Adieu Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

Ingmar Bergman "poet with the camera" (1918-2007)

"Masters like Ingmar Bergman can die only in the physical sense. He has been with me — as, I am sure, he has been with many others — ever since I discovered cinema as an art form. His work will live on forever for he has, through his huge body of work, defined the very contours of cinema for the modern world. You think of cinema, you think of Bergman. " - Adoor Gopalakrishnan's tribute to Bergman

"probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera" - Woody Allen
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Quotes by Bergman:

"Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls."

"I hope I never get so old I get religious. "

"I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images."
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One of the first headlines I read when I woke up today was that film icon and giant Ingmar Bergman is no more. Press reports quote his daughter Eva who said that her father passed away peacefully at his home on the Baltic Sea island of Faro.

The Associated Press writer Louise Nordstrom in her tribute to him writes:

Bergman's dozens of works combined deep seriousness, indelible imagery and unexpected flashes of humor in finely written, inventively shot explorations of difficult subjects such as plague and madness.


His vision encompassed the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, its glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the Baltic islet of Faro, where the reclusive artist spent his last years. (Link to article given below)


A very strict upbringing by his father, a Lutheran Minister, who believed in "spare the rod and spoil the child" traumatised him. His films dealt with love, pain, good, evil, the fear of death, the joys and pain of family life, relationships.... a navarasa of sorts on celluloid....

The unforgettable chess scene with death in The Seventh Seal (4:00)


Wild Strawberries: Prof. Borg's first nightmare (4:00)

Adoor Gopalakrishnan's tribute to Ingmar Bergman (Indian Express, July 31 2007)

Film Great Ingmar Bergman dies at 89 by Louise Nordstrom (Guardian Unlimited July 31)

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Film Director, Dies at 89 by Mervyn Rothstein (New York Times, July 30)

Ingmar Bergman: Summing up a life in film by Michiko Kakutani (New York Times, June 6 1983)