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Last Monday, July 30, 2007,
two of the most extraordinary and influential cinema directors died, just hours
apart. Ingmar Bergman (1918 - 2007) from Sweden,
and Michelangelo Antonioni (1912 - 2007) from Italy.
Bergman spent his life trying to understand the human mind and portrayed the
human suffering and tragedy in extraordinary films. He directed over 60 films,
comedies and dramas. Most of them written by himself. His first great
international success was in 1955 with the film Smiles of a Summer Night
for which he won the Cannes Festival that
year. In my opinion, his best productions are (1) Persona (1966) the
story of two women: one them an actress who lost her voice after interpreting Electra (a Greek tragedy), and her nurse; (2) Cries
and Whispers (1972) the terrible story of two sisters who take care of
a third sister who is dying of cancer; (3) The Seventh Seal, a
medieval story where the main character is the plague. In this extraordinary
film, Bergman shows a scene where a crusader's knight (Max Von Sydow) beats the
personification of death itself in a chess game, in order to make time to
understand the meaning of life. This scene is one of the most memorable scenes
in the history of cinema.
Let me quote what Woody Allen thought about Bergman: "probably
the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the
motion picture camera".
This statement, coming from a giant, is the greatest homage to Bergman.
Michelangelo Antonioni started his career by portraying the Italian
neo-realism and the European society after the Great War. He, like Bergman, was
tormented by the human social isolation, the social alienation, the emptiness
of humans in capitalist societies, and the internal demons of man. Antonioni
explored these themes in his trilogy (1960's): (1) L'Avventura
(The Adventure), (2) La Notte (The Night), and (3) L'eclisse
(The Church).
Besides the three films mentioned
above, I have a special love for the following Antonioni's films: (1) Il
Grido (The Cry, 1954) where he
describes the tragic history of a worker who commits suicide for the pain
of a failed love relation; (2) Blow-Up (one of his master pieces), a
thriller inspired in the novel "Babas del Diablo" of the great Argentinean writer Julio Cortazar;
(3) Il
Deserto Rosso (The Red Desert), where he analyses the relationship
between the social environment and man.
If you haven't seen any of these
pictures of Bergman and Antonioni, I anchorage you to watch these movies.
If, however, you only like films such as The Terminator seies (sorry Arnold!), I am sure Bergman and Antonioni will bore you.
Let's hear from you about this topic.
Many cheers to these two great artists!!
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