<p>Ingmar Bergmann passes today at age 89.</p>
<p>Your thoughts?</p>
<p>Inga svinga nurmba…I never could understand Swedish but I spent many happy hours of college in the 1960’s watching his black-and-white films, shown by the college for our evening viewing enjoyment, especially the ones starring Liv Ullman.</p>
<p>Last summer, I watched Scenes From A Marriage and Cries And Whispers multiple times. Those are really fundamental films for me – at the very core of my taste, although I don’t think I would want every film to be like that.</p>
<p>I discovered Bergmann in my freshman year. A NE winter was an appropriate setting in which to watch The Seventh Seal, Virgin Spring and other movies in the same vein. Then I went back to Paris for the summer and went on my own to watch Personna. It was a very strange, disorienting experience to come out of that film into the brilliant August sun. But Bergmann had a way of drawing the viewer into his world.</p>
<p>When S1 was 3 and in love with the Magic Flute, we showed him Bergmann’s version, which was charming and revealed a totally different side of him.</p>
<p>Was “Autumn Sonata” his last international release ?</p>
<p>It’s been >30 yrs since “Cries and Whispers” came out, and I still have not found another movie equal to it in power. There maybe moments of greatness in other movies, “Schindler’s List”, “Philadelphia” withstanding, but not sustaining like CNW.</p>