DOCSLIB.ORG

Ingmar Bergman's Persona As a Modernist Example of Media

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Ingmar Bergman's Persona As a Modernist Example of Media Filozofski vestnik | Volume XXXV | Number 2 | 2014 | 219–237 Ernest Ženko* Ingmar Bergman’s Persona as a Modernist Example of Media Determinism Introduction The film medium developed during a time of the rapid expansion of modernism, which took over almost all of art. Nevertheless, mainstream narrative cinema joined this movement only after a considerable delay. During the 1920s certain movements in cinema appropriated the main ideas of modernism, but it was only after the Second World War, in fact during the 1960s, that modernism in cinema came to full bloom. Due to its reflexive nature, the role of its auteur, and its open-endedness, Ing- mar Bergman’s film Persona (1966) is considered one of the finest examples of modernism in cinema. Persona is, nevertheless, also an exceptional example of media and technological determinism. In this film, Bergman accomplishes a reversal of a crucial modernist problem related to technology: he does not show how to animate an apparatus, but rather how media technology have infiltrated the prevailing frame of mind so deeply that the psyche can at best be grasped through the film medium itself. We should, for clarity, distinguish between a “vulgar” understanding of me- dia determinism as a reductionist, causal relation between the appearance of technological media and their impact on society, culture, art, and subjectiv- 219 ity, on the one hand, and its “soft” (or dialectical) version, on the other. In the latter, there is more space for various, sometimes even mutually opposed processes that obscure the main orientation, which nevertheless remains pre- sent in both crucial mantras of the so-called “media turn”—Marshall McLu- han’s “medium is the message”1 and Friedrich Kittler’s “media determine our 1 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, 7. * University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia ernest ženko situation.”2 In both assertions, priority has been given to the materiality of a medium over its content. In this paper, we will claim that such a view, related today to the above-men- tioned authors of the media turn, has actually been one of the key characteristics of modernist art. As pointed out by Mallarmé (“poetry was made not of ideas but of words”), Cartier-Bresson (“the photo was made not of stories but of lines”) and other modernist authors, it was the materiality of the medium that constituted the conditions of possibility for the creation, and consequently the interpreta- tion, of a work of art.3 Persona is not an exception to this rule, but is instead one of the best examples of media determinism ever created in the film medium. Persona, or, Cinematography There can been no doubt that Persona is an enigmatic film that defies a definite interpretation, and today, from the distance of half a century, this is perhaps even more so. After showing it to an audience of undergraduate students, I came across a judgment that evidently demonstrated how distant this film already is from the expectations of contemporary 20-year-olds. In their opinion, Per- sona is not film at all, because it tells us no coherent and comprehensible story and, consequently, makes no sense as a whole. They were thus quite bewildered when they realized (after searching internet resources for the film and using their smartphones during the screening, which is equally symptomatic) that what they had just seen was “one of this century’s great works of art.”4 Film critics and scholars never shared the opinion that Persona makes no sense; nevertheless, from the very beginning they did find it enigmatic and difficult to 220 pin down. In the words of Bergman’s biographer Peter Cowie, “Everything one says about Persona may be contradicted; the opposite will also be true.”5 This assertion reminds one of an old joke about abstract paintings: 2 Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, xxxix. 3 Not only modernist artists themselves, but also the scholars who interpreted their works became aware of this process, among them most notably Walter Benjamin. 4 Hubert Cohen, Ingmar Bergman: The Art of Confession, New York: Twayne, 1993, 227. Su- san Sontag even claimed that Persona was the best film ever. 5 Peter Cowie, Ingmar Bergman: A Critical Biography, New York: Scribner’s, 1982, 231. ingmar bergman’s persona as a modernist example of media determinism “I think this one is hanging upside down.” “How can you tell?” Consequently, there have been few serious attempts among critics to develop solid interpretations supported with firm arguments: “Although generally prais- ing the film, they tend to shy away from definitive interpretation, preferring in- stead to describe its sensory effects and to hazard some speculations as to their possible meaning.”6 One of the reasons why Bergman’s masterpiece manages to preserve the sta- tus of an enigma, evading any final determination, undoubtedly lies in some- thing that Bertolt Brecht called the alienation effect, which is associated with the film’s reflexive or self-referential structure. Christopher Orr even claims that “Persona remains the most avant-garde of Bergman’s films in the sense that its self-reflexive devices disrupt the spectator’s involvement in the events of the narrative and call attention to the film’s status as material object. In this respect, Persona can be placed within the context of what was in 1967 an emerging sub- genre of the art cinema: the Brechtian film.”7 Persona, therefore, calls the audience’s attention to the fact that it is watching a film, or, in other words, it “encourages the audience to suspend its willing sus- pension of disbelief, to back out of believing the story and take a critical look at it.”8 The alienation effect is enabled, but also complicated, by film’s reflexivity. Persona is modernist in a radical Kantian-Enlightenment sense, probably most precisely articulated by Clement Greenberg: “The essence of modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the disci- pline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.”9 The same critical procedure should be valid for any me- 221 6 Lloyd Michaels, “Bergman and the Necessary Illusion,” in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, ed. Lloyd Michaels, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 5. 7 Christopher Orr, “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Sweden: Persona as Brechtian Mel- odrama,” in Michaels, 88. Cf. Dana Polan, “A Brechtian Cinema? Towards a Politics of Self-Reflexive Film,” in Movies and Methods. Volume 2, ed. Bill Nichols, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985. 8 Bruce Kawin, How Movies Work, New York: Macmillan, 1987, 76. 9 Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism Vol. 4, ed. John O’Brian, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, 85. ernest ženko dium, not only modernist painting, and, since Persona “is a film in search of its own laws,” as Bruce Kawin puts it, it is therefore per definitionem modernist.10 There are not many coincidences in Bergman’s films, and the choice of a title would certainly not be one of them. As we know, the original Latin meaning of “persona” relates to a theatrical mask, and only in the later Roman period did the term change to indicate a character in a theatrical performance. From this early usage, the word entered contemporary culture and obtained the meaning of a character played by an actor, as well as that of an individual’s social role. The lat- ter developed within psychology under the influence of Carl G. Jung, who defined persona as “a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impres- sion upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual.”11 Many interpretations of Persona draw heavily from the assumption that nomen est omen, and they follow the motif of masks throughout the film, relating its meaning above all to the abovementioned Jungian understanding of persona. Bergman’s Persona thus becomes a mask that points to itself and questions the relation between the individual and the social, between being and role-playing. All interpretations of this sort, which focus mainly on and track the develop- ment of the narrative involving the main protagonists, assume that the film’s title is, in words of Roland Barthes, the anchor directing us towards a meaning already selected in advance (in this case by the film director).12 The crucial ques- tion that the interpreters have to answer therefore relates to the interpretation of a mask and its meaning, especially in relation to the culmination of the film in a composite close-up of both protagonists comprising a single mask. Some authors conclude at this point that Persona is a narrative about one single soul, 222 wearing a mask, divided into true self and role-playing. There are at least two arguments that speak against such interpretations. The first one comes from Bergman himself, who has been always “extremely specific 10 Kawin, 76. 11 Carl G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, London: Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1953, 190. 12 Cf. Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image,” in Image—Music—Text, New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. ingmar bergman’s persona as a modernist example of media determinism in disavowing this reading of the film.”13 When presenting the basic idea of this film to Svensk Filmindustri (SF), the leading Swedish film company, he gave a very simple description of the project: “It’s about one person who talks and one who doesn’t, and they […] get all mingled up in one another.”14 The second argument follows the well-known, but sometimes neglected, fact that the title Persona was not Bergman’s initial choice at all.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Rape and the Virgin Spring Abstract
    Silence and Fury: Rape and The Virgin Spring Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Abstract This article is a reconsideration of The Virgin Spring that focuses upon the rape at the centre of the film’s action, despite the film’s surface attempts to marginalise all but its narrative functionality. While the deployment of this rape supports critical observations that rape on-screen commonly underscores the seriousness of broader thematic concerns, it is argued that the visceral impact of this brutal scene actively undermines its narrative intent. No matter how central the journey of the vengeful father’s mission from vengeance to redemption is to the story, this ultimately pales next to the shocking impact of the rape and murder of the girl herself. James R. Alexander identifies Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring as “the basic template” for the contemporary rape-revenge film[1 ], and despite spawning a vast range of imitations[2 ], the film stands as a major entry in the canon of European art cinema. Yet while the sumptuous black and white cinematography of long-time Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist combined with lead actor Max von Sydow’s trademark icy sobriety to garner it the Academy Award for Best Foreign film in 1960, even fifty years later the film’s representation of the rape and murder of a young girl remain shocking. The film evokes a range of issues that have been critically debated: What is its placement in a more general auteurist treatment of Bergman? What is its influence on later rape-revenge films? How does it fit into a broader understanding of Swedish national cinema, or European art film in general? But while the film hinges around the rape and murder, that act more often than not is of critical interest only in how it functions in these more dominant debates.
    [Show full text]
  • Innovators: Filmmakers
    NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES INNOVATORS: FILMMAKERS David W. Galenson Working Paper 15930 http://www.nber.org/papers/w15930 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 April 2010 The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2010 by David W. Galenson. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Innovators: Filmmakers David W. Galenson NBER Working Paper No. 15930 April 2010 JEL No. Z11 ABSTRACT John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock were experimental filmmakers: both believed images were more important to movies than words, and considered movies a form of entertainment. Their styles developed gradually over long careers, and both made the films that are generally considered their greatest during their late 50s and 60s. In contrast, Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard were conceptual filmmakers: both believed words were more important to their films than images, and both wanted to use film to educate their audiences. Their greatest innovations came in their first films, as Welles made the revolutionary Citizen Kane when he was 26, and Godard made the equally revolutionary Breathless when he was 30. Film thus provides yet another example of an art in which the most important practitioners have had radically different goals and methods, and have followed sharply contrasting life cycles of creativity.
    [Show full text]
  • 25 Years of Media Investing in Creativity, Building the Future 1 - 2 December 2016, Bozar, Brussels
    25 YEARS OF MEDIA INVESTING IN CREATIVITY, BUILDING THE FUTURE 1 - 2 DECEMBER 2016, BOZAR, BRUSSELS #MEDIA25 “Oh how Shakespeare would have loved cinema!” Derek Jarman, filmmaker and writer “‘Culture’ as a whole, and in the widest sense, is the glue that forms identity and that determines the soul of Europe. And cinema has a privileged position in that realm… Movies helped to invent and to perpetuate the ‘American Dream’. They can do wonders for the image of Europe, too.” Wim Wenders, filmmaker “The best advice I can offer to those heading into the world of film is not to wait for the system to finance your projects and for others to decide your fate.” Werner Herzog, filmmaker “You don’t make a movie, the movie makes you.” Jean-Luc Godard, filmmaker “A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.” Alfred Hitchcock, filmmaker The 25th anniversary of MEDIA The European Commission, in collaboration with the Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR), is organising a special European Film Forum (EFF) to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the MEDIA programme, which supports European audiovisual creations and their distribution across borders. Over these 25 years, MEDIA has been instrumental in supporting the audiovisual industry and promoting collaboration across borders, as well as promoting our shared identity and values within and outside Europe. This special edition of the European Film Forum is the highlight of the 25th anniversary celebrations. On the one hand, it represents the consummation of the testimonials collected from audiovisual professionals from across Europe over the year.
    [Show full text]
  • Camera Stylo 2021 Web
    Cries and Whispers and Prayers MENA FOUDA Mena Fouda is an aspiring storyteller. Her dignifed process includes: petting and interviewing every cat she is lucky to cross paths with, telling bedtime stories to her basil plants, smelling expensive perfume to fnd out its secrets, and dancing to dreamy music in languages she can half-understand. 61 6 Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972) starts with neither cries nor whispers but a natural silence. When we are first brought into this world, we see a statue, a thing that by its very nature is made to be unmoving: a figure that crystalizes movement. It is a quiet dawn and light streams softly past the trees, suggesting a tranquil openness to this environment. At first glance, I wonder what it would be like to walk these serene fields, to dance beneath these emerging rays of light. This must be somebody’s paradise. Without warning, this utopic space bleeds a deep red, until the colour overtakes the screen and transports us somewhere inside the manor. Here, we see more statues and a number of clocks before cutting to a larger view of the internal landscape. A sense of claustrophobia wraps its vicious hands around my throat. Something dead twists in my stomach. I no longer want to walk through here. I want to leave this damned Hell. Writing about this film is difcult—not because it doesn’t stir passion within me, but because it stirs too much. Having started with this film, I have since gone on to enjoy Bergman’s other works including Persona (1966), Autumn Sonata (1978), and Wild Strawberries (1957)—but I always find myself retreating to Cries and Whispers for comparison.
    [Show full text]
  • Biografi Ingmar Bergman
    HUVUDREDAktöRER PAUL DUNCN BENGT WA NSELIUS TExtER AV BIRGITTA SEENE, PETER COWIE, BENGT FORSLUND, ERLAND JosEPHSON OCH INGMAR BERGMAN PRODUCERAD AV REGI BENEDIkt TASCHEN BERGMAN BOKFÖRLAGET MAX STRÖM TE INGMAR BERGMAN ARCHIVES Part 1 Ingmar Bergman’s silent home movies 18 mins Part 2 Behind the scenes of Autumn Sonata 20 mins Part 3 An Image Maker; Behind the scenes documentary 32 mins Part 4 A video diary from Saraband 44 mins © 2008 TASCHEN GmbH All rights reserved. Taschen DVD 1. Ingmar Bergmans egna smalfilmer 18 min Gycklarnas afton, 1953 Det sjunde inseglet, 1957 Såsom i en spegel, 1961 Kommentarer av Marie Nyreröd 2. Från inspelningen av Höstsonaten 20 min av Arne Carlsson 3. En bildmakare; från inspelningen av Bildmakarna 32 min av Bengt Wanselius 4. En videodagbok från Saraband 44 min av Torbjörn Ehrnvall Filmremsan är från Fanny och Alexander och klippt från en 35 mm filmkopia som har visats i Ingmar Bergmans egen projektor. 00_bergman_080607.indd 1 08-06-19 14.12.51 00_bergman_080607.indd 2 08-06-19 14.12.51 4 — Innehåll Innehåll Kapitel 1 Kapitel 2 Kapitel 3 Kapitel 4 spelöppning 6 10 118 192 270 Bergmans närmaste vän och medarbetare Bergmans barndom och lärotid inom teater Trots turbulenta år med flera äktenskap, Andra hälften av femtiotalet representerar Bergmans religiösa tvivel resulterar i den Erland Josephson skriver om deras livslånga och film. Efter debuten 1938 som regissör barn, skilsmässor och förhållanden medför Bergmans första storhetstid som filmskapare berömda ”trilogin” med dess utforskande av vänskap och om sitt sista möte med Bergman i Mäster Olofsgårdens teatersektion upp- perioden ett genombrott för Bergman inom och teaterregissör.
    [Show full text]
  • Music As Spiritual Metaphor in the Cinema of Ingmar Bergman
    Music as Spiritual Metaphor in the Cinema of Ingmar Bergman By Michael Bird Spring 1996 Issue of KINEMA SECRET ARITHMETIC OF THE SOUL: MUSIC AS SPIRITUAL METAPHOR IN THE CINEMA OF INGMAR BERGMAN Prelude: General Reflections on Music and the Sacred: It frequently happens that in listening to a piece of music we at first do not hear the deep, fundamental tone, the sure stride of the melody, on which everything else is built... It is only after we have accustomed our ear that we find law and order, and as with one magical stroke, a single unified world emerges from the confused welter of sounds. And when this happens, we suddenly realize with delight and amazement that the fundamental tone was also resounding before, that all along the melody had been giving order and unity... - Rudolf Bultmann(1) I said to myself, it is as if the eternal harmony were conversing within itself, as it may have done in the bosom of God just before the Creation of the world. So likewise did it move in my inmost soul. - Goethe(2) One Sunday in December, I was listening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in Hedvig Eleonora Church... The chorale moved confidentially through the darkening church: Bach’s piety heals the torment of our faithlessness... - Ingmar Bergman(3) Ingmar Bergman has frequently indicated the immense significance of musical experience for his own personal and artistic development, just as he has also suggested that human existence at large has need for music. His words suggest that of all arts, music may be the most spiritually meaningful of all.
    [Show full text]
  • CRIES & WHISPERS Background in His Book Images: My Life in Film (1990), Ingmar Bergman Has Written: “All My Films Can Be T
    CRIES & WHISPERS background In his book Images: My Life in Film (1990), Ingmar Bergman has written: “All my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except for Cries and Whispers. In the screenplay, it says that red represents for me the interior of the soul. When I was a child, I imagined the soul to be a dragon, a shadow floating in the air like blue smoke -- a huge winged creature, half bird, half fish. But inside the dragon, everything was red.” C ries & Whispers (V iskningar och rop, 1972) Colour. Running time: 91 minutes Cinematographer Sven Nykvist won an Academy Award for his work on the film. The film was also nominated for Oscars for best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best costuming. Bergman won the Technical Grand Prize for the film at the Cannes Film Festival. Plot The film is a trancelike, non-linear narrative made up of vignettes, dreams, and flashbacks. In 1880s or 1890s Sweden, “cancer-stricken, dying Agnes (37) is visited in her isolated rural mansion by her sisters Karin and Maria. As Agnes's condition deteriorates, fear and revulsion grip the sisters, who seem incapable of empathy, and Agnes's only comfort comes from her maid Anna. As the end draws closer, long repressed feelings of resentment and mistrust cause jealousy, selfishness, and bitterness to surface.” (IMDB review) “An extraordinary vision of the interior of the soul.” (Peter Cowie) Commentary ** You can read here < http://www.bergmanorama.com/films/cries_and_whispers_script.htm > how Bergman conceived of the four women. “Cries and Whispers envelops us in a tomb of dread, pain and hate, and to counter these powerful feelings it summons selfless love.
    [Show full text]
  • Major Swedish Retrospective of Classic Early Films
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019 Tel. 956-6100 Cable: Modernart MAJOR SWEDISH RETROSPECTIVE OF CLASSIC EARLY FILMS See enclosed screening schedule .Two giants of the Swedish cinema, Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller, will be honored in a major historical retrospective to be introduced by the Department of Film of The Museum of Modern Art from February 3 through April 8, 1977. The new film exhibition, "Sjostrom, Stiller and Contemporaries," will present all the extant early works of these two master directors, with the exception of one unavailable print, "The Story of Gosta Berling." This will be the first time that these great silent Swedish films will be seen in the U.S. as a collection. Many other virtually unknown films dating from 1911 through 1929, which is called "The Golden Age of Swedish Cinema," will also be shown. The program is a unique opportunity to re-examine an important chapter in film history. Many of the films of Sj*ostrb*m and Stiller seem to have left a deep, strong impression even when they were first released, especially in America, Germany and Russia, according to Adrienne Mancia. The Museum Curator initiated this comprehensive retrospective, with the cooperation of Anna-Lena Wibom and her staff at the Swedish Film Institute, which is dedicated to the preservation of early Swedish film classics. Both Harry Schein, Chairman of the Board of the Institute, and Ms. Wibom, Director of the Institute's Cinemateque, will come to New York from Stockholm for the inauguration of this event.
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaden Download
    Ivo Holmqvist INGMAR BERGMAN'S WINTER JOURNEY — intertextuality in `Larmar och gör sig till' Ingmar Bergman maintains on the back cover of his Femte akten (The Fifth Act, Norstedts 1994) that the four plays contained in that volume are written without any particular performance medium in thought, like Bach's cembalo sonatas ... They can be played by a string quartet, a woodwind ensemble, by guitar, organ or piano. I have written in the manner that I am used to for more than fifty years - it looks like theatre but could equally well be film, television or just a text for reading.1 However, these plays did not remain unperformed reading dramas, as three of them have been adapted for television, and the fourth for the stage. `Efter repetitionen' (After the Rehersal) was filmed long before publication, and `Sista skriket' (The Last Cry) was originally performed on stage but then converted for television. Film and theatre merge in that play, illustrating Ingmar Bergman's much-quoted words about theatre as a wife and film as a mistress. During his long creative life (he turned eighty on July 14, 1998, and is still going strong), he has demonstrated how well the two media combine. In `Sista skriket' he uncovers early Swedish film history, in a reconstruction of a plausible interchange between two pioneers of the silent screen, Charles Magnusson and Georg af Klercker. The last piece in Femte akten, called `Larmar och gör sig till' (Struts and Frets), is also centred on theatre and film. In his cover text from 1Femte akten, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Scandinavian S327
    GSD 331C (37145)/CL 323 (33430)/EUS 347 (35520) Prof. Lynn Wilkinson Fall 2019 The Films of Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) was arguably the greatest filmmaker of the twentieth century. His career spanned over sixty years and includes such works as the sophisticated comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), the allegorical Seventh Seal (1957), the avant-garde Persona (1966), the masterful television adaptation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1975), and the television miniseries Fanny and Alexander (1982). He also wrote scripts for many other filmmakers, including Bille August and Liv Ullmann. In 2003, he directed the television film Saraband, and in recent years many of his films have been adapted for the stage both in Sweden and elsewhere. This course is intended as an introduction both to the films of Ingmar Bergman and to the viewing of films in general. We will look at representative films by this prolific and gifted filmmaker, considering them in the contexts of the director's life, Scandinavian culture, and issues of film theory and aesthetics. This course carries the Writing Flag. Writing Flag courses are designed to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline. In this class, you can expect to write regularly during the semester, complete substantial writing projects, and receive feedback from your instructor to help you improve your writing. You will also have the opportunity to revise one or more assignments, and to read and discuss your peers' work. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from your written work.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Texas Press Society for Cinema & Media Studies
    University of Texas Press Society for Cinema & Media Studies "Baraka": World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry Author(s): Martin Roberts Source: Cinema Journal, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Spring, 1998), pp. 62-82 Published by: University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225827 Accessed: 16/07/2009 14:41 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=texas. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of Texas Press and Society for Cinema & Media Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Cinema Journal.
    [Show full text]
  • Janus Films Booking@Janusfilms.Com • 212-756-8761 Press Contact
    Booking Inquiries: Janus Films Press Contact: Courtney Ott booking@janusfilms.com • 212-756-8761 courtney@cineticmedia.com • 646-230-6847 “I never need to concern myself about present opinion or the judgment of posterity. I am a name that has not been recorded anywhere and that will disappear when I myself disappear; but a little part of me will live on in the triumphant masterwork of the anonymous craftsmen. A dragon, a devil, or perhaps a saint—it does not matter which.” —Ingmar Bergman INGMAR BERGMAN’S CINEMA No name is more synonymous with the postwar explosion of international art-house cinema than Ingmar Bergman, a master storyteller who startled the world with his stark intensity and naked pursuit of the most profound metaphysical and spiritual questions. In a career that spanned six decades, Bergman directed dozens of films in an astonishing array of tones, ranging from comedies whose lightness and complexity belie their brooding hearts to groundbreaking formal experiments and excruciatingly intimate explorations of family relationships. Text by Peter Cowie BIOGRAPHY EARLY LIFE AND PATH drew directly from his own early years.) what one British drama critic called “a TO THE THEATER Ingmar also enjoyed the family’s summer bloodshot, brooding nightmare.” holidays in the province of Dalarna, Ingmar Bergman was born on July 14, 1918, where his father had when young helped A CAREER IN THE CINEMA during the final year of the Great War, to construct the local railway. Here he which also saw the population of Europe could indulge his daydreaming, a habit In 1942, following the premiere of his play ravaged by the Spanish flu, and Sweden he retained throughout his adult life.
    [Show full text]