, it has an austere, condensed visual strength that makes analysis of its imagery almost superfluous. Its depiction of religiosity is ambiguous, yet profound, and so Simon carefully explores possible conclusions to be drawn from the ending--where the pastor, whose faith has deserted him, begins the Vespers service before an audience consisting solely of his church's staff and his atheist former mistress...
...series, he inherited the organization set up for the first volume--an interview, a short essay, detailed analysis of four films. Had Simon written according to his own desires, he might have written a survey work. That would have been too bad. Several fine general studies of Bergman exist now, and Simon's disagreements with Wood and Cowie and others are not so major as to warrant another. So Simon has written essays on just four films. They are the best, most thorough critiques of single fims that he has written--perhaps the best, most thorough that have been written...