Bergman Books

Book was great man! I loved the book so much, I went out and rented the movie! You have to see it to believe it!

The characters and locations are vivid; a great book to take to the beach!

This book is an extremely helpful and a very usefully source for writing papers.

I took an Ingmar Bergman class, and I therefore had to watch a lot of Bergman films as well as analyze and write about them. Many of Bergman films as many know are sometimes very hard to understand. However this book cleared up so many things for me in the films. The fact the book is mostly Bergman commenting on his own films is great, so you don't have someone else trying to interpret someone else's mind. I you need or want to better understand and enjoy Bergman's works, get this book!!

Well, this is it...

Bergman is notorioiusly difficult to sum up - we've had biographical, psychoanalytical, religious, aesthetic, God-knows-what-else approaches... But this book is about the best you'll get. Cowie, rightly regarded as an expert on Swedish (and Finnish9 film, provides a readable, informative and sensitive history. It has that perfect combination of enough fact for the uninitiated and enough interpretation for the devotee. As if that wasn't sufficient, it's been updated up to 1992 and contains lots of handsome images - not only of the great man and his entourage, but also of the films themslves, just right for stoking the embers of mnemory (especially if you haven't got a video-recorder...)

Quite simply an authoritative, genial account of a 'difficult' genius.

There are many things in life for which I'm grateful (and doubtlessly, because of my thickness, many more for which I should be but aren't). One of the things I'm most grateful for is Ingmar Bergman. He's simply the greatest film maker of my lifetime (and there have been some very good ones--e.g., Kurosawa, Herzog, Tarkovsky, and Fellini). As both writer and director, he reaches depths that most other film makers--especially Hollywood ones--can't even approximate.

A man of Bergman's genius deserves a talented interpreter, and Robert Emmet Long fills that bill. His Ingmar Bergman: Film and Stage is simply the best commentary on Bergman I know. Beautifully illustrated, drawing on Bergman's print and film interviews as well as the film maker's own autobiographies, Long's book explores the "personal myth" that Bergman documented in film after film. That personal myth--or worldview--born of both Bergman's private life and his philosophical reflections, includes themes generally referred to as "existential": human contingency, the absence of God, alienation, meaning or purpose, fluidity of self, loneliness and despair. In making his films, Bergman was really engaging in both autobiography and philosophy: exorcising his personal demons and trying to find meaning in the universe. The final speech Carl Gustav makes in "Fanny and Alexander," urging his listeners to celebrate the little joys of life that always have as their broader background the indifference of the universe, is the position that Bergman finally seems to have arrived at.

All this is wonderfully captured in Long's interpretive summaries of Bergman's films and theatre productions. Long doesn't merely provide plot synopses. He always strives to interpret, in the best sense of the word, what he describes. To take one example, from Long's perceptive reflection on "The Silence": the film, writes Long, "introduces a new dimension in Bergman's conception of cinema. Realistic perception is replaced by a total immersion in a subjective world in which characters embody psychic states" (p. 107). Ester and Alma, like the two lead characters in Bergman's later "Persona," "are different parts of a single psyche."

Highly recommended. As a nice complement, because of its incredibly detailed (but relatively noninterpretive) plot summaries, the reader might consider Hubert I. Cohen's Ingmar Bergman: The Art of Confession (1993).

This book was written just after the filming of "From the Life of the Marionettes" and during the planning of "Fanny and Alexander." At the time, Bergman was also drawing up plans for his Project Bergman, simultaneous stage productions of Ibsen's "A Doll House," Strindberg's "Miss Julie," and a stage adaption of his own "Scenes From a Marriage." Of course, Bergman retired from film shortly after, but he has since been producting theater persistently for another two decades, rendering this book a little outdated. *

* The authors did update the book a decade later, in 1992, under the title "Ingmar Bergman: A Life In Theatre."

Nevertheless, this is a fantastic introduction to the theater of Bergman -- a craft more dear to his heart than film-making. The authors stress Bergman's elevation of the actor, simplification of mis-en-scene, pure drama, and direct actor-audience confrontation methods. They also show the intuitive grace of Bergman's ability as a producer and director, and his tremendous sense of "rhythm," which has made him the envy of all directors.

There are some descriptions of Bergman's bold, fledgling productions in the 40s and 50s -- namely Valle-Inclan's "Divine Words," Camus's "Caligula," and Shakespeare's "Macbeth" -- but the majority of the book focuses entirely on his later productions of three authors: Strindberg, Moliere, and Ibsen, with a chapter for each. The most monumental work discussed includes his radical reformation of "The Ghost Sonata" as a dramatic crescendo, with the parts of the Mummy and the Hyacinth Girl performed by the same actress, "A Dream Play," where the stage was stripped bear and cut of all Wagnerian machinery to display the bare consciousness of the dreamer, "The Misanthrope," where rigid angularity and baroque shallowness was contrasted with visceral social drama for comedic effect, and, perhaps most significant of all, his productions of "Hedda Gabler" and "The Wild Duck," stripped of their naturalist clothing and rescued from the museum shelf, and performed as raw psychological dramas, enacting consciousness with innovative direction and design.

Other produtions are briefly passed over -- Buchner's "Woyzeck" and Gombrowicz's "Yvonne, Princess of Burgondy," for instance. Over all, the limited scope of the book allows it to very successfully give the reader a sense of Bergman as a director. It also begins and ends with very telling interviews between the authors and Bergman about his work in the theater.

I should also mention that the book does a great job of keeping Bergman's film work out of the discussion. Only on a few occasions is his film work mentioned, usually only when necessary to compare techniques. Aside from this, I should also mention the book's major failing -- its lack of criticism. The authors clearly admire Bergman (who doesn't?) to a degree that borders on obsequiessness, and one feels some critical debate would have really improved the discussion.

In any case, essential for any Bergman fan.

It's a pity that Hubert Cohen's fine book on the films of Ingmar Bergman is out of print. To my mind, it's the single best resource for the Bergman fan or scholar.

There's little interpretive originality or depth to the book. Cohen's central claim, that Bergman's films are by and large confessional, will strike no one as out of the ordinary. The book's value lies in Cohen's painstakingly detailed descriptions of each of Bergman's films up through "Sunday's Children." The precision with which the themes and plots of these films are summarized obviously comes from many viewings and meticulous note-taking on Cohen's part. His descriptions are likely to remind even very careful students of Bergman of points in the films that he or she has overlooked. I never watch a Bergman film without reading Cohen's summation of it afterwards.

Especially valuable is Cohen's encyclopediac skill in connecting themes, characters, and motifs that show up in Bergman's films. Bergman's obsession with his childhood and parents, his use of his mother's name (Karin) for many of his characters, his recurring motif of alienated, impotent men being held, pieta-like, by strong women, the importance of laden tables and meal scenes: these and many other connections are explored by Cohen.

The book is prefaced by a detailed chronology of Bergman's life up to 1993 (when the book was published) and concluded with an equally detailed filmography ending with "Sunday's Children" (1992).

Bergman students interested in more profound interpretations to supplement Cohen may turn to Robert Emmet Long's Ingmar Bergman: Film and Stage (1994). Like Cohen, Long offers a film-by-film treatment. But whereas Cohen typically summarizes, Long interprets.

This is quite simply one of my favorite books of all time, & I never ceased to be inspired by the adventures & courage of Gladys Aylward. She leaves England in her mid 20's, determined to reach China in spite of a war raging at the Chinese/Russian border, and eventually makes her way to a remote Chinese village where she sets up an inn with an aging missionary woman. After her partner's death, Gladys continues the mission inn alone, coming to be known as "Ai-weh-deh," the virtuous one. Her love & compassion for the people she meet form the substance of this fascinating story, including her friendship with the local mandarin. During World War II, Gladys, now a naturalized Chinese citizen, finds herself in charge of over 100 Chinese orphans with the Japanese army coming & Japanese planes dropping bombs from overhead. What happens to Gladys & the children? Does she find true love in the arms of the Chinese partisan soldier she has come to love & trust? Does she ever return to England? And what happened when the mandarin sent her alone into the midst of a murderous prison riot, believing that Aiwehdeh can do anything? Read the story yourself if you want to find out . . . I've read this story many times & it never fails inspire me & make my own troubles seem small. If Gladys could cope with such immense odds & not give up . . . what inspiration for our own lives. You will not be disappointed in this wonderful, wonderful book. I would give it more stars if I could.

I have used this text for approximately a year and found that the students are able to comprehend geography better with a systematic approach than a regional one. One of the things that sold me on this text was the auxillary material, particularly the webpage. The book is very easy to read and has excellent illustrations and photos. Needless to say, I highly recommend this text.