What words can one add to the mountain of praise that has been bestowed upon Ingmar Bergman shortly after his death? What is one more stranger’s elegy? Several of these pieces have extolled the uncompromising seriousness and artfulness of the great director’s work but have also mentioned how his status has been diminished as his work has fallen out of favor. This I can only regard with complete bewilderment. How, if one is a true lover of the medium, could one possibly disregard a talent so prodigious and an artist of such exactitude and depth as that of Ingmar Bergman? Dismissing his significance by applying to him the title “the prime purveyor of Nordic gloom” seems almost juvenile. Is Dostoyevsky a less significant novelist because his work is of such a “serious” nature? At the risk of sounding too judgmental is it possible that perhaps Bergman’s falling out of favor with the younger generation is in direct correlation to the ascension of celebrated directors of a different sort: purveyors of glibness, irony, and sensationalism of every stripe? The passing of Bergman and (on the same day) Antonioni doesn’t to my mind mark the passing of a cinematic era, for that happened some time ago when both men’s work ceased to have the mass relevance they once possessed. But if you look around at the meager citizenry that subscribes to cinema as art you can’t help but feel that their passing does (no pun intended) put another couple of nails in the proverbial coffin.
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