My Week in Movies: July 28 - August 3
Aug. 4th, 2019 01:14 pmHello from Ingmar Bergman-land! We're nearing the end now (just three films and one television miniseries left). Only two films this week were not directed by Ingmar Bergman (you can probably guess which ones).
Films in italics are ones I've seen previously.
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Winter Light (1963)
The Silence (1963)
Virgin Spring (1960)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
The Devil's Eye (1960)
All These Women (1964)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)
The Rite (1969)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
The Magician (1958)
After the Rehearsal (1984)
The Touch (1971)
The Serpent's Egg (1977)
Persona (1966)
Thirst (1949)
Masters of the Universe (1987) w/![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sol_se
Port of Call (1948)
Cries and Whispers (1972)
Through a Glass Darkly remains one of my favorite Bergman films, probably top five. Maybe I should do a ranking when I'm done with this box set? Most of Bergman's best films are chamber pieces with small casts working through intractable problems.
Winter Light deals directly with the question of faith, which for me is largely answered already, so it didn't have the same impact for me that it might have for others.
The Silence is difficult to watch for the best reasons.
I didn't find Virgin Spring (Bergman's first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Picture) all that impressive. I spent part of the time comparing it to its ill-gotten offspring Last House on the Left. It came out favorably in the comparison, but still not among my favorite Bergman movies.
The Seventh Seal is funnier than I remember it being. I largely credit Gunnar Björnstrand (a Bergman stalwart) and Nils Poppe (apparently Sweden's Big Name in comedy) for that. It's still a harrowing depiction of doubt in the face of eternity, but there are laughs along the way.
The Devil's Eye and All These Women show, despite what Smiles of a Summer Night and, um, The Seventh Seal suggest, that Bergman has no real knack for comedy.
Sawdust and Tinsel has one really affecting sequence at the beginning, but didn't excite me otherwise.
I needed a break from Bergman, so I watched A Hard Day's Night, one of my all-time favorite movies. So delightful, so endearing, so fun!
I liked The Magician this time better than I liked it the first, but it still has points that frustrate me, given that I like some kind of ground rules to be in effect. Either there's magic or there's not and the movie is frustratingly ambivalent. I suspect that's the point, but it doesn't win me over.
Both of Bergman's English-language films, The Touch and The Serpent's Egg, are different levels of bad. I wonder if all of Bergman's male protagonists are complete louses and the Swedish language hides their sins.
Persona is so fucking good. It's my favorite Bergman movie by a long shot. Just... mm. Good good good. I don't mind the rampant ambivalence here, as the film is fairly clear on its own artifice, which doesn't detract from its reality -- if that makes any sense.
Masters of the Universe was my date movie withsol_se (changed last-minute from Shark Exorcist). Both of us saw the film as youths, but neither of us remembered it very well. It's not terribly good. They had a rich fantasy world to potentially pull from and decided to set most of the movie in suburbia via magic portals. C'mon now.
Bergman didn't do a lot of work in color, which is a shame, because Cries and Whispers shows a certain mastery of color-for-storytelling. It's a riveting, sometimes upsetting film.
In case you're curious, I skipped The Magic Flute, because I saw it back in July on Criterion Channel. If it wasn't 2.5 hours, I might have watched it again, though, because I'm very fond of it.
Films in italics are ones I've seen previously.
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Winter Light (1963)
The Silence (1963)
Virgin Spring (1960)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
The Devil's Eye (1960)
All These Women (1964)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)
The Rite (1969)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
The Magician (1958)
After the Rehearsal (1984)
The Touch (1971)
The Serpent's Egg (1977)
Persona (1966)
Thirst (1949)
Masters of the Universe (1987) w/
sol_se Port of Call (1948)
Cries and Whispers (1972)
Through a Glass Darkly remains one of my favorite Bergman films, probably top five. Maybe I should do a ranking when I'm done with this box set? Most of Bergman's best films are chamber pieces with small casts working through intractable problems.
Winter Light deals directly with the question of faith, which for me is largely answered already, so it didn't have the same impact for me that it might have for others.
The Silence is difficult to watch for the best reasons.
I didn't find Virgin Spring (Bergman's first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Picture) all that impressive. I spent part of the time comparing it to its ill-gotten offspring Last House on the Left. It came out favorably in the comparison, but still not among my favorite Bergman movies.
The Seventh Seal is funnier than I remember it being. I largely credit Gunnar Björnstrand (a Bergman stalwart) and Nils Poppe (apparently Sweden's Big Name in comedy) for that. It's still a harrowing depiction of doubt in the face of eternity, but there are laughs along the way.
The Devil's Eye and All These Women show, despite what Smiles of a Summer Night and, um, The Seventh Seal suggest, that Bergman has no real knack for comedy.
Sawdust and Tinsel has one really affecting sequence at the beginning, but didn't excite me otherwise.
I needed a break from Bergman, so I watched A Hard Day's Night, one of my all-time favorite movies. So delightful, so endearing, so fun!
I liked The Magician this time better than I liked it the first, but it still has points that frustrate me, given that I like some kind of ground rules to be in effect. Either there's magic or there's not and the movie is frustratingly ambivalent. I suspect that's the point, but it doesn't win me over.
Both of Bergman's English-language films, The Touch and The Serpent's Egg, are different levels of bad. I wonder if all of Bergman's male protagonists are complete louses and the Swedish language hides their sins.
Persona is so fucking good. It's my favorite Bergman movie by a long shot. Just... mm. Good good good. I don't mind the rampant ambivalence here, as the film is fairly clear on its own artifice, which doesn't detract from its reality -- if that makes any sense.
Masters of the Universe was my date movie with
sol_se (changed last-minute from Shark Exorcist). Both of us saw the film as youths, but neither of us remembered it very well. It's not terribly good. They had a rich fantasy world to potentially pull from and decided to set most of the movie in suburbia via magic portals. C'mon now.Bergman didn't do a lot of work in color, which is a shame, because Cries and Whispers shows a certain mastery of color-for-storytelling. It's a riveting, sometimes upsetting film.
In case you're curious, I skipped The Magic Flute, because I saw it back in July on Criterion Channel. If it wasn't 2.5 hours, I might have watched it again, though, because I'm very fond of it.
