Ingmar Bergman Archives - Traveling Archive https://travelingboy.com/travel/tag/ingmar-bergman/ Traveling Adventures Fri, 19 May 2023 17:25:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 https://travelingboy.com/travel/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cropped-TBoyIcon-32x32.jpg Ingmar Bergman Archives - Traveling Archive https://travelingboy.com/travel/tag/ingmar-bergman/ 32 32 Traveling Boy Selects the 75 Greatest Film Directors of All-Time https://travelingboy.com/travel/75-greatest-film-directors/ https://travelingboy.com/travel/75-greatest-film-directors/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2023 18:00:35 +0000 https://travelingboy.com/travel/?p=33849 Since the release of Sight & Sound magazine’s 2022 Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time critics poll, some of us agreed, others were appalled; in particular with the absence of masterworks by Luis Buñuel, Ernst Lubitsch and Howard Hawks. But the positive is that it opens pathways for lists by other cineastes which keeps the importance of …

The post Traveling Boy Selects the 75 Greatest Film Directors of All-Time appeared first on Traveling Archive.

]]> Since the release of Sight & Sound magazine’s 2022 Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time critics poll, some of us agreed, others were appalled; in particular with the absence of masterworks by Luis Buñuel, Ernst Lubitsch and Howard Hawks. But the positive is that it opens pathways for lists by other cineastes which keeps the importance of cinema on the front burner. There were twice as many new pundits in the Sight & Sound poll from the last decades poll in 2012, where many stressed the importance of literary content over form. I’m a bit old school on that, remembering the medium is the message, a phrase coined by the Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Is it content over form, or is it form over content; or should the two really be the same in the visual frame?  No doubt, you’ll notice I approach film within the context of the auteur theory. It’s hard not to do so, where each of the 75 directors have a personal signature and vision that’s evident from film to film. Yes, some are a product of the Hollywood studio system, simply given a script to shoot. Yet, like a painter who is assigned to do a portraiture, the content of their painting is well-defined, but they still are able to convey their own unique style, a style that belongs to them alone.

Here’s my list, and I encourage you to assault, disagree or perhaps even agree, and send in your own list in our readers’ section at ad***@tr**********.com . What is most important is to keep a dialogue going about cinema as a visual medium for artistic expression where it takes its place among other art forms.

1. Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson, France, (1901-1999). Photograph courtesy of Senses of Cinema.

The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself. When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it. The ear goes more towards the within, the eye towards the other. – Robert Bresson

Bresson Films for Review:

 2. Yasujirō Ozu

Yasujirō Ozu, Japan, (1903 –1963). Photograph courtesy of the Nippon Communications Foundation.

I have formulated my own directing style in my head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others. I can make fried tofu, boiled tofu, stuffed tofu. Cutlets and other fancy stuff, that’s for other directors. – Yasujirō Ozu

Ozu Films for Review:

3. Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock, England-US, (1899 – 1980).

If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on. – Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock Films for Review:

4. Jean-Luc Godard 

Jean-Luc Godard, France-Switzerland, (1930 – 2022). [Photo via MaxPPP]

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality. – Jean-Luc Godard

 Godard Films for Review:

5. Roberto  Rossellini 

Roberto Rossellini, Italy-France, (1906 – 1977).

I want you to know how deeply I wish to translate those ideas into images, just to quiet down the turmoil of my brain. – Roberto Rossellini

Rossellini Films for Review:

6. Orson Welles 

Orson Welles, US-International, (1915 – 1985).

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. – Orson Welles

Welles Films for Review:

7. Ernst Lubitsch  

Ernst Lubitsch, US, (1892 –1947).

There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one. I let the audience use their imaginations. Can I help it if they misconstrue my suggestions? – Ernst Lubitsch

Lubitsch Films for Review:

8. Howard Hawks  

Howard Hawks, US, (1896 – 1977).

I’d say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven’t seen is characters and their relation to one another. I don’t worry much about plot anymore. – Howard Hawks 

Hawks Films for Review:

9. Kenji Mizoguchi 

Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, (1898 – 1956).

You must put the odor of the human body into images [which] describe for me the implacable, the egoistic, the sensual, the cruel… there are nothing but disgusting people in this world.– Kenji Mizoguchi

Mizoguchi Films for Review:

10. Jean Renoir  

Jean Renoir, France, (1894 – 1979).

What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object – Jean Renoir 

Renoir Films for Review:

11. Max Ophüls  

Max Ophüls, France-Germany-US, (1902 – 1957). 

The highest reaches of the actor’s art begin, I believe, at the point where words cease to play a part. – Max Ophüls

Ophüls Films for Review:

12. Luis Buñuel  

Luis Buñuel, Spain-Mexico-France, (1900 – 1983).

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. Thank God, I am still an atheist – Luis Buñuel

Buñuel Films for Review:

 13. Fritz Lang 

Fritz Lang, Germany–US, (1890 –1976).

To begin with I should say that I am a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or only rarely, with my ear – to my constant regret. Each picture has some sort of rhythm which only the director can give it. He has to be like the captain of a ship. – Fritz Lang

Lang Films for Review:

14.  John Ford  

John Ford, US, (1894 – August 1973).

My name’s John Ford. I make westerns – John Ford

Ford Films for Review:

15. Josef von Sternberg

Joseph von Sternberg, US-Germany, (1894 –1969)

Shadow is mystery and light is clarity. Shadow conceals – light reveals. To know what to reveal and what to conceal and in what degrees to do this is all there is to art. – Josef von Sternberg

Sternberg Films for Review:

 16. Billy Wilder  

Billy Wilder, US, (1906 – 2002)

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut. – Billy Wilder

Wilder Films for Review:

17. Robert Altman 

Robert Altman, US, 1925 – 2006).

Making a movie is like chipping away at a stone. You take a piece off here, you take a piece off there and when you’re finished, you have a sculpture. You know that there’s something in there, but you’re not sure exactly what it is until you find it. – Robert Altman 

Altman Films for Review:

18. D.W. Griffith 

D. W. Griffith, US, (1875 – 1948)

Remember how small the world was before I came along? I brought it all to life: I moved the whole world onto a 20-foot screen. I made them see, didn’t I? I changed everything. – D.W. Griffith 

 Griffith Films for Review:

19. Abbas Kiarostami 

Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, (1940 – 2016).

My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated. – Abbas Kiarostami

Kiarostami Films for Review:

20. Carl Theodor Dreyer 

Carl Theodor Dreyer , Denmark, 1889 –1968)

Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry. – Carl Theodor Dreyer 

Dreyer Films for Review:

21. Michelangelo Antonioni  

 Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy-UK, (1912 – 2007).

After you’ve learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like – including breaking those rules. A film you can explain in words is not a real film. – Michelangelo Antonioni

Antonioni Films for Review:   

22. Buster Keaton 

Buster Keaton, US, (1895 – 1966).

Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot. Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles. – Buster Keaton 

Buster Keaton Films for Review:

23. Chantal Akerman   

Chantal Akerman, Belgium-France, (1950 – 2015).

When people ask me if I am a feminist film maker, I reply I am a woman and I also make films. – Chantal Akerman

Akerman Films for Review: 

24. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany, (1945 –1982). 

Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It’s a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other. – Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder Films for Review:

25. Ousmane Sembène  

Ousmane Sembène, Senegal-France, (1923 – 2007).

I think cinema is needed throughout Africa, because we are lagging behind in the knowledge of our own history. I think we need to create a culture that is our own. I think that images are very fascinating and very important to that end. Our forefathers’ image of women must be buried once for all.  – Ousmane Sembène

Sembene Films for Review:

26. Charles Chaplin 

Charles Chaplin, US, 1889 – 1977).

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease from pain. You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down. We think too much and feel too little. – Charles Chaplin

Chaplin Films for Review: 

27. Andrei Tarkovsky  

Andrei Tarkovsky, Soviet Union, (1932 –1986).

The director’s task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable. – Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky Films for Review:

28. Federico Fellini  

Federico Fellini, Italy, (1920 –1993).

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me. – Federico Fellini

Fellini Films for Review:

29. Ermanno Olmi

Ermanno Olmi, Italy, (1931 – 2018).

I really don’t feel exclusive. My ambition instead, perhaps because of my peasant–worker background, is to look at the world with others, not as an aristocratic. – Ermanno Olmi

Olmi Films for Review:  

30. Akira Kurosawa 

Akira Kurosawa, Japan, (1910 – 1998).

Kurosawa Films for Review:  

For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film. – Akira Kurosawa

31. Sergei Eisenstein  

Sergie Eisenstein, USSR, (1898 –1948).

Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects? – Sergei Eisenstein

Eisenstein Films for Review:    

32. Éric Rohmer  

Éric Rohmer, France, (1920 – 2010).

Rohmer Films for Review: 

I don’t think that my films are ‘literary’; they are based on the most ordinary things of life. – Éric Rohmer 

33. Jerzy Skolimowski  

Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, (Born 1938).

As a poet my mind is trained along the path of poetic associations – I’m not afraid to wander away from direct narrative – I feel safe with a story that tempts you to believe or disbelieve. – Jerzy Skolimowski

Skolimowski Films for Review:  

34. F.W. Murnau 

F.W. Murnau, Germany-US, (1888 – 1931).

Don’t act – think! Films of the future will use more and more of these “camera angles” or, as I prefer to call them, these “dramatic angles.”  – F.W. Murnau 

Murnau Films for Review: 

35. François Truffaut

François Truffaut, France, (1932 – 1984).

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. – François Truffaut

Truffaut Films for Review: 

36. Miklós Jancsó 

Miklós Jancsó, Hungary, 1921 – 2014).

It’s very simple. Cinema has limits that it can’t exceed. It can never go beyond catching the spectator’s interest to make a spectacle. – Miklós Jancsó.

Jancsó Films for Review: 

37. Hou Hsiao-hsien  

Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan, (Born 1947).

The  “wu” in  “wuxia” means both “to cut” and “to stop.” It also refers to the weapon – usually a sword – carried by the assassin.  So wuxia stories are concerned with the premise of ending violence with violence. The hero’s journey is epic and transformative – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. – Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien Films for Review: 

38. Werner Herzog 

Werner Herzog, West Germany, (Born 1942).

There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization. – Werner Herzog

Herzog Films for Review: 

39. Satyajit Ray 

Satyajit Ray, India, 1921 – 1992).

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about. Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind. – Satyajit Ray 

Ray Films for Review: 

40. Stanley Kubrick  

Stanley Kubrick, US-UK, (1928 –1999).

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. – Stanley Kubrick

 Kubrick Films for Review:

41. Alain Resnais  

Alain Resnais, France, (1922 – 2014).

I use formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally. – Alain Resnais

Resnais Films for Review:

42. John Cassavetes  

John Cassavetes, US, (1929 – 1989).

During the actual filming, I’m not really listening to dialogue. I’m watching to see if the actors are communicating something and expressing something. You’re not aware of exactly what people are saying. You are aware of what they are INTENDING and what kind of feeling is going on in that scene. – John Cassavetes  

Cassavetes Films for Review:  

43. Claire Denis  

Claire Denis, France, (Born 1946).

I am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound. – Claire Denis

Denis Films for Review:

44. Sam Peckinpah 

Sam Peckinpah, US, (1925 –1984).

The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws – everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he’s only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don’t say to me we’re not violent. – Sam Peckinpah 

Peckinpah Films for Review:

45. Andrzej Wajda  

Andrzej Wajda, Poland, (1926 – 2016).

When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it. – Andrzej Wajda 

46. Martin Scorsese 

Martin Scorsese, US, (Born 1942).

Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out. – Martin Scorsese

Scorsese Films for Review:

47. Masahiro Shinoda

Masahiro Shinoda, Japan, (Born 1931).

One thing I can say is either to look at films very carefully, watch a lot of films, or don’t see any films at all. Just imagine! – Masahiro Shinoda

Shinoda Films for Review:

48. Ingmar Bergman 

Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, (1918 – 2007).

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. – Ingmar Bergman

Bergman Films for Review:

49. Sergio Leone 

Sergio Leone, Italy, (1929 – 1989).

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite. – Sergio Leone 

Leone Films for Review:

 50. Agnès Varda  

Agnès Varda, France, (1928 – 2019).

I’m not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman – not unless she is looking for new images. – Agnes Varda

Varda Films for Review:

51. Jacques Rivette  

Jacques Rivette, France, (1928 – 2016).

I guess I like a lot of directors. Or at least I try to. – Jacques Rivette 

Rivette Films for Review:

52. Clint Eastwood 

Clint Eastwood, US, (Born 1930).

I keep working because I learn something new all the time. – Clint Eastwood 

Eastwood Films for Review:

53. Erich von Stroheim

Erich von Stroheim, US, (1885 – 1957).

In Hollywood, you’re only as good as your last picture. – Erich von Stroheim

Stroheim Films for Review:

54. Chris Marker 

Chris Marker, France, (1921 – 2012).

An object dies when the gaze that lights on it has disappeared. – Chris Marker

Marker Films for Review:

55. Robert Flaherty

Robert Flaherty, US, (1884 – 1951).

Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit. – Robert Flaherty

Flaherty Films for Review::

56. Claude Chabrol

Claude Chabrol, France, (1930 – 2010).

Films with a message just make me laugh. – Claude Chabrol

Chabrol Films for Review:

57. Michael Powel & Emeric Pressburger 

Michael Powell, UK, (1905–1990) & Emeric Pressburger, UK,, (1902–1988),

Of course, all films are surrealist. They are because they are making something that looks like a real world but isn’t. – Michael Powell

Powell & Pressburger Films for Review:

58. Joseph Losey

Joseph Losey, US-UK, (1909 – 1984).

Films can illustrate our existence… they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But NOT give the answers. America has abandoned the strong woman of spirituality and is shacking up with the harlot of materialism. – Joseph Losey

Losey Films for Review:

59. Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges, US, (1898 – 1959).

I did not think that a good movie was the equivalent of a good stage play, any more than I thought an automobile ride was as exhilarating as a drive behind a spirited horse, nor a trip by steam as soul-satisfying as a voyage by sail. – Preston Sturges

Sturges Films for Review:

60. David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg, Canada, (Born 1943).

Everybody’s a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We’re all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos. – David Cronenberg

Cronenberg Films for Review:

61. Carlos Saura

Carlos Saura, Spain, (1932 – 2023).

I can’t separate cinema from my life. The two things are interrelated and enrich or impoverish each other. – Carlos Saura

Saura Films for Review:

62. Wim Wenders 

Wim Wenders, West Germany, (Born 1945).

Film is a very, very powerful medium. It can either confirm the idea that things are wonderful the way they are, or it can reinforce the conception that things can be changed. – Wim Wenders

Wenders Films for Review:

63. John Huston

John Huston, US, (1906 –1987).

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. – John Huston

Huston Films for Review:

64. Shōhei Imamura  

Shōhei Imamura, Japan, (1926 – 2006).

I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of daily Japanese life obstinately supports itself. – Shōhei Imamura 

Imamura Films for Review:

65. Nicholas Ray 

Nicholas Ray, US, (1911 –1979).

An actor can be as talented as another, but if he doesn’t stick to what the director’s intentions are, it all falls down. – Nicholas Ray 

Ray Films for Review:

66. Jean Vigo 

Jean Vigo, France, (1905 –1934).

However paradoxical it may seem, the film studio’s ideal would be to produce only one film which would go on making money forever. – Jean Vigo

Vigo Films for Review:

67. Vittorio De Sica

Vittorio De Sica, Italy, (1901 – 1974).

Art has to be severe. It cannot be commercial. It cannot be for the producer or even for the public. It has to be for oneself. – Vittorio De Sica

De Sica Films for Review:

68. Jacques Tati

Jacques Tati, France, (1907 – 1982).

The images are designed, so that after you see the picture two or three times, its no longer my film, it starts to be your film. You recognize the people, you know them, and you don’t even know who directed the picture. – Jacques Tati

Tait Films for Review:

69. Richard Lester

Richard Lester, UK-US, (Born 1932).

Cinema must reflect the temper of the times. We must choose material not only on the basis of whether we feel deeply, but on whether or not anyone’s bloody well going to see it. – Richard Lester

Lester Films for Review:

70. Kon Ichikawa 

Kon Ichikawa, Japan, (1915 – 2008).

I’ve made various types of films: period dramas, modern dramas, films set in the Meiji period. But I don’t make any distinctions between them – they’re all films. True, with a period drama, there are certain conventions. With a modern drama, there is a different style of shooting. So you have to make changes according to the genre, but I never think, “This is a period drama, so I have to shoot it in such and such a way.” Films are films. If you don’t understand that, then you start filming lies. – Kon Ichikawa

Ichikawa Films for Review:

71. Laurent Cantet 

Laurent Cantet, France, (Born 1961).

I think we’re going through a really precarious period in film production, and I very much fear that it’s going to be a lot more difficult to make my kind of cinema. If you make films that don’t exactly announce themselves as surefire hits, you feel like you’re walking a tightrope.  I don’t want to take larger scale films in order to show my evolution as a director. – Laurent Cantet

Cantet Films for Review:

72. Jean-Pierre Melville

Jean-Pierre Melville, France, (1917 – 1973).

I believe that you must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage. – Jean-Pierre Melville

Melville Films for Review:

73. Krzysztof Zanussi

Krzysztof Zanussi, Poland, (Born 1939).

I think cinema has a unique capacity to show the passage of time. When the camera can cover a distance of forty years, and you see what really happened to the faces of the actors – how they really aged, with no need for make-up – you see what happens to us. In literature, it is only reference, it’s not sensual; in cinema it’s sensual. – Krzysztof Zanussi

Zanussi Films for Review:

74. Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti, Italy, (1906 – 1976).

I could make a film in front of a wall if I knew how to find the data of man’s true humanity and how to express it. – Luchino Visconti

Visconti Films for Review:

75. David Lynch

David Lynch, US, Born 1946).

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too. – David Lynch

Lynch Films for Review:

Readers, feel free to comment or send your own lists to ad***@tr**********.com .

The post Traveling Boy Selects the 75 Greatest Film Directors of All-Time appeared first on Traveling Archive.

]]> https://travelingboy.com/travel/75-greatest-film-directors/feed/ 34 Max Von Sydow Remembered https://travelingboy.com/travel/von-sydow-and-other-news/ https://travelingboy.com/travel/von-sydow-and-other-news/#respond Fri, 13 Mar 2020 06:30:51 +0000 https://travelingboy.com/travel/?p=16051 Max von Sydow the Oscar-nominated actor best known for playing chess with Death in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal has passed away. He was 90 years old.

The post Max Von Sydow Remembered appeared first on Traveling Archive.

]]> Max von Sydow Remembered

By T-Boy Society of Film and Music

Versatile ‘Seventh Seal’ actor and frequent Ingmar Bergman collaborator has died at 90.

Max Von Sydow in 2006
Photo courtesy of Oneras, via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Max von Sydow (pronounced: “see-doh”) the Oscar-nominated actor best known for playing chess with Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal has passed away. He was 90 years old.

His wife, Catherine Brelet, announced the news without citing a cause of death in Paris Match. “It is with a broken heart and with infinite sadness that we have the extreme pain of announcing the departure of Max von Sydow on 8 March 2020,” she said, according to The Guardian.

Max von Sydow’s knight plays a game of chess with Death
The iconic photograph where Max von Sydow’s knight plays a game of chess with Death. Photo courtesy of Janus Films.

The Swedish actor became an international star in the late fifties and sixties due to his appearances in eleven Ingmar Bergman films. In particular, his first film with writer/director Bergman, The Seventh Seal – where he played a pensive knight returning home from the Crusades during Black Plague, who challenges Death to a game of chess – put both von Sydow and Bergman on the world map. The Seventh Seal is considered a classic of world cinema, as well as one of the greatest movies of all time. It established Bergman as a world-renowned director, containing scenes which have become iconic through homages, critical analysis and even parodies.

Von Sydow followed with Wild Strawberries in a bit part as a gas station attendant. I fondly recall audiences’ surprise when they noticed their heroic knight pumping gas in a contemporary film.

Von Sydow was blessed to be part of Bergman’s family of actors – in the vein of John Ford,  Preston Sturges and Rainer Werner Fassbinder – one of the greatest acting troops in the history of the cinema, which included Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. Von Sydow considered Bergman a genius, and was more than happy to play any part in which he was offered.

Max von Sydow in Bergman’s 'The Virgin Spring'
Bergman’s The Virgin Spring is a medieval morality play. In this photograph, Von Sydow prepares himself for the extreme act of vengeance upon learning that his daughter had been raped and murdered. Photo courtesy of Janus Films.

The Magician was the last of his three Bergman films photographed by the esteemed Gunnar Fischer. He followed with The Virgin Spring;  Through a Glass Darkly;  Winter Light; Hour of the Wolf;  Shame; The Passion of Anna and The Touch with Sven Nykvist behind the camera, one of the world ‘s greatest cinematographers. It should be noted that Bergman’s style shifted from Fischer’s hard, contrast lighting to the naturalness of Nykvist’s lighting schemes.

Bergman and von Sydow continued working together throughout the sixties, a decade during which von Sydow alternated between film and theatre.

Max von Sydow in Winter Light
In Winter Light, the second in Bergman’s trilogy that explores religious faith, von Sydow plays a tormented fisherman, fearing nuclear annihilation. With Gunnar Björnstrand as the pastor who attempts to console him, who begins to question his own faith. Photo courtesy of filmaffinity

“Ingmar has these special characters who are reincarnated from film to film,” von Sydow told Life in 1971. “There is the very sensitive, very emotional person who cannot bear his own feelings. He is usually destroyed by the second type of character, the one who is emotionally inhibited by his intellect, who never has had any real emotional experience and longs to be almost the victim of an emotional explosion just in order to  feel something.”

His stature was such that his Hollywood debut was in George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told, where he played Jesus Christ.

Von Sydow said of his craft in an 1965 interview, “In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don’t have direct contact and not always continuity, and I am fighting technical machinery. But what the movies do is give me an opportunity to go places. Now, I’m not only a Swede but an American, not just a man of my time but I’ve been living 2,000 years ago — and not just in a new country, America, but in the Holy Land, too.”

Within a decade, he was the star of William Friedkin’s blockbuster The Exorcist. Although his character receive little screen time in the horror film, it was von Sydow’s ability to play a priest who could display confidence in the face of a demon that brought the film together. He was 44 at the time the movie came out, but makeup effects made him look older, adding weight to the role. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for the performance but did not win. In 1988, von Sydow directed his only film, Katinka, a love story about a married woman falling in love with another man.

Known for his versatility, von Sydow also appeared in supporting roles in esteemed films such as partner of Barbara Hershey’s character in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters; a director of a futuristic police force in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report; and a dubious professor in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island.

von Sydow in the film 'Hamsun'
Von Sydow in the controversial title as Hamsun, directed by Jan Troell. Courtesy photo.

He would switch over to playing leading roles in Pelle the Conqueror, and in Jan Troell’s The New Land, The Emigrants and Hamsun, his last great lead  as Norwegian Nobel Laureate, Knut Hamsun, which covers his controversial support for the Nazi regime during WW2 and its consequences for the Hamsun family after the war.

Von Sydow was a man who liked to keep working, appearing in 120 films, with some light years away from his prestigious work with Bergman: Kojak: The Belarus File (TV Movie), Footloose, Conan the Barbarian, Strange Brew, Exorcist II and the voice in Ghostbusters (Video Game).

Von Sydow kept a busy schedule of projects up to his death, and is slated to appear in filmmaker Nicholas Dimitropoulos’ upcoming Echoes of the Past.

Von Sydow was married twice. He met his first wife, Christina Olin, while in theater school; the couple, who had two sons, divorced in 1979. He married Brelet in 1997 and, according to The Guardian, subsequently became a citizen of her native France.

Interview: Juliette Binoche

By Nicolas Rapold on March 12, 2020

Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche in 'The Truth'
Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche in ‘The Truth’ (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2020)

In Film Comment’s March and April issue, Molly Haskell writes eloquently of the new film The Truth: “It seems remarkable yet somehow unsurprising that the celebrated Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda should move seamlessly into the French language and a Parisian household in this autumnal portrait of an aging actress, a diva extraordinaire named Fabienne, played, naturally, by Catherine Deneuve. The occasion is the publication of Fabienne’s memoirs, which her daughter and family have come warily to celebrate. But the daughter, Lumir (Juliette Binoche), a screenwriter living in New York, has another agenda: to finally read the manuscript that her mother had promised to send her in advance. Memory and unreliability are at the center of this masterful exploration of a classic Kore-eda theme: the way in which families construct their mythologies, often at variance with whatever truths can be rescued from a past that has been pushed and pulled, rewritten and reshaped into forms that family members can live with.”

I sat down with Binoche last September at the Venice film festival, where The Truth had its world premiere as the opening night selection. Given the fascinating interplay between Binoche and Deneuve, and Binoche and Kore-eda, I initially focused on a few scenes, which the actor expounded upon with an electric intensity, as she did her upcoming projects. The Truth, which kicked off Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, opens March 20 at Film at Lincoln Center.

What was the first Kore-eda film you remember seeing?

Nobody Knows. I was very touched by that.

When did you first speak to him about The Truth?

We met in 2004, I think, and after that, we saw each other once in a while. Once I went to check in, and we went to Kyoto and spent time together. But I think when he met with Catherine, it clicked, and then the script started working on him.

What was your way into your character and her relationship with her mother and her career?

First of all he said to us, “It’s a comedy.” So that brought me a raw feeling for it. And then he said to me, “You really have to go into the shadow of your mother.” I was interested, because before that, I’d acted in [Clouds of] Sils Maria — I was the actress, and then all of a sudden I was like the assistant. He said to me, “I’m interested in the shadows,” probably because he’s like the sun for his group of people in Japan who work with him. Like when all the bees work for the queen. We chose colors — all greys in the clothes, and no-make-up kind of thing.

I was quite fascinated, because while we were shooting, he wrote the scene at the end with my daughter, in my old bedroom. It’s after she goes to see my mother, her grandmother, and she comes to me and I say, “So, did it work?” And she asks, “What’s the truth?” And I don’t really answer. I love the fact that he found that scene while we were shooting, because he was still exploring, still working through the complexity of these characters and all the layers of the story.

That’s a wonderful scene. I was going to ask about it because there’s that close-up on you — but it’s not a close-up that reveals. You respond to her, but it’s not a totally candid response.

Yeah. I remember, it was at the end of the day, at the end of shooting, and we were all exhausted. And he said to me, “You have to have this big smile, beaming.” And I said, “How do you want me to beam?” [Laughs] Because I’m cooked. I have nothing more to give. But he has a way of asking: so human and so subtle, not demanding. There’s something about life that he’s able to share in. He reminds me actually of when I read Anton Chekhov: I’m always very moved by the person, because he knows about human beings also because he’s been a doctor. Also, Chekhov was writing for his wife and showing the dark sides of a character as well as the light sides. But he always loved them no matter what. I think Kore-eda has the same quality of loving, even though we can be the worst and the best. That’s probably why I wanted to work with him so much. I felt there was something in him that is so human, without pushing, without wanting.

Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) and her family

Another striking scene is one with Catherine Deneuve that’s basically one long take. You’re embracing and, at the end, it abruptly seems that her character, Fabienne, was treating it all as material for a future performance. Can you talk about shooting that scene? 

Well, it was interesting. When we rehearsed, my first impulse in the scene — and her impulse as well — was that she came over to my shoulder. And I was cuddling her.

Right.

Catherine is not very comfortable, I think, with too much physical closeness, and she asked the crew to go away because she felt too much. There was too much attention on how we were going to deal with that scene. So we’re kind of alone with the director and the translator. So, after rehearsing several times, she allowed me to come to her shoulder. And there’s the complexity of my [character’s] needs as a little girl, because you always need the mom who’s going to protect you or fill in all the doubts. And it was almost impossible to stay on that shoulder, because she’s going through stuff herself. So I felt like Catherine opened up, and I remember her saying after doing the scene, “Oh, she’s terrible, she’s terrible.” She was surprised by it.

So she was able to channel her energy in an extraordinary way for that moment. 

I don’t know where it came from. I was surprised by it. She was surprised by it, and she could have enough distance to feel that it was awful to behave like that. You know, I remember living things in life and saying, inside of me, “How wonderful it would be to act that!” Of course you’re observing — it’s like a painter seeing some light and saying, “I want to reproduce this light, you know — this light is the most beautiful moment,” or “This is so truthful, I’ve never seen that before.” Of course you go into that, because it’s a part of the need to observe and take things in, in order to recreate it into a new art form.

It’s a moment of such genuine emotion for your character.

I think that’s the interest in being an actor. You know you’re in a fiction, you know it’s not true, and yet you have to be true within the fiction. And very much like in life, somehow you know it’s not the truth, the reality is somewhere else — yet you have to act fully as being truthful. Because we’re actors of our lives and we’re acting into a situation. Like now: you’re playing the journalist and I’m playing the actress. You have to be truthful in what you felt or in your questions. That’s the game of it all, but being truthful means being close to what you feel and being able to say what you feel, and not making it too beautiful, or too whatever, in projecting it.

It feels like Lumir has some common language with Fabienne in the form of imagination and being able to communicate things that way. But it can be dangerous, because you can get far away from your actual emotions. Did it feel like Lumir was trying to find a language through which she could communicate with her mother?

Being a scriptwriter, you mean? What was interesting to me is that the mother seems to be setting all the colors of what’s true or not true. Because she has that power: she wrote that book and she’s recognized and all. In some situations, it’s the daughter who’s actually writing, but her mother says whatever she wants at the end of the day. It’s the funny situation of it all — life is very comical but tragic at the same time. Where do you place the truth? Where does it come from? That’s why the film is fascinating, because it has so many layers.

Juliette Binoche in 'The Truth'

There’s something especially raw about the mother’s absolute devotion to her art, versus her feelings toward her family. 

Yeah, she’s assertive about that. She’s made a decision, and that decision is good for her: leaving everybody behind. [Laughs] Whether they have problems or not. I don’t know anyone who’s been like that. It reminds of the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford — and then [Crawford’s] daughter wrote a book about how nasty her mother was and all that. That’s the closest I can think of. Maybe this film brings out a lot of these questions of how much you put in your career, acting, world recognition, the need to be important, that kind of power. Personally, I don’t know anyone, any actress, who has done or felt that [toward their child]. You learn very early, as a little girl, that having a family and having children was important. And yet when I found acting, it was such an opening, it was a place where I could express myself and explore. For me, it was always such a joy and an important dimension, an inside dimension.

The Truth definitely reminded me of Clouds of Sils Maria and your character in that film, Isabelle. That movie also gets deep into the living details of being an actor, and the behind the scenes of life. How would you compare Fabienne and Isabelle?

Well, Kore-eda talked to me about Sils Maria.

Really!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember seeing him and talking to him after Sils Maria, which maybe he had seen in Cannes. It felt like he was fascinated by the subject matter and by the film. So when he met with Catherine, something probably clicked in him. Also, he was very attached to an actress who had been in his films and who died recently. Because he had a real love and a fascination for her. And directors have to deal with actors so much, you know…

It’s familiar. 

It’s familiar, so is it related to his own mother? I don’t know. You know, you have to be very, very intimate in order to go into [things]. We had a translator, so you couldn’t be one-on-one and really share intimate things. But I felt very early on that there was a natural complexity and intimacy with Kore-eda, because there’s something in his eyes that is very available, and soft, and he gets into you. He doesn’t keep his distance. The language keeps distance more than his eyes.

Catherine Deneuve in 'The Truth'

What’s the next film you’ll be shooting? 

After Kore-eda’s film, I have a film by Emmanuel Carrère, a French novelist. It’s going to be his second film. He’s done a documentary, but this is a fiction film. It’s an adaptation of a well-known book, Le Quai de Ouistreham, and I’m the only actress in it, with non-actors. It’s about maids, mainly, and I’m a writer going into their world and pretending to be a maid in order to see what it is really. So it has the complexity of the truth at the end, when they learn that I’m not actually a maid — that I was there as somebody who wanted to know the truth of what it is to have nothing. You know, 50 years old and you’re starting from nothing.

Tomorrow, I will be finishing a film that I started two months ago. It’s a comedy by Martin Provost, a French director. It’s his first comedy, and it takes place at the end of the ’60s, when there were a lot of schools in France for making good wives. Schools to prepare young girls, usually from the middle[-class], not rich people.

A finishing school sort of thing?

For three years, they had to learn how to cook and sew, and the principles of being a good wife. And you had to submit to the husband’s sexual needs or whatever needs they have. This existed before the Second World War, but it really exploded after the war, seven hundred schools like that. And then it stopped with the ’70s.

I would hope so. 

Because there was so much anger. And my character is flipping out. I’m the head of the school, with 20 young girls, having to deal with the learning process. Then it gets into ’68. And they go to Paris to do the revolution!

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