Today the world film community mourns the passing of one of the true masters of the artform. Legendary Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman is dead at age 89.Any film fan has at least a passing acquaintance with the incomparable images that Bergman captured. Who can forget Max Von Sydow as the knight playing chess with Death for his very life in The Seventh Seal? Or Von Sydow as the vengeful father praying for forgiveness for bloody revenge in The Virgin Spring, his weeping back facing away from the camera? Or the penultimate emotional confrontation that Persona has been delicately building towards that self-destructs in a torrent of melting celluloid? My only regret in the cinema of Bergman is that I haven't yet experienced enough of it. The titles mentioned above are the three forays into the man's 30 years in the business, a career marked by a consistent stamp of quality and good taste not found in any other director's fimography. It's no wonder Woody Allen respected him above all other directors and with good reason.
In today's marketplace overcrowded with trumped-up toy commercials parading as cinema, we need a figure like Bergman monitoring the proceedings with his cold, exacting eye to keep us all honest.
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